The Creation of State Anniversaries: James VI and I and the Politics of Thanksgiving

Abstract Religious anniversaries ordered by the state—by the monarch, royal council or parliament—were observed in England and Ireland from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. These have been studied chiefly as occasions for special sermons and popular festivities, the expression of English or Irish Protestant national identity, or the pursuit of party controversies. But examination of both the original establishment of state anniversaries by James VI and I, with three appointed during the short period from 1600 to 1605, and the principal documents published for these occasions, the orders and the forms of prayer, brings different perspectives. The anniversaries were British in scope. The first was originally ordered in Scotland, where James developed a politics of thanksgiving that he subsequently re-applied in England and Wales, with anniversaries which were later duplicated in Ireland. The king’s immediate purposes were to assist the management of political and ecclesiastical difficulties, and to advance a closer union of his Scottish and English kingdoms. His long-term aim was to increase the authority and the godly claims of the Stuart dynasty. This promotion of a divine-right British monarchy remained central to the special English and Irish church services which were conducted each year during the following centuries. In so far as the anniversaries came to be concerned with national identities or party causes, these were in tension with the texts and meanings of their religious services.