ABOVE: King James interrogates Guy Fawkes on his role in the gunpowder plot to blow
up parliament RIGHT: A group of ‘witches’ are beaten in front of the king cshould – be reunited. Drawing on one
of Elizabeth’s favourite sayings, that she
was “married to England”, he styled
himself the ‘Husband of Britain’, who
could not therefore have two wives
(Scotland and England).Suspicious minds
Despite what was, by James’s standards,
a rousing speech, parliament remained
unconvinced. This was at least partly due
to the natural xenophobia of the English.
“They have a great antipathy to foreigners,”
observed an Italian visitor to London about
a century earlier, “and imagine that they
never come into their island, but to make
themselves master of it, and to usurp their
goods.” That is exactly what parliament
feared James would do and, despite a
voluminous suite of State Papers devoted
to the issue, it all came to nothing.
Meanwhile, the king attempted to
impose his religious views upon his new
subjects. A fierce advocate of the Protestant
faith, James could not abide what he
scathingly referred to as the “rotten
religion” of the papists. In 1604, he held
a conference at Hampton Court with the
aim of unifying the English Church.
Although, in theory, Puritans and
Catholics alike were obliged to conform
to the ‘Anglican’ Church, in practice this
church was more Protestant than Catholic.
When it became clear that the new king
had no intention of following Elizabeth I’s
policy of toleration towards Catholics,dangerous dissent began to form among
his subjects. In 1605, a group of Catholic
gentlemen led by Robert Catesby hatched
a plot to blow up the House of Lords
during the state opening of parliament
on 5 November 1605. This was to be the
prelude to a popular revolt in the
Midlands, during which James’s nine-
year-old daughter, Elizabeth, would be
installed as the Catholic head of state. It
was only thanks to an anonymous letter
to the authorities, received in late
October, that the king and his Protestant
regime were not wiped out. The House of
Lords was searched at around midnight
on 4 November, just hours before the plot
was due to be executed, and Guy Fawkes
was discovered with 36 barrels of
gunpowder – more than enough to reduce
the entire building to rubble.
Refusing to heed the warning, James
continued to doggedly pursue policies and
reforms in which he fiercely believed.
They included the notorious Witchcraft
Act of 1604. This was altogether more
severe than any of the Tudor legislation
against sorcery and the ‘dark arts’. It made
hanging mandatory for a first offence of
witchcraft, even if the accused had not
committed murder, and prompted decades
of witch-hunting, resulting in many
hundreds of innocent people (mostly
women) being executed.
Elizabeth I had maintained a keen
awareness of – and respect for – her
subjects’ wishes throughout her long reign.By contrast, James
displayed a consistent disregard for them- one that would become increasingly
apparent as his reign progressed. Having
failed to unite his two kingdoms or the
church, he became ever more disillusioned
with – and intolerant of – his English
subjects. “The king ... seems dissatisfied
with his people, stays as little as possible in
London, never shows himself in the city,
and in entering and leaving always takes
the least frequented routes,” observed the
Venetian ambassador on a visit to court in
- “In short, in all his actions he does
not conceal his dislike.”
By the time of his death in 1625, James
had not only lost the love of many of his
subjects in England but had also sown the
seeds of discontent that would soon find
full, terrifying expression. The fledgling
Stuart dynasty was already on the verge
of destruction.
Trac y Bor ma n is an author and historian.
Her latest book is Thomas Cromwell
GETTY IMAGES (Hodder & Stoughton, 2014)