ABSTRACT
Heinz Schilling, through the notion of confessionalisation, argues that one of the major impacts of the Reformation was to enable sovereigns to tighten their grip on religious matters and church politics. Malcolm R. Thorp and Arthur J. Slavin, Politics, Religion and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe. Hence, religion still had an essential part in European politics, but sovereigns managed to play down its significance whenever it could cross their interests. The debate on religion and diplomacy hinges on a political question, namely the ability of a monarch to use the religious factor in his foreign policy without undermining his position both at home and abroad. Through the experiences and correspondence of three English diplomats in the second half of the seventeenth century, it will be demonstrated that the role religion should play in foreign policy. William Godolphin, Henry Savile and William Trumbull have been selected because they all experienced the potentially explosive combination of religion and diplomacy.
