The World of James VI and I: A fascinating tribute to the king of bling

Telegraph

24-04-2025

You have to wonder whether history would have been kinder to James VI & I if he had ended up being beheaded. His mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, had been brought to the scaffold in 1587, her death warrant signed by Elizabeth I – an event that in centuries since has cemented her legacy as a national heroine. In 1649, his son and successor, Charles I, met the same end. By contrast, James is perhaps best remembered as 'the wisest fool in Christendom', an epithet handed down to us by one of his courtiers, Sir Anthony Weldon, who could also be considerably less kind, as when he recalled James continually fidgeting with his codpiece.
Weldon's broadside appears at the outset of The World of James VI & I, an exhibition held at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh to mark the 400th anniversary of his death. It's a show of considerable nuance, in large part because it doesn't set out to rehabilitate James, as such – rather, it wants you to engage with James on something like his own level. Stuffier exhibitions tell the story of monarchy predominantly with portraiture, and leave you wondering whether you'd have been better getting it from an illustrated book. Not so here, where portraits, letters, clothes, jewellery, ornate glassware and more combine to conjure a rich sense of the charged times in which James ruled, in both his kingdoms – as well as of James's enormous love of bling.
The show takes the story of his reign at a canter. In Scotland, he founded Edinburgh University and cultivated a proud Renaissance court; on the other hand, his deeply held superstitions spurred him to rekindle the persecution of witches. In England, he tried in vain to effect an improbable peace with Spain, pursued a policy of unbridled colonisation in Ireland, oversaw the establishment of the first colonial plantations in Virginia, commissioned the King James Bible and enjoyed the company of male favourites such as George Villiers in terms that have had historians speculating ever since.
But the real achievement of this exhibition is in understanding that these historical debates are, ultimately, too big for it – it can only point to them. What it can and does achieve is a sense of the sheer splendour of the Stuart court under James – and how James mobilised that splendour to communicate the potency of his dynasty.
After the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when he made the politically questionable decision of transplanting most of his court from Edinburgh to London, he compensated by commissioning portraits, medallions, coins and jewels, circulating images of the entire royal family to as wide an audience as possible – and making it abundantly clear that he had a stable marriage and secure bloodline, which must have been a breath of fresh air after the Tudors.