KJB History

Just looking over a 1522 edition of the Annotations of Erasmus of Rotterdam in the SBTS archives.

On a Day Like Today ~ March 24, 1603. King James VI of Scotland acceded to the English and Irish Throne as HM King James I.

James I was born June 1566 at Edinburgh Castle in Scotland as the only child of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and Mary, Queen of Scots, thus making him a 2x Great grandson of HM Henry VII through both his parents. James succeeded to the Scottish throne at the age of thirteen months, after his mother Mary was compelled to abdicate in his favor. Four different regents governed during his minority, which ended officially in 1578, though he did not gain full control of his government until 1583.

On this day in 1603, upon the death of the childless HM Queen Elizabeth I, James acceded to the English throne as HM King James I. He continued to reign in all three kingdoms for 22 years, a period known as the Jacobean era after him. After the Union of the Crowns, he based himself in England (the largest of the three realms) from 1603, only returning to Scotland once in 1617, and styled himself "King of Great Britain and Ireland". His English Coronation was held in July 1603.

He was a major advocate of a single parliament for England and Scotland. In his reign, the Plantation of Ulster and British colonization of the Americas began. He faced great difficulties in England, including the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and repeated conflicts with the English Parliament. Under James, the "Golden Age" of Elizabethan literature and drama continued, with writers such as William Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson, and Sir Francis Bacon contributing to a flourishing literary culture. James himself was a talented scholar, the author of works such as Daemonologie (1597), The True Law of Free Monarchies (1598), and Basilikon Doron (1599). He sponsored the translation of the Bible into English that would later be named after him: the Authorized King James Version.

After about the age of 50, King James suffered increasingly from arthritis, gout and kidney stones. He also lost his teeth and drank heavily. During the last year of James's life, he was often seriously ill, leaving him an increasingly peripheral figure, rarely able to visit London. One theory is that King James I may have suffered from porphyria, a disease of which his descendant King George III exhibited some symptoms. In early 1625, King James I was plagued by severe attacks of arthritis, gout and fainting fits, and in March fell seriously ill with tertian ague and then suffered a stroke. James died in late March1625 at Theobalds House during a violent attack of dysentery. He was buried 6 weeks later at Westminster Abbey in London.

Since the latter half of the 20th century, historians have tended to revise James's reputation and treat him as a serious and thoughtful monarch. He was strongly committed to a peace policy, and tried to avoid involvement in religious wars, especially the Thirty Years' War that devastated much of Central Europe.

Shared from History & Lives of the British Royals
https://www.facebook.com/History-Lives-of-the-British-Royals-122845112442353/

Hung out with all 5 NT editions of Erasmus for several hours Friday in Rotterdam (and briefly examined a 1565 Beza). Erasmus was the first progenitor of the form of text that stands behind the KJB NT (the KJB Translators of course determined it’s final shape in their role as textual critics).

I also chatted the ears off of curator Dr. Tholen and visiting researcher Dr. Brian Cummings, to my mind the world’s leading expert on the text of the BCP.