At the 1604 Hampton Court conference, John Rainolds, a Puritan scholar, proposed a new English Bible. King James I approved the project amid tensions about church governance, including the role of bishops, and about the Bible English readers should use. The resulting translation was a royal and church project in a politically divided setting; it was not simply a private commission from a king who personally translated the text.
Scholars worked in companies based at Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge. The surviving record does not give a perfectly certain roster; Folger’s exhibition describes the familiar estimate as about forty-seven translators and notes that some died before publication. The 1611 title page says the work was made by royal command, but the familiar names “King James Version” and “Authorized Version” are not its formal title.