"You will scarcely conceive howe earnest his Majestie is to have this worke begonne."
These were the words that Richard Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury and director of the King James Bible translation, wrote in his letter to officials at Cambridge University in July of 1604—just six months after James had commissioned the new Bible at the Hampton Court Conference.
And the king was "the principal Mover and Author of the work," as the translators themselves wrote in the dedication and preface to the completed Bible. It was he alone who—in their words—propelled the design for the new Bible forward "that the work might be hastened, and that the business might be expedited in so decent a manner, as a matter of such importance might justly require."
