ABSTRACT
This chapter explains that the horizons of upper-class British and Irish chroniclers, scholars and travellers of early modern times often extended beyond western Europe to the Austrian Habsburg lands and to Poland-Lithuania. Moreover, the British and Irish view of those times, whether recorded from the archipelago or else during a fleeting Grand Tour, was of a central Europe that seemed less exotic than that which writers further west have imagined since the Enlightenment period. Additionally, from 1634, the central European Leslies provided the focus for an English-speaking circle in the region which was recognised both amongst the literate reading public at the Stuart court in London and more especially amongst early tourists and other anglophones arriving there as comprising a socially diverse and prominent group of expatriates from the archipelago. Some other early modern anglophone commentators pointed out analogies that are more detailed than any of those mentioned already.
