WHEN King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England in 1603, many English poets felt that the event marked the beginning of a new cultural climate, one in which religious verse would be highly valued. His accession encouraged some poets to switch from writing secular verse to sacred or philosophical, and others to publish religious poetry that, while written during the earlier reign, could now be published to a more receptive climate. The result was an outpouring of religious verse in the years 1603–05. This chapter will focus on the optimism among writers that James would patronise religious and philosophic verse as never before. We see such great hope expressed in Academiae Oxoniensis (1603), a neo-Latin collection of panegyrics; John Davies of Hereford's Microcosmos (1603); Joshua Sylvester's translation of du Bartas' Les Sepmaines, William Leighton's Vertue Trium-phant (1603) and in the writings of Sir John Harington. Although the hopes of these poets were often frustrated, as James' patronage fell far short of expectations, their poetry is worthy of notice for the way it reflects the interaction between royal taste and national culture.

Queen Elizabeth died early on the morning of 24 March 1603; later the same morning James was proclaimed king of England. Messengers sped to the Scottish court at Edinburgh, and on 26 March James was informed by Robert Carey, Lord Hunsdon, of his new position.

AMONG James' earliest poetic endeavours was a versification of Psalm 104, which appeared in Essayes of a Prentise (1584). This psalm is described as “translated out of Tremellius”, and being composed in an eight-line stanza would not have matched any of the common meter tunes then in use with the Psalms:

With this publication James began his life-long interest in psalm versification and the reform of the metrical Psalter used in the churches of England and Scotland. This chapter will consider the attempts, by both James and others, to fashion a new Psalter, and the attempt after his death to promote his version of the Psalms for use in the churches.

Psalm versification was a fairly common poetic exercise at the time, and the 104th, being rich in natural imagery, was a popular choice. James' tutor, George Buchanan, had produced a Latin version of it that had become famous across Europe. Thus, the publication of James' translation of this single psalm was by no means a signal that he intended a complete versification of the Psalter.

On the morning of 27 March 1625, in the full knowledge that King James I lay dying, Daniel Price preached on the significance of a monarch for the cultural flavour of a nation:

Price is comparing James with Constantine, and while contemporaries joked about their king's love of hunting, it was James' religious interests that had the greatest effect on England. This understanding of the cultural influence of a monarch lies behind the present study. Malcolm Smuts suggests that “The King's tastes and cultural interests need to be studied more carefully, but it seems unlikely that he will emerge as a major trendsetter even in many fields in which he took some interest.” This book is an attempt to assess the role of James in that aspect of English culture, religion, which most attracted his interest. I suggest that in this area James was a “major trendsetter”, or perhaps it is better to say that he was that “North Star” from which the religious culture of the period took its bearings.

JAMES Stuart arrived in England in 1603 with a well-developed under-standing of the role of a king in the religious life of his kingdom. This understanding had two prime sources: the Protestant understanding of the Bible as it related to kingship, and his experiences as a young king of Scotland. The Scottish reign not only affected James' own view of his role, it also developed expectations among the English, as they looked to the church and court of Scotland for a model of what they themselves might expect in 1603.

In his opening speech to the Hampton Court Conference of 1604, James said “It is no novel device, but according to the example of all Christian princes, for kings to take the first course for the establishing of the church, both in doctrine and policy. To this the very Heathen related in their proverb, A Jove principium.” This motto sums up well his understanding of the king's role in religious life. This, however, was only one strand of thought within Christendom: in the fourth century Donatus had rhetorically asked: “What has the Emperor to do with the Church?”, and many since had answered, “nothing”. British Christians of the early seventeenth century might look to a number of different eras for a model of the relation between a ruler and the religious life of the state: Old Testament Israel, the early church under the Roman emperors, and the customs of the medieval church.

THE iconography of James I drew on a substantial number of previous models – biblical, imperial and British. William Germano, in an unpublished dissertation on dedications to King James, notes that “As early as 1604, James had been hailed as any number of biblical kings, as a Caesar (particularly Constantine and Titus), a Noah, someone vaguely related to Apollo or Apollo himself, Atlas, and even Homer.” Classical and biblical prototypes would often be brought together in describing James: Robert Burton describes him as “a wise, learned, religious king, another Numa, a second Augustus, a true Josiah”.

As I suggested in the preface, many recent scholars have concentrated on the classical iconography used to celebrate James' reign, especially at his accession. Correspondingly, the large body of biblical references applied to the king has been relatively neglected. Ultimately, there was perceived to be a closer correspondence between James and a biblical king than between him and a pagan emperor. Widely overlooked as well has been the important model that later Christian emperors such as Constantine provided for the iconography of the time. The emphasis on classical models may be a reflection of scholars' attention to drama and the masque: considerations of the iconography of James must move beyond the limited visual worlds of the theatre, architecture and art, to consider a wide variety of prose and poetry.

AT the beginning of King James' reign, William Thorne had reminded him that while men might praise him as a God, he would “die like a man”, an eminently safe, if unwelcome, prediction. Daniel Price, dean of Hereford, in his sermon preached at Theobalds just hours before James' death, recalled that biblical verse as well. The occasion of the king's death, in March 1625, provided the people of England with an opportunity to reconsider both the human and divine qualities of their monarch of twenty-two years. Some attention was also given to the mark he had left on religious life in England, but this aspect of his life received far less attention than at his accession. As at earlier times, biblical comparisons were common, with the peaceful King Solomon most often presented as the type of James. The most important of these works marking James' death was the funeral sermon preached by John Williams, bishop of Lincoln, entitled “The Death of Solomon”. More so than most poems and speeches it surveyed James' life and reign, rather than looking forward to the possibilities his death opened up. Williams' sermon was a sort of lone light, in striking contrast to the general speed with which the late English king's life and death were forgotten, as attention turned to the immediate situation of a royal marriage and foreign conflicts.

AROUND 1614, the Dutch painter Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne produced a canvas entitled “Fishing for Souls”, which shows a wide river, with crowds of men portrayed on either bank – well-known Protestants on the right-bank of the river, and Roman Catholics on the left. In the midst of the river are a number of boats, each attempting to haul in various swimming or drowning figures. The painting effectively conveys the vigour with which the two halves of western Christendom attempted to win converts, especially converts of political or scholarly significance. The year of the painting is also significant, for while this battle for allegiance was ongoing from the Reformation, it reached a period of intensity from about 1607 to 1618. As David Mathew notes, in 1614 “there began the slow piecemeal conversion [to the Church of Rome] of small individual princes”, and these years were also a period of intense conversion activity within England. Prominently appearing on the right bank in the painting is King James, along with his daughter Elizabeth, and her husband, Frederick, Elector of the Palatine. The painting appropriately presents King James as a figure deeply concerned with significant conversions, both within England and across Europe.

ANDREW Melville, the Scottish scholar, preacher, and poet, is most often remembered for his confrontation with King James at the Falkland General Assembly of 1596, at which time he plucked James by the sleeve, and referred to him as “God's sillie vassal”. While this is typical of the tension between the king and the de facto leader of the Scottish Presbyterians from the 1580s on, their relationship went through a series of stages, with frequent periods of ambivalence on the part of both men. At times, Melville was quite prepared poetically to praise James as at least a potential godly prince. He produced a great range of literary works, many of which had some relation to King James: these ranged from celebrations of Queen Anne's coronation and the birth of Prince Henry, to satiric epigrams on the English church. As a writer whose major works are in Latin he is less accessible than many better known, yet less significant, contemporaries. Although he devoted most of his life to theological scholarship and church government, his fame as a poet was widespread, and his poems, however short, circulated widely and provoked great controversy. Unlike many ecclesiastics his poetic production did not slow down later in life: he continued to write until his death in 1622 at the age of seventy-seven. An examination of Melville's writings and activities will illustrate the interconnectedness of English and Scottish ecclesiastical and theological controversies, the significance of Latin poetry in these conflicts, and the tendency for new controversies to resurrect the arguments and texts of earlier, and at times, significantly different conflicts.

IN his prose work The Wonderfull Yeare, Thomas Dekker celebrates 1603 as a year noteworthy both for the peaceful accession of a new king in the spring, and the devastating plague of that summer. The outpouring of praise and hope at James' accession has been traced in the previous chapter, but as a time of national crisis this year also elicited a much different kind of poetry. As an “annus mirabilis” it provided an opportunity for outspoken assessment of the state of England, an assessment which sometimes established itself in reference to Israel's prophets. By far the majority of works heralding the new reign were panegyric, with any instruction to the king disguised as praise; however, a few writers did adopt the more radical position of prophet. This chapter will examine two writers who in 1603 adopted a moderately prophetic stance in their writings to the king, and then compare these with the developing prophetic mode of George Wither, and the general tendency to more outspoken prophecies that emerged in the period 1619–25. However, before these individual figures can be turned to, we must consider the tradition of prophecy, as understood by Protestantism generally, and English Protestantism particularly.

James' English subjects recognized that while their new monarch had a high view of his own authority, he also saw a role for Protestant prophetic utterances and interpretation of biblical books.