James I, the first king to reign in both England and Scotland, faced many difficulties with the Parliament of England. Though recent studies have shown that the Parliament of Scotland may have been more of a thorn in his side than was previously believed, James developed his political philosophy of the relationship between monarch and parliament in Scotland and never reconciled himself to the independent stance of the English Parliament and its unwillingness to bow readily to his policies.
Overview
The source of concern was that the King and Parliament adhered to two mutually, extended exclusive views about the nature of their relationship. James I believed that he owed his authority to God-given right, that the law(s) of, and in, "His" Kingdom were only an extension of his royal prerogative, and that Parliament was in essence a lower Court to him, its laws and opinions always subject to his oversight and review; and that he was free to revise or overrule them completely whenever he wished. In the areas Royal administration and governmental policy (i.e., how the government did its business and what directions it took in the affairs of the country), the King saw no role for Parliament or to be informally bound by its opinions at all.
Parliament on the other hand, particularly the Commons, first of all saw the relationship as a partnership. Parliament believed the king ruled by contract (an unwritten one, yet fully binding). Parliament believed that its own rights to exist and to function in the ongoing work of the government of the country were as sacrosanct as those of the King and, in that sense, Parliament's rights were equal to those of the King. Furthermore, Parliament believed that in return for grants of subsidies to the Crown, the king should take its views on policy formulation and execution into account.
The end result of this fundamental disagreement was a series of difficult parliaments, two of which James dissolved in frustration. Many historians, from the mid-seventeenth century to the present, have traced the problems with Parliament faced by James's son, Charles I, to those experienced by James, though others have questioned the inevitability of Charles's fatal clashes with Parliament.
Theory of monarchy
In 1597–1598, James wrote two works, The Trew Law of Free Monarchies and Basilikon Doron (Royal Gift), in which he established an ideological base for monarchy. In the Trew Law, he sets out the divine right of kings, explaining that for Biblical reasons kings are higher beings than other men, though "the highest bench is the sliddriest to sit upon". The document proposes an absolutist theory of monarchy, by which a king may impose new laws by royal prerogative but must also pay heed to tradition and to God, who would "stirre up such scourges as pleaseth him, for punishment of wicked kings". Basilikon Doron, written as a book of instruction for the four-year-old Prince Henry, provides a more practical guide to kingship. Despite banalities and sanctimonious advice, the work is well written, perhaps the best example of James's prose. James's advice concerning parliaments, which he understood as merely the king's "head court", foreshadows his difficulties with the English Commons: "Hold no Parliaments," he tells Henry, "but for the necesitie of new Lawes, which would be but seldome". In the True Law James states that the king owns his realm as a feudal lord owns his fief, because: