From the acclaimed royal historian, the dramatic and untold story of the lie about the controversial succession that ended the Tudor era and changed the course of British history

In the long and dramatic annals of British history, no transition from one monarch to another has been as fraught and consequential as that between Elizabeth I and her cousin, James VI of Scotland, which ended the Tudor dynasty and launched the Stuart era in March 1603. Elizabeth had reigned for forty-four turbulent years and faced many threats, but no danger was greater than the intensifying uncertainty over who would succeed her. Her unwillingness to marry or name a successor gave rise to fierce rivalry between the many blood claimants to the throne, which threatened to destabilize the monarchy.

As acclaimed Tudor historian Tracy Borman reveals in The Stolen Crown, Elizabeth’s earliest biographer, William Camden, claimed on her deathbed that the queen indicated James as her chosen heir, and indeed he was crowned king soon after she died. Camden’s endorsement has been accepted as fact for more than four centuries. However, recent analysis of Camden’s original biography manuscript shows that key passages were pasted over and rewritten to burnish James’ legacy. The newly uncovered pages make clear not only that Elizabeth never named James, but that James, uncertain he would ever gain the British throne, was even suspected of sending an assassin to London to kill the queen. Had all this been known at the time, the English people—bitter enemies with Scotland for centuries—might well not have accepted James as their king, with unimagined ramifications.

Inspired by the revelations over Camden’s manuscript, Borman sheds rare new light on Elizabeth’s historic reign, chronicling it through the lens of the various claimants who, over decades, sought the throne of the only English monarch not to make provision for her successor. The consequences were immense. Not only did James upend Elizabeth’s glittering court, but the illegitimacy of his claim to the throne, which Camden suppressed, found full expression in the catastrophic reign of James’ son and successor, Charles I. His execution in 1649 shocked the world and destroyed the monarchy fewer than 50 years after Elizabeth died, changing the course of British and world history.