Strange turn of events
For much of the sixteenth century England and Scotland hated each other with all the passion of warring neighbours. Yet in 1603 a Scottish king would ascend the English throne with the connivance and general approval of the English ruling elite. This unlikely turn of events owed much to the eccentricities of the Welsh Tudor dynasty that had occupied the English for almost precisely that century: the determination of the father, Henry VIII, to marry often and the equal determination of the daughter, Elizabeth, not to marry at all. But it also owed a great deal to Protestantism.
There was little that bound together the English aristocracy and the Scottish king, for whom they developed a profound distaste, than a shared commitment to Protestantism. It was a determination to preserve England as a Protestant nation that gave James VI and I his opportunity and which would doom his son Charles when his actions threatened to undermine this cherished identity.
A remarkably smooth transition
'...by the end of the century England and Scotland were... the cornerstones of Protestant Europe.'
For all the glories of hindsight, there are many ironies in this unlikely turn of events. The prevailing mood among historians has been to regard the translation of England to Protestantism as largely accidental, and certainly grudging. If England became a Protestant country, it is argued, it did so largely at the behest of its rulers and against its better judgement. If this was so, the transformation was indeed profound, for by the end of the century England and Scotland were rightly regarded as the cornerstones of Protestant Europe.
The faith would become so deeply ingrained that in the seventeenth century both nations would defend their religious affinity with a passion that verged on bigotry. Yet the adoption of Protestantism had been, by the standards of the turmoil that had gripped much of Europe in this period, remarkably smooth.
Published: 2001-05-01
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