“The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth. For kings are not only God's lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called gods.”
Hello and happy Thursday to you!
Welcome to the second post in this special series, Women’s History By the Numbers. If you’re a free subscriber and catching the sample of this post, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription 🙏
Without further ado, let’s get into it.
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been teaching one of my A-Level groups the reign of James I (1603-1625) - who you might also know as James VI of Scotland. Specifically, we’ve been trying to work out whether his belief in the divine right of kings was the number one reason for his not-so-great relationship with parliament.
If you're not familiar, the divine right of kings was a doctrine that was hella popular in Britain in the 16th and 17th centuries, and is also associated with absolutism in France. It was the idea that kings derived their authority from God and not their subjects. James I was so into divine right that he wrote several books about it. The quote at the top of this post is taken from one of those.
Anyway, as I'm looking through the specification for this course and planning out how best to teach this topic, I can't help but notice the lack of women. There’s also – very bizarrely – nothing noted about witchcraft. What we have instead is a focus on the divine right (obvs), finances, foreign policy, the Gunpowder Plot and his court favourites.