ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the contours of Francophobia in Stuart England. It draws upon evidence from across the century as a whole, in order to establish the preconceptions that the English already had about France and the French prior to the beginning of Louis XIV's personal rule in 1661. To uncover the cultural baggage that later seventeenth-century English people brought to bear when reacting to what Louis XIV or his subjects were thought to be up to. Francophobia intensified in England after the Restoration, in the wake of the expansionist policies of Louis XIV, whose personal rule began in 1661. One thinks of the prevalence of the stereotypes of the papist, the puritan, or the Protestant nonconformist, and the part the ideologies of anti-popery and anti-puritanism played in the political and religious upheavals of England's century of revolution. The stereotype of the French as a sexually oriented people was already established.
