Peace with Spain, 1605

One of the most spectacular diplomatic events of the early seventeenth century was the ceremonial embassy in 1605 of the Earl of Nottingham to the Spanish court, the symbolic end to twenty years of war.

For nearly half a century Spaniard and Englishman had reviled each other with unrestrained enthusiasm, Spanish seamen and merchants had learned to dread the raids of English Englishmen had cursed the ambition of an empire privateers; and that seemed determined to destroy English liberty and English religion.

The conflict, merging with Dutch and French wars, had been ruinously expensive for Spain and enormously inconvenient for England, especially when it complicated the crown’s attempts to control Ireland.