Richard Rainolde's literary career was concentrated in roughly one decade, the 1560s, during which he produced three substantial works on rhetoric, history, and political theory. While his rhetorical treatise, The Foundation of Rhetoric (1563), has received the most attention, his literary output as a whole is of interest for the ways in which it reflects both his life and the dominant concerns of the decade in which it was created: his writings display a humanist's concern with active applications of learning, a nationalist's concern with political order and stability, and a Protestant's concern with the dangers of Catholicism. No matter what the subject, Rainolde saw his work as vitally important, convinced that it could play a practical role in promoting the well-being of the commonwealth. All three of his treatises emphasize the need for political order and stress "the duty of a subject, the worthy state of nobility, the...