The Spanish Match

Abstract

By 1622 James had exhausted virtually all his diplomatic options. The attempt to raise taxation in the 1621 Parliament was only partly successful and the economies pursued by Lord Treasurer Cranfield, created earl of Middlesex in 1622, might at best balance the king’s accounts, but could never produce enough for aggressive foreign action. Powerless to take decisive measures, James returned to the Spanish match as his only hope of restoring the Palatinate to Frederick and Elizabeth. To his subjects, the match merely exacerbated fears about popery and Spanish corruption, while the Overbury scandal was revived in libels deploring the absence of God’s word and religious purity from the king’s court.¹