Sejanus: Ethics and Politics in the Early Reign of James

Abstract

Basilikon Doron, written by King James VI of Scotland as a book of advice for his son Prince Henry, was an instant best-seller in the London of 1603–4. The English Queen, Elizabeth, had just died, and her Scottish cousin had now succeeded her as James I. People in England were understandably curious about their new ruler’s political, social, and religious ideas, and Basilikon Doron more than satisfied such curiosity. At one point, for instance, James instructed Henry about the origins and progress of the Reformation in Scotland. In that country, he noted, the change in ecclesiastical government had not been imposed by order of the prince (as had happened in England and Denmark); instead, it had resulted largely from ‘popular tumult and rebellion, of such as blindly were doing the worke of God, but clogged with their owne passions and particular respects… Indeed, ‘some fierie spirited men in the ministerie, got such a guiding of the people at that time of confusion, as finding the gust [taste] of gouernment sweete, they begouth [began] to fantasie to themselues a Democraticke forme of gouernment … .’ They ‘setled themselves so fast upon that imagined Democracie, as they fed themselves with the hope to become Tribuni plebis: and so in a popular gouernment by leading the people by the nose, to beare the sway of all the rule.’ (BD p. 23).