What's in a Date? Alberico Gentili and the Genesis of De legationibus libri tres

It may not be all that much of an exaggeration to suggest that the birth of modern international law was expedited by a happenstance. In November 1583 Francis Throckmorton was arrested on suspicion of participating in a plot to overthrow Queen Elizabeth and to place on the throne in her stead the imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots—a stratagem to be implemented by an invasion of a mercenary army led by the Duke of Guise. The Spanish ambassador to England, Bernardino de Mendoza, was intimately involved, too, which raised the delicate matter of ambassadorial privileges. Twelve years earlier, a panel of five English civil lawyers had determined in the analogous case of the Scottish ambassador to England, John Lesley, Bishop of Ross—who had been implicated in the Ridolfi Plot—that a scheming legate forfeited his...