King James I and the protestant cause in the crisis of 1618–22

Abstract

In the early seventeenth century, when Europe was divided along religious lines and works of polemical theology circulated widely, most Englishmen seem to have been convinced that their nation was part of a protestant community of nations with certain common interests. This attitude had its roots in the recent past, when the government of queen Elizabeth had aided—albeit adroitly—the Dutch and French Calvinists and had maintained close relations with several protestant states, particularly in the Rhineland. When the ‘Invincible Armada’ from Spain had been thwarted in its intended object, the English were thankful to Providence for the events which had preserved protestantism on the island. The common cause among protestant states thus came to be thought of, by statesmen and ordinary citizens alike, as an effort to safeguard the political autonomy of the protestant states, particularly against the great Hapsburg monarchy in Spain and Austria, and to preserve the protestant faith against the revived Roman Catholicism of the counter-reformation. Religion and national identity were so closely linked that English ‘papists’ had constantly to struggle against a suspicion that they were unpatriotic or disloyal.