Good newes from Fraunce : French anti-league propaganda in late Elizabethan England

The French Religious Wars generated a large body of political propaganda from the Huguenots, the Politiques (a Huguenot-Catholic confederacy) and the Catholic League.

Dr Parmelee discusses how, in the last decades of the reign of Elizabeth I some 130 translated documents were imported into England, most of them - originating from the Politiques, written in support of the Protestant Henry of Navarre's accession to the French throne -advocating religious tolerance as a way to peace.

She argues that while most English political thinkers did not openly embrace or articulate the absolutist ideas often expressed in these writings, they had a wide impact on political discourse in the late Elizabethan period.

They were useful against foreign enemies, Catholic recusants and Presbyterians, but particularly, in a time of fear of civil war engendered by an unsettled succession, they helped to establish an intellectual climate conducive to the later development of Stuart absolutism.

Dr LISA FERRARO PARMELEEteaches in the Department of History at Villanova University.