A king's court
James disliked water so much that he did not even use it to wash himself. He drank heavily and let court festivities turn into drunken revels. Extravagance in dress and amusement flourished at court even more than under Elizabeth. Elizabeth had enjoyed masques, but now, with Ben Jonson writing the verses, Inigo Jones designing costumes and scenery, and the parts played by nobles and fine ladies living on the revenues of the country, this fabulous and astonishing art reached its peak. The court grew ever more gay and, at the same time, ever more corrupt. Courtiers accepted large gifts for granting orders, licenses, monopolies and offices to those who asked. Baron Montagu paid 20,000 pounds (the book's figure) to become treasurer.
James paid no attention to these matters and gave little thought to the business of government. He therefore left the running of the country to a council of six Englishmen and six Scots, presided over by Robert Cecil, whom in 1605 he made Earl of Salisbury. Cecil had inherited all his forebears' advantages except good health. He was a hunchback with a pitiable appearance, but, like his father, he was shrewd in choosing and ranking men. He had a hidden stubbornness and a clever wit that astonished his rivals at home and the courtiers of other lands. James called him my little dog. After Cecil's death James fell under the influence of Robert Carr, a handsome young man, gave him the title Earl of Somerset, and let him take precedence in political and administrative matters over older men such as Francis Bacon and Edward Coke.
Coke and the law
Coke embodied the law and its (the Persian text is garbled here, and we render it as) majesty. He reached the height of his fame by his persistent prosecution of the Earl of Essex in 1600, Raleigh in 1603 and those involved in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, and in 1610 he gave a historic opinion to this effect: it is written in our books that the common law in many cases controls acts of parliament and sometimes adjudges them utterly void; for when an act of parliament is against common right and reason, the common law will control it and adjudge such an act void.
Parliament may not have liked this point, but James made him Chief Justice of the King's Bench (1613) and a member of the council. Coke, however, though the king's own creature, turned out to be a nuisance. He criticized the inquisition into people's opinions, defended freedom of speech in parliament, and checked James's despotism with the sour reminder that kings are servants of the law. In 1616 his rival Bacon accused him of an official fault. Coke was dismissed, but he could not be kept out of parliament, and when he took the lead of James's opponents he was imprisoned in the Tower, though he was released from it (the Persian wording is obscure). Until his death in 1634 he never gave up his view, and held with all stubbornness to the power and letter of the law. He left behind his Institutes in four volumes, still counted a valuable monument of English legal learning.
Divine right and the Commons
Meanwhile James was engaged in a dispute with parliament that, in his son's reign, ended in civil war and in his son's death. He kept all the control that Henry VIII and Elizabeth had over discontented lawmakers and subjects, and he also treated his claims as divine commands. In 1609 he told parliament: monarchy is the supreme thing on earth. Kings are not only God's lieutenants upon earth and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called gods. For kings are rightly called gods, since their power on earth is like divine power. If you consider the attributes of God, you will see that they fit a king too. God can create or destroy, make or unmake at his pleasure, give life or take it, and judge all without being answerable. Kings have the same power: they can raise or abase, give life or take it, and judge all their subjects in all cases without being accountable. As a pawn at chess can take a bishop or a knight, kings may treat their subjects in the same way, and have the right to give away or hoard their money.
This was a step backward, for under the political theory of the Middle Ages the king represented an independent nation, and only popes thought of themselves as God's vicars. To state the best philosophical case for the claim, we must remember that the popes, as the last authority of the Middle Ages, held that men's individualistic impulses are so strong that social order can be kept only by teaching the people respect for the church's power and by accepting the popes as God's voice and deputy. When the Reformation weakened or destroyed papal power, political power took over responsibility for social order, now or later; and the popes had also held that a purely worldly power cannot restrain men's antisocial tendencies effectively or at reasonable cost. That is how the doctrine of the divine right of kings grew together with the rise of nationalism and the decline of the popes. In Germany the princes who followed Luther, after taking over the spiritual authority of the old church, felt they could transfer to themselves the halo of sanctity that almost all sovereigns before 1789 needed for moral authority and social calm. James's mistake was to state this theory too bluntly and in an extreme form.
If the members of parliament had been, as in Elizabeth's great days, landowners who mostly owed their titles to the Tudors, parliament might (with sly smiles) have accepted royal despotism in theory. But among the 467 members there were now many representatives of the merchant class, newly risen men who could not bear the king's unlimited control over their wealth. There were also many Puritans, who rejected the king's claim to command in religious matters. The House of Commons, taking no notice of James's divinity, fixed its own privileges and declared itself the only body that could judge disputed elections. Its members also asked for freedom of speech and freedom from arrest while the House sat, and held that parliament was meaningless without these privileges. The Commons also proposed to legislate on religion, and rejected the king's right to interfere in such matters without parliament's consent. The bishops of the Anglican church, however, said that their convocation should have the right to oversee church affairs with the king's agreement. The Speaker told James that the king cannot make law but can only assent to or refuse the laws parliament has passed. In June 1604 the Commons declared: our privileges and liberties are our right and due inheritance, no less than our lands and goods.
So in that historic struggle over the king's prerogative and parliament's privilege a boundary was marked; and after hundreds of victories and defeats English democracy came into being.
The Hampton Court Conference
Besides the economic and political struggle, the religious quarrel, which was bound up with both, raged fiercely. Half the pamphlets published were Puritan attacks on the bishops and ceremonies of the Anglican church, or Anglican attacks on the Puritans, or attacks by both on the Catholics who were working to bring England back to the old faith. James did not grasp the depth of these hatreds, and thought of creating a middle way between Puritans and Anglicans. For this purpose he invited their leaders to a conference at Hampton Court (14 January 1604). Like Constantine he presided, astonishing both parties by his learning in theology and his power in debate, but he insisted on one doctrine, one discipline and one religion in substance and ceremony, and held that government by bishops was necessary. The Bishop of London thought James inspired by God and said that nothing like him had been seen since the time of Christ. But the Puritans complained that James had not judged as an impartial judge.
From that conference nothing came but a sudden and historic decision to make a new translation of the Bible. The convocation of 1604 issued canons by which all clergy had to follow Anglican practice. Those who refused were dismissed, and many were jailed; a good number resigned, and some turned to Holland or America.
James brought disgrace on himself by putting two Unitarians to death in 1612 for denying the divinity of Christ in spite of the king's arguments, but from then on he put no one to death for religious difference, and this made his name. Those two were the last to be executed for heresy in England. As secular law advanced, the idea gradually grew that religious toleration is compatible with morality and national unity, while most people still believed that social order needs an unchanging faith and church. In 1614 Leonard Busher published a book on religious peace in which he argued that persecution for religion intensifies disagreement and drives people to hypocrisy.