1 CM 3 The Seventeenth Century: 1603-1660

On March 24, 1603, the last day of the year under the old Julian calendar, Queen Elizabeth I died in sleep, “mildly like a lamb”. She was uneventfully succeeded by her northern kinsman James, son of Mary, Queen of Scots. In Scotland he was James VI, but in England he became James I. He had ruled in Scotland for twenty years already and would

constantly played with his codpiece. His tongue appeared to be too large for his mouth.

colonisation, the rising bourgeois class in the cities, the printing press and the expansion of literacy... But this century, and the changes it brought to the worldview, can also be seen as

revolutionary spirit and the trial, the conviction and execution of an anointed (divine) king, produced seismic changes in consciousness.

Soon after James I’s accession, the Elizabethan stability in church and state began to totter. Unlike Elizabeth, the Stuarts kings, James I and his son Charles I, were unable to maintain control over the Parliament and to retain the loyalty and devotion of their subjects. By contrast with Elizabeth’s, James’s court was disorderly and indecorous, marked by

Sa

against; from the other side, Puritans (those Protestants who were closer to Calvinism) pressed for more reformation. The ascent of Charles I to the throne in 1625 brought a palpable change in

monarchical style: Charles was inflexible about royal absolutism and the divine right of kings. He dissolved Parliament and began a “personal rule”. His appointment of William Laud as archbishop of Canterbury in 1633 was his final mistake. The archbishop of Canterbury is the equivalent of the Pope for the Anglican Church: the highest ecclesiastical authority of the kingdom; and William Laud was much too close to the Roman Catholic Church to be

m

returned. From one side, Roman Catholics were often, sometimes violently, discriminated

ue

still accommodated both Catholic and Protestant quite