In reviewing so important a conflict as that which had broken out at home, it almost requires an effort of will to bestow deep interest upon foreign affairs in turn. But not only is this necessary from the connexion between the two, but we should not be able to understand the history of England if we left out of consideration its relation to those great events of European importance which absorbed even the largest share of public attention.

Charles I had undertaken to do what his father avoided to the end of his life,—to offer open opposition to the Spanish monarchy and its aims. Like Queen Elizabeth he took this step in alliance with France, Holland, and the Protestants of Germany and the North, but yet not in full agreement with his own people. This was due mainly to the circumstance that France had become far more Catholic under Mary de' Medici and Louis XIII than it had been under Henry IV. The offensive alliance between France and England now developed a character which rather irritated than quieted the religious feelings which prevailed in England.

On the first shocks sustained by the close alliance which had existed between the Catholic powers, the Huguenots in France rose in order to recover their former rights which had been curtailed. But the French government was not at all inclined to give fresh life to these powerful and dangerous movements: on the contrary it invoked the assistance of England and Holland to put them down.