James VII in Biography and Autobiography: The First and Forgotten Jacobite

Abstract

First paragraph: King James VII of Scotland. He is of course the father of Jacobitism, the origin of the label – James, Latin Jacobus and so Jacobitism. Even though I wrote and taught about Jacobitims long before my biography of James was published almost a decade ago James VII, Duke and King of Scots, 1633-1701 (John Donald, 2014), I’m essentially a Restoration historian, contrasting James more with his brother Charles than with his son and grandson. Biography is a problem and there is always the fear of becoming the person you write about. There is a considerable amount of negative history written about James – failure, cowardice, delusion, stupidity etc. F.C. Turner published a good, source-rich biography of James in 1948 in which he judged his easy-to-read handwriting a sign of low IQ. God help them, my former students must have thought me a genius as they struggled to read my comments on their essays. I for one delight in James’s hand being easy on the eye.