Debating War and Peace in Late Elizabethan England

Peace with Spain was debated by Elizabeth I's government from 1598, when France and Spain made peace by signing the Treaty of Vervins. Robert. Devereux, second earl of Assay was zealously hostile to accommodation with Spain, while other privy, councillors argued in,favour of peace. Arguments for and against peace were, however, also articulated in wider context, in particular in a series of manuscript treatises, and also in printed tracts from the Netherlands, which appeared in English translation in the late 1590s. This article, explores wags that ideas of war and peace were disseminated in manuscript and printed media outside the privy council and court. It is argued that disagreement about the direction of the war reveals contemporary responses to the legitimacy of the Dutch of abjuration of Spanish sovereignty and the polio of the United Provinces, which have implications for our understanding of political mentalities in line Elizabethan England.