I'm John Batchel with Claire Jackson, Professor Claire Jackson of Cambridge University.

Her new book is The Mirror of Great Britain, which is an assembly of gems I learned from the professor no longer with us,

that was used in a display when James appeared with his crown on or was in robes that are befitting a king.

The Mirror of Great Britain also has wordplay in it, and there's lots of wordplay in James's life.

He is a very well-educated, extremely sensitive person who doesn't like confrontation. He doesn't like

it. Like most intellectuals I've been familiar with, they prefer to find a compromise where no one's

happy, but everyone's learned something. That was James, but who were those who were arguing?

It was Rome and, I guess Canterbury, but the Episcopalians,

all the Protestants of all Northern Europe were arguing. And James tried to hold together a

kingdom that had a contradiction in it that could not be solved. He sounds frustrated sometimes,

Professor. Is that a good way to approach how he would speak peacefully

and everybody would turn violent quickly?

Yes, I think James is in the religious sphere.

I think he's instinctively an ecumenist.

I mean, I think he feels that the best way in which Christianity can be

supported is by themes of accommodation and toleration. His main, the red line for him,

the one he won't cross is anybody using religion for political ends. So whether Catholics, as per the gunpowder plot,

are using what they regard as their faith as a justification to contemplate atrocity,

or at the other end of the spectrum, as he would see,

radical Protestants who also say that a king is not a sort of divine

body. I mean, he's raised by George Buchanan, who is a phenomenal intellectual humanist poet,

but also one of the great minds behind Mary Queen of Scots' deposition. So he's raised on this

...