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James the ServantorWhat’s In a Name?
Whatdoes your name mean?
If it isBaker orMiller orTaylor orCarpenter orFisher orCook,
it means that at some time one of your ancestors was a
baker, ormiller, ortailor, orcarpenter, orfisher, orcook.
If your name is Stuart or Steuart or Stewart or Steward, it means that at some time one of your ancestors was a steward for in olden days people knew very little about spelling, and theyspelled the same name in different ways. A steward was a chief servant.
There was a family named Stuart in Scotland, and from chief servants or stewards they had become rulers of the Scots. Mary Stuart, whom Elizabeth had beheaded, was one of them.
As Queen Elizabeth never married, she had no children to rule after her. She was the last of the Tudor family. So the English had to look around for a new king, and they looked to Scotland.
Now, Scotland, as I have told you, was then a separate country and not a part of England as now. The son of Mary Stuart was then king of Scotland. His name was James Stuart. As he was related to the Tudors, the English invited him to come and rule over them. He accepted the invitation and was called James I. So we speak of his reign and that of his children as the reign of the Stuarts.
The Stuart family reigned for about a hundred years, that is, from 1600 to 1700, all except about eleven years when England had no king at all.
Many times the English must have been very sorry that they had ever invited James to be their king, for he and the whole Stuart family lorded it over the English people. They acted as if they were “lords of creation,” and the English people had to fight for their rights.
A body of men called Parliament were supposed to make the laws for the English people. But James said that Parliament could do nothing that he didn’t like, and if they weren’t very careful he wouldn’t let them do any governing at all. James said that whatever the king did was right, that the king could do no wrong, that God gave kings the right to do as they pleased with their subjects. This was called the Divine Right of Kings. Naturally the English people would not put up with this sort of thing. Ever since the time of King John they had insisted on their own rights. The Tudors had often done things that the people didn’t like, but the Tudors were English. The Stuarts, however, were Scotch, and the people looked on them as foreigners; what they permitted in one of their own family they wouldn’t stand in these strangers whom they had invited into their family. So, of course, a quarrel was bound to start. But the real fight came with the next king and not with James.
James was very fond of beefsteak, and one particular cut from the loin of beef he liked especially well. It was so delicious he thought it should be honored in some way, and so he made it a knight as if it were a brave and gallant gentleman and dubbed it “Sir Loin,” which we still call it to-day—although people have forgottenall about how it got such a name, and some even say this is only a story and that he never did such a foolish thing, anyway.
During King James’s reign the Bible was translated into English. This is probably the same Bible you read and that is called the King James Bible.
Nothing much happened in England during James’s reign, but in some other countries a great deal did happen, although the king had little to do with it. English people made settlements in India, that far away country of the Brahmanists, which Columbus had tried to reach by going west; and these settlements there grew until India at last belonged to England. The English made settlements also in America, and these grew until at last part of America, too, belonged to England.
One of these settlements in America was made in the South, and one was made in the North. Raleigh’s settlement at Roanoke had disappeared, as I told you; but in 1607 a boatload of English gentlemen sailed over to America looking for adventure and hoping to make their fortunes by finding gold. They landed in Virginia and named the place where they settled Jamestown after their king, James. But they found no gold, and as they were not used to work, they didn’t want to do any. But theirleader, Captain John Smith, took matters in hand and said that those that didn’t work shouldn’t eat. So then the colonists had to go to work.
Back in England people had learned to smoke, and so the colonists began to raise tobacco for the English people. The tobacco brought the colonists so much money that it proved to be a gold-mine—of a different kind—after all. But the colonial gentlemen wanted some one to do the rough work for them. So a few years later some negroes were brought over from Africa and sold to the colonists as slaves to do the rough work. This was the beginning of slavery in America, which grew and grew until in the South almost all the work was done by colored slaves.
A little later another company of people left England for America. These people were not looking for fortunes, however, as the Jamestown settlers had been. They were looking for a place where they might worship God as they pleased, for in England they were interfered with, and they wanted to find a place where no one would interfere with them. So this company of people left England in 1620 in a ship called theMayflowersailed across the ocean and landed in a place called Plymouth, in Massachusetts, and there they settled. Morethan half of them died the first winter from hardship and exposure in the bitter weather that they have in the North, but, nevertheless, none of those who were left would go back to England. This settlement was the beginning of that part of the United States called New England. You will hear more about both settlements later when you study American History. But at present we must see what was going on in England, for there were great “goings on” there.