References in the consultas on Ireland in the Simancas archives continually remind the student of the larger background against which the invasion of 1601–2 took place. It was a background in which the emphasis insofar as Spanish foreign relations were concerned was on disengagement. But while Spain had concluded peace with France, sent out overtures to England, was seeking to extricate herself from the costly Dutch war and conducted negotiations even with Constantinople, she yet maintained a jealous care for her greatness. Thus war with France threatened to erupt over Savoy; Spain continued support to Archduke Albert, sovereign of the Netherlands, in his struggle against the United Provinces; she sought to support the emperor's eastern war against the Turk by attacking the Berbers in the Mediterranean; and she tried to extract better peace terms from England by creating a diversion in Ireland.

There is a sense in which the home rule debates of 1886 were less the climax of than a deviation from the logical and predictable development of Irish politics in the Parnellite period. Had home rule been achieved, no doubt all would have been changed, and an autonomous Irish parliament would have addressed itself enthusiastically to solving the country's social and economic problems. But in the absence of home rule these problems immediately resumed the centre of the stage and the chief of them, the settlement of the land question, became again the crucial issue in Anglo-Irish relations. For some people, indeed, it had remained the crucial issue even during the ‘home rule’ winter of 1885–6, when the position on the Clanricarde estates in Galway, already notoriously bad, perceptibly worsened and when pressure was brought to bear both upon the Irish National League and upon the parliamentary party itself to adopt a more warlike posture towards rack-renting and evicting landlords.