James I

(1566 - 1625)

James I was crowned King James VI of Scotland at the age of thirteen months and ruled that country independently by age eighteen. He secured an alliance with Elizabeth I, unwavering even when she executed his own mother, and ascended the English throne in 1603 at the age of thirty-seven, claiming to be “an old and experienced king.” In 1604 he published one of the earliest texts to condemn tobacco, blaming the “Indians” for introducing it to Europe and complaining of its harmful effects to the lungs. That same year he commissioned forty-seven scholars to produce a new translation of the Bible, later published in 1611 as the famous King James Version.