Retreat to your own personal island with our new historical fiction series, Matchlock! Matchlock is set during the Thirty Years' War, beginning in 1622, when Matthew Lock lands in Europe to investigate the brutal murder of his parents.

Order your copy of Matchlock and the Embassy by clicking here.

Traditional narratives of the Thirty Years War frequently gloss over the English/Scottish or British contribution, and in this episode, we do our best to rectify that error! We start with a scene of peacemaking not dissimilar to that visited in our previous episode, with the added twist that James I and VI had ended a twenty-year war instigated by his famous predecessor. The Anglo-Spanish war was at an end, with little good gains to show for it and all that had been spent, but there was still work for King James to do. Ireland required planting, money needed borrowing, ships needed sailing, and foreign diplomats needed talking to.

If James was to bring Britain out of its Spanish funk and into the continental system, arrangements with old foes like France would have to be reached, and the relationship with the Dutch properly formalised. In the background of course, were the residual impacts of twenty years of war – a deep-seated suspicion among the British populace of everything Spanish or Catholic. Such trends would have to be combated, and time would tell whether James was equal to the task.

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