The lion and the unicorn were fighting for the crown

Elizabeth I died at Richmond Palace on 24 March 1603 at the age of 69 after a reign of 45 years. Her health had been poor from the early 1590s onwards: arthritis, gastric disorders, chronic insomnia and migraines were just some of the ailments which plagued her. Yet, uniquely among English monarchs, she refused to make provision for the succession.

James I made great efforts to ensure that his escape from the Gunpowder Plot would not soon be forgotten

From Tudor to Stuart is Susan Doran’s enthralling account of the behind-the-scenes manoeuvres of those who had a viable claim to succeed the Virgin Queen. The group included the Habsburg Isabella Clara Eugenia (a descendant of John of Gaunt); Lady Arbella Stuart (a descendant of Henry VII); and Edward Seymour, Lord Beauchamp (another descendant of Henry VII). The book is also a history of the first decade or so on the English throne of the candidate who prevailed: James VI of Scotland.

James and his consort, Anna, the daughter of Frederick II of Denmark, have been overshadowed in the popular imagination for the better part of four centuries by those who came immediately before and after, both in Scotland and in England: Mary Queen of Scots (James’s mother); Elizabeth I (James’s cousin); and Charles I (James and Anna’s second son). Yet, as Doran rightly notes at the outset of this book, the early Jacobean period ‘is as important as it is exciting’. The union of the English and Scottish crowns; the Gunpowder Plot; the flowering of the court masque under Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones; Shakespeare’s production of what were arguably his best plays (Macbeth, King Lear, The Tempest); the successful establishment of the settlement at Jamestown, in Virginia – all this and more springs to life in these pages.