[Footnote 26: Henry V., Act II., Scene 3, line 10.]
[Footnote 27: Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy, p. 327.]
[Footnote 28: The Tempest, Act V., Scene 1.]
[Footnote 29: Ibid., Act I., Scene 2.]
[Footnote 30: For a list of books of selections from the drama, see p. 216.]
[Footnote 31: For full titles, see p. 6.]
[Footnote 32: For full titles of books of dramatic selections, see the preceding paragraph.]
CHAPTER V: THE PURITAN AGE, 1603-1660
History of the Period.—James I. (1603-1625), son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and the first of the Stuart line to reign in England, succeeded Elizabeth. His stubbornness and folly not only ended the intense patriotic feeling of the previous reign, but laid the foundation for the deadly conflict that resulted. In fifty-four years after the defeat of the Armada, England was plunged into civil war.
The guiding belief of James I. was that kings governed by divine right, that they received from the Deity a title of which no one could lawfully deprive them, no matter how outrageously they ruled, and that they were not in any way responsible to Parliament or to the people. In acting on this belief, he first trampled on the religious liberty of his subjects. He drove from their churches hundreds of clergymen who would not take oath that they believed that the prayer book of the Church of England agreed in every way with the Bible. He boasted that he would "harry out of the kingdom" those who would not conform.