Very dense and detailed, with 500 packed pages of historiographically-informed narrative, which is one reason it took me six and a half months to finish.

Harris' focus is upon the reign of James VI & I from the time of his accession to the English throne, and the reign of Charles I from his ascending the throne in 1625 until the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642. Primarily an English focus, but with extensive sections devoted to Scotland and Ireland. In spite of the somewhat misleading title, Harris does not believe that the outbreak of violence in the "Wars of the Three Kingdoms" in the 1640s was inevitable, but was rather the result of short term policy decisions and the practical ineptitude of Charles I.

The book is based upon a close reading of recent work by scholars on both sides of the Atlantic, and includes an immensely helpful and lengthy section of endnotes (63 pages of rather small print, and that does not include the list of primary sources consulted, nor the "Guide for Further Reading." Thank you OUP for including these in the printed book, where there belong, and not merely directing interested readers to some obscure location on the interwebs.) ( )

Tim Harris’s book offers a detailed and multifaceted account of the reigns of the Stuart monarchs, James I (also James VI of Scotland), and his ill-fated son, Charles I. While he is primarily concerned with offering a detailed account of the reigns of these early Stuart monarchs in their own right, he is also examining the events that led up to the English Civil War, and evaluating the combination of circumstances that conspired to bring it about.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with this period of history, James VI of Scotland came to the English throne as James I, after the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. As the son of Mary Queen of Scots and the great great grandson of Henry VII, the first Tudor King of England, he was in line to inherit the thrones of both England and Scotland. The period of his reign is referred to as the Jacobean era, and in it he saw the continuance of the so-called golden age of Elizabethan drama with writers like William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson contributing to a thriving literary culture, as well as some major political events, such as the gunpowder plot of 1605. His son, Charles I came to power after his death, ruling from 1625 until the events of the English civil war(s), in which the King fought the armies of the English and Scottish Parliaments in the years 1642-46 and 1948, which led to his execution in 1649.

The book begins with two chapters by way of a prologue and introduction in which Harris discusses the economic and political state of the three kingdoms before the Stuarts even came into power, setting up some of the questions that lead the rest of his narrative:

Why did it prove impossible to hold this multiple-kingdom inheritance together? Was this inheritance unmanageable, or inherently unstable, meaning that some sort of major cataclysm was bound to eventually come? Or were the problems that arose due to the failings of the particular men in charge? (7-8)

These are the questions that are returned to throughout the book, and which are all considered from a variety of angles. One of the strengths of Harris’ book is that it does a good job of feeling like a balanced account that tries to take in the various opinions of historians over the years. Reading this book as a relative newcomer to this area of history, I felt that I was being safely led through the main events by Harris’ own reading of them, while being encouraged to explore alternative views, both historical and contemporary. In this, Harris’ book makes a very well-rounded and authoritative introduction to the period, which I can imagine making a popular addition to a student reading list, as well as being a great book for general readers.

In the second of these preparatory chapters, ‘How to Reigne Well,’ Harris examines the contemporary ideas and ideals of kingship, including those held by James I himself, showing us a fluid and ambiguous concept that was often manipulated to the purposes of the moment. According to Harris, relations of power between the king, the law, and the religious ideals of the country were never defined absolutely, which left a lot of room for political and polemical manoeuvre. The king was both a ruler and lawmaker by divine right, and subject to the law and to the needs of his people, each to varying degrees depending on the writer or orator, and the occasion. James I himself took each of these stances at varying points, depending on how he wished to be seen at that moment; a strong king invoking his divine right, or a beneficent ruler, servant of his people. This section is very useful in contextualising the events that were to occur during the English Civil War, and the arguments that were made on either side of the decision to execute King Charles I, a decision towards which the narrative of this book is inevitably, if not self-consciously, building.

The main body of the book is an in depth study of the reigns of James I and Charles I in their own rights. It deals with the impact of their reigns on all of the countries over which they reigned, as well as the circumstances that challenged their ability to reign, with an interest in the Scottish and Irish kingdoms that reaches beyond just how they affected things in England. The word I keep coming back to in describing this book is balanced, or fair. In every aspect, whether it is considering the characters of James and Charles in both a negative and a positive light, or weighing up the arguments of scholars, Harris is balanced. He explores various avenues of thought rather than forcing his own agenda, and this makes the book highly readable; we are being shown the possibilities of history, rather than being told what it is. Harris leads us through key events; the gunpowder plot, religious division, various rebellions, while opening up a range of interpretive possibilities and probabilities in a way that encourages engagement rather than argument.

In the conclusion of his book, Harris helpfully situates his contribution to the scholarship surrounding the early Stuart period within a debate about the origins of the English Civil War, which falls roughly between a traditional argument of there having been long-term social and economic problems that were at least partly responsible for it, and a revisionist argument based on the notion of there being significant personal differences of political and religious belief between the king and his parliament, with fortune playing no small part in the way events unfolded from that situation. Harris’s position tends towards restating the traditionalist arguments against the revisionist ones, while giving time to, and finding virtue in, many of the views he is considering. He concludes that while the war was certainly precipitated by short-term factors as the revisionists have suggested, these only became important due to “the longer-term political, religious, social, economic and cultural contexts, which, even if they do not possess strong causal significance, certainly possess great explanatory significance”. (504) This conclusion is not definitive, but open-ended, and as such really compliments the exploratory, examining nature of the rest of the book.

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