A bad beginning

While James 1 and V1 was the closest relative and, according to the times, entitled to succeed Good Queen Bess, even Sir Walter Scott, when writing for his grandson, felt the need to explain how a Scot could accede to the English throne.
“The faults of Elizabeth, though arising chiefly from age and ill-temper, were noticed and resentted by her subjects, who began openly to show themselves weary of a female reign, forgetting how glorious it had been, and manifested a general desire to have a king rule over them.”
As always, Scott provides some detail – “Queen Elizabeth … When verging on the extremity of life, her mirror presented her with hair that was too grey and features too withered … discontinuing the consultation of her looking glass … exchanged that monitor… for the more false, favourable, and pleasing … reports of the ladies who attended her.The young females … turned her pretensions into ridicule; and if the report of the times is true … misplacing the cosmetics … sometimes even venturing to lay upon the royal nose the carmine which ought to have embellished her cheeks. – Something which reflects more on the young ladies of court than queen who fought the Armada.
Be that as it may, the governing elite saw James as someone they could manipulate, yet someone who would be acceptable to Protestants of both the Church of England and the more radical factions around the country. The Catholics, in turn, saw the son of a strict Catholic, expected some easing of the restrictions imposed on the by Elizabeth.
The Scots saw this as both a business opportunity and a chance to impose their bottom up, emerging Presbyterianism, on the top down religious ideas of the Church of England.
The usual collection of splinter groups that are at each others throats once the objective is achieved, boding badly for the future of the Stuart monarchs, and the nation, and ushering in a hundred and fifty years of slaughter ending in Culloden’s aftermath.
The last king of only Scotland