James VI and I
King of Scotland who succeeded Elizabeth I on the English throne. At the Hampton Court conference of 1604 he ordered the new translation of the Bible that was published in 1611 and bears his name.
The translators of 1611 dedicate their work to James as king of Great Britain, France and Ireland, and speak of him as having succeeded Queen Elizabeth and as the one who set the translation in motion (King James Bible (1611), Epistle Dedicatory). William Barlow reports his words at Hampton Court in January 1604: he wanted one uniform translation, made by the universities, reviewed by the bishops and ratified by himself, and without the notes of the Geneva Bible, some of which he thought seditious (Barlow, Sum and Substance of the Conference, second day (Cardwell, pp. 187–188)). See the King James Bible.
The settlers who signed the agreement at Cape Cod in November 1620 styled themselves his loyal subjects and dated it in the eighteenth year of his reign in England and the fifty-fourth in Scotland (Mayflower Compact opening words and dating clause); see the Pilgrims Land at Plymouth. Thomas Helwys told him in print that as an earthly king he had no power over his subjects’ consciences (Helwys, Mystery of Iniquity, p. 69). The Dutch synod that met at Dordrecht in 1618 says that it obtained theologians from Great Britain by his favour (Canons of Dort preface); see the Synod of Dort.
In the timeline
- 1611, firm dateThe King James Bible
A new English translation of the Bible, asked for at the Hampton Court conference of 1604 and made by companies of scholars at Westminster, Oxford and Cambridge, is published in London in 1611 by command of James I and appointed to be read in churches.