James VI and I - King and Church

King and Church

After the Gunpowder Plot, James sanctioned harsh measures for controlling non-conforming English Catholics. In May 1606, Parliament passed the Popish Recusants Act which could require any citizen to take an Oath of Allegiance denying the Pope's authority over the king. James was conciliatory towards Catholics who took the Oath of Allegiance, and tolerated crypto-Catholicism even at court. Henry Howard, for example, was a crypto-Catholic, received back into the Church of Rome in his final months. On ascending the English throne, James, suspecting he might need the support of Catholics in England, had assured the Earl of Northumberland, a prominent sympathiser of the old religion, that he would not persecute "any that will be quiet and give but an outward obedience to the law".

In the Millenary Petition of 1603, the Puritan clergy demanded, among other things, the abolition of confirmation, wedding rings, and the term "priest", and that the wearing of cap and surplice become optional. James was at first strict in enforcing conformity, inducing a sense of persecution amongst many Puritans; but ejections and suspensions from livings became fewer as the reign continued. As a result of the Hampton Court Conference of 1604, a new translation and compilation of approved books of the Bible was commissioned to resolve issues with different translations then being used. The Authorised King James Version, as it came to be known, was completed in 1611 and is considered a masterpiece of Jacobean prose. It is still in widespread use.

In Scotland, James attempted to bring the Scottish kirk "so neir as can be" to the English church and to reestablish episcopacy, a policy which met with strong opposition from presbyterians. In 1617, for the only time after his accession in England, James returned to Scotland in the hope of implementing Anglican ritual. James's bishops forced his Five Articles of Perth through a General Assembly the following year; but the rulings were widely resisted. James was to leave the church in Scotland divided at his death, a source of future problems for his son.