This book demonstrates the anxieties and tensions, both diplomatic and domestic, lurching beneath the ostensibly settled middle years of James i's reign. Twice in three years there were fears of an invasion from Spain, and on each occasion the government ordered a muster of the militia and the disarming of Catholics. The underlying cause was the jolt given by the assassination of Henri iv of France followed by the defensive alliance and double marriage treaty between France and Spain in 1611, leading James i to wonder about a ‘general league’ of Catholic powers against Protestant Europe; the trigger was the gathering of a Spanish armada in 1612 in Lisbon, the purposes of which fuelled much speculation, even reaching the ears of the twelve-year-old Prince Charles. Was the target England, Ireland or Virginia? The death of his elder brother, Henry, in November 1612 was a body blow to the Protestant nation in this feverish atmosphere, which was flamed by those, such as Archbishop Abbot, who had always feared Spanish global hegemony and creeping Catholicism at home. The marriage of Princess Elizabeth to Frederick v Elector Palatine in February 1613, despite Spanish opposition, burst the bubble of this scare. There was a brief reoccurence in September 1614, in the midst of Spanish military moves during the Julich-Cleves crisis, but the fleet in the channel turned out to be Dutch salt ships. The two episodes demonstrate the enduring spectre of Spanish invasions dating from the Elizabethan wars of 1585–1604, the complexities of pursuing peace in a confessionally-divided Europe as well as the power of rumour. The study is based on thorough research of national and international archives, and a mastery of secondary sources, and the result is a very rich narrative containing a number of gems. One is an anti-Spanish poem by an Oxford don, Richard Rands, in a printed anthology to celebrate the Palatine marriage, which led to its suppression and his imprisonment after a complaint from the Spanish ambassador, Alonso de Verlasco (pp. 136–9); a second is the re-discovery in Simancas of what may be the first English satirical political print (pp. 207–8, 225), depicting King James i holding the pope's nose to the grindstone, which was censured after objections from Velasco's successor, Gondomar. There are about a hundred pages of detailed discursive endnotes; rather oddly, each chapter has its own bibliography, which leads to needless repetition and some ferreting about by the reader. Nevertheless, here is a carefully researched microhistory which is to be welcomed.