[James], the name of three disciples of Christ; James, the elder son of Zebedee, by order of the high-priest was put to death by Herod Agrippa; James, the younger son of Alphæus; and James, the brother of the Lord, stoned to death.
[James I.], king of Scotland from 1406 to 1437, son of Robert III., born at Dunfermline; in 1406, while on a voyage to France, he was captured by the English and detained by Henry IV. for 18 years, during which time, however, he was carefully trained in letters and in all knightly exercises; returning to Scotland in 1424 with his bride, Jane Beaufort, niece of the English king, he took up the reins of government with a firm hand; he avenged himself on the nobles by whose connivance he had been kept so long out of his throne, reduced the turbulent Highlanders to order, and introduced a number of beneficial reforms (e. g. a wider parliamentary franchise, a fixed standard for the coinage, a supreme court of civil jurisdiction, a renovated system of weights and measures), and widened Scotland's commercial relations with the Continent; he was a man of scholarly tastes, a patron of learning, and exhibits no mean poetic gift in his well-known poem the "King's Quhair"; his vigorous and sometimes harsh and vindictive efforts to lower the powers of the nobility procured him their inveterate hatred, and in 1437 he was murdered in the Dominican monastery at Perth by a band of conspirators (1394-1437).
[James II.], king of Scotland from 1437 to 1460, son of preceding; during his minority the country was torn by rival factions amongst the nobility, the chief point of contest being the wardship of the young king; an attempt on the part of the conspirators who had murdered James I. to place their leader, the Earl of Athole, on the throne, was frustrated; in 1449 James assumed the duties of his kingship, and in the same year married Mary, the daughter of the Duke of Gueldres; an English war then being waged on the Borders was brought to a close, and the young king entered vigorously upon administrative reforms; in these efforts he was hampered by the opposition of the nobility, and his fiery temper led him to participate in the murder of the chief obstructionist, the Earl of Douglas; protection given to the exiled Douglases by the Yorkists led James to support the claims of Henry VI. in England; he was killed by the bursting of a cannon at the siege of Roxburgh Castle (1430-1460).
[James III.], king of Scotland from 1460 to 1488, son of James II.; was during his minority under the care of his mother and Bishop Kennedy of St. Andrews, the Earl of Angus being lieutenant-general of the kingdom; but the bishop and the earl died before he was 14, and the nobility fell into faction and disorder again; the first to gain power was Lord Boyd (whose son married the king's sister), but a charge of treason brought about his downfall and exile; the king married Princess Margaret of Denmark in 1469, and gave himself up to a life of quiet ease surrounded by men of art and culture, while his brothers Albany and Mar, by their military tastes and achievements, won the affections of the nobles; James, becoming jealous, imprisoned them; Albany, who had intrigued with Edward IV., fled to France, Mar died in Craigmillar Castle; while the king and his army were marching to meet expected English action in 1482 the nobles, instigated by Archibald, Bell-the-Cat, seized and hanged the royal favourites at Lauder, and committed the king to Edinburgh Castle; a short reconciliation was effected, but was soon broken, and civil war ensued; the defeat of the royalist forces at Sauchieburn took place in 1488; the king escaped from the field, but was thrown from his horse, and taking refuge in a house at Beaton's Mill, was there slain (1462-1488).
[James IV.], king of Scotland from 1488 to 1513, participated in the rebellion which overthrew his father, James III., and succeeded him; but in remorse for his unfilial conduct wore an iron belt all his life; during his youth his supporters carried on the government in their own interests, and despoiled the nobles who had been loyal to the late king; but when he came of age he showed his independence in choosing good advisers, among them Sir Andrew Wood; his reign was marked by resistance to the claims of the Roman pontiff, by the firm and wise administration of law, the fostering of agriculture, of shipbuilding, and other industries; in 1503 James married Margaret, daughter of Henry VII.; after that king's death relations between the two countries became strained; two English men-of-war captured Andrew Barton's privateers; the jewels which the queen inherited from her father were retained by Henry VIII., and James maintained an alliance with Henry's enemy, France; at the solicitation of the French queen, against the advice of his own queen and nobles, he invaded England in 1513, but the invasion ended in disaster at Flodden, where he and the flower of his army perished; he was an able but a headstrong, a pleasure-loving, and an extravagant man (1472-1513).
[James V.], king of Scotland from 1513 to 1542, was only an infant when he succeeded to his father's throne; his mother was regent till her marriage with young Angus, when the nobles called James IV.'s cousin, Albany, from France to assume the regency; French and English factions sprang up; Henry VIII. intrigued in the affairs of the country; anarchy and civil war ensued, and Albany retired to France in 1524; in that year the queen-mother, aided by Henry, took the young king from Sir David Lyndsay, to whom he had been entrusted, and assumed the government again in his name; the Douglas family usurped his person and the government in 1525; but James asserted himself three years later, and began to reign in person, displaying judgment and resolution, banishing the Douglases, keeping order in the Highlands and on the Borders, establishing the College of Justice, protecting the peasantry from the tyranny of the barons, and fostering trade by a commercial treaty with the Netherlands; he married (1) Princess Magdalene of France in 1537, and (2) Mary of Guise in 1538; Henry, aggrieved by James's failure to meet him in conference on Church matters, and otherwise annoyed, sent 30,000 men into Scotland in 1542; disaffection prevented the Scottish forces from acting energetically, and the rout of Solway Moss took place; the king, vexed and shamed, sank into a fever and died at Falkland; in this reign the Reformation began to make progress in Scotland, and would have advanced much farther but that James had to support the clergy to play off their power against the nobles (1512-1542)
[James VI. of Scotland and I. of England], son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Darnley, born in Edinburgh Castle; was proclaimed king of Scotland when only 13 months old, in 1567; entrusted to the Earl of Mar, and educated by George Buchanan; Moray, Lennox, Mar, and Morton were successively regents, till James assumed the government in 1581, executing Morton and choosing Arran and Lennox for his advisers; plots and counter-plots, the Raid of Ruthven (1582), the siege of Stirling by some of the nobles with 10,000 troops, mostly from England, the surrender of the king and the fall of Arran in 1585, the insurrection of the Catholic nobles 1491-94, and the Gowrie Conspiracy in 1600, betrayed the restlessness of the kingdom, and the weakness of the king; James married Anne of Denmark 1589; on the death of Elizabeth, in 1603, he succeeded to the throne of England as James I.; was at first popular, but soon forfeited all confidence by his favouritism; he governed through creatures like Carr, Earl of Somerset, and the infamous Buckingham, whose indiscretion brought about a war with Spain in 1624; James died immediately afterwards; he has been described by Sully as "the wisest fool in Christendom"; his conduct was certainly much less creditable than his conversation; he held absurdly high views of the royal prerogative; but he sold patents of nobility, and was careless of the misdeeds of his ministers; he did not live to see revolution, but he saw its precursor in the loosening of the bonds of sympathy between sovereign and people (1566-1625).
[James II. of England and VII. of Scotland], the son of Charles I., reigned in succession to Charles II. from 1685 to 1688; during the Commonwealth he was a soldier in France and Spain; at the Restoration returned to England as Duke of York, and became Lord High Admiral; avowing himself a Catholic in 1671, the Test Act of 1673 enforced his resignation, and thenceforward repeated attempts were made to exclude him from the succession; on becoming king he promised to maintain the Church and to respect the liberties of the people, but his government all the same was arbitrary and tyrannical; he paraded his Catholicism, persecuted the Covenanters, subordinated English interests to French, permitted the "Bloody Assize," suspended the Test Act, violated the rights of the Universities, gave Church offices to Roman Catholics, and by these and many other acts of despotism made his deposition necessary; leading statesmen invited William of Orange to assume the throne, and James fled to France; an invasion of Ireland in 1689 ended in his defeat at Boyne Water; he retired again to France, and lived at St. Germains till his death (1633-1701).
[James, Epistle of], a Catholic epistle of the New Testament, presumed to have been written by James, the brother of the Lord, addressed to Jewish Christians who, in accepting Christianity, had not renounced Judaism, and the sphere in which it moves is that of Christian morality, agreeably to the standard of ethics given in the Sermon on the Mount. The author looks upon Judaism as the basis of Christianity, and as on the moral side leading up to it, in correspondence with the attestation of Christ, that "salvation is of the Jews."
[James, G. P. R.], historical novelist, born in London; wrote as many as a hundred novels, beginning with "Richelieu" in 1829, which brought him popularity, profit, and honour; was burlesqued by Thackeray (1801-1860).