[2][3] The practical if not formal unification of England and Scotland under one ruler was an important shift of order for both nations, and would shape their existence to the present day.

On that date, a group of English Catholics (including Guy Fawkes) attempted to assassinate the King and destroy Parliament in the Palace of Westminster.

Through a crash program of selling off royal demesnes, Lord Treasurer Robert Cecil reduced the debt to £300,000 and the annual deficit to £46,000 by 1610—but could not follow the same method of relief much farther.

The result was a series of tense and often failed negotiations with Parliament for financial supports, a situation that deteriorated over the reigns of James and his son and heir Charles I until the crisis of the English Civil War.

[7] Europe was deeply polarized, and on the verge of the massive Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), with the smaller established Protestant states facing the aggression of the larger Catholic empires.

The marriage of James' daughter Princess Elizabeth to Frederick V, Elector Palatine at Whitehall 14 February 1613 was more than the social event of the era; the couple's union had important political and military implications.

King James' determination to avoid involvement in the continental conflict, even during the "war fever" of 1623, appears in retrospect as one of the most significant, and most positive, aspects of his reign.

The wildly popular tale of the Trojan War had until then been available to readers of English only in medieval epic retellings such as Caxton's Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye.

The high costs of these spectacles, however, positioned the Stuarts far from the relative frugality of Elizabeth's reign, and alienated the middle classes and the Puritans with a prospect of waste and self-indulgent excess.

Francis Bacon had a strong influence in the evolution of modern science, which was entering a key phase in this era, as the work of Johannes Kepler in Germany and Galileo Galilei in Italy brought the Copernican revolution to a new level of development.

Bacon laid a foundation, and was a powerful and persuasive advocate for modern objective inquiry, predicated upon empiricism as a lens to study the natural world.

Scholarship and the sciences, or "natural philosophy", had important royal patrons in this era—not so much in the King but in his son, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, and even his wife, Anne of Denmark.

Yet the slow development of a native school of painting, which had made progress in the previous reign, continued under James, producing figures like Robert Peake the Elder (died 1619), William Larkin (fl.

Some would also claim, as part of this trend, Cornelius Johnson, or Cornelis Janssens van Ceulen (1593–1661), born and trained in London and active through the first two Stuart reigns.

Architectural detail and decorative strapwork patterns derived from continental engravings, especially the prints of Hans Vredeman de Vries, were employed on buildings and furniture.

[15] Inigo Jones may be the most famous English architect of this period, with lasting contributions to classical public building style; his works include the Banqueting House in the Palace of Whitehall and the portico of Old St Paul's Cathedral (destroyed in the Great Fire of London).