If the Apocrypha books were rejected as Scripture why were they included in the 1611 KJV Bible?

This version of the bible was for the Church of England. The Apocrypha was allowed by them to be included.

Prior to 1629, all English-language Bibles included the Apocrypha.

The books of the Apocrypha have a different canonical status in different Christian traditions. The Catholic and Orthodox traditions include them in their canon, because they were part of the Septuagint. Many Protestant traditions exclude them from their canon, because the Jewish community ultimately decided to exclude these books from their canon. The Anglican tradition includes the books but gives them a secondary status as being useful for Christians to read.

Since the King James translation was sponsored by the Church of England, the books of the Apocrypha were included in the translation.

Not every major denomination recognizes the same books as canon. Early on, there was debate among believers over which books should be considered canon, and which should not. I'm likely wrong, but I think the apocrypha was held to be in a sort of different class in the West, at least until the Council of Trent, which happened during the Reformation. By that time, protestants tended to question whether the intertestamental books were divinely inspired. Protestants noted that the apocrypha are not included in the Jewish canon, and things went from there.

The real question, then, is when did Protestant bibles drop the apocrypha. Protestant bibles that included the apocrypha had the books in a separate section. A search turns up the date 1629, but I haven't found if something specific happened that year, or if some Protestant bibles started dropping the apocrypha then.

In 1642 in the Westminister Confession Chapter 1, section 3 dismiss the books of the Apocrypha as not being of divine inspiration.

The Apocrypha was included in the translation of the KJV because it was an Anglican translation meant for the Church of England. The Church of England has this to say about the Apocrypha in her confessional document called the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion:


And the other books as Hierome [Jerome] saith, the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners, but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine.

Bray, G. (2009). The Faith We Confess: An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles (p. 41). The Latimer Trust.