James I: Speech on the Divine Right of Kings (1609)
James VI of Scotland became James I of England in 1603 upon the death of Queen Elizabeth I, passing the English throne from the Tudor to the Stuart house. He expounded his belief in the Divine Right of Kings through a series of speeches delivered to Parliament in 1609. As the result of his lavish spending habits and challenges to parliamentary authority, James I frequently came into conflict with Parliament and its increasingly powerful House of Commons after ascending the throne. He also faced opposition from gentry seeking political influence and Puritans and Roman Catholics seeking religious reform.
The questions of the extent of power of secular monarchs in relation to the papacy, the limits of monarchical control over the Church, and the right of the people to challenge heretical or tyrannical monarchs had been debated since the Middle Ages. The theory of the Divine Right of Kings developed to justify the political obligation of subjects to their rulers. The Divine...
