This thesis engages with the historiography of English imperial studies between the reigns of Elizabeth I and James II to contend that English domestic and international policy depended on the Roman Republican and early Imperial models as a guidebook for effective governance. England, this thesis demonstrates, more closely aligned itself with the early and middle Roman Republic during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, but evolved to value the late Republic during the reign of Charles I and Cromwell, and the early Empire during the reign of Charles II and James II.