This book is about the political consequences caused when reality fails to meet great expectations, when promise is not met and when leaders are blamed for causing this gap between the real and the imagined.

The 1603 Union of the Crowns, in which James VI of Scotland inherited the thrones of England and Ireland, was a watershed moment in British history. The union laid the foundation for the future formation of the British state, the forging of the British Empire and the emergence of Britain as a world power. However, to those living in the period 1603–42 these historical events were in the distant future. When many contemporaries thought about the meaning of the union they often considered it in confessional terms. For those with a militant Protestant mindset the union was pregnant with the potential to create a Protestant superpower, one that was capable of both protecting fellow Protestants on the European continent and providing a counterbalance to militarized and reinvigorated post-Tridentine Catholicism. However, as the decades progressed it became clear that the reality of the situation was quite different. Britain was not a Protestant superpower. In fact, for most of the period, a time when Europe was frequently at war, Britain was neutral, and the times it did attempt to intervene in Continental affairs ended in abject failure.