And I Will Make Them One Nation The Stuarts

Edinburgh's extinct volcano, Arthur's Seat,

is named after the mythical King Arthur

who ruled the ancient kingdoms of Britain.

The legend was that one day he would return to unite Britain.

In June 1566 in this tiny room in Edinburgh Castle,

a boy was born who was hailed as Little Arthur.

He was born into a bewildering world of emotional turbulence

and political mayhem.

Before this baby's first birthday, his father would be murdered,

blown up by gunpowder.

He would be forcibly separated from his mother, Mary Queen of Scots,

whom he'd never see again.

And yet this was the boy who would rise to become

the first king of all Britain.

His name is James, and if his early years were traumatic,

they are only a taste of what was to come for his remarkable family.

In the coming century, seven members of this dynasty will rule

the three separate kingdoms of Scotland, England and Ireland.

Through bloodshed and civil war they will refashion them

into the Great Britain that we know today.

It was a century of struggle marked by religious divisions,

revolution and conflicting visions of what Great Britain would be.

A struggle that has echoes today.

They are the first family of Great Britain.

They are the Stuarts.

On the 5th April 1603,

the King of Scotland, James VI, left Edinburgh for London,

promising to return home every three years.

The reason for his departure was a sudden vacancy

for a Protestant king.

His distant cousin Elizabeth Tudor, the Queen of England,

was dead without an heir.

And her crown had been offered to him.

With England would come Ireland too and the Principality of Wales.

James would rule all three kingdoms of the British Isles.

No-one had ever done that before.

except in those myths of King Arthur.

When King James VI of Scotland became James I of England,

he actually inherited three very different kingdoms,

each with separate parliaments, clashing religious preferences

and even a history of going to war with one another.

Today we tend to take the modern United Kingdom for granted,

though there was nothing inevitable about its creation.

Yet more than any other, the Stuart century was

the one in which the foundations of modern Britain were laid.

So how did this come about?

And what role did this remarkable family play?

Where then does this new relationship begin?

It begins in Berwick.

During James' Scottish reign,

Berwick was a frontier town with a frontier mentality.

A place surrounded by these massive fortifications

designed to keep James and his countrymen out.

And whose townspeople rode the Borders

to protect them from Scottish raiders.

Today that same event is a colourful pageant

called the Riding of the Bounds.

But it was once a security patrol along a very edgy border.

In 1603, at a stroke, the Stuart succession transformed this town.

It was round about here that James climbed up onto these fortifications

and it's hard to imagine the excitement

with which he saw England, his new kingdom.

He fired off a canon in celebration, and the town of Berwick erupted

as people lit bonfires, sang and cheered

and welcomed their new king.

In a royal proclamation, James ordered his Scottish subjects

to acknowledge the English as "their dearest brethren and friends."

That would be quite a change.

It would require a leap of faith...

..and would mean becoming more intimate with one another.

As James sized up England, England sized up James.

James' new subjects would have known that he believed himself

to have been chosen by God to rule.

Yet looking at James, they would have seen not a divine being,

but a short, ungainly man, modestly dressed.

Some might - some did - say scruffily dressed.

They'd also have heard an alien accent -

undiluted, freely using Scottish words.

But those who really wanted to know what James' reign

might have held in store, could do something other than

judge his clothes or his accent - they could read one of his books.

It's called the Basilikon Doron, which means "the gift of the king".

It's a manual on kingship that James wrote

for his four-year-old son and heir, Prince Henry.

And it was published in London

within weeks of him becoming King of England.

You really get to know James reading this book.

He advises Henry that he should talk in a plain, honest, natural, clean

and short way, and that's exactly what James does in this book.

It's not written in ornate fancy language.

It's plain middle Scots, it's advice between a father and a son.

At least that's how it reads.

But what I also like about this book is the way that James deliberately

uses it to project an image of himself as a wise king.

A philosopher-king,

from whom his new subjects would have nothing to fear.

Take this little section, for example.

In political terms, one of the key pieces of advice James gives Henry

is always to keep in mind two images -

one is of a good king, the other is of a tyrant.

The good king rules lawfully

and is well supported and liked by his subjects and very secure.

The tyrant rules illegally, is arbitrary, violent and insecure.

And it's only by always thinking of those two images

that Henry will realise what it is that a good king does

as opposed to an insecure, neurotic, illegal tyrant.

He also thinks that kings should be good physicians,

and he advises Henry that he needs to be a doctor of the body politic.

He needs to know the illnesses

that his patient is naturally most subject unto.

And what might those illnesses be?

They might be riot, they might be rebellion,

they might be religious extremism.

That Henry really needs to get to know the tempers of his people.

In his 36 years as King of Scotland,

James had got to know the tempers of his people only too well.

After the traumas of his early childhood, he'd been brought up by

noble guardians at Stirling Castle, a Stuart family seat.

He was the ninth Stuart monarch in a line stretching back to 1371.

But he was the first fully to confront the new religious tensions

brought about by the Protestant Reformation.

Don't be misled by its name - the Reformation was a revolution

with the power to unleash holy war.

It divided Europe and transformed Scotland

from a Catholic country into a Protestant one.

It also made some Protestant fanatics bold enough

to challenge James' royal authority openly.

In Basilikon Doron, he calls them, "rash-headed puritans

"who think it their honour to contend with kings

"and perturb whole kingdoms."

But the Reformation brought the Stuarts

one unexpected political gift.

As they found themselves on the same Protestant side

as their traditional enemy England,

facing the same Catholic threat from Europe.

And this new bond encouraged James to dream of fulfilling

his family's deepest ambition - the ambition to rule in England.

If you can decode it,

the ceiling here in the royal apartments at Stirling Castle

reveals why the Stuarts were able to dream on such a big scale.

It all dated back to the marriage

between the Thistle and the Rose in 1503,

between James's great-grandmother, Margaret Tudor,

who's painted up there holding a Tudor greyhound

and his great-grandfather, James IV.

And this shows us very vividly

James's claim to the English throne -

his unique descent from both Tudor and Stuart blood.

Margaret Tudor was the sister of this character, Henry VIII.

And while his bloodline famously died out in England,

hers went from strength to strength in Scotland,

through these two - James V and his wife -

via Mary Queen of Scots and finally through to James himself.

What I get very strongly from this ceiling is confirmation

of James' hereditary right to the English throne.

Henry VIII is on the sidelines.

He was the one who had married six wives

but couldn't secure the English succession beyond his own children.

But James has this terrific dynastic inheritance.

James made his official entry to London in early 1604.

And it was a huge and hopeful affair.

The State Opening of Parliament today provides a flavour

of the kind of spectacle that would have surrounded the occasion.

HE ISSUES COMMANDS

When James arrived in London, it was as James VI of Scotland

and James I of England.

But James didn't want to stop at that.

He intended to fulfil his destiny as the new King Arthur

by uniting his kingdoms.

James planned a complete union of Scotland and England,

to create a new country called Great Britain.

It would have one law, one parliament

and one king.

And - the best bit - James's family, the Stuarts,

would be this new country's only rightful rulers.

We still watch the monarch travel to Parliament today.

The pomp and pageantry has taken over

as her political power has diminished.

But that wasn't the case in James' day.

For James, the English Parliament

was the place to unveil his bold idea

and he expected the English MPs to listen.

When he first addressed both Houses of Parliament,

he outlined his idea in rich and characteristically vivid detail.

BIG BEN TOLLS

He explained that the moment had come to,

"Perfect that Union which is made in my blood."

James is a wonderful wordsmith and a brilliant propagandist.

It must have been quite unnerving for the English MPs

after decades of taciturn Tudor rule

suddenly to have a Stuart king appear in their midst,

engaged in a massive PR exercise.

He outlined a long, interesting rationale for union,

even looking at a map.

Surely it made sense that one island should be one country,

especially as there weren't any great physical boundaries

between Scotland and England.

The two countries also shared a similar Protestantism,

a similar language and very similar social customs and mores.

For James, it would only be out of malice or ignorance

that anyone would oppose union.

It would only be those, as he put it,

"Who delighted to fish in troubled waters."

James also claimed that union was God's will.

This was to be not just a union,

but a marriage between two equal countries,

and that enabled James to use an emotional, almost carnal rhetoric

when he addressed English MPs,

as he told them, "What God hath conjoined, let no man separate.

"I am the husband and all the whole isle is my lawful wife.

"I am the head and it is my body.

"I am the shepherd and it is my flock."

I think this is a very clever speech,

the first time that James met his English MPs.

It would have been delivered in an unfamiliar Scottish accent

and it would have presented the MPs

with an unfamiliar notion of Anglo-Scottish Union.

But it was presented with a rhetoric of inevitability,

telling the MPs that not only was the Union in their interests,

but also it was the Royal wish and it was also God's plan.

James was making the idea of Great Britain pretty hard to resist.

As a statement of intent to the English Parliament,

James' plan was crystal clear.

But the MPs didn't succumb to his rhetoric right away.

Instead, a commission was set up to consider the idea soberly

in the fullness of time.

And while it did,

James tried to bring Great Britain into existence in other ways,

taking his message out beyond parliament, beyond London.

I live and work in Cambridge, and in one of its museums

are objects that help to reveal just how James sold his plans

for a single United Kingdom to his subjects directly.

He made sure that they literally carried the idea around with them

wherever they went.

Adrian, what do we... What do we have here?

Oh, we have a nice selection of Scottish and English coins.

First of all, this is a pound coin.

To start with, James appears like an English king,

but you can notice that in the inscription it reads "Mag Brit",

so he is King not of England and Scotland,

but King of Great Britain, "Magnae Britanniae."

That idea of unity is reflected even further by the inscription

around the arms, which reads in Latin,

"Faciam eos in gentem unam."

"I will make them one people."

So it's a very tangible sense of James's project

that he was putting across right from the very start?

And as a result, this pound coin was known in its age as a Unite.

-"So I will give you one Unite."

-HE LAUGHS

Yes. But also the message goes all down to the small change coins,

which would have been used in the marketplace.

You can see on one side an English rose

and on the other side a Scottish thistle.

So even if somebody was illiterate,

they would have one of these, and they could handle it

and know that the two countries were now in some relationship?

So you don't have to read this to be able to know what is behind.

And generally, people would put their hands in their pockets

in James's reign, see a new country - Great Britain.

See a new coat of arms with England, Scotland and Ireland

and then a very powerful political message?

Yes. The idea of unity, it's on all his coinages.

"And I will make them one nation"

is a quote from the Old Testament book of Ezekiel.

James was so keen to present union as part of God's divine plan

that he targeted his subjects' spiritual world.

He commissioned a new translation of the Bible

that all his subjects could share

and even boldly used its front page to promote the idea of himself

as King of a new country.

Which brings me onto these,

the very first attempts at a new British flag,

under which James wanted Scottish and English ships to sail.

The Earl of Nottingham was commissioned

to come up with some designs.

He made various attempts

at trying to balance the two countries equally,

as he no doubt saw it.

But these weren't what James wanted

to represent his union of hearts and minds.

James was looking for something much more...intertwined.

Something like this - the modern Union flag,

first raised on April 12th 1606.

Uniting and - it must be said -

dividing the nations of Britain ever since.

But could the two countries really unite as seamlessly in reality

as they did on James' flag?

I'm on my way to see for the first time,

the rather forgotten treaty that James' commission drew up

in response to his wish for union.

It's tucked away in the vaults of the National Archives at Kew.

This document is one of three copies

of the Anglo-Scottish Treaty of Union of 1604.

So it's rather spectacular.

You have these wonderful seals plated onto velvet and bullion thread.

We believe this is the King's copy.

Among other things, the treaty legitimizes

intermarriage between any man and women in England and Scotland

and proposes to do away with the name "the Borders".

So you can see on this side you've got

the signatures of the 39 English commissioners

and then you have their seals fixed in order down these platted threads

and on this side, you have the Scots signatures and then their seals.

So it literally is a document of two halves.

Yes, exactly.

The finest vellum, velvet thread laced with bullion and the seals

and signatures of the greatest men in the land.

But ultimately, these good intentions were as close to a formal political union as Scotland

and England could come.

The English Parliament wouldn't pass it into law.

English MPs raised arguments about the sanctity of English common law

and economic arguments about the wisdom of England joining with its

poorer neighbour.

So James coolly shifted the goalposts.

He reassured his English audience that, "You are to be the husband, they the wife,

"you conquerors, they as conquered, though not by the sword,

"but by the sweet and sure bond."

But still the English Parliament of 1607 refused.

It's clear to me that although James' accession to the

English throne is a giant step towards modern Great Britain,

the kind of Great Britain that he envisaged simply wasn't ready

to be born - certainly not in England and not in Scotland either.

But there was one other kingdom under James' rule

and his attention was soon directed there.

Ireland was different.

Ireland was James' Catholic kingdom.

England's kings and queens had a troubled past in Ireland - wars,

persecution, upheaval, failed attempts at colonization.

But when James came to power, a mood of optimism briefly shone through.

Initially, the leaders of Gaelic Ireland had high hopes

for the Stuart dynasty and much was made of its fabled Gaelic origins.

They hoped that things might be different under James and he might

see things their way. But that mood of optimism quickly evaporated.

James wanted the Irish nobles to prove their loyalty to him.

But here in the north of the country, the Catholic, Gaelic heartland,

the ruling Catholic landowners wouldn't subject

themselves to James', or any British monarch's, authority.

This is Lough Swilly on Ireland's north coast

and it was from this point on 4th September 1607 that the Earls

of Tyrone and Tyrconnell dramatically set sail for the

Continent in a party of 99,

including their friends and families.

Known as "the Flight of the Earls" it dramatically changed

the course of British and Irish history.

Their destination was Spain, Catholic Europe's superpower,

but it was what they left behind that troubled James most -

a power vacuum that stretched across the north of Ireland.

So James planned to fill it in the most opportunistic way.

James set up a scheme to send loyal citizens from his other two

kingdoms to live in Ireland.

James was looking for a certain type of person

if his new venture was to succeed.

Ideally, they'd be English or Lowland Scots, Protestant,

willing to sign up for five years and in a position to defend

the new settlements with arms, if it came to it.

They were given land - the land of the earls,

and it was called Plantation.

The land was also used by the native Irish population

who herded cattle and moved with the seasons.

They were driven off land they'd used for centuries

as James established new permanent towns each with a Protestant church

and a market square at its heart.

As James said,

"The settling of religion

"and the introducing of civility, order

"and government amongst a barbarous and unsubdued people were

"acts of piety and glory and worthy always of a Christian

"prince's endeavour."

But James also wanted his scheme to make a profit.

In the darkest, most impenetrable part of the Gaelic north,

James knew he'd need help. And he knew just the people to ask.

The merchant banks of their day - the City of London's trade guilds known as livery companies.

They were lined up to provide the cash to develop the area economically.

But how could James sell them this plan?

Well, it was sold to the livery companies, of course, as an asset -

the idea was that the land was flowing with milk and honey,

that you could rear any kinds of crop or animals on it - that the

rivers teemed with fish, the minerals were of great value.

There were some attractions there, some of them were genuine

but I think in reality most of them were going to be hard-won

and the livery companies realised this.

But this was an offer they couldn't refuse.

If you don't do it, you're off to the Tower of London and we will

fine your livery company very, very hard - you know, there was really

no choice for the livery companies, they had to become involved.

So the London guilds divided up the land around Derry

between fishmongers and goldsmiths, mercers and grocers,

and the first thing they did was build protective walls

around their new settlements to keep the Irish rebels, almost all of whom were Catholic, out.

In thanks, the settlement of Derry became Londonderry - for some.

Though today, the town's identity remains a matter of political preference.

Ireland would haunt James' successors but ironically,

during the early years of his reign,

Ireland was more settled than it had been or would be for centuries.

James had done what previous English monarchs had failed to do -

planted something stronger than an army -

James had planted an idea, the idea of loyalty.

For James, as a Stuart monarch, this must have seemed

a kind of golden moment. His three kingdoms might not have been

united politically but they were settled and loyal

and full of optimism about the Stuarts' rule.

And part of the reason for this optimism was that

for the first time in living memory, England had a Prince of Wales.

I can just about make out the word Henry.

There's a very intimate way in which we can get to know Prince Henry -

James' eldest son and heir.

This is one of his school books that date from

when he is about 10 or 12 and it's his handwriting book.

We can see in the first page Henry practising his letters,

just doing letters over and over again - like all children do.

A few pages later you can see lots of Henry's doodles - practising

signing his name, playing with his fountain pen and lots of squiggles.

He seems to have forgotten on this page that he is supposed to be

the great Protestant hero, the learned prince. Instead,

he's just taken up a pen and started doodling.

I think this is a really fascinating way of getting to know the young prince.

He is writing here over and over again Hericus Principi Salute,

how you might start a letter.

"I greet you" - just as any child would be in a grammar school

at this stage, learning how to open a formal letter.

Of course, in Henry's case he's actually going to be writing

formal letters to the heads of state throughout Europe,

but he's nevertheless practising over and over again

but if I'm interested, just as a historian,

the whole of 17th-century Europe was fascinated by Henry's education

because his father was James, the philosopher king, who had

written a manifesto for kingship, Basilikon Doron, that was

essentially an outline of how a good prince should be educated.

By most accounts, Henry wasn't the world's brightest student.

But he didn't need to be - he was good looking, athletic

and hugely popular.

In the Tower of London, there's a remarkable object that brings

alive this side of his character.

What I think of as Henry's true character -

not the man of letters, but the man of action.

This is Henry's very own suit of armour -

presented to him when he was 14.

This is so different from looking at portraits - it's a very vivid

three-dimensional sense of exactly what Henry would have

looked like if he was standing right here.

He's 14, he's about 4 foot 9 inches, and he is dressed ready for battle.

The exquisite detail isn't just decoration - it's a story

celebrating the achievements of the greatest warrior of antiquity,

Alexander the Great.

The exotic global spread of Alexander's empire is

reflected in the fact that there are depictions of elephants

everywhere - there are also quite humorous touches.

There's an amorous couple about to elope into a tent

and there's a dog that's either being rescued or drowned down a well.

But why would someone give a suit of armour to a 14-year-old?

Well, there's a practical reason -

as a young man, Henry needs to learn how to wear a suit of armour

and it's much better to start at this age than when you are an adult.

But there's a second symbolic reason - the Stuarts need to

project Henry as a credible warrior in waiting.

Henry Stuart rides, fences, excels with his pike and lance,

and he swims in the Thames every day.

He is a kingdom united in flesh and blood, the first British prince.

But there never was a Henry IX.

So what happened?

In the early autumn of 1612, Prince Henry fell ill.

He became uncharacteristically listless and remained in bed.

The physicians gathered.

They ordered split pigeons to be applied to his head,

and a dead cockerel to be fixed to his feet.

The family visited to lift his spirits.

But Henry's spirits didn't lift.

On the 6th of November, 1612, Henry died aged 18.

The worst thing about Henry's death was that it was so unexpected.

For years, Henry had enjoyed rude health

and the adjectives that people used when they describing him

was robust, athletic, muscular.

The fact that it had also been a four-week illness,

and Henry appeared to have suffered excruciating gastro-intestinal

symptoms, led some to suspect perhaps medical malpractice - even poisoning.

People were so desperate

to explain how this seemingly healthy prince could just suddenly be no more.

An autopsy carried out at the time ruled out the possibility

of poisoning, recording instead that Henry had died of a fever.

A fever that medical historians later identified as typhoid.

Contracted, no doubt, here in the Thames,

where the prince once swam every day.

James was so distraught he couldn't attend Henry's funeral

and courtiers feared for the sanity of his wife, Anna.

It's ironic that, for most people, they first encounter Henry

through death, rather than through his life,

but the impact of his death was profound

and it rendered the Stuart dynasty much more precarious and fragile.

From three heirs, they were now down to two.

And the most important of those two was cause for concern.

Meet Charles.

Or Baby Charles, as James called him all his life.

In some respects, Charles was the opposite of Henry.

His childhood achievements aren't particularly well documented,

but his physical infirmities are.

Today, you have to seek out the anonymous exhibits

of a medical museum to understand just why Charles

was such a cause for concern.

As a young child, he'd suffered from rickets -

a disease caused by lack of sunlight that produced bone deformities.

Rickets had made it difficult for Charles to learn to walk,

let alone excel at princely sports.

James had ordered that his son's legs be put in irons,

to help straighten them, but for all his father's intervention,

the sense remained that Charles was a weak physical specimen.

Charles was also a stammerer,

so James ordered another helpful intervention...

..to cut the tendons under his tongue.

And only reluctantly relented when Charles' guardian intervened.

In an era when royal authority came from rhetoric and debate,

how would Charles convince, how would Charles control,

if he was unable to speak properly?

English MPs were so concerned about the sickly prince's prospects

that, in 1614, they suggested that

Charles' sister Elizabeth should become the official heir.

She was married to a Protestant prince in Europe.

Elizabeth looked a safer bet than Baby Charles.

But by early adulthood, Charles was transformed.

He had toughened up.

He was an excellent fencer and an outstanding horseman.

And as James' official heir, he was approaching his first major test...

..marriage.

A royal wedding, 17th-century style,

loaded with power, politics and religion...

..and just a dash of blatant opportunism.

James saw a chance

for his Stuart heir to marry someone a little bit special.

Her name was Maria Anna. She was the princess of the most

powerful family in all Europe - the Spanish Habsburgs,

who, controversially, were very devout Catholics,

which didn't go down well at home,

especially when war broke out between Catholics and Protestants

in central Europe and James was urged to take sides.

When the English Parliament met in November,

keen to debate events overseas,

where was James?

Not where you'd expect him - in Parliament - but here at Newmarket,

claiming ill health, but distracted by horses and hunting.

Hunting or hiding,

James had left Charles to take his place in Parliament,

Some MPs called for James to defend his Protestant faith -

to declare war on the Catholic Habsburgs,

rather than marry his son and heir to them.

Each evening, Prince Charles met the Privy Council,

to review the day's proceedings and, in his letters back to James,

Prince Charles became increasingly angry that his future subjects

thought it was all right to discuss who he might marry.

As he put it, the subject of his marriage was being

"prostituted" in the House of Commons.

Fractious, critical and highly personal...

this was Charles' introduction to politics.

But the English Parliament of 1621 broke up with little accomplished

and with Charles stubbornly clinging to his controversial marriage plans.

For Charles, I think the marriage plans had become more

than dynastic ambition, more even than religious power broking.

They had become his way of proving himself.

So, Charles did something extraordinary.

With his father's help,

he hatched a daring scheme.

He would travel to Spain, in secret,

to secure his marriage and bring back his bride himself.

And in February, 1623, Charles readied his horse,

donned a false beard and set off for Spain, in disguise,

with just one trusted advisor.

He travelled through France,

heading south, to the very heart of Catholic Spain.

Finally, covered in dust after a 13-day journey from Paris,

the heir to the Stuart thrones of Scotland, England and Ireland

arrived in Madrid at eight o'clock one evening.

He and his advisor were looking for a house with seven chimneys.

And this is it - the one-time English Ambassador's residence.

The only problem was, they hadn't told anyone they were coming.

Charles' surprise arrival presented the British Ambassador

with a huge dilemma.

It wasn't just that he didn't have food and lodging prepared

for his distinguished guest. It was that Charles' decision

to pitch up spontaneously at the most strictly formal

and ceremonious royal court in Europe represented a genuinely

astonishing and unprecedented breach of diplomatic protocol.

You didn't just drop in on the Habsburgs.

They ruled over the largest empire the world had ever seen.

At its heart was 17-year-old King Felipe IV,

who was worshipped by his subjects almost as a God.

Having Charles suddenly turn up at his court was doubtless unsettling,

but for Felipe, it must surely also have been intriguing.

If Charles had come this far, might he be willing to go further?

Might he be willing to become a Catholic?

Charles was allowed to meet his intended bride, in person, briefly,

once...or twice,

then Maria Anna faded into the background...

..as religion and politics took over.

The Spanish began a religious charm offensive,

to detoxify their religion in Charles' eyes.

Charles was invited to debates with Catholic priests and scholars

and to attend Catholic feasts.

This is Corpus Christi.

It involves the body of Christ,

in the form of a communion wafer, being paraded through the streets.

In the 17th century. it powerfully confirmed

just how central the Catholic religion was to Spanish identity.

And today, it seems little has changed.

CHORAL SINGING

It's certainly like nothing I've ever witnessed before.

Corpus Christi is a massive assault on the senses.

Visually, everyone is immaculately dressed and there is every colour

imaginable, whether it's religious vestments or costumes or flags

or flowers or the tapestries hanging from the cathedrals.

There's also a cacophony of sound -

bells, military bands, people cheering, plainsong chant

and fireworks.

But actually, more than anything else, it's the very heady smell.

It's a very odd mix of incense, which is everywhere,

and dried herbs, thyme and rosemary, that are strewn across the streets.

It is completely intoxicating.

After two months at the Spanish court,

Charles was invited to attend that year's parade,

while Felipe led the celebrations.

Watching King Felipe take part in the Corpus Christi processions,

alongside clerics, courtiers and statesmen,

showed a pious king and his subjects brought together

in the same lavish celebrations.

If any religious festival was going to tempt Charles to convert,

then this was it.

But, of course, Charles didn't convert,

though that's not to say that he wasn't influenced

by what he observed at the Habsburg court.

Here, he'd have seen the tempting reality of a king treated

almost as a God - served on bended knee, with impressive formality.

In Spain, the monarch ruled with just a small group of advisors,

without trouble from Parliament.

And I think that all this must have left its mark on the young prince.

As the summer heat increased, so did the stakes.

The Habsburgs eventually made clear what the conditions were

for any marriage.

They were laid down by the Pope himself

and they were really quite something.

It wasn't enough that British Catholics would be allowed

to worship privately, without fear of persecution.

Instead, the Pope insisted that all forms of anti-Catholic legislation

be abolished separately in the parliaments

of England, Scotland and Ireland.

For the Protestant Stuarts, this was surely unacceptable.

Charles' romantic adventure was quickly turning into

a political quagmire and a diplomatic nightmare.

He was out of his depth and, suddenly, out of love with the idea

of a Spanish bride.

Back home, James began to suspect

that Charles was being held a virtual prisoner.

So, he advised Charles to agree to

every one of the Habsburgs' conditions -

to promise anything that would get him home.

And Charles listened to his father's advice.

If Charles' initial appearance in Madrid

had shocked the Spanish court,

it was in for an even greater surprise in late July,

when Charles announced that he had seriously made up his mind

to accept every condition Spain had laid down for the marriage.

Astonished, but delighted, the Spanish court announced

the official engagement of the Infanta to Charles

with four days of fireworks and festivities.

The Spanish match was on and, mission accomplished,

Charles could now return home.

There were to be no fond farewells, however, between the prince

and his fiancee. Instead, Charles met Felipe here,

at this exact spot outside Madrid on September 2nd.

They bid their final farewells to one other

as prospective brothers in law.

To commemorate the occasion, Felipe had the column behind me built.

It once bore the inscription,

"Stop here, fame, there is nothing more than this."

Nothing greater that is than this new marriage alliance

between the Habsburgs and the Stuarts.

But this strange column in a field outside Madrid

is actually the only thing to come out of

this whole extraordinary escapade.

Charles renounced his intention to go through with the marriage before

he'd even boarded his ship home. He was just pleased to have escaped.

But if he didn't return from Spain with a bride,

what did he return with?

A certain style, an education in formality

and in the absolute virtue of royal authority.

Something he'd draw on when it was his turn to be king.

James died on the 27th of March, 1625, at the age of 58.

In his pursuit of peace and unity, in his willingness to tolerate

and to be pragmatic, James had been more than a king.

He'd been that most modern of bogeymen - a politician.

One source summed up James' achievements.

"The schools of the prophets newly adorned,

"all kind of learning highly improved,

"manufactures at home daily invented,

"the Borders of Scotland peaceably governed,

"the north of Ireland religiously planted,

"the Royal Navy magnificently furnished.

"And they are all the actions and true-born children of King James, his peace."

It's good, isn't it?

It's about as close as we get in Britain to the magnificence

of the Sistine Chapel.

This was Charles' tribute to his father.

It was painted by one of Europe's leading artists,

Peter Paul Rubens who came to London from the Spanish court.

It shows James as a wise King Solomon figure,

imposing order on the chaos around him just as James had brought

order to the chaos of the three Stuart kingdoms during his reign.

Impressive in scale, beautiful in execution.

But wasn't it also just a little bit Catholic?

Charles wasn't a Catholic but some of his subjects were

beginning to suspect that he wasn't Protestant enough either.

He projected an image of royal authority that was formal

and aloof and very different to James.

And the way he ruled was highly authoritarian.

You could say it was a little like a Spanish Emperor.

He controlled his church through bishops and kept dissenting voices out.

He married, not the Spanish Infanta, but a French Catholic princess

whom he allowed to practise her religion openly.

When the English Parliament criticised his conduct

he dispensed with it and dispensed with debate,

to rule with the support of a few trusted advisors.

He grew remote.

But of course, England wasn't his only kingdom.

In Scotland he'd always been remote.

Charles had been born in Scotland but it took him eight years

to arrange his long overdue coronation as King of Scots.

The country of his birth was now a place as foreign to him

as England had once been to James.

So what would Charles make of Scotland

and what would Scotland make of Charles?

He arrived in Edinburgh in June 1633

and took up residence in his royal palace.

Today the monarch still does the same when visiting Scotland

in a modest ceremony, with just a smattering of pomp.

With no royal court for a generation,

Scottish subjects had no doubt imagined what it would be like

to have their king back among them.

But somehow Charles didn't seem to fit the bill.

His ceremonial style took the Scots by surprise.

He came with his own ministers, his own advisors

and his own formal way of doing things.

Charles' differences were soon on public display

at his coronation in Holyrood.

The coronation was based on an English service

the likes of which Scotland hadn't seen since the Reformation.

And then Charles called a parliament,

which allowed his Scottish subjects to get to know him better.

Bad move.

For 30 years monarchy had been an absent and therefore abstract notion

for Scots but when Charles I arrived in person

his subjects found the reality of Stuart rule distinctly unsettling.

For a start Charles' Coronation had been weirdly alien, very formal and ritualistic.

It was also at Holyrood whereas Scots kings were traditionally crowned at Scone.

And when Charles then attended the specially convened Coronation parliament

he acted in ways that were at best suspicious and at worst alarming.

He made clear that everyone knew he was keeping a careful record

of anyone who dared oppose his government.

Charles was an instinctive authoritarian.

And whereas in England he'd dispensed with Parliament,

here in Scotland he didn't.

He commissioned this new Parliament Hall.

It reminds me that in Scotland it wasn't Parliament that concerned him...

..it was the church.

Today the annual gathering of the Kirk is a gentle affair.

But then, it was a hotbed of firebrands made from the same mould

as hard line reformer John Knox.

The Scottish Kirk considered itself to be the most

perfectly reformed Protestant church in the world.

Answerable only to God,

not keen on bishops...

..not keen on the authority of kings.

And what's more it had become a wellspring of Scottish identity

since the departure of the royal court.

You might say it had become a law unto itself.

But Charles saw a way to increase his control over it.

His big idea was a new prayer book,

to be used by every minister, in every service

in every church in the land.

But when Scottish churchgoers opened Charles's new prayer book,

they saw something astonishing.

Illustrations,

a typeface normally associated with Catholic texts,

instructions to kneel at communion.

Small things but far from trivial.

It seemed like a British solution to a problem that the Scottish church didn't even know it had.

And Charles was determined to push it through.

The new prayer book caused a riot...

..as the tensions between disgruntled people

and distant king boiled over.

And events now moved at speed.

Some of the church's leaders took action.

They met here in Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh on 28th February, 1638.

And set out clearly where their loyalties lay.

And it wasn't necessarily with the monarch.

They drew up a remarkable document called the National Covenant.

It called for a return to the purity of Reformation religion

and opposed all recent "innovations".

From this spot, copies of the Covenant were sent all over Scotland.

In town after town, parish after parish people stood solemnly in line to sign it.

To Charles it must have seemed like the whole country was standing against him.

To my mind it was a traditional way of registering serious discontent.

A yellow card if you like

and an invitation to Charles to rethink his religious policy.

Charles however regarded it as an outrageous attack on his authority

and something to be suppressed with force if necessary.

Moreover Charles had a blind spot,

he insisted that Scottish opposition was political and not religious.

For Charles it was all about whether he was a proper King of Scotland or not

as he wrote, "As long as the covenant is in force in Scotland

"I am no more king there than a Doge of Venice."

He also insisted that he would rather die than yield to

the impertinent demands of the covenanters.

Grand rhetoric,

but not designed to build bridges.

The two Stuart kings that we've met both believed in the Divine Right of Kings.

But I think James would have found a pragmatic way out of Charles' problem.

It might have stung, but the James I know would've compromised

and kept his hands firmly on power.

But that wasn't Charles' style.

The king the Scots chose to test their power against was allergic to the idea of compromise.

So he raised an army and marched north

and his Scottish opponents did the same and marched south.

And ironically they faced each other precisely where

little Arthur's dreams of a union had begun.

36 years earlier King James had crossed the River Tweed

and set foot in England promising a Union of Hearts and Minds born out of love.

The three kingdoms had been united in loyalty to their

first Stuart king but had become fatally divided by their second.

Berwick's famous battlements should have been redundant but now it seemed they might be needed again.

A hostile Scottish army was on the march and war was imminent.

In the next episode...

"And I will make them one nation,"

said James when he became King of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

But under his son Charles, the Stuart dynasty and its three kingdoms fell into an abyss.

Driven by religious hatred and religious violence,

they tore themselves and each other's people...apart.