1603 was one of the most important and interesting years in British history, the seminal year in which Britain moved from Tudor medievalism towards the wars, republicanism and regicide that lay ahead. When Queen Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudors, died, her cousin immediately rode to Scotland to inform James VI, and the son of Mary Queen of Scots left for London to claim his throne as James I of England. Original documents written in 1603 describe how a plague killed nearly 40,000 people--priests blamed the sins of the people, witches were strangled and burned and plotters strung up on gate tops. But not all was gloom and violence. Shakespeare was finishing Othello and Ben Jonson wrote furiously to please a nation thirsting for entertainment; and from a ship's log we learn of the first precious cargoes of pepper arriving from the East Indies after the establishment of a new spice route. - Publisher.