James I’s Tumultuous First Year as King: Plague, Conspiracy and Catholicism

Ben Norman

feb 2024 · Pen and Sword History

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This is the story of a crucial year in the history of England, brimming with great political and social upheaval: the year 1603.

1603 was a time of last goodbyes and new beginnings; of waning customs and fresh political and constitutional visions. It saw an aged queen die and a king from the far north rise as sovereign over a foreign nation. It also witnessed an unprecedented outbreak of bubonic plague, which began in London and spread indiscriminately through the provinces, killing up to 30,000 people.

Catholicism was a second major disease doing the rounds in 1603. Its presence would lead to an attempt to dethrone King James I in the very first months of his reign, culminating in a trial staged at Winchester Castle in November. One of the candidates the conspirators had in mind to replace him was the would-be queen Lady Arbella Stuart. Indeed, Arbella would bring her own dramas to an already crowded and politically and socially charged year.

The present work considers the entirety of the year 1603 in England, from January to December. In this same spirit, it also pays attention to the lives of ordinary men and women, as well as the lives of the great and powerful of the land. How aware were so-called common folk of the significant national episodes playing out around them? Did they even care?

The answers are both fascinating and unexpected, and raise important questions about the interrelationship between the ordinary and the extraordinary in seventeenth-century England.

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Ben Norman grew up in South Cambridgeshire, in a 700-year-old farmhouse that was supposedly visited by Oliver Cromwell in the seventeenth century. He has always found the past a fascinating place, with a particular interest in the strange but familiar world of early modern England, and holds a master’s degree in Early Modern History from the University of York, for which he achieved a distinction. When not immersed in history Ben enjoys writing fiction, spending days doing absolutely nothing, and indulging in his favourite science fiction film franchise. He currently lives and works in York.