1603: Kingship Renewed (seminar)

For more past programming from the Folger Institute, please see the article Folger Institute scholarly programs archive.

This was a spring 2003 semester seminar led by J.G.A. Pocock, Linda Levy Peck, and Gordon J. Schochet.

2003 is the quatercentenary of James VI's accession to the English throne as James I. "Kingship Renewed" reconsidered the transformation of both monarchies that ensued. In England, male rule was restored after a half-century of female rule and anxiety over the succession. In Scotland, a royal minority had already become the effective rule of a king with male heirs. The Union of the Crowns transformed the two into a multiple monarchy of Great Britain and inaugurated the period in British history known as that of the Three Kingdoms. In Europe, the end of the wars with Spain began a period of peace during which the English Royal Supremacy and the Church of England played an ambivalent role in the struggle between Calvinism and the Counter-Reformation. King James, a royal intellectual, had his own views on all these matters. One of the Center for the History of British Political Thought programs, this seminar addressed what he and others thought of the new British monarchy's position in state and empire, church, court, and culture. The seminar was directed by the Center's steering committee, and its discussion was situated in the new British history, revised views of the Jacobean regime, increased interest in intellectual exchange, and the languages of political thought. Visiting faculty included Christy Anderson, Antonio Feros, Anne McLaren, Jane Ohlmeyer, and Orest Ranum.

1603: Kingship Renewed?