Union of the Crowns Union of the Crowns The Union of the Crowns (; ) was the accession of James VI of Scotland to the thrones of England and Ireland, and the consequential unification for some purposes (such as overseas diplomacy) of the three realms under a single monarch on 24 March 1603. The Union of Crowns followed the death of Elizabeth I of England, the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty, who was James's unmarried and childless first cousin twice removed. The Union was a personal or dynastic union, with the Crown of Scotland remaining both distinct and separate—despite James's best efforts to
Angevin kings of England the Cathedral", an exploration of Becket's death and Eliot's religious interpretation of it. During the Tudor period, popular representations of John emerged. He appeared as a "proto-Protestant martyr" in the anonymous play "The Troublesome Reign of King John" and John Bale's morality play "Kynge Johan", in which John attempts to save England from the "evil agents of the Roman Church". Shakespeare's anti-Catholic "King John" draws on "The Troublesome Reign", offering a "balanced, dual view of a complex monarch as both a proto-Protestant victim of Rome's machinations and as a weak, selfishly motivated ruler". Anthony Munday's plays "The Downfall and The