King James had ruled until 1621 without parliament, employing officials such as the businessman Lionel Cranfield, who were astute at raising and saving money for the crown, and sold earldoms and other dignities, many created for the purpose, as an alternative source of income.

Another potential source of income is the prospect of a Spanish dowry from a marriage between Charles, Prince of Wales, and the Spanish Infanta, Maria.

The policy of the Spanish Match, as it is called, is also attractive to James as a way to maintain peace with Spain and avoid the additional costs of a war.

Peace could be maintained as effectively by keeping the negotiations alive as by consummating the match—which may explain why James will protract the negotiations for almost a decade.

The policy is supported by the Howards and other Catholic-leaning ministers and diplomats—together known as the Spanish Party—but deeply distrusted in Protestant England.

James's policy had been further jeopardized by the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, especially after his son-in-law, Frederick V, Elector Palatine, had been ousted from Bohemia by Emperor Ferdinand II in 1620, and Spanish troops had simultaneously invaded Frederick's Rhineland home territory.

Matters had come to a head when James finally called a parliament in 1621 to fund a military expedition in support of his son-in-law.

The Commons on the one hand had granted subsidies inadequate to finance serious military operations in aid of Frederick, and on the other—remembering the profits gained under Elizabeth by naval attacks on Spanish gold shipments—had called for a war directly against Spain.

In November 1621, led by Sir Edward Coke, they had framed a petition asking not only for war with Spain but also for Prince Charles to marry a Protestant, and for enforcement of the anti-Catholic laws.

James had flatly told them not to interfere in matters of royal prerogative or they would risk punishment, which had provoked them into issuing a statement protesting their rights, including freedom of speech.

Urged on by the Duke of Buckingham and the Spanish ambassador Gondomar, James had ripped the protest out of the record book and dissolved Parliament.

Prince Charles, now twenty-three, and Buckingham had decided in 1623 to seize the initiative and travel to Spain incognito, to win the Infanta directly, but the mission had proved a desperate mistake.

The Infanta detests Charles, and the Spanish had confronted them with terms that included his conversion to Catholicism and a one-year stay in Spain as, in essence, a diplomatic hostage.

Though a treaty had been signed, the prince and duke return to England in October without the Infanta and immediately renounce the treaty, much to the delight of the British people.

Prince Charles and the Duke of Buckingham, their eyes opened by their unsuccessful visit to Spain in pursuit of the Spanish Infanta as a bride for Charles, now turn King James's Spanish policy upon its head and call for a French match and a war against the Habsburg empire.

The negotiations had long been stuck, but it is believed that Buckingham's crassness is key to the total collapse of agreement; the Spanish ambassador has asked Parliament to have Buckingham executed for his behavior in Madrid; but Buckingham has gained popularity by calling for war with Spain on his return.

To raise the necessary finance, they prevail upon James to call another Parliament, which meets in February 1624.

For once, the outpouring of anti-Catholic sentiment in the Commons is echoed in court, where control of policy is shifting from James to Charles and Buckingham, who pressures the king to declare war and engineers the impeachment, for corruption, of the capable Lord Treasurer, Lionel Cranfield, by now made Earl of Middlesex, when he opposes the plan on grounds of cost.

The 1621 Parliament had begun an investigation into monopolies and other abuses in England and extended it later to Ireland; in this first session, Buckingham had been quick to side with the Parliament to avoid action being taken against him.

However, the king's decision in the summer of 1621 to send a commission of enquiry, including parliamentary firebrands, to Ireland had threatened to expose Buckingham's growing, often clandestine interests there.

Knowing that, in the summer, the king had assured the Spanish ambassador that the Parliament would not be allowed to imperil a Spanish matrimonial alliance, he had therefore surreptitiously instigated a conflict between the Parliament and the king over the Spanish Match, which had resulted in a premature dissolution of the Parliament in December 1621 and a hobbling of the Irish commission in 1622.

Irish reforms nevertheless introduced by Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, in 1623–1624 are largely nullified by the impeachment and disgrace of the pacific Lord Treasurer in the violently anti-Spanish 1624 parliament—spurred on by Buckingham and Prince Charles.

The outcome of the Parliament of 1624 is ambiguous: James still refuses to declare war, but Charles believes the Commons had committed themselves to finance a war against Spain, a stance which is to contribute to his problems with Parliament in his own reign.

Henriette Marie de France, the youngest daughter of King Henry IV of France (Henry III of Navarre) and his second wife, Marie de' Medici, had been brought up as a Catholic.

As daughter of the Bourbon king of France, she is a Fille de France, a member of the House of Bourbon, and the youngest sister of the King Louis XIII.

After her older sister, Christine Marie, married Victor Amadeus I, Duke of Savoy, in 1619, Henriette had taken the highly prestigious style of Madame Royale; this is used by the most senior royal princess at the French court.

Henrietta had been trained, along with her sisters, in riding, dancing and singing, and takes part in French court plays.

Although tutored in reading and writing, she is not known for her academic skills the princess has been heavily influenced by the Carmelites at French court.

Henrietta was by 1622  living in Paris with a household of some two hundred staff, and marriage plans were being discussed.

Henrietta had first met Prince Charles of England, her future husband, in Paris, in 1623, while he was traveling to Spain with the Duke of Buckingham to discuss a possible marriage with the Infanta Maria Anna of Spain—Charles first saw her at a French court entertainment.

The Spanish negotiations having failed, Charles looks to France instead.

The English agent Kensington is sent to Paris in 1624 to examine the potential French match, and the marriage is finally negotiated in Paris by James Hay and Henry Rich.

James is growing sick by 1624, and as a result is finding it extremely difficult to control Parliament.

Some historians (for example Willson, p 425) consider James, who is fifty-eight in 1624, to have lapsed into premature senility; but he suffers from, among other ailments, an agonizing species of arthritis which constantly leaves him indisposed; and Pauline Croft suggests that in summer 1624, afforded relief by the warm weather, James regains some control over his affairs, his continuing refusal to sanction war against Spain a deliberate stand against the aggressive policies of Charles and Buckingham (Croft, pp 126–127); "James never became a cypher." Croft, p 101.

Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu had begun to rise to power quickly after the death of French King Louis's favorite, the duc de Luynes, in 1621,

The young King had soon nominated Richelieu for a cardinalate, which Pope Gregory XV had accordingly granted on April 19, 1622.

Crises in France, including a rebellion of the Huguenots, have rendered Richelieu a nearly indispensable advisor to the King.

Upon his appointment to the royal council of ministers in April 1624, he had begun intriguing against the chief minister, Charles, duc de La Vieuville.

La Vieuville is arrested on charges of corruption in August of this year, and Cardinal Richelieu takes his place as the King's principal minister.

Richelieu's policy involves two primary goals: centralization of power in France and opposition to the Habsburg dynasty (which rules in both Austria and Spain).

He is faced with a crisis in Valtellina, a valley in Lombardy (northern Italy), shortly after he becomes Louis' principal minister.

Richelieu, in order to counter Spanish designs on the territory, supports the Protestant Swiss canton of Grisons, which also claims the strategically important valley.

The Cardinal deploys troops to Valtellina, from which the Pope's garrisons are driven out.

Richelieu's early decision to support a Protestant canton against the Pope is a foretaste of the purely diplomatic power politics he is to espouse in his foreign policy.

Buckingham had directed the marriage negotiations, but when Charles’s betrothal to Henrietta Maria of France is announced in 1624, the choice of a Catholic is widely condemned.

Charles is married by proxy to Henrietta Maria in front of the doors of the Notre Dame de Paris on May 11, 1625, before his first Parliament could meet to forbid the banns.

Many members are opposed to the king marrying a Roman Catholic, fearing that Charles would lift restrictions on Roman Catholics and undermine the official establishment of Protestantism.

Although he will state to Parliament that he will not relax restrictions relating to recusants, he promises to do exactly that in a secret marriage treaty with Louis XIII of France.

Moreover, the price of marriage with the French princess is a promise of English aid for the French crown in the suppressing of the Protestant Huguenots at La Rochelle, thereby reversing England's long held position in the French Wars of Religion.