At ten o'clock in the morning on March 24, 1603—just hours after Queen Elizabeth's passing —King James VI of Scotland, heir to the British throne, became King James I of England. Within hours, well-wishers from across the entire religious and political spectrum rushed northward to the Scottish border to greet the new king. Calvinists, Roman Catholics, and middle-of-the-road Anglicans all wanted to be the first to congratulate him—and to ask him for special favors.
And James didn't disappoint his new subjects. As he and his royal entourage moved slowly southward into England, the scene was one of ecstatic celebration. Thrilled with his newly acquired royal office, James loved nothing better than to grant favors. Between Edinburgh and London he con ... ferred more than three hundred knighthoods, handed out hundreds of new appointments, granted countless petitions, and gave away untold sums of money and packets of the Crown's land.
Some of the petitions presented to James, however, were ones that stood no chance of being granted. For instance, the Catholics, who'd been sorely oppressed under Elizabeth, asked the king to allow them to practice their religion freely. And some Puritan radicals appealed to James to remove the bishops in the Anglican Church and to usher in a democratic, Calvinist-style organization. So, actually, only one of the numerous religious petitions James received seemed reasonable to him—the Puritan "Millenary Petition."
