in the contest for dominance of Britain between England and France suffered by the Scots, may have led them to stress their religious achievements. A theology developed that saw the kingdom as in a covenant relationship with God. Many Scots saw their country as a new Israel and themselves as a holy people engaged in a struggle between the forces of Christ and Antichrist, the later being identified with the resurgent papacy and the Roman Catholic Church. This view was reinforced by events elsewhere that demonstrated that Reformed religion was under threat, such as the 1572 Massacre of St Bartholomew in France and the Spanish Armada in 1588. These views were popularised through the first Protestant histories, such as Knox's History of the Reformation and George Buchanan's Rerum Scoticarum Historia. This period also saw a growth of a patriotic literature facilitated by the rise of popular printing. Published editions of medieval poetry by John Barbour and Robert Henryson and the plays of David Lyndsay all gained a new audience. Seventeenth century In 1603, James VI King of Scots inherited the throne of the Kingdom of England and left Edinburgh for London where he would reign as James I. The Union was a personal or dynastic union, with the crowns remaining both distinct and separate—despite James' best efforts to create a new "imperial" throne of "Great Britain". James used his Royal prerogative powers to take the style of "King of Great Britain" and to give an explicitly British character to his court and person, and attempted to create a political union between England and Scotland. The two parliaments established a commission to negotiate a union, formulating an instrument of union between the two countries. However, the idea of political union was unpopular, and when James dropped his policy of a speedy union, the topic quietly disappeared from the legislative agenda. When the House of Commons attempted to revive the proposal in 1610, it was met with a more open hostility. The Protestant identification of Scotland as a "new Israel", emphasising a covenant with God, emerged at the front of national politics in 1637, as Presbyterians rebelled against Charles I's liturgical reforms and signed the National Covenant. In the subsequent Wars of Three Kingdoms Scottish armies marched under the saltire of St. Andrew, rather than the lion rampant, with slogans such as "Religion, Crown, Covenant and Country". After defeats at Dunbar (1650)