thumb|[[Castle Bromwich Hall, Birmingham]]
The Jacobean style is the second phase of Renaissance architecture in England, following the Elizabethan style. It is named after King James VI and I, with whose reign (1603–1625 in England) it is associated. At the start of James's reign, there was little stylistic break in architecture, as Elizabethan trends continued their development. However, his death in 1625 came as a decisive change towards more classical architecture, with Italian influence, was in progress, led by Inigo Jones. The style this began is sometimes called Stuart architecture, or English Baroque (though the latter term may be regarded as starting later).
Courtiers continued to build large prodigy houses, even though James spent less time on summer progresses around his realm than Elizabeth had. The influence of Flemish and German Northern Mannerism increased, now often executed by recruited craftsmen and artists, rather than obtained from books as in the previous reign. There continued to be very little building of new churches, although there was a considerable amount of modifications to old ones and a great deal of secular building.
Characteristics
thumb|Jacobean Revival dining hall ([[Selwyn College, Cambridge)]]
The reign of James VI of Scotland (also James I of England from 1603 to 1625), a disciple of the new scholarship, saw the first decisive adoption of Renaissance motifs in a free form communicated to England through German and Flemish carvers rather than directly from Italy. Although the general lines of Elizabethan design remained, there was a more consistent and unified application of formal design, both in plan and elevation. Much use was made of columns and pilasters, round-arch arcades, and flat roofs with openwork parapets. These and other classical elements appeared in a free and fanciful vernacular rather than with any true classical purity. With them were mixed the prismatic rustications and ornamental detail of scrolls, straps, and lozenges also characteristic of Elizabethan design. The style influenced furniture design and other decorative arts.
History and examples
thumb|right|250px|The Jacobean east wing of [[Crewe Hall, Cheshire, built in 1615–36]]
thumb|250px|[[Bank Hall, Bretherton, built in 1608]]
Reproductions of the Classical orders had already found their way into English architecture during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, frequently based upon John Shute's The First and Chief Grounds of Architecture, published in 1563, with two other editions in 1579 and 1584. In 1577, three years before the commencement of Wollaton Hall, a copybook of the orders was brought out in Antwerp by Hans Vredeman de Vries. Although nominally based on the description of the orders by Vitruvius, the author indulged freely not only in his rendering of them, but in suggestions of his own, showing how the orders might be employed in various buildings. Those suggestions were of a most decadent type, so that even the author deemed it advisable to publish a letter from a canon of the Church, stating that there was nothing in his architectural designs that was contrary to religion. It is to publications of this kind that Jacobean architecture owes the perversion of its forms and the introduction of strap work and pierced crestings, which appear for the first time at Wollaton Hall (1580); at Bramshill House, Hampshire (1607–1612), and in Holland House, Kensington (1624), it receives its fullest development. Most of these would have been hall and parlor dwellings with a simple central chimney, a feature of British architecture since the earlier Elizabethan era, a timber frame, a squat lower floor and an upper floor with bare beams and a space to be used for storage.