6. A Puritan King? The Accession Of King James
6
A PURITAN KING?
THE ACCESSION OF
KING JAMES
When Elizabeth I died in 1603, she left a nation that had been propelled to global greatness by the events of her long reign. England's rise to international power, which dates from the second half of the sixteenth century, is widely attributed to the national stability that developed under the long reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Religious stability was an essential element of Elizabeth's program of national reconstruction.
Elizabeth came to the throne of England in the aftermath of the disastrous reign of Mary Tudor, which had seen widespread persecution of Protestants in England. The assassination of the Protestant statesman William of Orange by Roman Catholics led many to fear that Elizabeth would suffer the same fate. In 1570, the Pope had specifically released Elizabeth's subjects from any allegiance to her—in effect, offering them a license to depose her, and replace her with someone more sympathetic to Rome. The obvious replacement was Mary, Queen of Scots, who was the focus of assassination plots against Elizabeth, including the Babington Plot of 1586. At Parliament's insistence, Elizabeth ordered Mary's execution in February 1587.
The most important event to secure England's Protestant identity was the decision of Philip II of Spain to defeat English Protestantism, and reconvert England to Roman Catholicism—in effect, to restore the situation as it was under Mary Tudor, to whom Philip had briefly been married. A huge armada—the Spanish word simply means “fleet”—of some 130 ships was assembled in Portugal, and sailed for England in the final days of May 1588. The original intention was to link up with the army of the duke of Parma at Calais, and then to proceed across the English Channel to invade southern England.
The plan went catastrophically wrong. The armada was intercepted long before Calais, and was harassed by English warships until it finally reached Calais. The duke of Parma failed to show up with his army. On July 28, English fire ships caused havoc among the anchored Spanish warships. They put to sea, and were engaged at the Battle of Gravelines the following day. Routed, the Spanish decided to abandon any attempt to invade England, and returned home by a circuitous route that took them around the north coasts of Scotland and Ireland. Both severe weather and English attacks took their toll, and the survivors limped home, as defeated as they were demoralized.
The outcome was seen as confirming England's credentials as a Protestant nation. It was also seen as marking a decisive shift of power in Western Europe. Up to that point, Spain had been widely seen as the dominant naval and military power in Europe. The English victory was thus a landmark in English self-confidence. Elizabeth's reign would be celebrated as a golden age, with the queen herself as a symbol of English pride. The names by which she was known—“Good Queen Bess,” “the Virgin Queen,” and “Gloriana”—pointed to her potent symbolic role as the head of a powerful emerging nation.
Alongside the economic growth, military successes, and increasing sense of national identity and pride that developed under Elizabeth, a new confidence in the English language began to emerge. Elizabeth's reign witnessed the emergence of a major body of English literature. Writers such as Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, and Sir Philip Sidney gave the English language some of its most important works of literature.
Yet things were not quite as straightforward as they might seem. Beneath the image of a unified Protestant nation lay serious tensions, of major importance to the origins of the King James Bible.