This article concerns two manuscript tracts by Sir Robert Cotton, the Answer to Certain Military Men regarding Foreign War (1609) and Twenty-Four Arguments on the Strict Execution of the Laws against Seminary Priests (1613). To the limited extent that these tracts have been studied at all, historians have read them as artifacts of the Jacobean regime's internal counseling process. Through analysis of the both the structure of the Jacobean regime's knowledge economy and the two tracts and contextualizing them, the author argues that these were, instead, innovative exercises in publicity, designed to defend existing Jacobean policy against so-called country criticism. Designed to circulate widely among the kingdom's social elite—indeed, more than two dozen handwritten copies of each tract survive—the manuscript pamphlets played on Cotton's reputation as an antiquary to legitimize the Jacobean regime's most controversial policies. More broadly, the tracts demonstrate the dilemma of a Jacobean regime caught between the geopolitics of peace and interconfessional diplomacy and the expectations of a domestic political elite nurtured on the values and expectations of confessional war.

中文翻译：

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罗伯特·科顿爵士，手稿宣传册制作，以及短暂和平时期詹姆士一世时期王权的建立，ca。1609–1613

本文涉及罗伯特·科顿爵士 (Sir Robert Cotton) 的两份手稿，对某些军人关于对外战争的答复(1609) 和对神父严格执行法律的二十四条论据（1613）。在对这些小册子的研究范围有限的情况下，历史学家将它们作为詹姆士一世政权内部咨询过程的产物来阅读。通过分析 Jacobean 政权知识经济的结构和这两个领域并将它们置于背景中，作者认为，相反，这些是创新的宣传活动，旨在捍卫现有的 Jacobean 政策免受所谓的国家批评。这些手稿小册子旨在在王国的社会精英中广泛流传——事实上，每份小册子都有两打以上的手写副本幸存下来——这些手稿小册子利用科顿作为古董商的名声，使詹姆士一世政权最具争议的政策合法化。更广泛地，