In the early seventeenth-century Spanish monarchy, the discourse of reason of state enabled political actors and theorists to think about politics in pragmatic terms and to extend the boundaries of legitimate action, vital in facing the challenges of managing an overstretched composite monarchy. Thinking and writing about politics in a pragmatic way was always limited by commanding notions of political and religious virtue. Yet individuals displayed considerable creativity in negotiating the limitations of conscience, armed with the tool of necessity. In the absence of a set of markers that determined when necessity had arrived, information from present circumstances, classical and recent histories, and personal experience could be organized and manipulated in order to present extenuating circumstances that could temporarily suspend moral rules of personal and political conduct. There was power, in short, in necessity.