ABSTRACT
Matthew Sutcliffe was born as the second son of John Sutcliffe of Melroyd in the parish of Halifax, Yorkshire, and Margaret, his wife, nee Owlsworth, originally of Ashley. At Trinity College Sutcliffe overlapped with Robert Devereux, who was already Earl of Essex, 15 years his junior. Paul Hammer has shown that Essex's intellectual seriousness was underestimated by his earlier biographers. The Practice, Proceedings and Lawes of Armes is one of a whole wave of books on the art of war published during this prolonged conflict between Spain and England, on both sides. In his 'Epistle Dedicatorie', Sutcliffe professed a conviction that would please any modern 'realist' theoretician of international relations, one paradoxically shared with Catholic Church teaching, that war is an inescapable part of the world. Sutcliffe's comprehensive concept turned on what he saw as the grand strategic aim of England's security policy: decisively to disarm Spain, and to do so even to occupy Spanish territory.
