King James VI and I: Political Writings.

Johann P. Sommerville's new edition of the political writings of King James I of England makes a valuable primary resource of Jacobean political thought available for both the serious scholar and the undergraduate student. The volume is comprised of annotated texts of the Basilicon Doron, The Trew Law of Free Monarchies, Triplici Nodo, Triplex Cuneus, speeches to Parliament and in Star Chamber, a Meditation upon the 27th, 28th, and 29th Verses of the 27th Chapter of Saint Matthew, and His Majesties Declaration, Touching his Proceedings in the Late Assemblie and Convention of Parliament (1622) - a considerable, though not complete, edition of James's political thought. It also includes a helpful introduction, chronology of events, selected biographical and bibliographical materials, and a glossary of unfamiliar seventeenth-century terms encountered in the texts.

The introduction reviews the political writings of James I in their original historical context and gives a brief description of when they were written, under what circumstances, and how they were published. The introduction argues that they were widely circulated in England and abroad, influenced the theories of both Hobbes and Locke, demonstrating that, along with Filmer and Hobbes, James I was a major British theoretician of a moderate absolutism based on the rule of law and for the benefit of the common weal (xv, xxvii). While the focus of the writings selected is on the efforts of Roman Catholics to undermine the authority of the monarchy (xx), the introduction makes it clear that James's responses to the efforts of the Presbyterian clergy in Scotland in the 1590s and by the members of Parliament in 1621 to contravene the power of the king as well indicate his primary concern with orderly governance under a strong monarch to control the divisiveness of religious and political dissent.

As a teaching tool, however, the edition would have been improved by a more complete introduction and a different approach to the reproduction of the texts. For example, the chronology supplies information about James's personal experiences at the hands of the Earl of Gowrie and his supporters in the 1580s which would have been more profitably included in the introduction to support the king's rejection of his tutor Buchanan's anti-absolutist principles (xxix, xvi). For the non-specialist, it is necessary to augment this edition with information from other sources to understand fully the formulation of James's political thought.

The glossary and the annotated endnotes indicate that the original published appearance of these writings has been altered and that significant contemporary assumptions and values have been lost. Marginalia, designed to indicate major points that the author (and/or publisher) deemed significant and to record sources for quotations, have been transferred to the endnotes where they are undifferentiated from the modern editor's information on people and events mentioned in the texts. For example, the original marginalia of the First Booke of the Basilicon Doron "Of a Kings Christian Duetie towards God" alerted the reader that "The Trew Ground of Good Government" lay in the "double Bond of a Prince to God" (12, fn. 22 and 25), and that Scripture was the source for the quotations included. As a result, the opportunity to show how early modern scholarly traditions of visual rhetoric were used to emphasize Holy Scripture as the foundation for good government has been lost. Perhaps the inclusion of a sample page from one of the texts would have resolved this minor problem. Nevertheless, this new edition makes a valuable primary source for early modern European political thought available to a wider public.

REBECCA S. MORE Brown University