JAMES, THOMAS (c. 1573-1629), English librarian, was born at Newport, Isle of Wight. He was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, and became a fellow of New College in 1593. His wide knowledge of books, together with his skill in deciphering manuscripts and detecting literary forgeries, secured him in 1602 the post of librarian to the library founded in that year by Sir Thomas Bodley at Oxford. At the same time he was made rector of St Aldate’s, Oxford. In 1605 he compiled a classified catalogue of the books in the Bodleian Library, but in 1620 substituted for it an alphabetical catalogue. The arrangement in 1610, whereby the Stationers’ Company undertook to supply the Bodleian Library with every book published, was James’s suggestion. Ill health compelled him to resign his post in 1620, and he died at Oxford in August 1629.
JAMES, WILLIAM (d. 1827), English naval historian, author of the Naval History of Great Britain from the Declaration of War by France in 1793 to the Accession of George IV., practised as a proctor in the admiralty court of Jamaica between 1801 and 1813. He was in the United States when the war of 1812 broke out, and was detained as a prisoner, but escaped to Halifax. His literary career began by letters to the Naval Chronicle over the signature of “Boxer.” In 1816 he published An Inquiry into the Merits of the Principal Naval Actions between Great Britain and the United States. In this pamphlet, which James reprinted in 1817, enlarged and with a new title, his object was to prove that the American frigates were stronger than their British opponents nominally of the same class. In 1819 he began his Naval History, which appeared in five volumes (1822-1824), and was reprinted in six volumes (1826). It is a monument of painstaking accuracy in all such matters as dates, names, tonnage, armament and movements of ships, though no attempt is ever made to show the connexion between the various movements. James died on the 28th of May 1827 in London, leaving a widow who received a civil list pension of £100.
An edition of the Naval History in six volumes, with additions and notes by Capt. F. Chamier, was published in 1837, and a further one in 1886. An edition epitomized by R. O’Byrne appeared in 1888, and an Index by C. G. Toogood was issued by the Navy Records Society in 1895.
JAMES, WILLIAM (1842-1910), American philosopher, son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James, and brother of the novelist Henry James, was born on the 11th of January 1842 at New York City. He graduated M.D. at Harvard in 1870. Two years after he was appointed a lecturer at Harvard in anatomy and physiology, and later in psychology and philosophy. Subsequently he became assistant professor of philosophy (1880-1885), professor (1885-1889), professor of psychology (1889-1897) and professor of philosophy (1897-1907). In 1899-1901 he delivered the Gifford lectures on natural religion at the university of Edinburgh, and in 1908 the Hibbert lectures at Manchester College, Oxford. With the appearance of his Principles of Psychology (2 vols., 1890), James at once stepped into the front rank of psychologists as a leader of the physical school, a position which he maintained not only by the brilliance of his analogies but also by the freshness and unconventionality of his style. In metaphysics he upheld the idealist position from the empirical standpoint. Beside the Principles of Psychology, which appeared in a shorter form in 1892 (Psychology), his chief works are: The Will to Believe (1897); Human Immortality (Boston, 1898); Talks to Teachers (1899); The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York, 1902); Pragmatism—a New Name for some Old Ways of Thinking (1907); A Pluralistic Universe (1909; Hibbert lectures), in which, though he still attacked the hypothesis of absolutism, he admitted it as a legitimate alternative. He received honorary degrees from Padua (1893), Princeton (1896), Edinburgh (1902), Harvard (1905). He died on the 27th of August 1910.
JAMES OF HEREFORD, HENRY JAMES, 1st Baron (1828- ), English lawyer and statesman, son of P. T. James, surgeon, was born at Hereford on the 30th of October 1828, and educated at Cheltenham College. A prizeman of the Inner Temple, he was called to the bar in 1852 and joined the Oxford circuit, where he soon came into prominence. In 1867 he was made “postman” of the court of exchequer, and in 1869 became a Q.C. At the general election of 1868 he obtained a seat in parliament for Taunton as a Liberal, by the unseating of Mr Serjeant Cox on a scrutiny in March 1869, and he kept the seat till 1885, when he was returned for Bury. He attracted attention in parliament by his speeches in 1872 in the debates on the Judicature Act. In 1873 (September) he was made solicitor-general, and in November attorney-general, and knighted; and when Gladstone returned to power in 1880 he resumed his office. He was responsible for carrying the Corrupt Practices Act of 1883. On Gladstone’s conversion to Home Rule, Sir Henry James parted from him and became one of the most influential of the Liberal Unionists: Gladstone had offered him the lord chancellorship in 1886, but he declined it; and the knowledge of the sacrifice he had made in refusing to follow his old chief in his new departure lent great weight to his advocacy of the Unionist cause in the country. He was one of the leading counsel for The Times before the Parnell Commission, and from 1892 to 1895 was attorney-general to the prince of Wales. From 1895 to 1902 he was a member of the Unionist ministry as chancellor for the duchy of Lancaster, and in 1895 he was made a peer as Baron James of Hereford. In later years he was a prominent opponent of the Tariff Reform movement, adhering to the section of Free Trade Unionists.
JAMES, EPISTLE OF, a book of the New Testament. The superscription (Jas. i. 1) ascribes it to that pre-eminent “pillar” (Gal. ii. 9) of the original mother church who later came to be regarded in certain quarters as the “bishop of bishops” (Epist. of James to Clement, ap. Clem. Hom. Superscription). As such he appears in a position to address an encyclical to “the twelve tribes of the dispersion”; for the context (i. 18, v. 7 seq.) and literary relation (cf. 1 Pet. i. 1, 3, 23-25) prove this to be a figure for the entire new people of God, without the distinction of carnal birth, as Paul had described “the Israel of God” (Gal. vi. 16), spiritually begotten, like Isaac, by the word received in faith (Gal. iii. 28 seq., iv. 28; Rom. ix. 6-9, iv. 16-18). This idea of the spiritually begotten Israel becomes current after 1 Pet., as appears in John i. 11-13, iii. 3-8; Barn. iv. 6, xiii. 13; 2 Clem. ii. 2, &c.