Elizabeth dies in 1603 at the age of sixty-nine.

Her closest male Protestant relative is the King of Scots, James VI, of the House of Stuart, who becomes King James I of England in a Union of the Crowns.

King James I & VI as he is styled becomes the first monarch to rule the entire island of Great Britain, although it is merely a union of the English and Scottish crowns, and both countries remained separate political entities.

Several assassination attempts are made on James, notably the Main Plot and Bye Plots of 1603, and most famously, on November 5, 1605, the Gunpowder Plot, by a group of Catholic conspirators, led by Sir Robert Catesby, which causes more antipathy in England towards the Catholic faith.

Upon taking power, James immediately make peaces with Spain, and for the first half of the seventeenth century, England remains largely inactive in European politics.

Northwest Europe (1600–1611 CE): Transitions, Unifications, and Continued Struggles

England: End of the Elizabethan Era

The opening years of the seventeenth century saw the culmination and conclusion of the Elizabethan age. Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603, bringing to an end her long and largely successful reign. She was succeeded by James VI of Scotland, who ascended the English throne as James I, marking the beginning of the Stuart dynasty. This union of the crowns under James initiated a new political landscape, uniting Scotland and England under a single monarch, though both countries retained separate parliaments and administrations.

James I faced immediate challenges, notably the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a failed Catholic conspiracy led by Robert Catesby and famously involving Guy Fawkes, who sought to assassinate the king and destroy Parliament. The plot's failure heightened anti-Catholic sentiments and intensified religious tensions within the realm. James, concerned about Catholic threats and assassination attempts justified by European Catholic writings, responded by expelling Jesuits and other Catholic priests from England and reimposing fines for recusancy, further aggravating religious tensions.

Ireland: End of Tyrone’s Rebellion

The prolonged Nine Years' War in Ireland reached its conclusion during this period. Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, initially successful in employing guerrilla tactics, ultimately suffered defeat at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601. This decisive English victory under Lord Mountjoy marked the collapse of Gaelic resistance and the reaffirmation of English authority. The Treaty of Mellifont (1603) formalized O'Neill's submission, bringing temporary peace but setting the stage for subsequent displacements and the Plantation of Ulster, which began in earnest during these years, profoundly reshaping Ireland’s demographic and cultural landscape.

Scotland: Consolidation under James VI

With his ascension to the English throne, James VI sought to unify his realms more closely, though political and religious differences persisted. James advocated strongly for his concept of the divine right of kings, detailed in his writings such as the Basilikon Doron. His efforts to harmonize Scottish and English policies, however, met resistance from both nations’ elites, complicating his vision for a unified Britain.

Scandinavia: Continued Prosperity under Christian IV

Christian IV of Denmark-Norway continued to strengthen his realms economically and culturally. His reign saw the expansion of trade and infrastructure, notably with significant improvements in Copenhagen. Christian actively promoted exploration, initiating expeditions to North America, and further reinforced Lutheran orthodoxy, asserting greater control over religious and social life.

Cultural Achievements: Flourishing Literature and Theater

English culture continued to thrive under James I, who actively patronized literary and theatrical arts. William Shakespeare produced some of his greatest tragedies during this era, including Hamlet (1601), Othello (1603–1604), and King Lear (1605–1606). The theatrical scene also featured the works of other notable playwrights such as Ben Jonson, whose satirical comedies like Volpone (1605–1606) achieved considerable acclaim. The issuance of the King James Bible in 1611 became a cornerstone for English literature and Protestant thought.

Maritime and Colonial Ambitions

Maritime exploration and imperial ambitions persisted. The English established their first permanent settlement in North America at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, signaling the beginning of sustained English colonial presence. The Virginia Company of London financed this venture, hoping to profit from gold and other resources, though the colony initially struggled with harsh conditions and high mortality rates. The East India Company, established in 1600, began asserting England's global commercial presence, contending with Iberian rivals for domination of world trade.

Legacy of the Era

By 1611 CE, Northwest Europe had undergone significant transformations, marked by dynastic changes, the conclusion of major rebellions, and continued cultural flourishing. The peaceful transition from Elizabethan to Stuart rule in England, despite challenges such as the Gunpowder Plot, laid the foundation for ongoing debates over monarchy and governance. Ireland’s defeat at Kinsale fundamentally altered its societal structure, setting patterns of colonization and conflict. Scotland’s integration with England under James VI and I began reshaping both kingdoms politically. Meanwhile, cultural achievements, particularly in drama and literature, maintained their vibrancy, continuing to enrich European civilization profoundly.

Catholics had made several assassination attempts against Protestant rulers in Europe and in England during the late sixteenth century, including plans to poison Elizabeth I.

On Kings and the Education of Kings, published in 1598 by the Jesuit Juan de Mariana, had explicitly justified the assassination of the French king Henri III—who had been stabbed to death by a Dominican friar in 1589—and some English Catholics until the 1620s will continue to believe that regicide is justifiable to remove tyrants from power.

Much of the "rather nervous" James I's political writing is "concerned with the threat of Catholic assassination and refutation of the [Catholic] argument that 'faith did not need to be kept with heretics'".

James denounces the Catholic Church on 19 February 1604, shortly after he discovers that his wife, Queen Anne, had been sent a rosary from the pope via one of James's spies, Sir Anthony Standen.

Three days later, he orders all Jesuits and all other Catholic priests to leave the country, and reimposes the collection of fines for recusancy.

James changes his focus from the anxieties of English Catholics to the establishment of an Anglo-Scottish union.

He also appoints Scottish nobles such as George Home to his court, which proves unpopular with the Parliament of England.

Some Members of Parliament make it clear that in their view, the "effluxion of people from the Northern parts" is unwelcome, and compare them to "plants which are transported from barren ground into a more fertile one".

Even more discontent results when the King allows his Scottish nobles to collect the recusancy fines.

There are five thousand five hundred and sixty convicted of recusancy in 1605, of whom one hundred and twelve are landowners.

The very few Catholics of great wealth who refuse to attend services at their parish church are fined twenty pounds per month.

Those of more moderate means have to pay two-thirds of their annual rental income; middle class recusants are fined one shilling a week, although the collection of all these fines is "haphazard and negligent".

When James came to power, almost five thousand pounds a year (equivalent to over ten million pounds as of 2008) was being raised by these fines.

Puritan influences grow in spite of James I.

The King James Bible is issued, providing the basis for the anti-Catholic policy of individual Bible reading and interpretation.

Catholic conspirators plotting to topple the Protestant monarchy engage English Catholic mercenary Guy Fawkes to stow gunpowder barrels in a vault under the House of Lords and explode them on November 5, 1605, when the king opens Parliament.

An anonymous letter unravels the Roman Catholic-backed Gunpowder Plot in 1605, enabling the authorities to thwart the Catholic terrorists’ plan to blow up Parliament and the king.

During a search on November 4, 1605, Fawkes is arrested and reveals the plot under torture; he will be executed on January 31 of the following year.

A discussion between James and representatives of the Church of England, including leading English Puritans had originally been scheduled for November 1603, but the outbreak of plague caused its postponement until January 1604.

The conference has been called in response to a series of requests for reform set down in the Millenary Petition by the Puritans, a document which supposedly contains the signatures of 1000 Puritan ministers.

Convened at Hampton Court Palace, the conference is set out in two main parties by James, one party of Archbishop John Whitgift and eight Bishops who represent the episcopacy, supported by eight deans and one archdeacon, and another party of four or five moderate Puritans.

Many historians and contemporary religious radicals have speculated that James, after a consultation with Whitgift, had deliberately arranged to have moderate Puritan reformers attend the conference.

The de facto leader of the Puritans is John Rainolds (sometimes Reynolds), the president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

There are three meetings over a period of three days.

The conference begins with a meeting between James and his bishops about some of the Puritan complaints detailed in the Millenary Petition, particularly the complaints about the Catholic terms Absolution and Confirmation.

The King, after ending his talks with the bishops, claims he is "well satisfied", and declares that "the manner might be changed and some things cleared".

Private baptism, especially when administered by women, proved to be a more intense argument between James and his bishops, but James eventually persuaded them that only ministers should administer baptisms.

James then turned his attention to ecclesiastical discipline.

Excommunication for "trifles and twelvepenny matters" is to be abolished, and the often hasty trial policies of the commissaries' court are to be reviewed and amended by the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice.

For the Puritan complaint that punishment should be enforced by Christ's own institution, James holds the view that bishops should not exercise ecclesiastical discipline solely, though he does not speak of any specific method that he would use to remedy this.

All in all, James is pleased, and has good reason to be, with the first meeting.

Not only has he eloquently reached agreements on many of the Puritan demands, he has also avoided any major arguments.

The issue of religion is a further source of difference between Anne and James; she, for example, had abstained from the Anglican communion at her coronation.

Anne has been brought up a Lutheran, but she may have discreetly converted to Catholicism at some point, a politically embarrassing scenario which alarms ministers of the Scottish Kirk and causes suspicion in Anglican England.

Queen Elizabeth had certainly been worried about the possibility and had sent messages to Anne warning her not to listen to papist counselors and requesting the names of anyone who had tried to convert her; Anne had replied that there was no need to name names because any such efforts had failed.

Anne has drawn criticism from the Kirk for keeping Henrietta Gordon, wife of the exiled Catholic George Gordon, Marquess of Huntly, as a confidante; after Huntly's return in 1596, the St. Andrews minister David Black had called Anne an atheist and remarked in a sermon that "the Queen of Scotland was a woman for whom, for fashion's sake, the clergy might pray but from whom no good could be hoped."

When former intelligence agent Sir Anthony Standen is discovered bringing Anne a rosary from Pope Clement VIII, James imprisons him in the Tower.

Anne protests her annoyance at the gift, but will eventually secure Standen's release after ten months.

James meanwhile, as a result of the various plots, had on February 19, 1604, denounced the Catholic Church .

Three days later he orders all Jesuits and all other Catholic priests to leave the country, and reimposes the collection of fines for recusancy.

It is currently considered unlikely that Sir Walter Raleigh had any culpability in the Main Plot; see the biography of Raleigh's prosecutor, Sir Edward Coke.

Raleigh is to remained in the tower until 1616.

While imprisoned, he will write many treatises and the first volume of The Historie of the World (London, 1628) about the ancient history of Greece and Rome.

His son Carew is conceived and born (1604) while Raleigh is legally "dead" and imprisoned in the tower.

Archbishop John Whitgift had died on February 29, soon after the Hampton Court Conference, and the anti-Puritan Richard Bancroft, who had argued against the Puritans at Hampton Court, is appointed in March to the See of Canterbury.

The King's fears lead to demands that Puritan ministers adhere to each of the Thirty-Nine Articles.

The Hampton Court Conference also bears fruit for the Puritans, who insist that man know God's word without intermediaries, as it leads to James's commissioning of that translation of the Christian Bible into the English vernacular, which is to be known as the Authorized Version because it alone is authorized to be read in Churches.

It is now commonly described as the King James Version.

Crucially, the King has broadened a base of support, which under his predecessor Elizabeth I had been narrowed through harsh anti-Catholic laws, through his moderate and inclusive approach to the problems of English religion; while alienating the more extreme Puritan and Catholic elements of English Christianity.

The King on March 19, 1604, gives his opening speech to his first English Parliament in which he speaks of his desire to secure peace, but only by "profession of the true religion".

He also speaks of a Christian union and reiterates his desire to avoid religious persecution.

For the papists, however, the King's speech makes it clear that they are not to "increase their number and strength in this Kingdom", that "they might be in hope to erect their Religion again".

To Father John Gerard, the King’s words are almost certainly responsible for the heightened levels of persecution the members of his faith now suffer, and for the priest Oswald Tesimond they are a rebuttal of the early claims that the King had made, upon which the papists had built their hopes.

A week after James's speech, Lord Sheffield informs the king of over nine hundred recusants brought before the Assizes in Normanby, and ...

...a Bill that threatens to outlaw all English followers of the Catholic Church is on April 24 introduced in Parliament.

Robert Catesby, a man of "ancient, historic and distinguished lineage", is the inspiration behind what will come to be called the Gunpowder Plot.

Described by contemporaries as "a good-looking man, about six feet tall, athletic and a good swordsman", he along with several other conspirators, had taken part in the Earl of Essex's rebellion in 1601, during which he was wounded and captured.

Queen Elizabeth had allowed him to escape with his life after fining him four thousand marks (equivalent to over six million pounds as of 2008), to afford which he had been forced to sell his estate in Chastleton.

Catesby in 1603 had helped to organize a mission to the new King of Spain, Philip III, urging Philip to launch an invasion attempt on England, which they assured him would be well supported, particularly by the English Catholics.

Thomas Wintour had been chosen as the emissary for the mission to Spain, but the Spanish king, although sympathetic to the plight of Catholics in England, had been intent on making peace with James I.

Wintour had also attempted to persuade the Spanish envoy Don Juan de Tassis that "three thousand Catholics" were ready and waiting to support such an invasion.

Pope Clement VIII had voiced his concern that using violence to achieve a restoration of Catholic power in England would result in the destruction of those that remained.

According to contemporary accounts, in February 1604 Catesby had invited Wintour to his house in Lambeth, where they had discussed Catesby's plan to reestablish Catholicism in England by blowing up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament.

Wintour is known as a competent scholar, able to speak several languages, and he had fought with the English army in the Netherlands.

His uncle, Francis Ingleby, had been executed in 1586 for being a Catholic priest, and Wintour had later converted to Catholicism.

Also present at the meeting was John Wright, a devout Catholic said to be one of the best swordsmen of his day, and a man who had taken part with Catesby in the Earl of Essex's rebellion three years earlier.

Despite his reservations over the possible repercussions should the attempt fail, Wintour had agreed to join the conspiracy, perhaps persuaded by Catesby's rhetoric: "Let us give the attempt and where it faileth, pass no further."

Wintour had traveled to Flanders to inquire about Spanish support.

While there he sought out Guy Fawkes, a devout Catholic who had served as a soldier in the Southern Netherlands under the command of William Stanley, and who in 1603 had been recommended for a captaincy.

Accompanied by Christopher Wright, Fawkes had also been a member of the 1603 delegation to the Spanish court pleading for an invasion of England.

Wintour has told Fawkes that "some good frends of his wished his company in Ingland", and that certain gentlemen "were uppon a resolution to doe some whatt in Ingland if the pece with Spain healped us nott".

The two men late in April 1604 return to England, telling Catesby that Spanish support is unlikely.

Thomas Percy, Catesby's friend and John Wright's brother-in-law, is introduced to the plot.

Percy had found employment with his kinsman the Earl of Northumberland, and by 1596 was his agent for the family's northern estates.

He had served in about 1600–1601 with his patron in the Low Countries.

At some point during Northumberland's command in the Low Countries, Percy had become his agent in his communications with James.

Percy is reputedly a "serious" character who had converted to the Catholic faith.

His early years were, according to a Catholic source, marked by a tendency to rely on "his sword and personal courage".

Northumberland, although not a Catholic himself, plans to build a strong relationship with James in order to better the prospects of English Catholics, and to reduce the family disgrace caused by his separation from his wife Martha Wright, a favorite of Elizabeth.

Thomas Percy's meetings with James had seemed to go well.

Percy had returned with promises of support for the Catholics, and Northumberland had believed that James would go so far as allowing Mass in private houses, so as not to cause public offense.

Percy however, keen to improve his standing, had gone further, claiming that the future King would guarantee the safety of English Catholics.

The first meeting between the five conspirators takes place on May 20, 1604, probably at the Duck and Drake inn, just off the Strand, Thomas Wintour's usual residence when staying in London.

Catesby, Thomas Wintour, and John Wright are in attendance, joined by Guy Fawkes and Thomas Percy.

Alone in a private room, the five plotters swear an oath of secrecy on a prayer book.

By coincidence, and ignorant of the plot, Father John Gerard (a friend of Catesby's) is celebrating Mass in another room, and the five men subsequently receive the Eucharist.

Following their oath, the plotters leave London and return to their homes.