Note 405 — BOOK VIII THE AGE OF THE GREAT POWERS

Englishmen did try to control the foreign policy of James I, because it involved questions of religion, and because their primary concern was religious. They wanted foreign policy to be directed to the militant defence of Protestantism. James I, a good internationalist (in his way), and at any rate a lover of peace, wanted to secure European peace by diplomacy—and failed to do so. His parliaments, and all seventeenth-century parliaments, were vitally interested in foreign policy.—E. B.