[The articles in this Page about Jacobean times, have been taken from the excellent Site Shakespeare and the Globe: Then and Now, from the section Elizabethan and Jacobean England . This Site is dedicated to Shakespeare and features video and audio clips, including animates views of the Globe Theatre and vintage audio and film clips of Shakespearean performances. The following articles are sections drawn from the Encyclopædia Britannica article United Kingdom. I have included them because I think that it can help the visitor to this site to have a notion of the times in which Shakespeare lived and wrote his extraordinary plays and poetry. England in 1603 and James I, are written by Mark A. Kishlansky, Professor of History, University of Chicago.]

England in 1603: Economy and Society :

    At the beginning of the 17th century, England and Wales contained more than four million people. The population had nearly doubled over the previous century, and it continued to grow for another 50 years. The heaviest concentrations of population were in the southeast and along the coasts. Population increase created severe social and economic problems, not the least of which was a long-term price inflation. English society was predominantly rural, with as much as 85 percent of its people living on the land. Small market towns of several hundred inhabitants facilitated local exchange, and in contrast to most of western Europe there were few large urban areas. Norwich and Bristol were the biggest provincial cities with populations of about 15,000. Exeter, York, and Newcastle were important regional centres, though they each had about 10,000 inhabitants. Only London could be ranked with the great continental cities. Its growth had outstripped even the doubling of the general population. By the beginning of the 17th century it contained more than a quarter of a million people and by the end nearly half a million, most of them poor migrants who flocked to the capital in search of work or charity. London was the centre of government, of overseas trade and finance, of fashion, taste, and culture. It was ruled by a merchant oligarchy, whose wealth increased tremendously over the course of the century as international trade expanded.

    London not only ruled the English mercantile world, but it also dominated the rural economy of the southeast by its insatiable demand for food and clothing. The rural economy was predominately agricultural, with mixed animal and grain husbandry practiced wherever the land allowed. The population increase, however, placed great pressure upon the resources of local communities, and efforts by landlords and tenants to raise productivity for either profit or survival were the key feature of agricultural development. Systematic efforts to grow luxury market crops like wheat, especially in the environs of London, drove many smaller tenants from the land. So, too, did the practice of enclosure, which allowed for more productive land use by large holders at the expense of their poorer neighbours. There is evidence of a rural subsistence crisis lasting throughout the first two decades of the century. Marginally productive land came under the plow, rural revolts became more common, and harvest failures resulted in starvation rather than hunger. It was not until the middle of the century that the rural economy fully recovered and entered a period of sustained growth. A nation that could barely feed itself in 1600 was an exporter of grain by 1700.

    At the beginning of the 17th century, England and Wales contained more than four million people. The population had nearly doubled over the previous century, and it continued to grow for another 50 years. The heaviest concentrations of population were in the southeast and along the coasts. Population increase created severe social and economic problems, not the least of which was a long-term price inflation. English society was predominantly rural, with as much as 85 percent of its people living on the land. Small market towns of several hundred inhabitants facilitated local exchange, and in contrast to most of western Europe there were few large urban areas. Norwich and Bristol were the biggest provincial cities with populations of about 15,000. Exeter, York, and Newcastle were important regional centres, though they each had about 10,000 inhabitants. Only London could be ranked with the great continental cities. Its growth had outstripped even the doubling of the general population. By the beginning of the 17th century it contained more than a quarter of a million people and by the end nearly half a million, most of them poor migrants who flocked to the capital in search of work or charity. London was the centre of government, of overseas trade and finance, of fashion, taste, and culture. It was ruled by a merchant oligarchy, whose wealth increased tremendously over the course of the century as international trade expanded.

    London not only ruled the English mercantile world, but it also dominated the rural economy of the southeast by its insatiable demand for food and clothing. The rural economy was predominately agricultural, with mixed animal and grain husbandry practiced wherever the land allowed. The population increase, however, placed great pressure upon the resources of local communities, and efforts by landlords and tenants to raise productivity for either profit or survival were the key feature of agricultural development. Systematic efforts to grow luxury market crops like wheat, especially in the environs of London, drove many smaller tenants from the land. So, too, did the practice of enclosure, which allowed for more productive land use by large holders at the expense of their poorer neighbours. There is evidence of a rural subsistence crisis lasting throughout the first two decades of the century. Marginally productive land came under the plow, rural revolts became more common, and harvest failures resulted in starvation rather than hunger. It was not until the middle of the century that the rural economy fully recovered and entered a period of sustained growth. A nation that could barely feed itself in 1600 was an exporter of grain by 1700.

    In the northeast and southwest the harsher climate and poorer soils were more suited for sheep raising than for large-scale cereal production. The northeast and southwest were the location of the only significant manufacturing activity in England, the woolen cloth industry. Wool was spun into large cloths for export to Holland, where the highly technical finishing processes were performed before it was sold commercially. Because spinning and weaving provided employment for thousands of families, the downturn of the cloth trade at the beginning of the 17th century compounded the economic problems brought about by population increase. This situation worsened considerably after the opening of the Thirty Years' War (1618-48), as trade routes became disrupted and as new and cheaper sources of wool were developed. But the transformation of the English mercantile economy from its previous dependence upon a single commodity into a diversified entrepôt that transshipped dozens of domestic and colonial products was one of the most significant developments of the century.

    The economic divide between rich and poor, between surplus and subsistence producers, was a principal determinant of rank and status. English society was organized hierarchically with a tightly defined ascending order of privileges and responsibilities. This hierarchy was as apparent in the family as in the state. There, as elsewhere, male domination was the rule; husbands ruled their wives, masters their servants, parents their children. But if hierarchy was stratified, it was not ossified; those who attained wealth could achieve status. The social hierarchy reflected gradations of wealth and responded to changes in the economic fortunes of individuals. In this sense it was more open than most European societies; old wealth was not preferred to new, ancient title conferred no greater privileges than recent elevation; the humble could rise to become gentle, and the gentle could fall to become humble.

    During the early 17th century a small titular aristocracy composed of between 75 and 100 peers formed the apex of the social structure. Their titles were hereditary, passed from father to eldest son, and they were among the wealthiest subjects of the state. Most were local magnates, inheriting vast county estates and occupying honorific positions in local government. The peerage was the military class of the nation, and in the counties peers held the office of lord lieutenant. Most were also called to serve at court, but at the beginning of the century their power was still local rather than central.

    Below them were the gentry, who probably composed only about 5 percent of the rural population but who were rising in importance and prestige. The gentry were not distinguished by title, though many were knights and several hundred purchased the rank of baronet after it was created in 1611. Sir Thomas Smith defined a member of the gentry as "he that can bear the port and charge of a gentleman." The gentry were expected to provide hospitality for their neighbours, treat their tenants paternally, and govern their counties. They served as deputy lieutenants, militia captains, and most importantly, as justices of the peace. To the justices fell the responsibility of enforcing the king's law and keeping the king's peace. They worked individually to mediate local disputes and collectively at quarter sessions to try petty crimes. As the magistracy the gentry were the backbone of county governance, and they maintained a fierce local independence even while enforcing the edicts of the crown.

    Beneath the gentry were those who laboured for their survival. There were many prosperous tenants who were styled yeomen to denote their economic independence and the social gulf between them and those who eked out a bare existence. Some were the younger sons of gentlemen; others aspired to enter the ranks of the gentry, having amassed sufficient wealth to be secure against the fluctuations of the early modern economy. Like the gentry, the yeomanry were involved in local government, performing most of the day-to-day, face-to-face tasks. Yeomen were village elders, constables, and tax collectors, and they composed the juries that heard cases at quarter sessions. Most owned sufficient freehold land to be politically enfranchised and to participate in parliamentary selections. Filling out the ranks of rural society were husbandmen, cottagers, and labourers. They were the vast majority of local inhabitants, and their lives were bound up in the struggle for survival.

    In towns, tradesmen and shopkeepers occupied the ranks below the ruling elites, but their occupational status clearly separated them from artisans, apprentices, and labourers. They were called the middling sort and were active in both civic and church affairs, holding the same minor offices as yeomen or husbandmen. Because of the greater concentrations of wealth and educational opportunities, the urban middling sort were active participants in urban politics.

Government and society.

    Seventeenth-century government was inextricably bound together with the social hierarchy that dominated local communities. Rank, status, and reputation were the criteria that enabled members of the local elite to serve the crown either in the counties or at court. Political theory stressed hierarchy, patriarchy, and deference in describing the natural order of English society. The most common visual description of this political community was the metaphor of the body politic. Like the human body, government and society were organic and their parts interdependent. Each element had its special and essential tasks to perform, without which the body could not function. At the head was the king, whose rule was based upon divine right and whose conception of his role in the state came closer to personal ownership than corporate management. Most of the aristocracy and gentry were the king's own tenants, whose obligations to him included military service, taxes, and local office holding. The monarch's claim to be God's vice-regent on earth was relatively uncontroversial, especially since his obligations to God included good governance. Except in dire emergency, the monarch could not abridge the laws and customs of England nor seize the persons or property of his subjects.

    The monarch ruled personally, and the permanent institutions of government were constantly being reshaped. Around the king was the court, a floating body of royal servants, officeholders, and place seekers. Personal service to the king was considered a social honour and thus fitting to those who already enjoyed rank and privilege. (For more on courtiers, see Baldassare Castiglione.) Most of the aristocracy and many gentlemen were in constant attendance at court, some with lucrative offices to defray their expenses, others extravagantly running through their fortunes. There was no essential preparation for royal service, no necessary skills or experiences. Commonly, members of the elite were educated at universities and the law courts, and most made a grand tour of Europe where they studied languages and culture. But their entry into royal service was normally through the patronage of family members and connections rather than through ability.

    From among his court the monarch chose a privy council. Its size and composition remained fluid, but it was largely composed of the chief officers of state: the lord treasurer, who oversaw revenue; the lord chancellor, who was the crown's chief legal officer; and the lord chamberlain, who was in charge of the king's household. The archbishop of Canterbury was the leading churchman of the realm, and he advised the king, who was the head of the established church. The privy council advised the king on foreign and domestic policy and was charged with the administration of government. It communicated with the host of unpaid local officials who governed in the communities, ordering the justices to enforce statutes or the deputy lieutenants to raise forces. In these tasks the privy councillors relied not only upon the king's warrant but upon their own local power and prestige as well. Thus, while the king was free to choose his own councillors, he was constrained to pick those who were capable of commanding respect. The advice that he received at the council table was from men who kept one eye on their localities and the other on the needs of central policy.

    This interconnection between the centre and the localities was also seen in the composition of Parliament. Parliament was another of the king's councils, though its role in government was less well defined than the privy council's and its summoning was intermittent. In the early 17th century Parliament was less an institution than an event; it was convened when the king sought the aid of his subjects in the process of creating new laws or to provide extraordinary revenue. Like everything else in English society, Parliament was constituted in a hierarchy, composed of king, lords, and commons. Every peer of the realm was personally summoned to sit in the House of Lords, which was dominated by the greatest of the king's officers. The lower house was composed of representatives selected from the counties and boroughs of the nation. The House of Commons was growing as local communities petitioned for the right to be represented in Parliament and local gentry scrambled for the prestige of being chosen. It had 464 members in 1604 and 507 forty years later. Selection to the House of Commons was a mark of distinction, and many communities rotated the honour among their most important citizens and neighbours. Although there were elaborate regulations governing who could choose and who could be chosen, in fact very few members of the House of Commons were selected competitively. Contests for places were uncommon, and elections in which individual votes were cast were extremely rare.

    Members of Parliament served the dual function of representing the views of the localities to the king and of representing the views of the king to the localities. Most were members of royal government, either at court or in their local communities, and nearly all had responsibility for enforcing the laws that were created at Westminster. Most parliaments were summoned to provide revenue in times of emergency, usually for defense, and most members were willing to provide it within appropriate limits. They came to Parliament to do the king's business, the business of their communities, and their own personal business in London. Such conflicting obligations were not always easily resolved, but Parliament was not perceived as an institution in opposition to the king any more than the stomach was seen as opposing the head of the body. Upsets there were, and increasingly during the 17th century king and Parliament clashed over specific issues, but until the middle of the century they were part of one system of royal government.

JAMES I (1603-25)

    James VI of Scotland (1567-1625) was the most experienced monarch to accede to the English throne since William the Conqueror as well as one of the greatest of all Scottish kings. A model of the philosopher prince, James wrote political treatises like The Trew Law of a Free Monarchy (1598), debated theology with learned divines, and reflected continually on the art of statecraft. He governed his poor nation by balancing its factions of clans and by restraining the enthusiastic leaders of its Presbyterian church. In Scotland, James was described as pleasing to look at and pleasing to hear. He was sober in habit, enjoyed vigorous exercise, and doted on his Danish wife, Anne, who had borne him two male heirs. But for all of these qualities, James I was viewed with suspicion by his new subjects. Centuries of hostility between the two nations had created deep enmities, and these could be seen in English descriptions of the king. There he was characterized as hunchbacked and ugly, with a tongue too large for his mouth and a speech impediment that obscured his words. It was said that he drank to excess and spewed upon his filthy clothing. It was also rumoured that he was homosexual and preyed upon the young boys brought to service at court. This caricature, which has long dominated the popular view of James I, was largely the work of disappointed English office seekers whose pique clouded their observations and the judgments of generations of historians.

    In fact, James showed his abilities from the first. In the counties through which he passed on his way to London he lavished royal bounty upon the elites who had been starved for honours during Elizabeth's parsimonious reign. He knighted hundreds as he went, enjoying the bountiful entertainments that formed such a contrast with his indigent homeland. He would never forget these first encounters with his English subjects, "their eyes flaming nothing but sparkles of affection." On his progress James also received a petition, putatively signed by a thousand ministers, calling his attention to the unfinished business of church reform.

Religious policy.

    The Millenary Petition (1603) initiated a debate over the religious establishment that James intended to defend. The king called a number of his leading bishops to hold a formal disputation with the reformers. The Hampton Court Conference (1604) saw the king in his element. He took a personal role in the debate and made clear that he hoped to find a place in his church for moderates of all stripes. It was only extremists that he intended to "harry from the land," those who, unlike the supporters of the Millenary Petition, sought to tear down the established church. The king responded favourably to the call for creating a better educated and better paid clergy and referred several doctrinal matters to the consideration of convocation. But only a few of the points raised by the petitioners found their way into the revised Canons of 1604. In fact, the most important result of the conference was the establishment of a commission to provide an authorized English translation of the Bible, the King James Version (1611). Indeed, James's hope was that moderates of all persuasions, Roman Catholic and Protestant alike, might dwell together in his church. But his plan to find a formula to encompass Catholics within the Calvinist English church was overthrown by the hotheadedness of Guy Fawkes, a convert to Roman Catholicism, and his confederates, who conspired to assassinate the king, lords, and commons by blowing up the Houses of Parliament. The failure of the Gunpowder Plot (1605) led to reprisals against Catholics and prevented James from going any further than exhibiting humane leniency toward them in the later years of his reign. Nevertheless, James's ecumenical outlook did much to defuse religious conflict and led to 20 years of relative peace within the English church.

Finance and politics.

    To a king whose annual budget in Scotland was barely 50,000, England looked like the land of milk and honey. But in fact, James I inherited serious financial problems, which his own liberality quickly compounded. Elizabeth had left a debt of more than 400,000 and James, with a wife and two sons, had much larger household expenses than the unmarried queen. Land and duties from customs were the major sources of royal revenue, and it was James's good fortune that the latter increased dramatically after the judges ruled in Bate's case (1606) that the king could make impositions on imported commodities without the consent of Parliament. Two years later, under the direction of James's able minister Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, impositions were levied on an expanded list of goods, and a revised book of rates (1608) was issued that increased the level of duties. By these measures customs revenues grew by 70,000 a year. But even this windfall was not enough to stem the effects of inflation on the one hand and James's own free spending on the other. By 1606 royal debt was more than 600,000, and the crown's financial ministers had turned their attention to prerogative income from wardships, purveyance, and the discovery of concealed lands (i.e., crown lands on which rents and dues were not being paid). The revival and rationalization of these ancient rights created an outcry. As early as 1604 Salisbury was examining proposals to commute these fiscal rights into an annual sum to be raised by a land tax. By 1610 negotiations began for the Great Contract between the king and his taxpaying subjects that aimed to raise 200,000 a year. But at the last moment both royal officials and leaders of the House of Commons backed away from the deal, the government believing that the sum was too low, the leaders of the Commons that a land tax was too unpopular. The failure of the Great Contract drove Salisbury to squeeze even more revenue out of the king's feudal rights, including the sale of titles. This policy violated the spirit of principles about property and personal liberty held by the governing classes and, along with impositions, was identified as a grievance during James's first parliaments.

    There was much suspicion that the Scottish king would not understand the procedures and privileges of an English Parliament, and this was in evidence at the opening of the first session of the Parliament of 1604-10. The conventional ban upon the selection of outlaws to the Commons led to the Buckinghamshire Election Case (1604). The Commons reversed a decision by the lord chancellor and ordered Francis Goodwin, an outlaw, to be seated in the House. James clumsily intervened in the proceedings, stating that the privileges of the Commons had been granted by the grace of the monarch, a pronouncement that stirred the embers of Elizabethan disputes over parliamentary privilege. Although a compromise solution to the case was found, from this time forward the Commons took an active role in scrutinizing the returns of its members. A standing committee on elections was formed, and the freedom of members from arrest during sessions was reasserted. Some wanted to go even further and present the king with a defense of the ancient rights of their House. But this so-called apology was the work of a minority and was never accepted by the whole House or presented to the king.

Factions and favourites.

    As in the previous reign, court politics were factionalized around noble groups tied together by kinship and interest. James had promoted members of the Howard family to places of leadership in his government; Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, adeptly led a family group that included Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, and Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel. All managed to enrich themselves at the expense of the king, whose debts reached 900,000 by 1618. A stink of corruption pervaded the court during these years. The Howards formed the core of a pro-Spanish faction that desired better relations with Spain and better treatment of English Catholics. They also played upon the king's desire for peace in Europe. The Howards were opposed by an anti-Spanish group that included the queen, George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, and William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. This group wished to pursue an aggressively Protestant foreign policy and, after the opening of the Thirty Years' War, to support James's son-in-law, the elector Frederick of the Palatinate. It was the anti-Spanish group that introduced the king to George Villiers, reputedly one of the handsomest men in Europe. Through Villiers they sought a conduit to power.

    Even at the time it was thought unseemly that a lover should be provided for the king at the connivance of the queen and the archbishop. But Villiers was nobody's fool, and, while he succeeded spectacularly in gaining James's confidence, he refused to be a cipher for those who had advanced him. Soon he had risen to the pinnacle of the aristocracy. First knighted in 1615, he was created duke of Buckingham in 1623, the first nonroyal duke in half a century. Buckingham proved an able politician. He supported the movement for fiscal reform that led to the disgrace of Lord Treasurer Suffolk and the promotion of Lionel Cranfield, later Earl of Middlesex. Cranfield, a skilled London merchant, took the royal accounts in hand and made the unpopular economies that kept government afloat.

    Buckingham, whose power rested upon his relationship with the king, wholeheartedly supported James's desire to reestablish peace in Europe. For years James had angled to marry his son Charles to a Spanish princess. There were many obstacles to this plan, not the least of which was the insistence of the pope that the marriage lead to the reconversion of England to Roman Catholicism. When negotiations remained inconclusive, James, in 1621, called his third Parliament with the intention of asking for money to support the Protestant cause. By this means he hoped to bully Philip IV of Spain into concluding the marriage negotiations and into using his influence to put an end to the German war.

    Parliament, believing that James intended to initiate a trade war with Spain, readily granted the king's request for subsidies. But some members mistakenly also believed that the king wished their advice on military matters and on the prince's marriage. When James learned that foreign policy was being debated in the lower House, he rebuked the members for their temerity in breaching the royal prerogative. Stunned, both because they thought that they were following the king's wishes and because they believed in their freedom to discuss such matters, members of the Commons prepared the Protestation of 1621, exculpating their conduct and setting forth a statement of the liberties of the House. James sent for the Commons journal and personally ripped the protestation from it. He reiterated his claim that royal marriages and foreign policy were beyond the ken of Parliament and dryly noted that less than a third of the elected members of the House had been present when the protestation was passed.

    The Parliament of 1621 was a failure at all levels. No legislation other than the subsidy bill was passed; a simple misunderstanding among the members had led to a dramatic confrontation with the king; and judicial impeachments were revived, costing the king the services of Lord Chancellor Bacon. James, moreover, was unable to make any progress with the Spaniards, and supporting the European Protestants drained his revenue. By 1624 royal indebtedness had reached 1 million. The old king was clearly at the end of his power and influence. His health was visibly deteriorating, and his policies were openly derided in court and country. Prince Charles and Buckingham decided to take matters into their own hands. In 1623 they traveled incognito to Madrid.

    Their gambit created as much consternation in England as it did in Spain. James wept inconsolably, believing that his son would be killed or imprisoned. The Spaniards saw the end of their purposely drawn-out negotiations. Every effort was made to keep Charles away from the infanta, and he only managed to catch two fleeting glimpses of the heavily veiled princess. Nevertheless, he confided in Buckingham that he was hopelessly in love. Buckingham and John Digby, Earl of Bristol, the ambassador to Spain, were almost powerless to prevent the most damaging concessions. Charles even confessed himself willing to be instructed in the Catholic faith. Yet the more the prince conceded, the more embarrassed the Spaniards became. Nothing short of an ultimate Catholic reestablishment in England would be satisfactory, and they began to raise obviously artificial barriers. Even the lovesick prince realized that he was being humiliated. Shame turned to rage as he and Buckingham journeyed home.

    There they persuaded the bedridden king to call another Parliament for the purpose of declaring war on Spain. The Parliament of 1624 was given free rein. All manner of legislation was passed; subsidies for a trade war with Spain were voted; and issues of foreign policy were openly discussed. Firmly in control of political decision-making, Charles and Buckingham worked to stave off attacks upon James's fiscal policies, especially the granting of monopolies to royal favourites. The last Parliament of James's reign was his most successful. On March 27, 1625, the old king died.

[ England in 1603 and James I, are written by Mark A. Kishlansky, Professor of History, University of Chicago.]

JAMES I (r. 1603-25)

    James I, son of Mary, Queen of Scots (and descended from Henry VII's daughter Margaret), had been King of Scotland for 36 years when he became King of England. Although he was King of both countries, James's attempt to create a full governmental union proved premature.

    An able theologian, he ordered a new translation of the Bible which became known as the Authorised King James's Version of the Bible. James himself was fairly tolerant in terms of religious faith, but the Gunpowder Plot (an attempt by Guy Fawkes and other Roman Catholic conspirators to blow up the Houses of Parliament) in 1605 resulted in the reimposition of strict penalties on Roman Catholics.

    As an arts patron, James employed the architect Iñigo Jones to build the present Banqueting House in Whitehall, and drama in particular flourished at his court.

    Although he believed that kings took their authority from God, James accepted that his actions were subject to the law. Unable, like many of his predecessors, to put royal finances on a sound footing, James was often in dispute with his Parliaments. A proposed 'Great Contract' (1610), under which Parliament would provide a regular income to the Crown to meet government costs and maintain the navy and army, in exchange for modifying the monarch's fundraising, came to nothing. The Addled Parliament of 1614 lasted eight weeks.

    The outbreak of the Thirty Years War (1618-48) in Europe spread, and financial pressures forced James in 1621 to summon Parliament, but when the House of Commons tried to debate wider aspects of foreign policy and asserted their right to discuss any subject, James dissolved it. A further Parliament, summoned in 1624, failed to resolve foreign policy questions. On James's death in 1625, the kingdom was on the edge of war with Spain.

[Text from History Monarchy]

James VI of Scots and I of England (1566 - 1625)
King of Scots (1567-1625) and of England and Ireland (1603-25).

    James, the first Stuart king of England, was the son of Mary Queen of Scots and her second husband, Henry, Lord Darnley. When James succeeded to the Scottish throne in 1567, following his mother's enforced abdication, he was only 13 months old. His long and troubled minority saw a succession of regents. Religious and aristocratic factions made various attempts to secure the king's person, and civil war raged until 1573 when the earl of Morton took control of Scotland. In 1586 by the treaty of Berwick James was awarded an English pension; and his cousin Elizabeth I promised not to oppose his claims to the English succession unless he provoked her by his actions in Scotland. This sufficed to ensure James' acquiescence to his mother's execution in 1587 and his neutrality when the Spanish armada sailed against England in the following year. In 1592 James consented to an act of parliament establishing Presbyterianism in Scotland; with the support of Presbyterians he was finally able to subdue the Roman Catholic earls of the north. James did much to improve the system of civil government in Scotland and took the first steps towards initiating a regular system of taxation. He married Anne of Denmark in 1589.

    When James succeeded to the English throne in 1603, he made it clear that there would be no fundamental alteration to the Elizabethan church settlement and that he believed the Anglican church and the monarchy to be interdependent. His slogan was `no bishop, no king'. One manifestation of the frustration of the religious minorities was the Roman Catholic inspired gunpowder plot of 1605.

James' experience in Scotland failed to prepare him adequately for the English throne. He was soon in conflict with his parliaments (1604-11, the 1614 Addled Parliament, and 1621-22) on the question of the extent of his sovereignty and its refusal to grant what he considered adequate revenue. On occasion he sought financial independence by means of extraparliamentary levies. His liking for attractive young men, notably such court favourites as Robert Carr and George Villiers (duke of Buckingham), alienated many Englishmen. Soon after his accession James made peace with Spain, realizing England could no longer afford the crippling costs of war. He aspired to the role of the peacemaker of Europe, acceptable to both Catholics and Protestants. His efforts were ruined both by the strength of Protestant opinion in Britain and by the reluctance of Spain to form an alliance with him. After the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War ( 1618) on the Continent, James had to settle for a treaty with the Dutch and a French marriage alliance for his heir Charles.

[From Xreferences.com]

James I, King of England (1566 - 1625)

    The only child of Mary Queen of Scots, he became James VI of Scotland in 1567 and in 1589 married Princess Anne of Denmark. He succeeded Queen Elizabeth I in March 1603, and gave his royal patent to Shakespeare's company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, making them the King's Men. In 1604 Shakespeare was one of nine members of the company to whom James gave four-and-a-half yards of red cloth for livery to walk in the Coronation procession.

    Many of Shakespeare's plays were acted at Court during James's reign, and Macbeth seems especially relevant to James's interests. Attempts have been made to identify him and members of his family more or less closely with characters in a number of Shakespeare's other plays, but the evidence is speculative.

[From Xreferences.com]

King of England and Ireland (1603-25), King of Scots (as James VI; 1567-1625)

    The son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, James was the first monarch to rule both Scotland and England. His long minority was plagued by Scotland's religious and political turmoil, but after 1583 he succeeded in imposing his authority on the warring factions. In England he had less success, failing to understand the English and their institutions; they in turn mocked his personal habits and his liking for handsome young courtiers. They also resented his policy of seeking peace with Spain. In his attempts to assert himself James had bitter disputes with his parliaments, usually over money. His schooling under George Buchanan had given him a taste for learning, and he wrote treatises on several subjects (witchcraft, tobacco, the divine right of kings) but his greatest contribution to literature was made in 1604 when he commissioned the Authorized Version of the Bible.

[From Xreferences.com]

Jacobean Drama

    Jacobus is the Latin form of the name James; the Jacobean Age, therefore, refers to the reign of James I of England (James VI of Scotland), from 1603 to 1625.

Jacobean Drama: A term for plays written during reign of James I, (1603-25). Elizabethan Drama is a general term for plays written during reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603), and by extension including also those written up to closing of theatres in 1642. Those written from 1603 to 1642 are more correctly called Jacobean (from James I, 1603-25) and Caroline (from Charles I, 1625-49) . Historically, the term 'Elizabethan' refers to the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) and 'Jacobean' to the reign of her successor, James I (163-25). However, the terms are sometimes used more loosely when applied to the drama of the period.

    'The plays of the Jacobean period become even more complex, even more passionate and violent than the plays of the Elizabethan age, as they go more deeply into problems of corruption and human weakness. The masterpieces of Jacobean tragedy include the plays of John Webster, especially The White Devil (published in 1612), and The Duchess of Malfi, written about the same time. These plays contain two of the most memorable tragic heroines in English drama, Vittoria Corombona and the Duchess of Malfi herself; women who are the victims of male violence, and whose sufferings show many of the problems that Jacobean society was experiencing.' [From The Penguin Guide to English Literature, London, 1996. ]

Jacobean Age:

So called from Jacobus 'James', and thus belongging to the reign of James I (1603-25). A period which, like the Elizabethan age, was particularly rich in literary activity. The King himself published at least four books: two on poetry, a work on demonology, and the famous A Counterblaste to Tobacco (1604). Among dramatists, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont & Fletcher, Webster, Tourneur, Ford, Middleton and Rowley were all very active. Donne and Drayton were two of the most famous of the lyric poets of the period. Bacon and Robert Burton were the best known prose writers. In 1611 was published the King James Bible [See The Cavalier Poets and The Metaphysical Poets].

Metaphysical:

    Metaphysical (L al suffixed to Gk 'after [Aristotle's work on] physics') A term now generally applied to a group of 17th century poets; chiefly Donne, Carew, George Herbert, Crashaw, Henry Vaughan, Marvell, Cleveland and Cowley. It appears that one of the first to use the term was William Drummond of Hawthornden in a letter written to Arthur Johnston c. 1630. In his Discourse of the Original and Progress of Satire (1692) Dryden said of Donne: 'He affects the metaphysics not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign, and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy'. Later Johnson, in his Livis of the Poets (1779-81), established the term more or less permanently as a label. Johnson wrote somewhat disapprovingly of the discordia concors in metaphysical imagery, and referred to 'heterogeneous ideas... yoked by violence together.'

    The marks of 17th century metaphysical poetry were arresting and original images and conceits (showing a preoccupation with analogies between macrocosm and microcosm), wit, ingenuity, dexterous use of colloquial speech, considerable flexibility of rhythm and meter, complex themes (both sacred and profane), a liking for paradox and dialectical argument, a direct manner, a caustic humour, a keenly felt awareness of mortality, and a distinguished capacity for elliptical thought and tersely compact expression. But for all their intellectual robustness the metaphysical poets were also capable of refined delicacy, gracefulness and deep feeling; passion as well as wit. The foollowing example is Marvell's The Definition of Love:

The Definition of Love

My Love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis, for object, strange and high;
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed ;
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close ;
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic power depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant poles have placed
(Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel),
Not by themselves to be embraced,

Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear,
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramped into a planisphere.

As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet ;
But ours, so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.

[Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678]

    The Metaphysicals have had a profound influence on the course of English poetry in recent years, thanks, in great measure, to the critical appreciations of Herbert Grierson, T.S. Eliot, J.B. Leishman, H.C. White, Rosemond Tuve, Cleanth Brooks, Louis Martz, George Williamson and Helen Gardner. [See Conceit.]

Metaphysical:

    metaphysical: metaphysical is an adjective used to describe the poetry of a group of seventeenth-century poets (for example, Donne, Marvell, Herbert) whose language, imagery and verse forms were original.

Conceit:

    Conceit: (L conceptus 'concept influenced by It concetto) By c. 1600 the term was still being used as a synonym for 'thought', and as roughly equivalent to 'concept', 'idea' and 'conception'. It might also then denote a fanciful supposition, an ingenious act of deception or a witty or clever remark or idea. As a literary term this word has come to denote a fairly elaborate figurative device of a fanciful kind which often incorporates metaphor, simile, hyperbole or oxymoron and which is intended to surprise and delight by its wit and ingenuity. The pleasure we get from many conceits is intellectual rather than sesuous. They are particularly associated with the MNetaphysic poets, but are to be found in abundance in the work of Italian Renaissance poets, in the love poetry of the Tudor, Jacobean and Caroline poets, and in the work of Corneille, Molière and Racine.

    An elaborated, extended, and startling comparison between apparently dissimilar objects, associated in particular with Mataphysical Poetry. When in his poem 'The Flea' John Donne (?1571-1631) compares his lover and himself to a flea (the flea has sucked the blood of both, and by carrying their mixed blood in his body becomes a symbol of unity) he is composing a textbook conceit: unexpected, lengthy, and ultimately both convincing and intriguing.