In 1633, several significant works of literature were published for the first time. These included Spenser's A View of the Present State of Ireland, Jasper Fisher's Fvimus Troes, George Wither's Iwenilia, Charles Aleyn's The Battailes of Crescey and Poictiers, while John Ford's Perkins Warbeck, though not published until 1634, was probably first performed in 1633. In the same year, Charles I rode north to his Scottish coronation, calling forth the celebratory poem Scotland's Welcome by William Lithgow, and Ben Jonson also wrote The King's Entertainment at Welbeck to entertain the king when he broke his journey at the earl of Newcastle's great house, Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire. The year also saw the appointment of Strafford as Lord Deputy in Ireland, Thomas Stafford's Pacata Hibernica, and Geoffrey Keating's History of Ireland, and the centenary of Henry VIII's first declaration of England as an empire in 1533. This essay argues that these events and publications are linked by their concern with questions of what it meant to be English, Scottish, Irish, or Anglo‐Irish, with the occasion of Charles I's Scottish coronation, coupled with his growing political unpopularity, provoking a collective soul‐searching on the subject of national identities.