This thesis traces the evolution and development of English masculinity and manhood in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in order to elucidate the construction of an Early Modern English identity and sense of nationhood. Because of political and social instability wrought by the English Reformation, crises in dynastic succession, and successive attempts at constructing a unique nationhood, English masculinity experienced a general crisis in the seventeenth century with recurring fears of emasculation and cuckoldry. This thesis surveys an archive of popular print culture and published sources which captured and contoured these debates. It argues that a discourse of cultural imperialism developed in the seventeenth century that overcame this masculinity crisis.