lx
cation of all of these in or about the year 1603, and the translation of the more important into Latin, French, and other languages.
After a short interval, the King was again stirred to controversy by Catholic opposition to the Oath of Allegiance (1606), following the Gunpowder Plot, which required Catholic Englishmen to deny the temporal supremacy of the Pope. An Apologie For The Oath of Allegiance, which appeared late in 1607,[1] was the King's defense of this requirement, in reply especially to two breves from the Pope to English Catholics and Cardinal Bellarmine's published letter to the Archpriest George Blackwell.[2] The Apologie was re-issued in May, 1609,[3] with formal admission of the royal authorship and an extended Premonition To All Most Mightie Monarches, Kings, Free Princes, and States of Christendome, defending the Apologie against its critics. In the meantime a veritable battle of the books had ensued, in which continental theologians found a target for their pamphlets in the prominence of their royal opponent. Before 1615 at least thirty-six distinct works appeared on one side or the other, and a complete list of translations, re-issues, and skirmishes on the borders of the main engagement would number many more.[4] Among the more important English writers who came to the King's defense were Launcelot Andrewes, Bishop of Chichester, William Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln, William Tooker, Dean of Lichfield, John Donne the poet, John Barclay, and Samuel Collins, Regius Professor at Cambridge. "On y travaille," writes Boderie of the Premonition, "et il y a une petite congrégation
- ↑ "Il se trouvera du bien et du mal . . . le style en est vehement et temoigne de la passion." Boderie, Vol. II, p. 105 (December, 1607).
- ↑ Cf. W. H. Frere, A History of the English Church in the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I, London, 1904, pp. 337 ff.
- ↑ Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, IV, p. 343. Letter written by W. Johnson, May 24, 1609, sending a book "lately set forth by the King, presently called in again, and now newly set forth . . . out of the press but yesterday."
- ↑ A list, by no means complete, is given by Birch in an appendix to the 1772 edition of Harris's Life and Writings of James I. For a more extended account of the King's part in the controversy, cf. Irving, Lives of the Scotish Poets, Vol. II, pp. 232-251.
