One of the most important political issues of the early years of James I's reign was the union of England and Scotland. Although James advanced his schemes for union cautiously and desired to use the parliaments of both kingdoms as much as possible, it was primarily the English House of Commons which would be blamed for its failure. But, whatever the ultimate result of the project, it aroused heated discussions not only on the floor of the House of Commons, but also in writings available outside its walls. The practical issues of the union and its theoretical under-pinnings apart, one of the emerging themes was that of civic greatness.

The king himself linked the union with the idea of civic greatness. Speaking at the opening of his first English parliament, 19 March 1604, James posed a rhetorical question, ‘hath not the union of Wales to England added a greater strength thereto?’ Wales was ‘a great principality’, but it ‘was nothing comparable in greatness and power to the ancient and famous kingdom of Scotland’. The logical conclusion was that the union of England and Scotland would create a truly great monarchy. Many of the treatises of union written in the course of 1604 followed suit, pointing out that civic greatness would be a chief benefit of the union. Political changes, it was argued, were always difficult and dangerous, but the intrinsic value of the union far outweighed any danger: in this case ‘the increase of Empire’ occurred by peaceful methods rather than by wars or conquest.