In the end, Elizabeth's crown was passed without manifest constitutional crisis to her Protestant relative, King James VI of Scotland, after a series of co-conspiring events: Cecil's commitment to the Stuart succession after the Essex rebellion of 1601, Philip III of Spain's refusal to pursue the Infanta's claim, an increased Protestant support for the Stuart claim as a result of Persons's pamphlet, and, by then, the absence of any other plausible alternative. The uncertainty remained, however, on the fundamental nature of James's royal title: had he been elected by the Council, appointed by Elizabeth, or chosen by blood ties? In any case, the title would only be strengthened by a sound genealogical claim which would, at the very least, fashion the Scottish king as an English one.

From the moment of his accession, the pedigree of James VI and I and the legitimacy it conferred upon him were systematically imposed onto the public sphere, for the first time in English history, through the medium of print. The king's commitment to forbid any misconceptions and criticism of his right to the throne appears in a cryptic letter to the Earl of Salisbury dated c.1610. It mentions that an unnamed ‘villain’ had slandered the king by questioning his genealogical legitimacy; in the missive, James ‘recommend[ed] the knave to the gallows for the points of [i.e., arguments concerning] my pedigree’. One of the new king's earliest – and certainly his most drastic – gestures was the manipulation of the implicit genealogical structure of one of the most significant monuments of royalty: the tombs of the English kings in Westminster Abbey. In 1606, Elizabeth I's bier was removed from the chapel of Henry VII and laid to rest on top of the coffin of her Catholic sister Mary – a carefully planned irony of history. The king thus physically and visually weakened her ancestral connection with the Tudor ancestor who had united the two roses.

Genealogical texts in print celebrating James's accession appeared at a moment in which public opinion was still seeking to overcome the trauma of Elizabeth I's death, enveloped in the tense atmosphere caused by the political uncertainty which had characterised recent years.