Abstract
The conclusion of the treaty of London in 1604, which ended the long Armada war between England and Spain, is often depicted as a personal triumph for James VI and I. In the words of Derek Hirst, ‘War weariness created a favourable climate for James to set in train moves which were to bring peace with Spain in 1604’. As king of Scots he had never been at war with Spain, with whom he had no particular quarrel, so perhaps not surprisingly, historians have tended to assume that it was his accession which ‘opened a possibility for peace’.1 In May 1603, some six weeks after coming to the English throne, James proclaimed a ceasefire at sea with the recall of all English privateering vessels. So the end of the great conflict is presented as the consequence of the Stuart succession, with war-weariness leading smoothly to the successful peace negotiations of 1604. On this scenario the reign of the monarch frequently entitled ‘Rex Pacificus’ began fittingly with his first international triumph, the Treaty of London.2
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Notes
Derek Hirst, Authority and Conflict: England 1603–1658 (London: Arnold, 1986), p. 98: ‘The death of Elizabeth and the enthronement of the Scottish king, James VI, immediately opened a possibility for peace’.
Antonio Feros, Kingship and Favouritism in the Spain of Philip III 1598–1621 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 163.
James F. Larkin and Paul L. Hughes, eds, Stuart Royal Proclamations vol 1: Royal Proclamations of King James I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), pp. 30–1.
Malcolm Smuts, ‘The Making of Rex Pacificus: James VI and I and the Problem of Peace in an Age of Religious War’, in Daniel Fischlin and Mark Fortier, eds, Royal Subjects: Essays on the Writings of James VI and I (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002), p. 371.
Robert Cecil, ‘The State and Dignity of a Secretary of State’s Place’, in T. Park, ed., Harleian Miscellany (10 vols, London: John White et al., 1808–1813), vol. 5, pp. 166–8; J. S. Brewer and William Bullan, eds, Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts (6 vols, London: Longmans, 1867–1873), vol. 5, pp. 317–20.
The standard narrative of foreign policy in these years is R. B. Wernham, After the Armada: Elizabethan England and the Struggle for Western Europe 1588–1595 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984); and
Wernham, The Return of the Armadas: The Last Years of the Elizabethan War against Spain 1595–1603 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). There is also valuable material in
Wallace MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I: War and Politics 1588–1603 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
There is no full study of the Bourbourg negotiations. Cecil’s sketchy diary, British Library, Lansdowne MS 5 7/24, can be amplified by his letters to his father in T[he] N[ational] Archives], SP Holland 84/21. H[istorical] M[anuscripts] C[ommission], Calendar of the Manuscripts of the … Marquess of Salisbury Preserved at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire (23 vols, London, HMSO, 1883–1976), vol. 23, p. 14; P. Croft, ‘Brussels and London: The Archdukes, Robert Cecil and James I’, in Luc Duerloo and Werner Thomas, eds, Albert and Isabella: Essays (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), pp. 79–86.
F. G. Davenport, ed., European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States (4 vols, Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1917–1937), vol. 1, pp. 235–8.
Luc Duerloo and Werner Thomas, eds, Albert et Isabelle 1598–1621: Catalogue (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), pp. 9–15, gives a chronological summary of the careers of the archdukes, invaluable in the absence of the full political study they deserve.
Thomas Wright, Queen Elizabeth and Her Times (2 vols, London: H. Colburn, 1838), vol. 2, pp. 459–60. Wright printed an extensive selection of the correspondence between Burghley and Robert Cecil now in Cambridge University Library; Paul C. Allen, Philip III and the Pax Hispanica 1598–1621: The Failure of Grand Strategy (Yale: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 15.
Penry Williams, The Later Tudors: England 1547–1603 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 349, 360–1, 364; Cecil to Burghley, T.N.A., SP France 78/42/13.
G. P. V. Akrigg, ed., Letters of King fames VI and I (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 200–2.
Allen, Philip III, p. 102; J. C. Thewliss, ‘The Peace Policy of Spain 1596–1604’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Durham, 1975), p. 141.
H. S. Scott, ed., ‘The Diary of Sir Roger Wilbraham’, in Camden Miscellany: Volume 10, (London, Royal Historical Society, Camden 3rd Series, v. 4, 1902), pp. 49–50. For the expenses of Ireland, Cecil to Carew, 4 November 1602, Calendar of Carew Manuscripts, vol. 5, p. 375. There is interesting material on Spanish attitudes to Scotland in C. Saenz Cambra, ‘Scotland and Philip II, 1580–1598: Politics, Religion, Diplomacy and Lobbying’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2003).
A.G.S., E 1856, Philip III to Duke of Sessa, 12 February 1601. M. A. S. Hume, ed., Calendar of Letters and State Papers Relating to English Affairs Preserved Principally in the Archives of Simancas (London: HMSO, 1892–1899), vol. 4, pp. 729–37.
Calendar of Carew Manuscripts, vol. 5, pp. 417–18; Nicholas Canny, Making Ireland British 1580–1650 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 165–70.
A.G.S., E 622, relation of Nicolas Scorza, 26 April 1603. A. J. Loomie, ‘Philip III and the Stuart Succession in England, 1600–1603’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 43 (1965), 507.
A.G.S., E 622, King James to the Archdukes, 3/13 April 1603, Latin text and Spanish translation summarised in H. Lonchay and J. Cuvelier, eds, Correspondance de la Cour d’Espagne sur les Affaires des Pays-Bas au xviie siècle (6 vols, Brussels: P. Imbreghts, 1923–1927), vol. 1, pp. 139–40.
Charles Carter, The Secret Diplomacy of the Habsburgs (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), pp. 12–13, 273. H.M.C., Salisbury, vol. 15, p. 74.
Albert J. Loomie, ‘Toleration and Diplomacy: The Religious Issue in Anglo-Spanish Relations 1603–1605’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 53 (1963), 15.
R. Brown and H. F. Brown, eds, Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, Relating to English Affairs, Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice (38 vols, London: HMSO, 1864–1947), vol. 10, pp. 140, 141–4, 147; Akrigg, ed., Letters of King James VI and I, p. 227.
The negotiations are detailed in the journal printed in H.M.C., Eighth Report (London: HMSO, 1881), Appendix One, 95b–98b (manuscripts of the earl of Jersey); and a slightly variant text in Robert Watson, History of the Reign of Philip III of Spain (2 vols, London: G. G. J. & J. Robinson, 2nd edn, 1786), vol. 2, pp. 267–380. The treaty is printed in Davenport, ed., European Treaties, pp. 246–57.
For the merchants’ anger in May 1607 and their petition to the House of Commons, where they found much support, Linda Levy Peck, Northampton: Patronage and Policy at the Court of James I (London: Allen & Un win, 1982), pp. 192–8.
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Croft, P. (2006). Rex Pacificus, Robert Cecil, and the 1604 Peace with Spain. In: Burgess, G., Wymer, R., Lawrence, J. (eds) The Accession of James I. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230501584_9
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