This year marked the 400th anniversary of the death of King James I of England (James VI in Scotland), the first monarch of the generally disastrous Stuart dynasty. By no means forgotten by historians, the anniversary was marked by no fewer than three heavyweight biographies, and headlines devoted to the King in the Times and the Telegraph .

James’s son Charles I lost both a civil war and his head; his grandson Charles II presided over the plague, the Great Fire of London, and saw his fleet towed away by the Dutch; his second grandson James II lost the throne entirely and fled into exile. But in spite of this dismal record, of all the Stuart sovereigns, the first James was easily the worst and most disgusting monarch ever to have occupied the throne.

Let’s look first at his poor pers

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