Protestant Foreign Policy and the Coming of War, 1582–1593

The Anjou marriage diplomacy triggered a series of reactions. The chapter deals with James VI’s attempts to free himself from the control of Anglophile elements within his court. The response of those around Elizabeth was to become increasingly hostile to Mary Stuart and, against Elizabeth’s wishes, to evolve republican schemes in response to the unsettled English succession and also to intervene militarily in the Netherlands. The narratives of the English and French succession crises began to move in step at this point, that is as, after Anjou’s death, it became an issue as to whether the Huguenot Henry of Navarre ought to be allowed to take the French crown after Henry III. The latter half of the chapter deals with the exclusion of the Scottish queen from the English line of succession, the war with Spain and the Armada of 1588, and the turn of a certain sort of Catholic to the Scotland of James VI as their best hope for the political future.