Argyll's political career highlights the fact that, before 1603, British politics could only be found in the interstices between the overlapping political worlds of the Atlantic archipelago. The British strategies formulated by a few politicians sought to integrate those separate worlds into a comprehensive whole. However, without a political system at its heart, the story of British politics does not easily fit into a single, linear narrative. In addition to its fresh perspectives, the ‘new’ British history requires novel ways of writing. A balance needs to be struck when uncovering the hidden drama of British politics during the sixteenth century. On the one hand, the British dimension of events should be highlighted and, on the other, the integrity of the political worlds in which they occur must be respected. In an attempt to achieve such a balance, the chronological narrative that follows (chapters 3–6) has been divided into three parallel sections. Each section focuses upon events in one of Argyll's political worlds, with the British dimension and the 5th earl himself binding the separate sections together. For the sake of narrative clarity, the order of the sections varies between chapters. During his career as a British politician, Argyll moved constantly between the regional politics of the Gàidhealtachd, Scottish national affairs, and the triangular relationships of the English, Irish and Scottish realms, which formed part of the international arena of European diplomacy. He had daily experience of these three political worlds and used that to formulate his own British policy.