James I, King

The first British settlement in North America was established in 1607 and named Jamestown, after King James i. The little tobacco-growing colony was located on the East Coast, in the region that would eventually become the state of Virginia. One of the constant debates among the Jamestown settlers was whether they should expand the colony. Tobacco growing was a very profitable enterprise, especially since labor was so cheap — the Jamestown settlers had brought the first African slaves to North America. But the settlement was surrounded by unfriendly Indians who would, of course, resist the expansion. 

King James I of England expresses a rather different opinion in his Counterblast to Tobacco, which denies the substance has any real medicinal value. The king also tries to reduce the growing popularity of smoking by taxing tobacco, a practice that is soon taken up by other European nations. 

Nicotine is an alkaloid derived from the leaves of the Nicotiana species. It originated in South America where it has been smoked by the native population for hundreds of years. It was introduced into Western Europe in the 16th century but shortly after its introduction into Great Britain it was condemned as a habit "injurious to the lung" by King James I. 

Chan, King W. Sawyer, Donald M. Vette, James I. NASA TM-X-72611, 1977... 

Thomas Overbury was a poet and essayist who moved to London to seek his fortune. With his friend Robert Carr (page to Lord Dunbar) he managed to secure an appointment at the court of King James I, where they both received expeditious promotion. Carr acquired the title of Lord Rochester and Overbury was knighted. 

James I, A Counterblaste to Tobacco (1604), in The Workes of the Most High and Mighty Prince lames. By the Grace of God Kinge of Great Brittaine France Ireland Defendor of the Faith c. (London, 1616), 220. 

See James I, A Counterblaste to Tobacco, and Daemonologie in Forme of a Dialogue (London, 1597). Harrisnotes that James not only presented himself as the nation s moral physician, but demonstrated a notable interest in Paracelsian medicine see Foreign Bodies, 55-6. On James s interest in the theater, see, for instance, Alvin Kernan, Shakespeare, the King s Playwright Theater in the Stuart Court, 1604-1614 (New Haven Yale University Press, 1995). 

Fargo, U.S.S., 257 Farouk I., King of Egypt, 67 Fawzi Pasha el Moqri, 179 Ferguson, Colonel James, U.S.A.F., 220... 

Witch-finding by the water ordeal, or swimming as it was often called, became an accepted method in England during the first half of the seventeenth century, when it was recommended by King James. So it appears, proclaimed James I, that God has appointed, for a supernatural sign of the monstrous impiety of witches, that the water shall refuse to receive them in her bosom, that have shaken off them the sacred water of baptism and willfully refused the benefit thereof. ... 

When James I became the King of England, he did not like the mild Elizabethan laws against witches. He therefore found a defect in the statute. .. by which none died for witchcraft but they only who by that means killed, so that such were executed rather as murderers than witches. In other words, until then, alleged witches had been punished only for what they did James had the law changed so that they were punished for who they were. 

James became king of Scotland in 1567 (as James VI) on the abdication of his mother Mary he also inherited the English throne (as James i) on the death of Elizabeth i in 1603. 

Harvey counted Kings (James I and Charles I) and distinguished contemporaries such as Sir... 

These verses come from the Geneva Bible of 1560, the language and spelling of which would have seemed archaic in 1645. At almost all other times the Levellers used the Bible of 1611, authorised by King James I. 

The association of smoking with health problems is almost as old as the use of tobacco. In 1604, King James I of England issued the first... 

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