The Jacobean Polity and the Failure of Via Media Politics, 1611–1620

After the assassination of Henry IV of France, the resulting weakness of the French regency government and the proposal for a Franco-Spanish dynastic treaty meant that King James was compelled to look to an overtly Protestant foreign (dynastic) alliance; the result was the Anglo-Palatine marriage treaty of 1612. That there was a British dimension to the resulting fractures in the Jacobean polity could be picked up from troubles in Ireland where there was more than one prescription for guaranteeing civil peace and national security. These fractures became even more apparent when war threatened and then actually commenced in central Europe over the Bohemian succession. James was at risk of being dragged into the conflict because his son-in-law Frederick V had accepted the Bohemian crown after the Archduke Ferdinand was deposed. This left James faced with calls to prosecute a war on behalf of his European Protestant friends while he himself tended to think that dynastic diplomacy was a better bet.