The Saxon Connection: St Margaret of Scotland, Morgan Colman’s Genealogies, and James VI & I’s Anglo-Scottish Union Project

Abstract

James VI of Scotland’s succession to the English throne as James I in 1603 was usually justified by contemporaries on the grounds that James was Henry VII’s senior surviving descendant, making him the rightful hereditary claimant. Some works, however, argued that James also had the senior Saxon hereditary claim to the English throne due his descent from St Margaret of Scotland—making his hereditary claim superior to that of any English monarch from William the Conqueror onwards. Morgan Colman’s Arbor Regalis, a large and impressive genealogy, was a visual assertion of this argument, showing that James’s senior hereditary claims to the thrones of both England and Scotland went all the way back to the very foundations of the two kingdoms. This article argues that Colman’s genealogy could also be interpreted in support of James’s Anglo-Scottish union project, showing that the permanent union of England and Scotland as Great Britain was both historically legitimate and a justifiable outcome of James’s combined hereditary claims.

Keywords

• jacobean
• genealogies
• great britain
• hereditary right
• succession