"The British Isles were frequently torn with religious dissension throughout most of the 1600s. In fact, it had been in a rather desperate effort to produce at least some degree of unity and loyalty among the fractious Christian groups found in his new realm, that King James had summoned a group of fifty-four scholars who were charged to produce the first officially authorized English translation of the complete Bible, naively assuming that surely the many varieties of Christians represented among his religious subjects could at least agree on this one unifying force for their common faith. The translators began their famous task shortly before the three shiploads of intrepid Jamestown adventurers left their Mother Country for the New World. The king's scholars continued laboring toward the completion of their magnificient finished product- the King James Version of Holy Scripture- which was finally published in 1611 . While this Bible did indeed become a principle religious building block for all the English-speaking Christians who follwoed in the wake of those first colonists, nevertheless over the next two centuries that would be about the only thing that Virginia's Christians would passionately hold in common."

“I made the carles lords, but who made the carlines ladies?”

“Unfortunately for his image, both then and later, the new king did not look, sound or act, to contemporary eyes and ears, very much like a surrogate for the Supreme Being. It is not James' fault that he was a rather odd-looking man: skinny legs supported an ungainly body, crowned by a somewhat ponderous head. That head housed a tongue that was too large for its mouth, causing a pronounced lisp. The lisp exacerbated a stutter and what to English hearing was a thick Scots accent. In our politically correct age all of this might be overlooked or even celebrated in the name of diversity. But contemporaries used to the regal bearing of the Tudors and bound by their own prejudices could not help but draw unflattering conclusions. In particular, James' Scottish descent was difficult to stomach for English men and women who had long seen their northern neighbors as rude, impoverished brigands. Some charged that the king had swept down from his poor northern kingdom accompanied by "the hungry Scots": Scottish courtiers who saw England as a vast treasure house to plunder.”

“Dr Donne's verses are like the peace of God; they pass all understanding.”

“A branch of the sin of drunkenness, which is the root of all sins.”

“I acknowledge the Roman Church to be our mother church, although defiled with some infirmities and corruptions...Let assure themselves, that, as I am a friend of their persons, if they be good subjects, so am I a vowed enemy, and do denounce mortal war to their errors.”

“On the morning of 15 May 1607 a hundred and forty-three men disembarked from having been crowded aboard Captain Christopher Newport's three ships during the past four months of their tedious sea passage. They found themselves on an island near the north bank of a tidal river, where they then set about establishing the first permanent English settlement in North America. With their exuberant native patriotism having bounded with them onto the shore of this largely-unknown continent, these alien settlers immediately named both the sparkling river and their little fortress settlement for their young sovereign of the Stuart dynasty, James I of England . Whenever King James was living in Scotland he dutifully worshipped with the Church of Scotland- a group he did not especially like- and whenever he was living in England he rather disdainfully worshiped in the Anglican Church- a group which overwhelmingly distrusted him... and vice versa.”