Even before his accession King James is said to have given a verbal promise to Thomas Percy, the future conspirator, that the Catholics would be granted some degree of liberty. There is, in the very nature of things, no written evidence of this promise, and the King later denied having given it, but the Catholics firmly believed that some assurance of toleration had been given. But by the beginning of 1604 all hope of toleration for papists was gone. On 19 February, James I protested ‘his utter detestation of their superstitious religion, and that he was so far from favouring it, as if he thought his son and heir after him would give any toleration thereunto, he would wish him fairly buried before his eyes’. And fairly buried he was in 1612.

On 22 February, 1604, a proclamation was issued ordering all Jesuits and seminary priests to depart the kingdom before 19 March. On the same day the fine of £20 a month for recusancy was again put in force, and was made to include the whole period since the King’s coming, thus negativing what little relief had been granted.

On 24 April, a bill was introduced in the lower house, classing Catholics with forgers, perjurers and outlaws, and disabling them from sitting in parliament, while an ‘Act for the due execution of the statutes against Jesuits, seminary priests and recusants’ made in this session, not only reenforced all the laws made in Elizabeth’s reign but even added to their severity. On the third reading of this bill Viscount Montague courageously denounced it, and the following day found himself in the Fleet for his ‘scandalous and offensive speech’. Further proclamations followed and on 16 July the bloody persecution broke out again when John Sugar, a priest, and Robert Grissold his servant, were executed at Warwick.