Militant Protestants: British Identity In The Jacobean Period, 1603-1625

The 'new British history' still has a great deal to offer when it comes to understanding the formation and conceptualization of British identity before the advent of the British state. This article focuses on the aftermath of the 1603 'union of crowns' under James VI and I. Up to now it has been the consensus among historians that British identity was mostly limited to James himself and that he, rather clumsily, attempted to impose the idea of Britain on his unwilling subjects in England and Scotland. However, by paying more attention to the thoughts and aspirations about Britain, a different kind of British identity can be discerned. There were many individuals in both Scotland and England who believed that the union of crowns created one of the most powerful Protestant kingdoms in Europe. For these individuals British identity was a militant Protestant identity. They embraced the idea that Britain should be an active protector of Protestantism and that it should use this combined military might to extirpate the papal Antichrist. While the militant Protestant version of British identity was always a minority opinion, its existence reveals that there were alternative ways to thinking about Britain that did not necessarily originate with James VI and I, nor was it limited to or inhibited by traditional antagonisms between England and Scotland.