History of the Constitution of the United Kingdom and applied it to their form of government. When Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603 without issue, she was succeeded by her cousin James VI of Scotland, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and he became King James I of England. This was a major step towards creating a single British state, although the Kingdom of Great Britain did not come about until a hundred years later. James VI faced a fractious religious England since it contained Anglicans (of the Church of England), Puritans, Separatists (who wanted to break from the Church of England), and also many Roman Catholics,
The History of England (Hume) anti-Jacobite shibboleth that Hume wanted to refute held that absolute monarchy was an innovation brought to England by James I. When James was writing his Basilicon Doron expounding the divine right of kings, he was king of Scotland alone. He wanted to bring the authoritarian English model of kingship to his unruly northern kingdom. When he came to England, he inherited the oppressive Court of High Commission and the Court of the Star Chamber from the Tudors. He did not increase their powers. On the contrary, Hume found the rule of the first two Stuarts to have been milder than