Good newes from Fraunce

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.