Royal Family, Royal Lovers: King James of England and Scotland

by David Moore Bergeron

Book Overview

A study of the lives of the Stuart royal family. Written in an accessible style, the narrative moves chronologically from James's birth in 1566 to his death in 1625. It is aimed at the general reader as well as historians and describes a family divided by jealousy, neglect and the violence of war. A cousin, denied marriage to the man she loves, dies locked in a tower; a young prince, heir-expectant, dies suddenly; a princess marries a German prince and then finds herself the prisoner of European wars; a king-father, noted for his peacemaking, ensnares his country in a war as his life ends; a queen-mother, determined to nurture her young children, finds herself estranged from them.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826207839
• ISBN13: 9780826207838
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: University of Missouri Press
• Length: 222 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Dark secrets of a Gt King ... will shock some

King James, sponsor of the famous Authorized "King James" Bible, is often lauded as defender of the faith by some who worship his 1611 publication as the be-all and end-all of all English Bible translations. Many hagiographic works abound, but Bergeron's isn't one of those.While writing his Basilicon Doron to attack the sin of sodomy, James himself used his royal position to shield himself from such a charge against himself. Bergeron digs up the historical dirt and shares a contemporary's view of the hypocrisy, a diary entry in 1622 by one Simonds D'Ewes of a conversation he'd had with a friend:"Of things I discoursed with him that weere secrett as of the sinne of sodomye, how frequente it was in this wicked cittye, and if God did not provide some wonderfull blessing against it, wee could not but expect some horrible punishment for it; especially it being as wee had probable cause to feare, a sinne in the prince as well as the people, which God is for the most part the chastiser of himselfe, because noe man else indeed dare reprove or tell him them of ther faults." (Bergeron, p. 183)Many more pieces of evidence are to be found in those pages, and what emerges from Bergeron's picture is that of a great man who was both King of England and Scotland and quite human.