Bible-thumper, witch-hunter: history has not been kind to King James. A cradle king who was crowned in Scotland in 1567 and England and Ireland in 1603, James VI and I has long been eclipsed in fame and reputation by his cousin and predecessor, Elizabeth I, and his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots. Now, four hundred years after his death, Wolfson History Prize–winning historian Clare Jackson finally reappraises his life and evolving legacy, contextualizing both the domestic drama of his youth and the renewed creativity of the Jacobean era, culminating in the commissioning of the King James Bible, as well as the many attempts on his life, including Guy Fawkes’s notorious Gunpowder Plot of 1605. In the process, Jackson reveals how the king’s keen interest in joining worlds old and new—the creation of colonies overseas and, closer to home, uniting Scotland, England, and Ireland—set the geopolitical stage for centuries to come.