Kings and Things

A tongue-in-cheek history of Irish kings through the ages.Sample Chapter - The StuartsJames IThe English had run out of kings in 1603, so they sent to Scotland for James VI when Elizabeth died. They called him James I.James was the son of Mary Queen of Scots and the Irish thought she would have told him to be nice to the RCs before she was so rudely snatched from his side, but she had been busy being amorous with dissolute Frenchmen and dissolute with amorous Scots. The result was that...
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A tongue-in-cheek history of Irish kings through the ages.Sample Chapter - The StuartsJames IThe English had run out of kings in 1603, so they sent to Scotland for James VI when Elizabeth died. They called him James I.James was the son of Mary Queen of Scots and the Irish thought she would have told him to be nice to the RCs before she was so rudely snatched from his side, but she had been busy being amorous with dissolute Frenchmen and dissolute with amorous Scots. The result was that James allowed Mountjoy to march into Munster to punish the RCs for listening to the wrong sermons and other seditious practices, like going to school. He also punished the Dissenters for dissenting. He said that he could do what he liked because he had the Divine Right of Kings, so all the Dissenters sailed away on the Mayflower. They would have founded the New World if the Indians and Saint Brendan and Christopher Columbus hadn't got there first.The Indians later called themselves Native Americans to distinguish themselves from all the foreigners who kept turning up, leaving no room for them except on reservations. They were sick and sad and kept singing 'From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever', but the foreigners were busy building the Land of the Free and no one heard them.It has to be said that for a man who detested the English class system and disapproved of English snobbery, James didn't hesitate to dub thousands of knights at #65533;1,000 a time, although the titles were no doubt given away free to his lovers, who were men from all classes, but who had to be approved by his wife. Someone had to take the blame should the gentlemen be found wanting in any respect.James ordered that the bible should be translated into English so that the common five-eighths shouldn't die ignorant of the Word of God. This was known as the King James Bible to distinguish it from the Wicked Bible, which ordered that all men should commit adultery.Although James I disapproved of smoking, he ordered his colonists in Virginia to grow hemp because the Royal Navy could use the fibre. It didn't take the growers long to discover that they could get stoned on the leaves.King James I died in 1625, but not before he had settled his own people in the most enduring of all the plantations attempted in Ireland. Many Scots and some English people were settled on the rich lands of O'Neill, O'Donnell and Maguire in Ulster. These were the men known as The Earls who fled the country with their families in 1607.