We Want War!: Why Nobody Liked Poor, Peaceful James I

I’ve been really excited by this online resource that the library has—it’s an e-book called Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England. Because I’ve been studying court culture and James’s identity construction, this book’s focuses seem very relevant to me. One chapter that has been particularly useful this far has been the second chapter, “The Stuarts and the Elizabethan Legend.” This chapter outlines some of the distinctive factors of Elizabeth’s identity construction and explains why the Stuarts weren’t able to use the same methods that Elizabeth used. In particular, the author—Malcolm Smuts—is very insistent that the largest problems the Stuarts had were related to their religious wars. Elizabeth, he argues, became “the chief symbol of a cultural tradition embodying the aspirations, the religious values, and the patriotism that grew out of the lengthy victorious struggle against domestic and foreign enemies” (15). The people loved that she stood for a Protestant kingdom, and they used warrior-like, chivalric imagery to connect her with the legacy of a defender. On the other hand, James sought peace with Spain, something that many found offensive. As Smuts notes, “the Jacobean please probably served the nation’s best interests and undoubtedly saved the crown from insolvency, but James’s pacific and pro-Spanish policies nonetheless provoked considerable discontent” (25). With his peaceful goals, James could not utilize the images that Elizabeth used as defender and crusader, and the images had to be reinterpreted for him. For instance, while Queen Elizabeth was compared to the chivalric King Arthur, James was compared to King Arthur as a keeper of the peace (25). In general, then, the most important difference between Queen Elizabeth and King James’s identity construction was related to the Wars of Religion—Queen Elizabeth was seen as a defender, while James was seen as weak and unable to follow in Elizabeth’s footsteps. It does not matter if these accusations are unfair or if James was making the best decisions for England at the time: that is still how these views are broken up.

This idea fits really well with The Knight of the Burning Pestle. While the actors are more interested in telling the story of an apprentice and his master's daughter, Nell and George demand a tale of high chivalry. They, like the general public in England at the time, wanted the medieval myth of honor, and they were peeved at James I for instead seeking peace with Spain. Even more tellingly, Nell and George demand that Rafe goes off to battle at the end of the play. They are calling for war, showing that the middle class at the time wanted the glory that comes with war, not the safety that comes with peace. In a context like this, James's policies would not go over well, even if they were good policies.

This is a really great resource so far, and it touches a lot on the role of religious wars in James I's and Charles I's reigns. If anyone is writing about the perception of religion and war in this time period, I would highly recommend this resource to you. It also does a great job of showing the transition between Elizabeth I's persona and James I's, if that sound interesting.

Happy researching, everyone!

 

Smuts, Malcolm. Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. ProQuest. Web. 2 April 2015.