This slant towards the House of Habsburg, at the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, put paid to Maxwell's hopes of advancement in England, and in particular of a post he coveted, historian in Chelsea College.
Emperor Ferdinand II had, he declared, commanded his presence at court, and offered him spiritual preferment, with the office of imperial antiquary and genealogist, and a pension of a thousand crowns after the death of Sebastian Tegnangel.
)[6] In recompense for his books written in defence of the Church of England against the Puritans, and towards finishing one on the king's genealogy, he asked for a lay prebend.
[3] Gilbert Blackhall commented on Scots of this period who had spurned offers from the Spanish king, and their lack of Habsburg prospects (and may have had Maxwell in mind).
[3] He identified with a neo-Platonic tradition, against Aristotelianism: Plato and Hermes Trismegistus, but also Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino, and Franciscus Patricius.
[14] In this work he correspondingly places less emphasis on the Magdeburg (Carion) prophecy as applied to Prince Charles; but it was later picked up and reinforced by the Anglo-Saxon scholar William Retchford.
[17] He also goes back to Carion, through a Latin version of Hermann Bonus, to pick up a related Magdeburg prophecy on the reformation of the Roman Catholic Church.
[18] Maxwell found both a popular audience for verse summaries of his ideas, and some learned sympathy with Henry Spelman, Matthew Sutcliffe, and Patrick Young.
[1] Among his productions is a poem entitled Carolanna, for the death of Anne of Denmark in 1619;[20][21] Maxwell wrote it under the pseudonym of James Anneson, a play on the names of the king, queen, and their son Charles.