Strangers Settled Here Amongst Us: Policies, Perceptions and the Presence of Aliens in Elizabethan England

A pathbreaking study that sheds new light on the impact of immigrants from the Continent on Elizabethan England and the policy decisions that their presence prompted. Much like governments facing immigration issues today, England's sixteenth-century governors struggled to strike balances in their policies dealing with the influx of immigrants who sought escape from religious persecution and the wars that then wrecked the Continent. The resulting dichotomy of welcome and control explored in this study characterizes the relationship between native and immigrants to the present day.Strangers Settled Here Among Usprovides important insights in the history of immigration and the search for balance -- as relevant today as it was in the sixteenth century.