ABSTRACT
James had been a monarch for virtually the whole of his life and had thought deeply about his role. In The Trew Law of Free Monarchies, written about 1598, he argued that kings were appointed directly by God and were responsible to him alone, not to their people. Belief in the divine right of rulers was commonplace, and Elizabeth, not to mention her father, took it for granted. The accession of a new sovereign had been, for the previous three reigns, the occasion for a redefinition of religious policy, and in 1603 the puritans were hoping that James, whose Scottish background was presbyterian, would show sympathy with their demands for modification of the Elizabethan Settlement. Elizabeth bequeathed James a debt of 300,000, but this was not as bad as it seemed, for the subsidies voted by her last Parliament had not yet been collected in full, and by the time they were all paid in to the Exchequer the net debt was a mere 100,000.
