ABSTRACT
English Catholics greeted James I’s (1566-1625) accession to the throne with great hope. They viewed his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, as a martyr for the faith, and though James himself was Protestant, as king of Scotland he had shown no inclination towards persecution. He maintained cordial relations with the papacy, and was well known for his dislike of the more extreme forms of Puritanism. After their sufferings under Elizabeth, many recusants saw James as a deliverer. They were disappointed. Although James had no plan to extirpate Catholicism root and branch, he was aware that recusants presented a greater potential threat in England than in Scotland. Moreover, reaffirming the laws against Catholics was popular with many of his new subjects, whose anti-Catholic views had only grown stronger since the defeat of the Armada. Those laws equated Catholicism with treason; they punished priests as foreign spies, and those who sheltered them also faced ruin or death. Catholic homes could be ransacked by searches for priests or religious paraphernalia like rosaries, and recusants’ fortunes dwindled under the burden of the monthly £20 fines imposed on those who refused to attend church. Although the laws were only enforced sporadically, they nevertheless imposed great hardship upon the Catholic population.
