[3] Having, for unknown reasons moved to the Calvinist University of St Andrews in Scotland, in 1595 Quin was presented to James VI, who was charmed with his manner and his verse.
The good impression which Quin made was confirmed by his presenting the king, on New Year's Day 1596, with an oration about his title to the English throne, a subject that was increasingly controversial as Elizabeth I grew older and yet had no official heir.
[7] Meanwhile, Quin had been taken into the service of James VI as tutor to his sons, and he gave proof of his loyalty by publishing, in 1600, Sertum Poeticum in honorem Jacobi Sexti.
[8] The volume consists of some of Quin's early anagrams on the king's name, with Latin odes and epigrams, and English sonnets, addressed to members of the royal family and the rescuers of James VI during the Gowrie Conspiracy.
[3] As part of the prince's circle Quin contributed Italian verses "In lode del autore" to Thomas Coryat's Odcombian Banquet (1611).
In common with many other poets of the time, he lamented his young patron's death; these elegies were printed in Joshua Sylvester's Lachrymæ Lachrymarum (1612).
On Charles I's marriage to Henrietta Maria in 1625 Quin published In Nuptiis Principum incomparabilium, congratulatory verses in Latin, English, French, and Italian.
Around this time he returned to historical biography with a French prose account of the memorable sayings of Henri IV, the new queen's father.
James Quin contributed to the Oxford University collections of Latin verse issued on the return of the king from Scotland in 1641, and on the peace with the Dutch Republic in 1654.