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DEBATING WAR AND PEACE IN LATE ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND*

ABSTRACT 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 Essex 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 contexts, 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 ways 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 differing contemporary responses to the legitimacy of the Dutch abjuration of Spanish sovereignty and the polity of the United Provinces, which have implications for our understanding of political mentalities in late Elizabethan England.