The King James Translation

[JonC]

I don't think you have this quite right. At the Hampton Court conference in 1604, James declared to the Puritan party, "If this be all your party have to say for themselves, I will make them conform to the Church, or I will harry them out of the land, or else do worse." James was a calvinist, but he hated Presbyterianism because of his problems with Scottish Presbyterianism. Therefore he wanted an Episcopal settlement for the English Church (the status quo) so that he could keep the Church under his thumb.

FYI, 'English' is England only; 'British' and 'Britain' refers to England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Therefore, since I live in England, I am both English and British. Until the Act of Union between England and Scotland in 1707, there was no 'Britain,' though people did refer to 'the British Isles.'

John Rainolds was the one who purposed the new translation as a unifying Bible at the Hampton Court Conference. About one fourth of the translators chosen were favorable towards the Puritians.

I do not mean that King James viewed Puritians and Presbyterians favorably. He did not hold the detaine Barclay held (Barclay did not want a new translation and abhored Calvinists).

I mean King James sought to unify factions under one Bible.

 

[Logos1560]

About one fourth of the translators chosen were favorable towards the Puritians.

What source indicates that about one fourth of the KJV translators were favorable towards the Puritans? Are the specific names of around one fourth of the KJV translators presented and listed or was this perhaps a guess or rough estimate?

Miles Smith is sometimes suggested to have been favorable towards the Puritans, and yet in the 1611 preface he makes negative comments directed at the Puritans.

While a very few of the makers of the KJV had formerly been associated with the Puritan party of the Church of England, which wanted to purify it from some Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, none were considered active Puritans during the time of the making of the KJV. Archbishop Richard Bancroft had required all those who held any offices or positions in the state Church of England to conform and accept his official 1604 canons [rules]. Their views before 1604 may have been different than their publicly required views according to the 1604 canons.

Otto Scott noted that Archbishop Richard Bancroft had drawn up new canons (church laws) for the Church of England which "added over forty special rules against Puritan dissenters" (James I, p. 283). White asserted that “forty-nine of the leading ministers he [Bancroft] summarily deprived, and struck such terror into the rest that they complied” (Lives, p. 381). Robert Dale maintained that three hundred of the clergy “were silenced or deprived of their livings” (History, p. 187). Alexander Leighton (1568-1649) claimed that “400 ministers were silenced, suspended, or thrust out by virtue of these wicked canons” (Sion’s Plea, p. 75). Alexander Leighton described those wicked canons as “the Popish after-birth of Bishop Bancroft” (Ibid.). Henry Clark noted: “Orders were sent across the country that all the clergy must formally accept the established order of things, from the Royal Supremacy down to the latest item in the Canons of 1604: every precaution was taken to prevent anything in the nature of procrastination or evasion” (History, I, p. 248).

Gustavus Paine observed that by 1606 "all the Puritan translators had conformed enough to escape being banished or direly punished in other ways" (Men Behind the KJV, p. 97). For example, Thomas Sparke, a KJV translator who had earlier been one of the four Puritan representatives at the Hampton Court Conference, conformed. Milward noted that in 1607 Sparke published a book or pamphlet “to encourage the Puritan ministers to follow his example and to justify himself against this ’hard censure of many for conforming myself as I have to the orders of our Church” (Religious Controversies, p. 15). Tyacke suggested that Sparke “claimed to have conformed even before the [Hampton Court] conference” (Anti-Calvinists, p. 13).