a. (sb.) Also -æan. [f. late and mod.L. Jacōbæus (f. Jacōbus: see prec.).]
1. Of or pertaining to the reign or times of James I. of England; spec. in Arch., a term for the style that prevailed in England in the early part of the 17th cent., consisting of very late Gothic with a large admixture of Palladian features; also transf. in other arts, as Engraving, etc.
1844. F. A. Paley, Church Restorers, 171. I have seen Jacobean doors added to ancient churches.
1867. F. G. Lee, 1636 & 1866, in Ess. Reunion, 128. Most of the Jacobean divines, apparently, could not look beyond the confines of the English nation.
1874. Parker, Goth. Archit., I. ii. 20. What are called Jacobean Gothic buildings of the time of James I. are often very good examples of the Perpendicular style.
1880. Warren, Book-plates, iii. 22. The Jacobean style was most prevalent on our book-plates about 1730.
2. Of or pertaining to the apostle St. James the Less or the Epistle written by him.
1883. Pulpit Treas., June, 108. The Jacobean definition of religion must be recovered [Jas. i. 27].
1898. W. S. Lilly, in 19th Cent., Sept., 516. A doctrine in which the Pauline and Jacobean pronouncements are unobtrusively blended.
b. Jacobean (or Jacobæa) lily, a bulbous plant (Sprekelia formosissima, N.O. Amaryllidaceæ), a native of Mexico, named after St. James.
1760. J. Lee, Introd. Bot., App. 305. Jacobæa Lily, Amaryllis.
1770–4. A. Hunter, Georg. Ess. (1803), III. 125. I have no where seen it more manifest than in the Jacobean Lily.
1846. J. Baxter, Libr. Pract. Agric. (ed. 4), I. 119. In the Jacobæan lily, Linnæus noticed a drop of transparent liquid protruding every morning from the stigma.
B. sb. A statesman or writer of the time of James I.
1885. Athenæum, 21 Nov., 661/2. Milton’s chance of leadership would have been slight if … the age needed a prosaic reaction from the extravagances of the Jacobeans.
