'Your grievances are ours': Militant pan-Protestantism, the Thirty Years' War, and the origins of the British problem, 1618--1641

Examines the domestic impact of Stuart foreign policy during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) focusing on politics, religion and culture. The war on the continent had a divisive effect on politics and religion in Britain and this division is placed within a British context, showing how those opposed to Stuart foreign policy could be found in both England and Scotland where shared religious and political ideals fostered an alternative sense of British identity to the one proffered by the British king. On one side the king, and his closest advisors, believed that the conduct of foreign policy should ensure, through alliances and diplomacy, the strength and stability of the Stuart dynasty. This meant that the Stuart monarchs were willing to engage in friendly relations with Catholic powers, such as during the early 1620s when a marriage between Prince Charles and a Spanish princess was proposed, if they believed it would benefit the dynasty. This clashed with an alternative British identity that was militant, pro-Protestant, and stridently anti-Catholic. These individuals, such as Thomas Scott, Simonds D'Ewes, Samuel Rutherford, and others, labeled "militant pan-Protestants" in the dissertation, believed that the international Protestant cause should trump the needs and desires of the dynasty. The ideas of the militant pan-Protestants are explored through their diaries, printed polemics, and letters. In this way the dissertation seeks to offer new insights into both the origins and the outbreak of the British civil wars, showing that the international situation created deep divisions between the Stuarts and their subjects in both England and Scotland. Previous historians may have labeled these individuals "Puritans" and would have noted that their interest in the Protestant cause was ancillary to their concerns about domestic religion. The dissertation argues that the concern for the Protestant cause was primary in the thoughts of those typically labeled "Puritan" and that this concern for international Protestantism informed their opinions on the domestic political situation.