James’s English coronation takes place on July…
July 1603 CE
James’s English coronation takes place on July 25, with elaborate allegories provided by dramatic poets such as Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson.
Even though an outbreak of plague restricts festivities, "the streets seemed paved with men," wrote Dekker.
"Stalls instead of rich wares were set out with children, open casements filled up with women".
For decades, the English have lived under a monarch who had refused to provide an heir, but James arrives with a family and a future line of succession.
His wife, Anne of Denmark, is the daughter of a king.
Their eldest child, the nine-year-old Henry, is considered a handsome and confident boy, and their two younger children, Princess Elizabeth and Prince Charles, are proof that James is able to provide heirs to continue the Protestant monarchy.
James's succession sets aside Henry VIII's Third Succession Act and will in favor of the line of Henry's younger sister, Mary Tudor.
To rectify this, James has Parliament pass the Succession to the Crown Act 1603.
The Act recites the loyalty of Parliament to James, and states that the English crown, on the death of Elizabeth I, had come to him "by inherent birthright and lawful and undoubted succession".
It acknowledges him as the legitimate king "of England, Scotland, France and Ireland".
The question of whether Parliament could control the succession to the crown by statute is to remain controversial throughout the seventeenth century.
The kingdom to which James has succeeded is, however, not without its problems.
Monopolies and taxation have engendered a widespread sense of grievance, and the costs of war in Ireland have become a heavy burden on the government.
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