A European Elizabethan

Abstract This book brings Robert Beale, a man usually in the background and shadows of Elizabethan England, into the light. By situating him in his European contexts of education, travel, religion, and politics, it illuminates the ways in which Beale’s experiences in the Holy Roman Empire and France prepared him for a career in the engine room of Elizabethan government. A man of modest origins, he enjoyed the patronage, protection, and friendship of some of Queen Elizabeth’s top officials like William Cecil and Francis Walsingham, but he was also personally insecure and financially vulnerable. Beale’s own religious inclinations, political principles, legal positions, and personal life all come into full colour here, as do the ways in which Beale engaged with many large and overlapping issues in Elizabethan politics and religion, like the royal succession, Puritanism, international relations, and the wars of religion. By thoroughly investigating Beale’s personal reference archive, which remains largely intact at the British Library, and additional material across the UK, mainland Europe, and the USA, this book endeavours to mirror Beale’s own archival practices in collation, reading, reflecting, and writing that made him simultaneously a jack-of-all trades and a master of them all. By considering a man with identities and experiences both particularly English and broadly European, the book offers a route forward for thinking about Europe was in England, and England was in Europe.