THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Ex Libris ISAAC FOOT rr iminal paui tiny m the .(/W/, 4 Spencer, P. C. C. He leaves bequests to his wife, to his eldest son Edward, and Edward Wotton's wife, to various nephews, cousins, friends, and servants, but there is no mention of his younger children. 5 Register of the University of Oxford, 2, iii, p. 151. CHAPTER II FIKST VISIT TO THE CONTINENT. 1589-1594 IT is the good fortune of Henry Wotton's biographer that his history can be studied in his own correspondence, which begins at the age of twenty-one, and lasts with a few breaks till his death fifty years later. The earliest of his letters are addressed to his brother, Edward Wotton, and are printed in these volumes from transcripts preserved in the British Museum. Written in the autumn of 1589, they describe the young Wotton's first journey abroad after leaving Oxford. Foreign travel was almost a necessary part of the education of an ambitious youth in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The young men went abroad, in Shakespeare's phrase Some to the wars, to try their fortune there ; Some to discover islands far away; Some to the studious universities. 1 Their object was seldom or never mere sight-seeing and pleasure. The soldiers went to gain military experience in the foreign wars ; the students to perfect their education in the foreign uni- versities, and by the company and instruction of foreign scholars. But for young Englishmen of birth the main object of travel was almost always political. By observing different forms of government, by penetrating into the secrets of foreign courts, they both prepared themselves for the service of the State, and procured information likely to be useful to the Government at home. 2 They acted as informal spies on foreign princes, and on the English political exiles ; and attempted to fathom the plots, and discover the warlike preparations, that were per- petually threatening England from abroad. So important for political purposes was foreign travel considered, that Queen Elizabeth was constantly sending young men abroad at her own expense to learn foreign languages, and to be trained up and made fit for the public service. 3 These young travellers, 1 Two Gentlemen of Verona, i. 3. 2 Einstein, The Italian Renaissance in England, 1902, chap. iii. 3 Bacon's Advice to Villiers (Spedding N , vi. 43. FOREIGN TRAVEL 9 whether or not they were supported by the Queen, were not absolutely free, but by their licences (and without a licence to travel no one could go abroad) they were restricted to certain countries, and to certain periods of time. Their movements were more or less determined by orders from home ; and it is plain from Wotton's letters that he was acting under instructions in his various journeys. Francis and Anthony Bacon, Robert Cecil, Raleigh, Essex, and indeed almost all of Wotton's contemporaries, eminent in politics, spent some years on the Continent in their youth ; but of these Elizabethan travellers Wotton is the only one of whose studies and journeys an adequate record remains. His letters are of interest for this reason, and also for the glimpse they give us of his character in his early years. Although somewhat cumbrous and stilted in style, they are not without the per- sonal quality, and felicitous phrasing, of his later letters, and present a lively and pleasant picture of the thoughts and good resolutions natural to a serious and high-spirited youth at his first entering into the world of the plans and hopes of a young Englishman setting forth, the year after the defeat of the Armada, for study and travel on the Continent. Europe lay before him, first the universities and great scholars of Germany, then Italy, the great school of state-craft, then perhaps Con- stantinople ; and at last his return to England, the favour he hoped of some great man; and, after that, who knew what brilliant fortune? Wotton wrote to his brother that he felt he had hitherto been but a fool, and was beginning life anew at twenty-one, and he meant to convince his friends that he could teach his ' soul to run against the delights of fond youth '. ' It is knowledge I seek,' he wrote to his mother, ' and to live in the seeking of that is my only pleasure.' Among the many departments of knowledge, his first object was to devote himself to the study of Civil Law. In this he was following the example of Nicholas Wotton, who had studied law abroad, and received a legal degree in Italy. But since the time of his great-uncle, learning had deserted Italy, and made its home north of the Alps; and it was Wotton's ambition to become the pupil of one of the greatest of living jurists, the old and eminent Francois Hotman^ then Professor of Law at Basle, ' the second lawyer in the earth' in his opinion, and only inferior to the famous Cujas. He writes again and again with boyish 10 SIR HENRY WOTTON eagerness, begging his brother to procure him letters of intro- duction to this great man, with whom he hoped to live until he went to Italy. This choice of Hotman for his master is of interest, for Hotman was a leader of the new or humanist school of legal study, which combined the reading of polite literature with that of law, and in which the student's atten- tion was directed from glosses and commentaries to the texts themselves; while Alberico Gentili, Wotton's Oxford master, belonged to the old Scholastic or Bartolist school, and was a bitter opponent of the French humanists. 1 It was therefore in search of a new and more elegant learning than he could find in England, and with the ambition of becoming ' the best civilian in Basle ', that Wotton set sail from Leigh in pleasant October weather. After a voyage of four days, he landed at Stade in North Germany, not far from Hamburg. Owing to the wars in France and the Low Countries, the course from England to North Germany was the safest and most frequented at this time. But even this crossing was not unattended with dangers; and although Wotton's voyage was without incident, the ship in which, a year later, another English youth made the same journey was chased by Dunkirk pirates on its way. This youth was Fynes Moryson, who travelled over the Continent almost in Wotton's footsteps. His Itinerary published in 161 7, and his description of Europe, recently printed from the manuscript in Corpus Christi College 2 , give much the same account of experiences and expenses as Wotton's letters, and help to make clear many of his allusions. Travelling on the Continent at this time was almost always done on horseback ; but in the Low Countries and in Germany it was usual to journey in carts, or ' coaches ', as they were called, lumbering vehicles with movable tops, holding about six people ; and travellers going in the same direction would commonly com- bine to hire a coach and share expenses. At Stade Wotton waited four days, looking for such companions, and finding, after the manner of young Englishmen abroad, much subject for cheerful laughter in the aspect and customs of the natives of the place. Through Brunswick and Frankfort he travelled to Heidelberg, where he arrived on Nov. 26. At this University, which was then one of the most famous ,of the Protestant 1 Holland, op. cit., p. 23. 2 Shakespeare's Europe, edited by Charles Hughes, 1903. HEIDELBERG 11 Universities of Europe, he spent the winter, studying German, and attending the law lectures and disputations. The legal instruction he found much superior to that of the English Universities ; and while waiting for letters that should introduce him to Hotman, he prepared himself to take full advantage of that great scholar's teaching. Although our information about Wotton, when, young and obscure, he wandered over Europe, is almost all derived from his own letters, yet he does not pass altogether unnoticed in the correspondence of the scholars whose acquaintance he made abroad. In all these notices the impression is much the same, that of a youth of noble birth, brilliant and virtuous and witty, who delighted his friends with his literature and learning, and won their affection by that 'sweet persuasiveness of behaviour' for which he was afterwards noted. The first to mention him is the Scotch poet and scholar, Dr. John Johnston, then head of a College in Heidelberg, who had . befriended Wotton at his arrival ; and Wotton adds, had given him ' the first sport in Germany with laughing at his dialect'. On April 10, 1590, Johnston wrote of Wotton to Camden (Wotton had brought with him a copy of Camden's Britannia, which he had lent to Johnston), remarking that Wotton was then on the point of leaving Heidelberg. 1 From Heidelberg Wotton went to Frankfort, and on the journey thither a piece of good fortune befell him. Delighting all through his life in the society and friendship of scholars, he shows, in his earliest letters, his desire to make the acquaintance of ' the great learned men' of the Continent. And now he fell in by chance with one of the greatest of European scholars, Isaac Casaubon, who had gone from Geneva to Frankfort in the hopes of meeting Lipsius, and to arrange for the publication of his edition of Aristotle, and was now extending his journey to Heidelberg. 2 We can picture the meeting at some wayside inn of the English youth, then twenty-two years of age, and the learned Frenchman, nine years his senior, querulous, ailing, and poor, but full of enthusiasm and generosity, and already famous in the world of scholars. They talked together for a little, and then went their several ways; but this encounter, or as 1 i. p. 233 n. 2 Cas.. Epist., p. 4. That Wotton and Casaubon met at this time is proved by Wotton's letter printed i, p. 302. 12 SIR HENRY WOTTON Wotton called it ' mere salutations in passing ', was the beginning of romantic friendship between them, and a few years later we find Wotton at Geneva living in Casaubon's house. After parting with Casaubon, Wotton went on to Frankfort, arriving in time to be present at the famous Mart, which was held there every spring and autumn, and was the great gathering place of Germany, and indeed of Europe, for merchants, travellers, authors, and scholars. Hither were brought silks from Italy, cloth from France and England, ironwork from Nuremberg, delicacies from Holland, and what was of more interest to Wotton hither to this 'Fair of the Muses' came not only booksellers from all over Europe, but the writers and learned men of the Continent, to meet each other, and to arrange with the printers of Frankfort for the publication of their works. 1 In the bookshops, or mingling in the crowd, or gathered around the bookstalls, the traveller would hear famous men lecturing and disputing with their friends ; and it is possible that at this fair, or two years later in the bookshops of Padua, Wotton caught a glimpse of perhaps the greatest, and certainly the most interesting of living philosophers, Giordano Bruno. 2 That Bruno would be among the loudest and most eager of the dis- putants there can be little question ; and the young Englishman may have listened to his profound and fantastic discourses about the plurality of worlds and the spirit of the universe, in which the deepest modern conceptions and the strangest allegory were so curiously mingled. At Frankfort he probably lodged with the hospitable printer, Andrew Wechel, in whose house seventeen years before his brother's friend, Philip Sidney, had first met Languet. But of his stay at Frankfort we 'know nothing certain, save that here he made the acquaintance and won the friendship of the great botanist Clusius, or Lecluse 3 , who was then resting at Frankfort after his many travels. News had no doubt reached Wotton of the death, in the previous February, of Franyois Hotman, from whose instructions he had promised himself such profit. He therefore abandoned his intention of travelling to Basle, and went to Altdorf, the little University of the town of Nuremberg, where he spent 1 Berti, pp. 230-1. a Giordano Bruno was at Frankfort in the summer of 1590, and his Italian biographer Berti states that he had arrived there about April (Ibid., p. 227 n.). He almost certainly visited Padua during Wotton's stay there in 1591-2. 3 i, pp. 246, 297. ALTDORF 13 the spring and summer, residing in the house of a lawyer to whom his friend Franciscus Junius, Professor of Theology at Heidelberg, had introduced him. 1 If the history of a man's early years is largely the history of his friendships, this is particularly true of Henry Wotton, who had the gift of winning the interest and affection of older and more distinguished men. The next friend on his list was an Englishman, Lord Zouche, who happened to be then at Altdorf. Edward la Zouche, eleventh Baron Zouche of Harringworth, was perhaps ten or twelve years older than Wotton, and already a political personage of considerable note. He had been one of the peers who had tried Mary Queen of Scots, and in after years he was charged with diplomatic and other offices of some importance. He was living abroad at this time, partly for the sake of studying foreign affairs, and partly too for economy ; for he had wasted his fortune not in the ways usual to spendthrift noblemen, but on gardens and horticulture. A man of cultivated tastes, the friend of Ben Jonson and of other poets, and interested in history and mathematics, he took the young Wotton under his protection, and they seem to have spent much of their time together. Wotton, writing to Lord Zouche nearly thirty years later, speaks of these days when they first met, and when he was a poor student at Altdorf, as the happiest of his life. 2 In the last edition of the Reliquiae Wottonianae, published in 1685, was printed a series of letters from Henry Wotton to Lord Zouche, written between October, 1590, and August, 1593 ; and it is from these, and from the collection of Wotton's letters preserved in the Hofbibliothek in Vienna, that most of our information about the next three years of his life is derived. Among the Vienna letters is one written at Altdorf, on Sept. 25, 1591, Old Style. It is addressed to his mother, and, like many letters of young men to their mothers, it is extremely pious in its tone. He informs his mother, however, that at Vienna, whither he was going, ' the great learned men ' there, in the profession he followed, were all 'marvellous devout papists ' ; but that did not trouble him, as he made a point of daily conversing with all sorts of men, yet in his own ' manner and conscience '. 3 Wotton left Altdorf towards the end of October, and after 1 i, p. 240. a ii, p. 161. For Lord Zouche, see Appendix III. 3 i, p. 240. 14 SIR HENRY WOTTON stopping at the Jesuit University of Ingolstadt, in Upper Bavaria, he arrived on Nov. 11, New Style, at Vienna; in which city, where his eldest brother had spent the winter fifteen years before in company with Philip Sidney, he remained for about six months. He had letters to two eminent Protestants in the service of the Emperor, Rudolf II : the Baron von Friedesheim, one of the judges of the Lower Court of the Province of Austria, and Dr. Hugo Blotz, or Blotius, a learned Dutchman, and librarian of the Imperial Library. With Friedesheim Wotton stayed for a week or two, and then went to live in the house of Dr. Blotius, adjoining the old Minorite monastery, in which the library was then lodged. His private study opened into the library, and he had the free use of this collection of about nine thousand volumes, for the most part manuscript. The cost of chamber, stove, table, and lights was two florins a week, and he had plenty of wine for himself and a friend who was with him. Altogether the expense of living came, he calculated, to about five pounds four shillings more a year than a good careful student would spend in the English Universities. 1 Blotius seems to have been a kindly host; Wotton soon won his trust and friendship to such an extent, that when in January, 1591, the librarian had occasion to go to Neustadt, he allowed Wotton to remain in the house with his wife, though not without misgivings about the unconventionality of such a proceeding. Wotton, however, was able to assure him that the conduct of Frau Blotius, in the absence of her husband, was altogether above reproach. 2 This time of Wotton's youthful sojourn abroad was apparently a period of severe study and immense and varied reading. If, as I believe, The State of Christendom, written three years later, is rightly ascribed to his authorship, he proved himself possessed of an amount of learning that is very remarkable in so young a man. Wotton's letters from Vienna show that he made full use of the Imperial Library, studying not only the political treatises it contained, but the Greek manuscripts as well. We find him busy with the text of Polybius (which 1 Two florins a week, if Rhenish florins are meant, would be equal to about 20 per annum in the money of that time (Pattison, p. 42). * ' De uxore tua addam amplius, me numquam quidquam aut (aur)ibus aut verbis spectavisse vel audivisse, quod non castissimae foeminae modestam vere- cundiam deceret.' Wotton to Blotius at Neustadt, Jan. 25, 1591 (Hofbibl. MS. 9737, Z. 17, f. 130). VIENNA 15 Casaubon had already begun to edit), and of other authors ; and indeed, at that time, a study of unpublished texts was almost a necessity for wide scholarship. In addition to the records of the past, he devoted much attention to the study of contemporary politics and matters of State. It was by knowledge of this kind, about the condition of foreign governments and the plans of foreign princes, that young men who, like Wotton, had chosen a political career, hoped to make their fortune. If their information proved to be useful to some great man at home, he would be likely to take them into his service, and thus start them on the road to success. And this indeed proved the case with Wotton almost immediately after his return to England four years later. This valuable and secret knowledge was to be obtained in two ways, by the confidence and conversation of experienced states- men, but still better by the study of printed or manuscript ' Relations ' about the forces, and revenues, and general condition of the different European States. The reports of Venetian am- bassadors are the best known of these ' Relations '; but there were many others written by travellers and State officials, and it is plain that they were of great value to the student. 1 Wotton had copies made for Lord Zouche of those he found in the Imperial Library, and writes of one of them, that more would be learned from it in three weeks' study, than from many years of observation. 2 As German was not much read in England, W'otton gave special attention to books or manuscripts in German ; works in other languages could be read at home, ' whereby the poor younger brother traveller loses his reward.' 3 Wotton vainly attempted to procure, by means of bribery, one rare manuscript for Lord Zouche, the Steganographia of Trithemius, which was the earliest treatise on cipher-writing, a dangerous book to possess, and therefore much prized ; though for this kind of undertaking he showed some distaste, confessing to his patron that he was too confiding and ' soon handled as they please to deal with me '. 4 The definite and comparatively commonplace character of our news makes one of the most obvious differences between the life of modern days and that of former centuries. News has for us 1 Many of these ' Relations ' are still to be found in manuscript collec- tions, and the quantity of them in existence must have been very great. For a list of sixty-four, which Francis Davison took abroad with him, see Havison, i, p. xxxix. * i, p. 261. i, p. 262. * i, p. 267. 16 SIR HENRY WOTTON lost half the wonder and uncertainty it possessed for our an- cestors, when echoes of great battles, and rumours of the deaths of kings, travelled mysteriously over Europe; when travel- stained couriers galloped through the gates of old walled cities with, in the phrase repeated by Wotton, 'lies in their mouths and truth in their packets 1 '; and when to know the news of the world, to gain the confidence of the well-informed, to study the masked faces of statesmen, and to rob the posts, was a profession in itself. In Ben Jonson's amusing comedy, The Staple of News, the methods of news-collectors are humorously described ; the play contains a phrase which seems to refer to Wotton 2 , and indeed all his life Wotton belonged to the class so wittily satirized by Ben Jonson. Even before he became an ambassador, (and the food of ambassa- dors, as he said, was news), we find him busy collecting the latest information ; and his letters, written in the old library of Vienna, are full of rumours of contemporary events, quarrels in the Imperial family, Henry IV's siege of Paris, and the marching of the Prince of Parma to relieve that famished city. The time was a troubled one for all parties. The death of Sixtus V, and of his short-lived successor, Urban VII, had left the Papal See vacant ; the fate of France, involved in the wars of the League, was still uncertain; and in Austria itself the fortunes of the house of Habsburg seemed almost at their lowest ebb. The half -mad emperor, Rudolf II, was shut up at Prague with his astrologers and soothsayers ; he seemed hopelessly in debt, the Turks harried his frontiers, his Protestant subjects were in almost open rebellion, and it appeared not unlikely that the power of the House of Habsburg would end with his reign. The young Ferdinand, who was destined to restore the fortunes of his house, and lead the forces of the Catholic reaction to so many triumphs, was then a boy of twelve. Wotton, in recounting the quarrels about his guardianship, little guessed that the boy would one day be Emperor, and he himself return to Vienna as ambassador to his Court. At the end of April, 1591, Wotton left Vienna and went to Prague ; and in June of this year we find him again at Frankfort, 1 ii, p. 213. Bacon attributes the phrase to Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester (Works, Ellis and Spedding, vii, p. 127). Webster made use of it in Vittoria Corombona, iii. i : Your mercenary post-boys : Your letters carry truth, but 'tis your guise To fill your mouths with gross and impudent lies. 3 ii, p. 10 n. JOURNEY TO ITALY 17 where he seems to have arrived before the end of May, and where, as he writes to Blotius, he had suffered from a severe and expensive illness of a month's duration. 1 In August he was again at Heidelberg, and shortly after he started for Italy, giving it out in the meantime that he was going to Constantinople. His Italian journey was an adventurous and somewhat dangerous undertaking; he wished to arrive there unknown, and under another name, and was particularly anxious to deceive his ' honest friends and country men', the English merchants abroad, from whose gossip the Spanish and Papal authorities might receive information about his plans. 2 For although Englishmen could safely enough visit Venice and Florence, and the States of the independent Italian princes, they ran the risk of arrest in Milan or Naples, as these were Spanish territories, and Philip II was at war with Elizabeth. A visit to Rome was fairly safe for the ordinary traveller, provided he could obtain Cardinal Allen's protection ; but Wotton's purpose was more than that of the ordinary traveller. He intended to penetrate as far as possible into the secrets of the Papal Court ; and to make the acquaintance, and discover the plans, of the English outlaws who congregated in Rome, and who were continually plotting the overthrow of Eliza- beth, either by assassination or by open war. This purpose, if discovered, would certainly have led to arrest and imprisonment ; and, indeed, any Englishman going to Italy for political objects had to be most careful to conceal his purpose. ' It would bring great danger upon me if it were known I were as I am/ a young English student of politics wrote from Italy at this time 3 ; and Fynes Moryson recounts how, three years later, another young Englishman who visited Rome, apparently with a purpose similar to Wotton's, was pursued as far as Siena by the Inquisi- tion, and took to his heels towards Padua, in such haste 'as he seemed to fly over the Apennine without wings '. 4 For the purpose of concealing his identity, Wotton travelled into Italy as a young German and a Roman Catholic ; and such was his fluency in his adopted language, that a German with whom he journeyed to Rome took him for a fellow countryman. Fynes Moryson, when he visited Rome, pretended to be a 1 Wotton to Blotius, Frankfort-on-Main, June 16, 1591, O.S. (Hofbibl. MS. 9737, Z. 17, f. 151). 4 i, p. 256. 8 Lord Darcy to the Lord Treasurer, Venice, June 12, 1592 (S. P. Fen.). * In., p. 159. 18 SIR HENRY WOTTON Frenchman ; and the hazardous nature of foreign travel in the time of Elizabeth is shown by the fact that Englishmen found it necessary to adopt these disguises. Wotton, indeed, who afterwards went as an Italian to Scotland, regarded a change of nationality as almost necessary for any one who would make the most of his opportunities abroad : ' he travels with mean consideration in my opinion/ he wrote, 'that is ever one countryman.' l On Nov. 4, 1591, New Style, Wotton landed in Venice at eight o'clock in the morning. 2 Of his journey thither I know nothing, save that, as he told the Doge of Venice many years later, when he crossed the Alps and came down into Italy, he loved the Italians at once with a particular affection which he never lost. 3 Italy, though fallen now under the dominion of Spain, and the deadening influences of the Catholic reaction, and no longer the home of liberty and learning, was still the main goal of English travellers, the model of culture, the great school of statecraft. When nearly fifty years later Italy had fallen still deeper into decadence, Milton found nevertheless great delight in the society of the cultivated and polite Italians of Florence ; and when Wotton, who had left England in the very dawn of its greatest day, crossed the Alps, he travelled indeed into the evening of the Italian Renaissance, but an evening from which the last glow of light had not yet faded. The Courts of Ferrara and Urbino still retained something of their old splendour ; and in Venice, where the spirit of the Renaissance remained the longest, Paolo Veronese had been dead but three years, Tintoretto was still living, and architecture was flourishing anew under the impulse given it by Palladio. Wotton's first visit to Venice, which was afterwards his home for so many years, lasted only four days. He found the climate of the city unwholesome, and 'not being made of stone' he felt he could not trust himself among the famous Venetian courtesans. 4 He went, therefore, to Padua, whence he wrote to Blotius on Nov. 30, telling of his arrival in Italy. Clusius had given him a letter to Pinelli at 1 i, p. 258. 2 Wotton to Blotius, Nov. 31, 1591, N.S. (Eofbibl. MS. 9737, Z. 17). 3 i, p. 147. * ' Istic hesi quatriduum, coactus maturare fugam turn quod urbs ad valetu- dinem minus commodo sita sit, turn etiam quod inter foeminas Venetianas non admodum confidam meis viribus, nam non consto ex lapide.' To Blotius, Nov. 30, 1591, N.S. (Hofbibl. MS. 9737, Z. 17). PADUA-ROME 19 Padua, the well-known patron of letters, who had not, how- ever, received him at his two visits. How long he would remain at Padua he did not know ; he had resolved to wait on chance, and sail towards whatever shore a favourable wind might waft him. His first impression of the Italians, like that of almost all travellers from the north, was of their politeness and perfidy ; and he wrote that he who would be always safe in Italy must not be always good. 1 The Blotius correspondence contains another glimpse of Wotton at Padua ; a young German writing to Blotius on Dec. 6 to say that Wotton had just visited him, and had sent his regards, and a message to the effect that he had changed his name, and letters to him, (if Blotius had written any), would not reach him. ' Stultus est ut nosti,' the letter concludes, ' et quoties cupio ipsum revocare ad sanctam Romanam Catholicam fidem, toties me ridet.' 2 At Padua Wotton was joined by Lord Zouche; but in March, 1592, they parted, and Wotton went to Rome, travelling, no doubt, by the way of Ancona. In his letters to Lord Zouche will be found an account of his two visits to Rome and his journey to Naples. At Rome he spent altogether more than a month, disguised as a dashing young German, drinking deep, in the German fashion, with mad German priests, and flaunting about the town with ' a mighty blue feather in a black hat '. To this mighty blue feather he trusted for safety, for it made him conspicuous, and therefore unsuspected ; and, by appearing light- minded, he would be thought harmless. He judged Rome, never- theless, from under his blue feather, with the serious eyes of a young Protestant; no Englishman, he wrote, true in his allegiance to the Queen, had seen more of the Pope and the Papal Court than he; and it was his opinion of Rome, or rather his assured knowledge, 'that her delights on earth are sweet, and her judgements in heaven heavy.' 3 Many years afterwards, when about to enter Anglican orders, Wotton related to Charles I how this, and his subsequent visits to Rome, had confirmed him in his devotion to the English Church. Rome he had found the very sink and seat of all corrup- tion, religion being converted there 'from a rule of conscience 1 ' Qui vult esse in Italia semper incolumis, non debet semper esse bonus.' (Hofbibl. MS. 9737, Z. 17.) a Heinrich Domason von Reichssniirt, Colonese, ad Blotium (Ibid.). i, p. 274. C 2 20 SIR HENRY WOTTON to an instrument of State, and from the mistress of all sciences, into a very handmaid of ambition.' l Throughout his life Wotton's hostility to Rome was more political than doctrinal. In Protestant dogma, as such, or indeed in any dogma, he seems never to have taken much interest. His religion was one of piety and trust ; a love of God which needed no very definite theology. But the political Rome, the Rome of the Inquisition, the Jesuits, and the Catholic Reaction, allied to Spain, and claiming supremacy over temporal princes, was to his mind the great political danger of the time. He had no admiration for the devotion and zeal in which the Jesuits so surpassed their Protestant adversaries ; and was not touched by that love of the ancient faith, which led back to Rome his eldest brother and several of his family, as well as some of the finest spirits of his time. Between his two visits to Rome he spent a week at Naples, where he may have seen the greatest of living Italian poets, Torquato Tasso, from whose poem Wotton had taken the subject of his Oxford play. For Tasso was then the guest of the cele- brated Manso, who, almost half a century later, acted as Milton's guide when he visited Naples. Returning to Rome from Naples, his visit was hurriedly ended by a chance meeting with an Englishman, who knew him, and who, he suspected, was in league with the Catholics, and might betray him. He went therefore to Florence, where, in the territory of a prince at peace with Elizabeth, he could resume his name and nationality. He had left Rome none too soon, as he found that information about his journey had reached the authorities, that it was known that he was travelling as a German, and both he and Lord Zouche were being watched for in the Spanish and Papal territories. 2 Nor was the risk of arrest and imprisonment in Rome the only danger that he ran. In that age of universal suspicion and treachery, his enemies, if they could not capture his person, might easily bring him into disfavour with the authorities in England, by making it appear that he had entered into intimate relations with traitors and Roman Catholics. A mysterious letter in the Record Office, written from Venice by Lord Darcy 3 , a travelling Englishman there, shows that some such attempt to 1 ii, p. 801. i, p. 276. 3 See Appendix III, where the portion of this letter referring to Lord Zouchs and Wotton is printed. FLORENCE 21 inculpate both Lord Zouche and Wotton was made at this time, apparently by sending them letters from Rome, and arranging that they should be intercepted by an English spy. Fortunately the spy brought them to Lord Darcy, who wrote at once to Burghley, otherwise both Wotton and Lord Zouche might have been forbidden to return to England. That this danger was no slight one is shown by the fact that even Sir Philip Sidney had, when abroad, fallen under the same suspicions ; and his friend Languet thought it wise to write to Walsingham to contradict these reports. 1 In Florence Wotton lodged in the house of one Baccio Buoni, a wise but wicked fallen courtier. Florence he described as ' a paradise inhabited by devils ' ; but the Italian was good, so that it was an excellent place to ' learn to speak well as to do ill '. Some knowledge of the ways of villains was a necessary part at that time of politicians' training; Wotton was afterwards destined to have many dealings with Italian knaves and spies ; and he seems to have regarded the study of Italian wickedness as a part of his preparation for his future career. He remained in Florence throughout the summer of 1 592, being under orders (no doubt from England) to stay near the Grand Duke's Court, and expecting further orders and letters of recommendation, though to whom he did not know. 2 During his first visit to Italy he became acquainted, Walton tells us, with the most eminent men for learning and all manner of arts ; but the only letters written by him at this time which have been preserved are more of a political than personal character, and give little information about his tastes and friends. Many years later, how- ever, he speaks of his admiration for the Pitti Palace, which he thought ' for solid architecture the most magnificent and regular pile within the Christian world ', 3 and the phrase shows that he had already acquired that taste for the noble and severe archi- tecture of the Late Renaissance which he expressed many years later in his little book on the elements of architecture. In October he went from Florence to Siena, where his host was Scipione Alberti, an old gentleman to whom Wotton often after- wards referred in his letters. Alberti, as steward at Rome, forty years before, to Giovanni Caraffa, Duke of Palliano and 1 Pears, Correspondence of Sidney and Languet, 1845, p. 92. 2 i, p. 287. 8 ii, p. 298. Wotton refers to the new court built at about this time by Ammanati ; the present front of the Pitti Palace had not yet been built. 22 SIR HENRY WOTTON nephew of Paul IV, had lived through the tragedy of the Caraffa family 1 a terrible and famous story like that of the Cenci and of Vittoria Accoramboni and on winter evenings, in some dark old palace of Siena, would tell his young English guest tales of horror and assassination, hardly to be equalled in the bloodiest Italian tragedies of Ford or Webster. 'With him,' Wotton o wrote long afterwards to Milton, ' I had often much chat of those affairs, into which he took pleasure to look back from his native harbour.' 2 The impression that Wotton made on his Italian friends, his goodness, his great learning, and courteous wit, can be dimly discerned beneath the flowery rhetoric of a little book written at this time by a learned Sienese, to help him in his study of Italian literature. 3 Early in the year 1593 Wotton went to Rome for a third visit, carrying with him as a guide for his conduct the phrase of his old Italian host, ' I pensieri stretti e il viso sciolto,' or as Wotton, who was fond of quoting the phrase, afterwards translated it, 'Your thoughts close, and your countenance loose, will go safely over the whole world.' In Rome he seems to have spent some weeks, and to have returned from thence to Florence. He next appears at Geneva, where he arrived on June 22, Old Style, after travelling through Genoa, the Milanese, and across one of the Grison passes. He felt (as he wrote Lord Zouche) that he had left a discreet country too soon ; he wished, however, to perfect himself in the French language ; and the memory of his meeting 1 The Duke of Palliano murdered his wife, and was tried and executed after the death of Paul IV. Modern readers are familiar with the story from Stend- hal's relation of it in his volume ISAbbesse de Castro. Stendhal states that his account is taken from a manuscript he discovered, written by one of the Duchess's household. This was possibly Scipione Alberti himself, who gave Wotton a narrative of 'The death of the Duchess of Palliano in the bloody times of Paul IV ' (i, p. 298). J. A. Symonds also tells the story in his Catholic Reaction, chap. v. 2 ii, p. 382. 3 J Fonti Toscani cC Orazio Lombardelli, Senese, Accademico Umoroso, Firenze, 1598. This book, being a treatise on the best Italian authors, is written in the form of an epistle, ' All' Illustre Signore, il Signore Arrigo Vuottoni Inglese, 1 and dated Siena, the Feast of the Purification, 1592 (Feb. 2, 1592-3). Lombavdelli states that Wotton had been introduced to him by Roberto Titi (a Florentine advocate and poet, who was afterwards professor at Bologna and then at Pisa, where he died in 1609), and speaks of the strong friendship between the three, and espe- cially praises Wotton's' innata bonta, cortese piacevolezza ', his ' bellissimo ingenio, finissimo giudizio, essendo in cosi verde eta, e nelle piu pregiate lingue, e nelle piii utili scienze, tanto nobilmente ammaestrato' (pp. 3, 4, 132). Wotton men- tions this book in a list he made out of Italian authors (see Appendix IV). In the Rawl. MSS. at the Bodleian there is a notice of a copy of I Fonti, to which is prefixed a letter from Wotton to Sir Maurice Berkeley, dated April 19, 1595 (B. 265, f. 13 b). I have not been able to find this volume. 23 with Casaubon three years before, and the desire to profit by his learning and society, drew him to Geneva, where Casaubon lived as Professor of Greek in the Academy of the little Republic. No good Protestant, moreover, would complete his foreign trip without a visit to this heroic city, the capital of continental Protestantism, ever threatened with ruin by the Catholic Duke of Savoy, but ever triumphant over his plots and armies. By the help of a common friend, Richard Thomson, a Cambridge scholar and collector of MSS., he succeeded in being taken as a lodger into Casaubon's house l . Here he remained with Casau- bon for fourteen months, a delightful period of studious com- panionship, of reading, and infinite talk, to which they both often referred in their letters afterwards. ' Ah, what days those were,' Casaubon wrote eight years later, ' when heedless of the lateness of the hour we passed whole nights in lettered talk ! I hanging on your stories of all you had seen of many men and many lands ; you pleased to hear somewhat of my desultory readings. Oh ! that was life worth living ! pure happiness ! I cannot recall those times without groaning in spirit.' 2 Wotton had much to tell of Oxford, his German wanderings, his Italian friends and adventures ; while Casaubon guided and advised his young guest in his reading of the Greek authors. Although, as Wotton wrote, they were at Geneva rather scholars than politicians, and sooner good than wise, Wotton did not apparently forget his political ambitions, and if the pos- thumous work, The State of Christendom, printed in 1657, is, as I believe, correctly ascribed to Wotton, it must have been written at this time. The book, however, is a puzzling one, and I deal in an appendix with the question of its date and author- ship. 3 That it was written in 1594, and not, as Wotton's biographers have all stated, in 1600 or 1601, is plain to any one who has read it. The State of Christendom is a folio of about three hundred pages ; the style is tiresomely euphuistic, and the book is overloaded with long historical digressions and parallels from classic authors. Apart from the evidence it gives in some- what pedantic fashion of immense and varied reading, it is mainly interesting as an exposition of the political ideas of an intelligent and travelled young Englishman of the time. In his 1 Cas., Epist., p. 578. 2 Ibid., p. 153. Translated, Pattison, p. 380. 3 Appendix II. 24 SIR HENRY WOTTON discussion of contemporary affairs the author shows remarkable insight. He had already discovered the weakness of that bugbear of the time, the Spanish monarchy; and he saw with insight equally remarkable the strength and growth of the Dutch Republic, whose power, he says, might almost be compared with that of the mightiest princes of the world l , and was likely to grow into a dangerous rival of the English nation. 2 He foresaw too the danger of France becoming too powerful, should Henry IV triumph over the forces of the League ; and the point of view throughout is that of a practical politician, more anxious to maintain the balance of power by fomenting troubles among the rivals of his country, than for the triumph of any great principle. He justifies not only the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, but Henry Ill's murder of the Guises. He also defends, in a curious passage, the statesmen and ambassadors who took bribes from foreign princes 3 ; and, save for a noble defence of religious toleration 4 , one would look in vain for principles raised above the somewhat unscrupulous political morality of the time. What gives this book its greatest value is the spirit which pervades it of passionate and triumphant patriotism. He shows in its full fervour the awakening of national consciousness and national pride, which dates from the defeat of the Armada, and characterizes the great literary creations of the epoch that immediately followed. This sense of the greatness of England was embodied in the figure of the heroic queen ; and the most eloquent passage in the book is a lofty and noble panegyric of Elizabeth. Avoiding the fulsome praises of her aged personal attractions, in which most of his contemporaries indulged, the author celebrates her as a martial and invincible princess, made glorious by her victory over the force and power of Spain. With the heightened style of the Elizabethan dramatists, he gives a sombre and sinister picture of Philip II, grown old and morose in evil, and still plotting by day and by night to trouble and conquer all the nations of Europe. Was he not ' the terror of princes, the controller of kings, the monarch of the world ' ? ' Now if a woman hath presumed to encounter with this man; if a queen of one island hath undertaken to bridle a prince of so many nations,' did not this surpass the glory of all the old heroes of antiquity ? ' Are not their praises 1 p. 103. p . 259. 8 Supplement, pp. 7, 8. * pp. 129-31. RETURN TO ENGLAND 25 eclipsed, their honours blemished, and their renown obscured ? ' He finds in the vain attempts to assassinate Elizabeth a proof of divine favour and protection. ' The Lord hath said that His elect shall not be confounded with human wisdom ; He hath said, and we may swear, that heaven and earth shall sooner perish than His word shall fail. Why then do the princes rage? Why then do the Pope and the King of Spain fret and fume against the Lord's Anointed 1 ? Against His chosen Vessel? Against His dear Virgin?' 1 Wotton, although he had intended to return to England in the spring of 1594, remained at Geneva till nearly the end of August. The want of money for travelling and for the payment of his debts was probably the cause of delay. As the remittances he was expecting did not arrive, he finally borrowed money and bought a horse on the credit of Casaubon, to whom he owed thirty-three gold crowns for board and lodging, giving him an order for money which he expected to be sent to the Autumnal Mart at Frankfort. The total amount for which Casaubon was responsible was 263 gold crowns, besides the price of the horse, an enormous sum for a poor scholar, but which was intended to be repaid within a few weeks' time. 2 Wotton left Geneva on Aug. 24 3 , meaning to travel down the Rhine to Heidelberg and the Low Countries. He carried letters of introduction from Casaubon to Marquard Freher at Heidelberg, to Melchior Junius, Rector of the Academy at Strassburg, and two copies of Casaubon's recently printed edition of the Apology of Apuleius, one for Scaliger, one for the younger Dousa, both of them at Leyden. The letter to Junius has been preserved, and gives us another glimpse of Wotton at this time. ' A noble Englishman,' Casaubon describes him, ' a youth adorned with all the virtues, who has lived many years abroad in order that, returning home at length, he might truly recall the account of Ulysses, that he had seen the cities of many men, and known their minds. Wherever he comes, therefore, his first care is to meet with those from whose company he may depart a better and a wiser man.' 4 1 pp. 84-91. 4 Casaubon to Wotton, Epist., pp.578, 579. To Scaliger, p. 11. Pattison, p. 42. 3 Casaubon to Marquard Freher. ' Hodie iter instituit Anglus quidani nobilis, cui literas ad te dedi, Frehere amicissime. a.d. IX Kal. Septemb. cioioxciv.' Epist., p. 576. 4 ' Qui tibi has litteras reddit, vir clarissime, nobilis Anglus est, iuvenis omnibus virtutibus ornatissimus. Is multos iam annos peregre versatur, ut 26 SIR HENRY WOTTON We next hear of Wotton at Leyden, whence Scaliger wrote in November to Casaubon to say that the copy of Apuleius had been delivered. 1 Wotton was back in England before the end of the year; but in the meantime, by his fault or misfortune, Casaubon was plunged into great trouble and embarrassment. The money which was to have been received at the Frankfort Mart had not arrived ; none of Wotton's debts were paid, and his creditors came down on the impecunious scholar for their money. Casaubon was in despair; it seemed to his excitable mind that complete overthrow and ruin threatened him. To Wotton he wrote a pathetic letter begging and imploring that the money might be paid. 2 This letter he sent to Scaliger to forward to Thomson, whom he asked to see that it was delivered. To Scaliger and Thomson, and to the French scholar and diplomatist Bongars, he related the whole story. 3 Scaliger took up the case warmly and wrote himself to Thomson. 4 At the next Frankfort Mart in the spring the money arrived and Casaubon was paid in full. 5 By Casaubon's and his own biographers Wotton has been very much blamed for this incident. The original misfortune was not, however, as Casaubon admitted, Wotton's fault 6 ; and the delay in pay- ment may have been due to the fact that there was no safe way of sending money to so distant a place as Geneva, save by the Frankfort Mart, where English traders would meet with traders from Geneva; and that Wotton was therefore compelled to wait till the next Mart in the spring to pay his debt. tandem domum revertens vere possit elogium Ulyssis referre, iro\\wv d ISfiv dffTta, KO.I voov yvwvat. Quacunque igitur venit, prima illi semper cura conveniendi viros, a quorum avvovaia et melior et doctior possit discedere. . . . Genevae, a. d. X Kalend. Septemb. cioioxciv.' Epist., p. 575. 1 ' Apologiam tuam, vel potius meam, Wultonus nuper mihi reddidit. Lugduni Batavorum, XII Kalend. Decemb. CIOIDXCHII.' Seal., Epist., p. 151. 2 Cas., Epist., pp. 578-9. Ibid., pp. 11, 578. * Scalig., Epist., p. 152. 5 Casaubon to Scaliger a. d. XIII Kalend. lunias cio 10 xcv. ' Qui adversis meis doluisti, gaude nunc laetis, Vir nobilissime. Recrearunt me proximae nundinae Francofurtenses, tarn felices mihi quam fuerunt superiores infaustae. W. satis- fecit.' . . . Cas., Epist., p, 19. 6 ' In molestias maximas, non sua culpa, me coniecerit ; sed perfidia quorundam mercatorum, quibus cum illo res saepe fuerat.' To Scaliger, Epist., p. 11. CHAPTER III IN THE SERVICE OF ESSEX; SECOND VISIT TO THE CONTINENT. 1594-1603 HENRY WOTTON'S years of travel and study were now for the time over ; he had returned to England to seek his fortune, endowed with great learning, much experience, and a wide knowledge of European politics and languages. He was then noted by many, Izaak Walton writes, ' both for his person and comportment ; for indeed he was of a choice shape, tall of stature, and of a most persuasive behaviour ; which was so mixed with sweet discourse and civilities, as gained him love from all persons with whom he entered into an acquaintance. And whereas he was noted in his youth to have a sharp wit, and apt to jest ; that by time, travel, and conversation was so polished, and made so useful, that his company seemed to be one of the delights of mankind.' His character, as we shall find it determining his future career, was now formed. A wit and courtier, with the self-possession of a man of action, ready for any adventure and disguise, he was yet by nature and inclination a scholar and student ; and beneath his cosmopolitan experience, and the taste and culture of Italy, he had preserved something of the simplicity and piety of the old Wottons, and an untouched devo- tion to the religion of his country. Whom, free from Germany's schisms, and lightness Of France, and fair Italy's faithlessness, Having from these sucked all they had of worth And brought home that faith which you carried forth, I thoroughly love, 1 his friend Donne wrote to him in a verse-epistle which, as Mr. Gosse has proved, belongs to about this period, 2 and which gives us another glimpse of Wotton through contemporary eyes. But it is vain to search history for perfect beings. Izaak Walton, who saw every one in the light of his own beautiful and pious nature, has given to Wotton's life a character of sanctity which it may have possessed in his retired and religious old age, 1 Chambers, ii, p. 9. 8 Gosse, i, p. 76. 28 but which one can hardly expect to find in one of the young courtiers of Elizabeth. There is plenty of evidence to show that observers, less friendly than Donne, watched Wotton with the distrust of the traditional ' Inglese Italianato ' with a certain suspicion of his sincerity and good faith. Even Donne's epistle might read like an admonition to 'Utopian youth grown old Italian', a warning against the notion that one could touch pitch and not be stained, could know vices and not act them. Throughout Wotton's active career we have the curious phenome- non of a man leading an unusually blameless life, in an age when great qualities were almost always associated with great faults and misdeeds, a man against whom a definite accusation was seldom or never brought, and who was yet frequently suspected of double-dealing and sinister motives. It would almost seem as if Wotton had learned only too well the need of disguise impressed on him by his old host in Siena ; and finding in Italy ' that he who would be safe must not always be good ', had decided that even for the virtuous, an appearance of subtlety and evil was a useful part of the mask which, for his own protection, the wise man must wear. However this may be, his habit of concealing his thoughts was enough to make him an object of suspicion ; and, in any case, a travelled Englishman, returning home with foreign manners and foreign phrases, was but doubt- fully regarded by his sturdy and straightforward compatriots. But Wotton's character was not without definite faults, both in reality and appearance. ' An undervaluer of money,' as Izaak Walton gently puts it, we shall find him, like most of his contem- poraries, often in pecuniary difficulties, and, like them, not un- willing to accept secret gifts of money. But, perhaps, for the life he had chosen, his greatest fault was a certain carelessness or nonchalance of character, a bookish abstraction and love of quiet, which, in future years, made him sometimes forget absent friends and neglect routine obligations. For the present, however, he was but a youth, mingling, with the hopes and ambitions of youth, in the life and politics of the English Court. These years at the end of the sixteenth century are of supreme importance in the history of literature, although politically the great days of Elizabeth's reign were over. The Queen had grown old ; the famous statesmen of her reign were either dead or dying, and the last years were troubled by personal quarrels and her own follies. The faction between Essex and the Cecils, THE EARL OF ESSEX 29 which occupies the foreground of the history of this decade, was a strife, not for principle or faith, but for personal power and the favour of the Queen. But this struggle must always remain interesting on account of the great personalities involved, the dramatic incidents, and the tragic ending. We are, however, only concerned with the modest part played in it by the young Henry (or, as his contemporaries called him, Harry) Wotton. When he returned to England, late in the year 1594, his hope of winning the favour of some great man was speedily fulfilled; and by the solicitation of his brother, Sir Edward Wofcton, he was taken, almost immediately, into the service of the Queen's favourite, the Earl of Essex. 1 Essex at this time was not only ambitious of military glory, but had come to desire political power as well. As foreign affairs were the great preoccupation of the time when Elizabeth was excommuni- cated, and still at war with Spain, and continually threatened from abroad, Essex devoted his wealth and energies to obtaining early and accurate information from foreign countries. He maintained, in rivalry with Burghley, what might almost be called a foreign office of his own, with news-agents and spies ; and by 1594 much of the foreign correspondence, greatly to the annoyance of the Cecils, passed through his hands. In 1595 Wotton entered the Middle Temple 2 , but he was never called to the Bar. Already in the summer of this year he had become, as he wrote his friend Blotius, one of the secretaries of Essex. 3 A paper, preserved among the Cecil MSS., signed ' Harry Wotton ', giving the names of his political acquaintances 1 On Dec. 12, 1596, Wotton wrote to Casaubon that he had been two years in England (i, p. 302). Among a number of copies of Anthony Bacon's letters at Lambeth, is an unsigned letter to Sir Edward Wotton, endorsed Dec. 20, 1594 : ' Sir, having found by my Lord that you had not as yet motioned unto his lord- ship that which it pleased you to mention unto me yesternight of my cousin your brother, I was so bold in kindness to take the opportunity to let my Lord understand your desire and purpose, which my Lord took very kindly, and with most honourable acknowledgement of the merit of your devoted love towards him, asserted without any solicitation ; and assured me with great affection that he would receive him, place him, and employ him in the best sort, and do him what good he could hereafter ' (Lambeth MS. 650, no. 214). This letter is almost certainly by Anthony Bacon, who was Essex's secretary, and a cousin to the Wottons (see Appendix III, under Francis Bacon). a Foster, Ox. 3 ' Vivo in aula apud Comitem Essexium, qui me secretarium loco dignatur, et (nisi Domini mei amor fallit) dignus est cui et ultima Thule serviat.' Wotton to Blotius, ex aula Nonis lulianis cio 10 x cv (Hofbibl. MS. 9737, Z. 17, f. 363). Two letters from Essex to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, written in Wotton's hand and signed by Essex, are preserved at Florence (Arch. Med. 4183, March 5, 1597, Jan. 18, 1598J. 30 SIR HENRY WOTTON and correspondents abroad, who might be useful in the way of providing information, was probably written at the time of his return, and addressed to Essex. 1 We soon find him employed by Essex in confidential business. In October, 1595, he visited, on the behalf of Essex, the Markgraf of Baden 2 , then in London ; and in December of this year he was entrusted with a mission of some delicacy, being sent to Paris to entice home a certain Godfrey Aleyn, who had gone from England to France as secretary to the exiled Spanish Minister, Antonio Perez. Perez had been sent by Essex on a mission to Henry IV ; Aleyn had intercepted some of his letters and sent copies to England ; and Essex, fearing the secrets he might reveal, was anxious to get him back before he knew his treachery was discovered. Wotton arrived in Paris on Dec. 13, 1595 (0. S.), and arranged an ingenious plot with Perez. Perez was to pretend that Wotton had brought important letters from Essex, so important that he could not trust Wotton, as he did not know him very well, with the answers. He, therefore, made Aleyn believe that he had prepared two sets of ciphers, and that he would give the real ones to Aleyn in secret, sending him to England ostensibly to bring back a sum of money he had left there, while Wotton was to be given the second set, which he should think were the real ones. Aleyn, thinking he was deceiving Wotton, was himself deceived, and, as Perez wrote, 'took the hook readily into his jaws', and, returning to England, delivered his papers full of unmeaning ciphers, and was at once arrested and put in the Clink prison, where he remained six months. 3 In 1596 Wotton sailed with Essex on the famous Cadiz expedition 4 , which has been too often written about to need 1 i, p. 299. 2 Cal. Cecil MSS., v, p. 400. 3 Birch, Elizabeth, i. 344-7. The letters of Perez to Essex about this affair are in the Kecord Office. The first, of Dec. 25, N.S., tells of the arrival of ' Ottonus '. The second, of Dec. 29, is endorsed in Wotton's hand, ' Received in Paris by a post.' The third, of Dec. 31, is endorsed by Wotton, ' Reed, at Dieppe on Friday, 2 of January, 1595 VO.S.). The fourth, of Jan. 7, 1596, is endorsed by Essex, ' Reed, by H. Wotton (S. P. France). * Dr. Ward has questioned Izaak Walton's statement that Wotton went on these expeditions, or was with Essex in Ireland (Ward, p. 33). That he was in Ireland is proved by the letter of April 19, 1599 (i, p. 307). The letter of May 29, 1596, with the phrase ' if I return ', makes it seem probable that he went to Cadiz ; and the fact is proved by the report of the trial of Sir Anthony Ashley for peculation on this expedition. Henry Wotton was called as a witness in this trial to prove that Ashley had boasted that Essex was going to make over some of the prisoners to him (ArchaeoL, xxii, p. 181). As for the Azores expedition, we have only Walton's word ; but as he was right about the others, there is no difficulty in accepting his statement in regard to this. IN THE SERVICE OF ESSEX 31 description here. His brother, James Wotton, and his friends, Arthur Throckmorton and John Donne, were of the company. Donne, then a youth of twenty-three, was in personal attendance on the Earl of Essex, and was perhaps induced by Wotton to join the expedition. It is probable that the two friends sailed on Essex's ship, the Ark Royal ; and we can imagine the thoughts of these young men setting out, not unlike the Argonauts on a famous adventure, with the heroes of their time, and how they watched the gathering in of the fleet towards evening, as ship greeted ship with sound of trumpets and noise of cheerful voices. They may have been witnesses, too, of that famous moment when Raleigh rowed back from the ship of the commander of the expedition, Lord Thomas Howard, and passing under the Ark Royal told the great news that Cadiz was to be attacked to Essex, who in his joy threw his hat far into the sea, shouting ' Entramos, entramos ! ' Wotton also went on the Azores expedition in 1597, which he afterwards described, contrary to the verdict of history, as the best of the voyages of Essex ' for the discovery of the Spanish weakness, and otherwise almost a saving voyage'. 1 About Wotton's life while in the service of Essex, we have not much information. Only eleven letters, written between the years 1595 and 1600, seem to have been preserved ; and although his name appears occasionally in the Bacon papers, the references are for the most part of no great importance. They show, however, that the dependents of Essex quarrelled among themselves, and that some of them at least felt towards Wotton that distrust and suspicion which his conduct or his manner aroused in unfriendly observers. Edward Reynolds, another of the Earl's secretaries, wrote to Anthony Bacon that he observed ' some spleen in his carriage' 2 ; and when in 1596 Essex sent Dr. Henry Hawkins on a political mission to Italy, Bacon accused Wotton of keeping back some letters of introduction, which were found ' in a mer- 1 Reliq., 4th ed., p. 178. a Wotton and Reynolds had disagreed about procuring a passport for a young German, the Baron of Zeirotine, who wished to go to Scotland. Reynolds wrote : ' Mr. Wotton and I had some cross words about this passport which he purposed to receive of Mr. Warde, and to pick a thank of the Baron ' (Lambeth MS. 656, no. 40). Anthony Bacon, in entrusting the affair to Reynolds, wrote March 9, 1595-6 : 'Thus you see how, with my cousin Wotton's leave, I presume to burden you and to spare him, till I find by the like good proof, the like strength in the faculties of his mind, to wit, judgement and memory, as also in the best affections that can possess a man's heart ; I mean natural kindness and due thankfulness ' (Hid., no. 54 ; Birch, Eliz., i. 441-3). 32 SIR HENRY WOTTON chant's window in London by my Cousin Harry Wotton's dutiful care and discreet address '. Bacon wrote to Essex begging that the matter might be sifted to the bottom 1 , and to Hawkins telling of the discovery of the letters, and adding : ' but let us leave my cousin for such as he is ; but doubt you not but I have and will improve this my cousin's prank and your disaster for his shame and your advantage the best I can.' 2 Wotton declared, however, that the letters discovered in London were duplicates, and that the originals had been sent; and as we shortly afterwards find Wotton in the position of secretary for Italian and German business, it is plain that Anthony Bacon's accusations did not injure him in his patron's eyes. 3 In spite of the bitter rivalry between Essex and Sir Robert Cecil, an appearance of friendly relations between the two leaders and their followers was maintained; and just before the sailing of the Cadiz expedition, we find Henry Wotton writing to Cecil, (who was a friend of his brother Edward, and afterwards his own greatest patron), about a lease of property, belonging to New College, which he wished to procure. The College authorities were reluctant to grant this favour ; but Court influence seems to have proved too strong, and in 1599 the Manor of Stanton St. John was leased to Henry Wotton at a rent of six pounds a year. 4 Another letter to Cecil written at the end of 1597 has been preserved. It is about a diplomatic mission to Germany on which Wotton was expecting to be sent, but which eventually was entrusted to some one else. The letter to Blotius already mentioned, two letters to Casaubon, and one apparently to the Earl of Essex are, with the letters to Cecil, all that remains of Henry Wotton's correspondence for the years 1595-8. 5 To Casaubon he 1 Lambeth MS. 659, no. 16 ; Birch, Eliz., ii, p. 149. a Lambeth MS. 659, no. 164. 3 Birch, Elis., i, p. 243. Wotton, in his Parallel (Rdiq., 4th ed., p. 169), accuses Anthony Bacon of procuring a gift of Essex House from Essex by a threat to betray to Queen Elizabeth the correspondence between Essex and James VL The improbability of this story has been demonstrated by Birch and Spedding, and other writers. How the story may have arisen is explained by Spedding, N. & Q., 2nd ser., iii, p. 252. 4 i, p. 302. The Oxford colleges were occasionally forced, by influence of the Crown and Court, to grant leases of college property to needy courtiers on advantageous terms. For a similar case in connexion with All Souls College (in which Sir Walter Raleigh was concerned) see Collectanea, Oxford Hist. Soc. i. 183. 6 Donne's verse-epistle (ante, p. 27) belongs to the year 1598, and in this year T. Bastard printed in his Chrestoleros two epigrams addressed to Henry Wotton (Bk. iv, pp. 39, 102). The first is as follows : Wotton, the country and the country swain How can they yield a poet any sense ? How can they stir him up, or heat his vein? WITH ESSEX IN IRELAND 33 wrote apologizing for his long silence, and recalling the happy and studious days they had spent together ; and to Essex, writing from Plymouth, a few days after the return from the Azores expedition, he sends news he had received from a correspondent in Berne, about the attempts of Philip II to win the Swiss from their allegiance to Henry IV. In 1599 Wotton accompanied Essex on his disastrous expedition to Ireland. After a stormy passage they landed at Dublin on April 14 ; and on the 19th Wotton wrote to his fellow secretary, Edward Reynolds (who had remained at Court), expressing good hopes for the campaign. In two unsigned letters which I believe to have been written by Wotton to John Donne, and which I include in these volumes, 1 will be found the impression which Ireland made on the followers of Essex ; a country in which there was almost nothing, ' but it is savage or wanton/ and whose people ' wanted nothing more than to be kept in fear ' a view of the Irish which, rightly or wrongly, has often been entertained by subsequent visitors to that island. It is not necessary to follow the course of this famous and unfortunate Irish adventure, which ended in the disgraceful treaty with Tyrone, the rebel leader. Wotton, as secretary of Essex, was one of the principal negotiators of the treaty. 'The Earl of Essex sent me with the necessary instructions,' he told the Doge of Venice eight years afterwards, when Tyrone had fled to Italy, ' and I went to the army of the Earl of Tyrone, which numbered 25,000 Irishmen; I stayed with him a whole day. How can they feed him with intelligence ? You have the fire that can a wit inflame, In happy London, England's fairest eye : Well may you poets have of worthy name, Which have the food and life of poetry. And yet the country or the town may sway Or bear a part, as clowns do in a play. Thomas Zouch says that Bastard addressed Wotton as a poet (Walton's Lives, ed. 1796, p. 191), but, as Hannah points out, the epigram proves no more than that Wotton was a friend and patron of poets (J. Hannah, p. xii), Wotton in his poem on the death of Sir Albertus Morton, 1625, writes : Oh my unhappy Lines ! you that before Have served my youth to vent some wanton cries. (Ibid., p. 41.) But of his early poems only one has been preserved under his name, the one beginning, O faithless World, and thy most faithless part, A Woman's Heart. This was printed in Davison's Poetical Rapsody, 1602, with the signature H. W., and reprinted in the Reliq., 1st ed., p. 516, with the title ' A Poem written by Sir Henry Wotton, in his youth '. It has also been ascribed to Benjamin Rudyard. (J. Hannah, p. 4.) 1 i, pp. 306-10. WOTTON. I 34 Sill HENRY WOTTON Tyrone, he added, was as cunning and suspicious a character as could be found l ; and this day spent in his camp, negotiating this humiliating treaty with ' Carmoc Mac Gonnis, Mac Giure, Mac Cowley ' and others, left a vivid impression on Wotton's mind; and his habitual kindliness of judgement is a little obscured whenever afterwards the Irish are mentioned in his letters. When Essex injudiciously and hurriedly returned to England in September, Wotton came with him, bringing the articles of the treaty which had so enraged the Queen. 2 For the next eighteen months the fate of Essex remained uncertain; the heroic old Queen now seemed determined on his disgrace, now showed touches of relenting; until at length, urged on by rash councils and his own desperation, the unfortunate young man was hurried into open rebellion c the last act,' as Wotton described it, * which was written in the Book of necessity.' Of Wotton's own whereabouts, his thoughts and fears during this time, we know very little. Belonging to the more moderate section of the Earl's followers, he probably tried to counteract the dangerous influence of Henry Cuffe, his fellow secretary ; and Cuffe, or some others of Essex's party, took advantage of this, and of a nearer alliance between Sir Edward Wotton and Cecil, to make Henry Wotton's loyalty suspected by Essex. Foreseeing the tragic outcome of a situation he was powerless to remedy, and in disgrace with the Queen, who was bitterly incensed against all who had shared in the surrender to Tyrone, Wotton took the safe course of retiring abroad ; and he was already far on his way to Italy, when the final catastrophe overwhelmed Essex and his rasher adherents. The authenticated facts of the next three years of Henry Wotton's life read more like romance than history ; and even our information about them is sometimes derived from curious and unexpected sources. The first mention of his name during this period appears in a bundle of old letters, ill-spelt, often almost illegible, and full of curiously misplaced moral platitudes, written by certain Italian spies and assassins, and preserved in the archives of the quiet old town of Lucca. When Henry Wotton went abroad this second time, he took 1 Cal, S. P. Fen., xi, p. 70. 2 H. Wotton hath both the articles of cessation, signed by Tyrone, and the in- structions I gave to treat, and is best able to deliver all circumstances, the whole business being chiefly left to Sir Warham Sentleger, and to him.' Relation of Essex, Sept. 30, 1599 (Cal. S. P. Irish, 1599-1600, p. 160). AMERIGO SALVETTI 35 with him his young nephew, Pickering Wotton, Sir Edward Wotton's eldest surviving son. With Pickering Wotton travelled a certain Lucchese gentleman, Alessandro Antelminelli, who, how- ever, called himself Amerigo Salvetti,having good reason to conceal a name famous in the history of Lucca and Italy. For the family of Antelminelli (or Interminelli as Wotton and others spelt the name) were collaterally descended from Castruccio Castracani, who was tyrant of Lucca in Dante's time. A few years before, Bernardino Antelminelli, father of the young Alessandro, passing by the borders of the little Lucchese Republic, had been heard to boast that by right of inheritance, the lord- ship of Lucca belonged to him ; and he had subsequently attempted, by means of forged documents, to establish his direct descent in the male line from the famous tyrant. The Republic, which existed in ever-present fear of conquest, was much alarmed by these pretensions of Bernardino (especially as he was known to be in the pay of their great enemy, the Grand Duke of Tuscany) and resolved to exterminate the whole family. The Govern- ment succeeded in capturing and putting to death Bernardino and three of his sons l ; but one son, this Alessandro, escaped to England on hearing of his father's execution. He was condemned to death, and a large reward offered for his capture or assassina- tion. And then began one of the most curious stories that can be found in the pages of history. For fifty years the unfortunate man was hunted by the spies and assassins of the little Republic, frequently in danger of his life, but always escaping ; and after long and hazardous journeys about Europe, he finally settled in England, and in the year 1618 was appointed Tuscan Resident at the English Court. 2 Even this position did not prevent attempts at his assassination ; but they were always unsuccessful, and he finally died in 1657, at the ripe age of eighty-five, leaving several sons, one of whom succeeded him in his office of Tuscan Resident. The letters preserved at Lucca concerning this long persecution (letters of spies and assassins, letters from Salvetti pleading his 1 Lucresia Buonvisi, S. Bongi, 1864, pp. 165-171. Bernardino and his eldest son were beheaded in 1596. The young English poet. Francis Davison, who was in Lucca at the time, gives in a letter to his father, William Davison, an account of the execution. (Davison, i, p. xxiv.) 3 His dispatches, the Salvetti news-letters, of which there are transcripts in the British Museum, are a source of information, well known to historians about the times of Charles I and the Commonwealth. D a 36 SIR HENRY WOTTON innocence, and begging for pardon) make most curious reading * ; we must, however, confine ourselves to the information about Wotton which they contain. On Dec. 13, 1600, Marcantonio Franciotti, a Lucchese spy in London, wrote that Salvetti had left England about fifteen days previously in the company of Pickering and Henry Wotton. They were travelling to Italy, but meant to stop at Paris for the marriage festivals of Henry IV and Marie de' Medici. Franciotti recommended that an assassin should be sent to Paris, as the occasion was a favourable one for murdering Salvetti. 2 A certain captain Jacobo Lucchezini, was given 100 crowns, and a letter of credit for 200 more, and sent to Paris for this purpose 3 ; but, like all the Lucchese assassins, he accomplished nothing. Salvetti and the two Wottons were traced to Lyons, (whither another assassin was sent), and then to Pisa, where they arrived about the end of February, 1601. While at Pisa, Wotton, as he afterwards wrote, discovered that Salvetti was a man condemned to death in his own country, and forbad him his house 4 ; but in spite of this they seem to have left Pisa together on March 2 for Florence, where they arrived on the 4th. 5 A letter to Casaubon, written at this time, shows how deeply Wotton felt the change in his fortunes caused by the fall of Essex. 6 He could not act the stoic, and pretend that by the loss of Court favour he had lost nothing ; on the contrary, he had lost much. His past life had been the sport of false hopes, his future must be one of wandering and exile and as the fresh memory of his misfortunes comes over him, he interrupts his 1 The most mysterious of documents are a series of Latin letters from a person calling himself Federigo Landsciott. In these letters, which begin in 1604, the so-called Landsciott (who states that he was in Genoa in 1596, when the treachery of Bernardino Antelminelli was discovered) offers to sell information concerning the whereabouts of Salvetti. Payments were made to his agents, but the information was not forthcoming, and the authorities of Lucca finally came to the conclusion that they were being tricked by this mysterious personage. * AM, 12. 3 Ibid., 15, Jan. 4, 1601. See i, p. 401 n. 5 AM, 15, March 8, 1601. * i, p. 311. On Dec. 8, 1600, Casaubon had written to Wotton from Paris in answer to a letter that has not been preserved, in which Wotton told of the change in his fortunes (due to the disgrace of Essex), and indulged in moralizings on the instability of human fate. Casaubon answers in the same key, 'Man is indeed as you write "an image of instability, a plaything of fortune".' But amid all the changes of life, his friendship for Wotton would remain ever constant ; above all things it behoved lovers of philosophy to preserve eternally friendships formed with men of their own sect. In the frequent writing of letters to which Wotton challenged him, 'he would be no slothful adversary.' (Cas., Epist,, p. 594.) SIR ANTHONY SHERLEY 37 letter. But when he takes up his pen again, it is to write of the consolations he found in the shipwreck of his fortunes, his affection for Casaubon, the memory of their happy days together, and the love of literature and learning, which was the basis of their friendship. He begs Casaubon to write to him in Greek, and promises to answer in the same language. There is a great contrast in sincerity of feeling between this letter from Florence, and the letter to Casaubon written five and a half years before from Elizabeth's Court, and interrupted by the distractions of business and affairs. 1 The protestations of affection, the phrases recalling their companionship of old, which seem forced and half sincere in the earlier letter, have a genuine ring about them now, when Wotton had learnt by bitter experience the instability of worldly hopes. But shortly after this letter was written, Henry Wotton started out again in the hunt for fortune, and again in curious company. For about the middle of March there had arrived at Florence that famous traveller and adventurer, Sir Anthony Sherley, whose history is too well known to need recounting here. It will, however, be remembered that in 1599, Sherley had gone to Persia, on a mission to the Shah ; and that in the following year, the Shah had sent him, with a nobleman of his Court and a train of Persians, on a diplomatic mission to the princes of Europe, to urge them to combine with Persia against the Turk. Sherley had been in Russia, the Emperor Rudolf had welcomed him at Prague, and he was now on his way to Rome to see the Pope. Henry Wotton and Anthony Sherley were connected by family ties, 2 and had been together with their patron Essex, on the voyage to the Azores. Sherley now introduced Wotton to the notice of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, 3 and when, early in April, he went with his Persian attendants to Rome, Wotton went with them. Salvetti followed, and joined them at Rome, being pursued on the way by a band of Lucchese assassins, who made a vain attempt to capture him at the passage of the Ronciglione. 4 Sherley and his train were given a magnificent reception on their arrival at Rome. The nobles and gentlemen of the city 1 i, p. 302. 2 Wotton's uncle, Sir Thomas Finch, married Catherine Moyle, whose sister Anne was mother of Sir Anthony Sherley. 3 i, p. 39. * Atti, 15, April 9, 1601. Pickering Wotton told the Lucchese spy, Daniele da Massa, that Salvetti had gone to Rome on a commission from Henry Wotton. (Ibid., 12, June 1, 1601.) 38 SIR HENRY WOTTON rode out to meet them ; salvoes of cannon from the fort of S. Angelo greeted their entrance, they were splendidly lodged in the Palazzo della Rovere ; and Sir Anthony Sherley, who displayed great zeal for Roman Catholicism, was for a while high in the favour of the Pope. Amid the other curious circumstances of this visit, (which was Wotton's fourth and last to Rome), an element of comedy was not lacking. The Persian nobleman, sent in attendance on Sherley, believed, or pretended to believe, that he was the ambassador, and Sherley his attendant; but speaking no European language, he had been unable to make known his pretensions at the various Courts they had visited. But at Rome he claimed precedence, and the best apartment in their palace ; and finding an interpreter, told the Venetian ambassador that Sherle'y had usurped the position that belonged to him, and had stolen the presents the Shah had sent to the princes of Europe. 1 Soon, however, both he and Sherley were in disgrace with the Pope, and forced to leave Rome. But before this Wotton had been sent back to Florence with letters to the Grand Duke, and letters for England also. 2 He arrived in Florence on May 31 3 ; and about a week later the Grand Duke sent him on a mission to the north. Before telling the story of this romantic journey, some account of Wotton's companions during this period of exile will be of interest. Sir Anthony Sherley went to Venice, and was there imprisoned for debt, or for some unknown cause; and in prison he remained till the death of Queen Elizabeth. He subsequently entered the Spanish service, and died a pensioner of the King of Spain. His companion, the Persian nobleman, returned to Persia, and was put to death by order of the Shah. Pickering Wotton remained in Florence ; we find him in Venice with his uncle two years later, and in Spain in 1605, in which year he died. His deathbed conversion to Roman Catholicism, under the influence of Father Richard Walpole, caused some little sensation at the time. 4 While at Florence the Lucchese spy became the companion of his pleasures, and wormed himself into his confi- dence, in order to discover the whereabouts of Salvetti. Pickering 1 Dispatch of Giovanni Mocenigo (Cal. S. P. Few., ix, p. 451). 2 ' From Rome I sent my cousin Hen. Wotton, but he not being heard of since, I fear the account of my proceedings hath perished with him.' Sir Anthony Sherley to Robert Cecil, March 3, 1602 (S. P. Dom. Eliz., cclxxxiii, No. 49). 3 Letter of Daniele da Massa, June 1, 1601 (Atti, 12). * See Appendix III. JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND 39 Wotton told all he knew, but for two years Salvetti disappeared from sight. Six years later, after other vain attempts to capture him, the authorities of Lucca, believing him to be in England, entered into negotiations to have him kidnapped by the English Government and sent to Italy by sea. These negotiations, which eventually came to nothing, were conducted as part of his official business, by none other than Henry Wotton himself, who was then the English ambassador at Venice. But the history of this belongs to a later period ; we have now come to an incident in Wotton 's life, a secret and mysterious journey, which proved the turning-point in his fortunes. He arrived in Florence, as I have said, on May 31, and on June 9 Daniele da Massa, the Lucchese spy, wrote to say that ' il volpone vecchio ', as he called Wotton, had ridden away, giving out that he was going to Bologna and Venice. Pickering Wotton had accompanied him with a friend, as far as Pratolino. 1 It was believed that he was going to Germany ; but the real object of his mission was kept a profound secret, even from his nephew. There was in Florence at this time a young Englishman named Thomas Wilson, who afterwards earned an unenviable fame as the spy who betrayed Sir Walter Raleigh. He was now acting as foreign intelligencer for Sir Robert Cecil, and his letters to Cecil are preserved in the Record Office. Oil September 16 he wrote that Sir Anthony Sherley was in Venice, and that he had written to Pickering Wotton to inquire if his uncle Henry had returned from Germany ; ' telling him that he stayed for him at Venice, and for no other cause ; ernestly desiring him as soon as he returned to come thither, and that he had matter to tell him which very greatly imported him. I think it is not unknown to your Honour/ Wilson adds, 'that the said Mr. Henry Wotton is gone from the Duke of Florence to the Princes of Germany in Ambassage, to what purpose I cannot yet learn, but as his nephew told me, he hath letters also to some of them from the Pope. He is in very great favour and reputation with theDukeofFlorence, the first occasion whereof was induced by the commendation of the party first named { Sherley), being here together ; and after, during the time he stayed at Rome about his ambassage, he sent the other (who lived with him at that time) with letters and messages to the Grand Duke, who, spying him a man fit for his purpose, hath given him employment and promised him advancement.' 1 Am, 12. 40 SIR HENRY WOTTON On October 5, Wilson wrote that Wotton had not yet returned ; ' his business, whereabout he is all this while, is wrapped up in great secrecy.' l Wotton's journey, the object of which Cecil's spy could not discover, was, as we know from other sources, to James VI in Scotland. Ferdinand I, formerly a cardinal, and now Grand Duke of Tuscany, was a wise, subtle, and ambitious prince, who by means of spies and correspondents kept himself well informed of the secret plans of foreign Courts and politicians. He had now discovered one of the plots for the assassination of James VI, which, in expectation of the death of Queen Elizabeth, were planned by some of the more ardent of the Spanish Catholic party, who dreaded the accession of a Protestant king, and wished to. strengthen the claim of Philip II's daughter, the Infanta Isabella. 2 Being on friendly terms with James VI, and connected with him by marriage with a princess of Lorraine, and believing himself to have great knowledge about poisons and their antidotes, 3 Ferdinand determined to send a warning and a casket of antidotes, by some trusty bearer. Henry Wotton, who had been introduced to his notice by Sir Anthony Sherley, and who had moreover become an intimate friend of his confidential secretary, Belisario Vinta, was chosen for this purpose ; and it is plain that Wotton, despairing of advancement in England, had decided to enter the Grand Duke's service, and that he looked for advancement at his Court. Pretending therefore to be an Italian, and taking the name of Ottavio Baldi, Wotton started for Scotland, bearing with him the casket of antidotes, and a dispatch ' of high and secret importance ', which the Grand Duke had intercepted, touching the succession to the English crown. He also carried a letter from the little Prince of Tuscany to Prince Henry of Scotland, who was then a boy of seven. Avoiding England, he travelled through Germany to Den- 1 8. P. Tuscany, Sept. 16, Oct. 5, 1601. Spaced words are in cipher in the original. a In 1602 a half-mad young Englishman residing at Florence, named Humphrey Dethick, actually travelled to Scotland for the purpose, as he there confessed, of killing James VI. Dethick was an old acquaintance of Wotton's, and it may have been against his attempt that Wotton was sent to warn James VI. See Appendix III. 3 Ferdinand, says Wotton, ' did excel all the Princes of the world ' in his know- ledge of antidotes to poison (ii, p. 800). The olio contraveleno del Granduca was highly prized by the Florentines, and the Tuscan ambassadors carried it with them when they went to foreign Courts. Count Montauto, the Resident at Venice, writes of a vasetto d'antidoto contraveleno which Ferdinand had given him with his own hands. (Arch. Med. 3004, Oct. 7, 1617.) JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND 41 mark (the journey, as he afterwards wrote, was a painful one l ) and taking ship landed in Scotland early in September. Our next document (a dispatch of September 9, 1601, from George Nicolson, Elizabeth's agent at the Court of James VI) describes the arrival of a mysterious envoy ' of high stature, brown- haired, sober and thought-wise ', who had come from the Duke of Tuscany, and was going immediately to meet the King. 2 Our documents now fail us, but Izaak Walton has told the story of Wotton's reception by James VI. Save that the inter- view took place, not at Stirling, as Walton seems to suggest, but at Dunfermline, near by, his account agrees with that of Nicolson, and indeed he had no doubt heard the story from Wbtton's own lips. By means of Bernard Lindsay the King learned, with surprise, of the arrival of an Italian ambassador or messenger, calling himself Ottavio Baldi, who declared that his business was of such importance that the Grand Duke of Tuscany had suddenly sent him from his native country of Italy to impart it to him. James VI thereupon arranged to receive him privately that evening. ' When Octavio Baldi/ Walton continues, ' came to the Presence - Chamber door, he was requested to lay aside his long rapier (which Italian-like he then wore) and being entred the Chamber, he found there with the King three or four Scotch Lords standing distant in several corners of the Chamber: at the sight of whom he made a stand; which the King observing, bade him be bold, and deliver his message : for he would undertake for the secresy of all that were present. Then did Octavio Baldi deliver his letters and his message to the King in Italian; which when the King had graciously received, after a little pause, Octavio Baldi steps to the table, 1 ii, p. 300. 1 ' Here is one come out of Italy I hear, from the D. of Florence, borne near Geneua, of high stature, brown-haired, , sober and thought- wise ; came about through Denmark in a ship of Culross hither, made his repair to Mr. David Lyndsay, and wrote to the K. at Stirlinge, whereon the K. went to secret conference with my L. of Mar, Sir Geo: and my Lord Bruce, and thereafter he was sent for to meet the K. at Dunfermlinge, whither this day he is gone in company of the Mr. of Orkney, Mr. Jeremy Lyndsay, and Barnard Lyndsay, unknown to any of them what he is, and having said he would change no clothes till he saw the K. having no servant with him.' George Nicolson to Cecil, Edinburgh, Sept. 9, 1601 O. S. (S. P. Scotland, Ixvii, No. 108}. There can be no doubt that this interesting letter is about Wotton, and describes his arrival in Scotland. By ' Geneua ' Nicolson probably meant Genoa (Geneva), as Wotton was travelling as an Italian. For David Lindsay see D. N. B., xxxiii, p. 297. The Earl of Mar was a Privy Councillor and Lord High Treasurer of the Household. (Ibid., xvii, p. 422.) Bernard Lindsay was Groom of the Chamber to James VI. (jLord Lindsay, Lives of the Lindsays, 1849, vol. i, p. 320 n.) 42 SIR HENRY WOTTON and whispers to the King in his own language, that he was an English man, beseeching him for a more private conference with His Majesty, and that he might be concealed during his stay in that nation ; which was promised, and really performed by the King during all his abode there (which was about three months), all which time was spent with much pleasantness to the King, and with as much to Octavio Baldi himself, as that country could afford, from which he departed as true an Italian as he came thither.' Wotton seems to have spent the winter in Scotland, for in March, 1 602, or before that date, he passed through Hamburg, 1 and was back in Florence by the end of May. Of his sojourn in Scotland we know little. How, on one occasion, his English nationality was revealed, was told to Drummond of Hawthornden by Ben Jonson in a not very edifying little anecdote. 2 When Wotton returned to Florence, he wrote in Italian an account of his impressions of James VI and his Court, which is now in the Florence Archives, and which is printed in these volumes. 3 His description of the gossiping, undignified James VI agrees with the accounts which other contemporaries have left us ; but the expres- sion, which he noted in the King's eyes, of modesty and kindness, ' una certa bontd naturale tirando al modesto,' adds a vivid touch to our picture of that monarch, whom we can hardly respect as a King, but who, like his grandson Charles II, possessed such good humour and natural kindliness of nature, that it is equally impossible to dislike him. Wotton notices James's addiction to learned talk and his fondness for jests ; and if the learned and witty Ottavio Baldi proved (as he must have done) a con- genial courtier, the King, who loved mystification, was no doubt particularly pleased by the presence of an Italian envoy, who was really a young Englishman in disguise, and the brother of the ambassador of Queen Elizabeth, who, sixteen years before, had come to Scotland, and, by his gaiety, and good breeding, and accomplishments, had obtained almost a dangerous influence in the Scotch Court. The joke indeed about Henry Wotton's disguise was kept up for many years, and his subsequent letters to the King were frequently signed by the Italian name of Ottavio Baldi. 1 Col. S. P. Dom., 1601-3, p. 166. a ' Sir Henry Wotton, befor his Majesties going to England, being disguised at Leith on Sunday, when all the rest were at church, being interrupted of his occupation by ane other wenche who came in at the door, cryed out " Pox on thee, for thou hast hindered the procreation of a chyld", and betrayed himself.' (Ben Jonson's Conversations with William Drummond, Shakespeare Soc., 1842, p. 32.) 3 i, p. 314. RETURN TO ITALY 43 Travelling back through Germany in a leisurely manner, and conversing with his learned friends, Bongars and Hoeschel and Marquard Freher, Wotton, unaware how materially his visit to the future King of England would affect his fortunes, seems to have been confirmed in his determination to lead the scholar's life. In Florence once more, he wrote to Casaubon of his literary plans ; he was composing an essay on Fate in Greek, which, with his other labours, he would dedicate to Casaubon in gratitude for his kindness; and to Hoeschel he declared that now, after the shipwreck of his fortunes, it was his ambition to win the commendation of the good and wise. 1 Wotton seems to have remained in Florence throughout the summer and autumn of 1602. A letter to Thomas Wilson, printed in these volumes, three Latin letters, 2 and three notes in Italian, 3 preserved in the Florence Archives, and addressed to Belisario Vinta, are all that remain of Wotton's correspondence at this time. In May, 1603, we find Wotton at Venice. The death of Queen Elizabeth, in the previous March, had produced a great change in his prospects. Her successor regarded with no dis- favour the followers of Essex, who had consistently supported his claim to the throne ; and Henry Wotton had already won his notice and affection. Of almost equal importance was the fact that Sir Robert Cecil, who was destined to control the govern- ment of England for the next nine years, had expressed to Sir Edward Wotton a favourable opinion of his brother Henry Sir 1 ' Nam sane non tarn cupio pretiosis vestibus, et magnifico famulatu, et salutantium turba ornari, quam bonorum hominum et sapientium commenda- tione. Haec sola mihi post naufragia fortunae superest ambitio.' Fragment of letter to David Hoeschel, dated Florentiae d. 27. August! A. 1602. (Heumanni Poecile, 1722, i, p. 581.) a See i, pp. 314, 315 n. 3 Arch. Med. 1219. These three notes are without dates ; the second is signed vArrigo Wottoni', the others are in Wotton's hand, but without signature. In the first he asks Vinta to get permission for him from the Grand Duke to read in the Laurentian Library, (a note at the bottom of the letter says that this permission was accorded him), and he also asks for a ' licentia di cavalcare ' for his nephew, Pickering Wotton. In the second he speaks of Alan Percy (Aleno Perci), brother of the Earl of Northumberland, who had been in France and the Low Countries, and had now come to Florence, and had rented a house there, in order to take riding lessons from the famous Rustico Piccardini. Wotton asks permission to bring him to Court, and recommends one of his own brothers (probably Sir Edward Wotton) as a person who might be able to help the Grand Duke in England. He was one of the most intimate friends of ' quel gran personaggio ' (Sir Robert Cecil ?) and not badly thought of by the Queen. But this must wait for the present, as all those who had been friends of Essex were in disgrace, and kept in their houses 'come mascherati\ Wotton adds in this letter that he wished, when the winter was over, to go to France or the Low Countries, where, being nearer his own friends, he could serve the Grand Duke better ; and he asks Vinta to consult the Grand Duke about this. In the third letter Wotton writes about Humphrey Dethick and his journey to Scotland to assassinate James VI (see Appendix III). 44 SIR HENRY WOTTON Edward sent the news of this to Italy ; and Henry replied in a letter to Cecil, offering to join with his brother's devotion to Cecil's interests, and expressing a hope that Cecil would make use of him in the public service. He speaks frankly of his former relations with Cecil's rival Essex ; and while admitting that he owed a duty to the memory of his former master, yet there was in his opinion, he wrote, no reason why that obligation should be eternal; especially as he had taken no part in the rebellion of that earl, and indeed toward the last, owing to the relation between the families of Cecil and Wotton, had been treated by Essex with some distrust. 1 The first Earl of Salisbury has the reputation of a cold and crafty person, without heart or friends. In his relations, however, with Henry Wotton his character shows itself in a more amiable light ; he never with- drew the favour and friendship he had once granted ; quickly forgave Wotton's errors ; always wrote to him in a kindly and considerate manner, and on his deathbed recommended that Wotton should succeed him as Secretary of State. When Wotton wrote to Cecil he was on the point of leaving Venice. He intended to travel to Germany with his nephew Picker- ing Wotton, who was with him, and expected to be at the Frank- fort Mart in September, after which he was going to France. On December 5 we hear of him as being in Paris on private business, and in April, 1604, if not earlier, he came to England. Walton tells the story of his return ; how James, when he came from Scotland, asked Sir Edward Wotton ' if he knew one Henry Wotton, who had spent much time in foreign travel ? ' Edward Wotton replied that he knew him well, and that he was his brother. ' Send for him, said the King, and when he shall come into England, bid him repair privately to me. The Lord Wotton, after a little wonder, asked the King if he knew him ? to which the King answered, "You must rest unsatisfied of that, till you bring the gentleman to me." Not many months after this discourse, the Lord Wotton brought his brother to attend the King, who took him in his arms, and bade him welcome by the name of Octavio Baldi, saying he was the most honest, and therefore the best dissembler that ever he met with : and said, " Seeing I know you neither want learning, travel, nor experience, and that I have had so real a testimony of your faithfulness and abilities to manage an ambassage, I have sent for you to declare my purpose ; which is to make use of you in that kind hereafter." ' 1 i, p. 317. AGAIN IN ENGLAND 45 Walton adds that the King offered Henry Wotton the choice of the French, Spanish, and Venetian embassies, and that of the three he chose Venice ; but I find no corroboration for this. Indeed by December 5, 1603 (O. S.), before he came to England, Cecil told Nicol6 Molin, the Venetian envoy, that Wotton had been appointed ambassador to Venice l ; and James afterwards said he had chosen him for this post because he had formerly known him in Scotland, ' whither the Grand Duke had sent him, as being a discreet and prudent gentleman, who had lived so long in Italy that he was master of its manners and its tongue.' 2 Wotton remained in England till the summer of 1604. He visited the Venetian ambassador, Molin, in June, to discuss a smuggling case, 3 and on Tuesday, July 10, Molin wrote to the Doge that Wotton had been knighted by the King on the previous Sunday (July 8, O. S.), and was to leave on Friday. ' He is a gentleman/ the ambassador added, ' of excellent condition, wise, prudent, able. Your Serenity, it is to be hoped, will be very well pleased with him.' 4 On July 19 Wotton was at Dover, whence, as was customary at this time, when an ambassador went abroad, one of the King's ships was to convey him to Boulogne. 5 It is worth noting that while Wotton was travelling to Venice, Shakespeare was probably engaged in writing his great Venetian tragedy, Othello, which was acted before James I in November of this year. 1 Col. S. P. Yen., x, p. 124. 2 Ibid., p. 190. 8 Ibid., p. 160. * Ibid., p. 168. 5 For Donne's verse-epistle ' To Sir Henry Wotton at his going ambassador to Venice ', see Walton's Life, and Chambers, ii, p. 41. CHAPTER IV WOTTON'S FIRST EMBASSY IN VENICE. 1604-1610. SPECIAL envoys, sent abroad to negotiate a treaty, arrange a royal marriage, or for purposes of formal congratulation or condolement, had for centuries played a part in European history, and great noblemen were still employed in this manner. The custom of sending resident or ' lieger ' ambassadors to reside at foreign Courts dated from the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the more modern conception of the balance of power, replacing the mediaeval ideal of the unity of the Empire, lent importance to the negotiations by which that balance was maintained. 1 Henry VII, who was the first English king to maintain agents at foreign Courts, had employed for this purpose men of obscure position who were meanly paid. But under the monarchs who succeeded him, the English Residents grew in position and importance. Although there was no regular diplomatic corps, and the profession was still an open one, it was usual to select for resident ambassadors gentlemen and knights of good family, and as a rule men who, like Wotton, had studied foreign politics abroad in their youth, or who, like Sir Dudley Carleton or Sir Ralph Winwood, had served an apprenticeship as secretary to an older ambassador. 2 The pay of a resident ambassador in the reign of James I was at the rate of five marks, or 3 6s. Sd. a day, for his ' diets ' 3 (a special ambassador was paid 4 or 5 a day), and in addition to this sum he was given about 400 a year for his special expenses, couriers, and secret service. There was a 1 For an account of the growth of European diplomacy see Ernest Nys, Les Commencements de la Diplomatic, etc., Revue de Droit International, Bruxelles, 1883-84, vol. xv, p. 577 ; vol. xvi, pp. 55, 167. 2 The history of English diplomacy has not yet been written. For the English ambassadors in the reigns of Edward VI and Queen Mary see Arnold Oskar Meyer, Die englische Diplomatic in Deutschland zur Zeit Eduards VI. und Mariens, Breslau, 1900. 3 The ambassador was paid from the date of his appointment until his reception by the King on his return. On May 19, 1604, the sum of 730 was paid to Henry Wotton, being his diets from Dec. 26, 1603 (when he was officially appointed ambassador to Venice), till the end of July, at the rate of five marks a day. (Is. Ex., p. 12.) 47 liberal allowance also for travel, and the transport of his goods. Out of his personal salary (about 1,200 a year in the money of the day, and perhaps six times as much in present value) he paid for his house, servants, food, and the salaries of his secretaries and staff. The money in itself was ample, but the payment extremely irregular ; and James I's envoys almost invariably returned from their missions in financial distress, and found it almost impossible to extract the sums owing them from the public exchequer. His personal staff or ' family ' each ambassador chose for himself, taking with him perhaps a dozen young men, who lived in the house of their chief, and returned to England when he returned. 1 Of these the principal person was the chief secretary, who helped the ambassador in his business, kept a register of his negotiations, and had charge of his ciphers and papers of impor- tance. When the ambassador was ill, or absent from the place of his charge, the chief secretary could act for him, and in some cases he wrote, or helped to write, the ambassador's dispatches. 2 In addition to the chief secretary, there were one or two assistant secretaries, who were employed for translating and copying, and to whom the ambassador frequently dictated his dispatches. A native of the country where the envoy resided was moreover engaged as a secretary ' for language and compliments ', and of all the suite he alone received his salary from the English exchequer. Another of the household was steward, keeping the ambassador's accounts, and acting as housekeeper and treasurer, and another was gentleman usher, or master of ceremonies. The ambassador also took a chaplain with him, being allowed by custom to celebrate the rites of his own religion in his private chapel ; and he sometimes took his own physician as well. Five or six more young men of good family, who desired to see something of the world, or to push their fortunes under the ambassador's patronage, made up the envoy's household. Besides their duties at the embassy, these secretaries and attaches (as they would now be called) were 1 George Chapman in his play Monsieur cCOlive (Act iii, Scene iv) gives an amusing picture of an ambassador choosing his suite. 2 For the duties of an ambassador's secretary see Works of Roger Ascham (Giles), London, 1865, vol. i, pt. ii, pp. 243-71, and Roger Ascham, sein Leben und seine Werke, by Alfred Katterfeld, Strassburg, 1869, p. 96. Ascham was secretary to Sir Richard Moryson, ambassador to Charles V, 1550-3. For the household of an English ambassador in the reign of James I see Lord Her- bert, pp. 197-8. 48 SIR HENRY WOTTON sometimes sent on secret missions into neighbouring countries, and sometimes to England, to carry dispatches that were too important to be trusted to the ordinary post. These missions and journeys were often sufficiently adventurous ; the disguised young Englishmen acting as spies were sometimes spied on themselves, and thrown into prison, and had to reveal their quality to obtain release ; those travelling to England might be waylaid, and their dispatches stolen, or be attacked by robbers and left for dead where they fell. The privilege, however, of carrying dispatches to England was highly valued, as the bearer was by this means introduced to the notice of the Secretary, or even of the King himself. Each ambassador was provided with a service of silver plate, 1 and in addition to the gentlemen 6f his suite, he was accom- panied by a number of footmen and pages. 2 The reign of the peace-loving James I was a time of numerous and brilliant embassies, and the sight of an English envoy on his travels was both picturesque and splendid. The ambassador shone, as a contemporary describes one of them, like a comet, all in crimson and beaten gold; behind him followed sometimes as many as one hundred attendants, footmen, and pages in splendid liveries, young men in satin suits, with gold lace and gilt spurs, and waving feathers ' a whole forest of feathers/ Chapman describes the train, though he detracts from the dignity of his image by comparing the ambassador, as he plodded along, to a schoolmaster followed by his boys. 3 Wotton's company when he went on his first journey to Venice, included his nephew, Albertus Morton, his chaplain Nathaniel Fletcher (a brother of the dramatist, John Fletcher), and several young men of Kentish families, 4 sons of gentlemen 1 On June 19, 1604, a warrant was issued for seven hundred ounces of plate to be delivered ' to Henry Wotton, Esquire, being sent Ambassador to Venice.' (S. P. Fen.) 2 See C. & T, Jos. I, i. p. 428 : ' The Lord Roos is gone for Spain, very gallant, having six footmen, whose apparelling stood him in 50 a man ; eight pages at 80 a piece ; twelve gentlemen, each of whom he gave 100 to provide them- selves ; some twenty ordinary servants, who were likewise very well appointed ; and twelve sumpter cloths, that stood him in better than 1,500.' When Sir Isaac Wake succeeded Wotton as ambassador to Venice in 1624, he made a fine show, 'as well in liveries, flaunting feathers, and the like, as in number of followers, among whom are six footmen, three or four pages, and gentlemen not a few.' (Ibid., ii, p. 454.) 3 Monsieur d'OUve, iii. 4. * George Rooke, of Kent, Rowland Woodward, Henry Cogan, and William Parkhurst accompanied Wotton to Venice, or were in his service during his first embassy there. Gregorio de' Monti was his Italian secretary, and another Italian, Giovanni Francesco Biondi, was in his employment. For all these names see Appendix III. ARRIVAL IN VENICE 49 who lived in the neighbourhood of Bocton. They rode across Germany on horseback, carrying their light luggage with them ; while their heavier effects, and furniture for the ambassador's house, were shipped direct by sea to Venice. On August 14 Wotton was in Augsburg, whence he wrote to Cecil, but his letter has not been preserved. 1 It was at Augsburg that he committed the indiscretion, afterwards famous, of writing his witty definition of an ambassador in the album of a friend, and signing it in full pomp of name and title. 'An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country,' the definition would read in English, but the pun is lost in the Latin in which Wotton wrote it. 2 The journey through France and Germany was pleasant enough in times of peace; and Wotton proceeded with his company in a leisurely manner, visiting in state the towns where he had been known as a poor scholar. He probably crossed the Alps by the Spliigen Pass to Chiavenna, which was his usual route in entering Italy. Sometimes, however, the main passes were closed by war or epidemics, and he was compelled to force his way 'by such rocks and precipices, as I think Hannibal did hardly exceed it, when he made his way (as poets tell us) with fire and vinegar '. 3 It was on September 23, 1604, that the young English am- bassador arrived in Venice. Entering the city incognito, he went into temporary lodgings to rest and recover from his journey. The sight of Venice, familiar to him, but new to his companions, was one of the most beautiful and splendid that could be found in Europe. Venice, with its hundreds of churches, monasteries, and gardens, with its ten thousand gon- dolas, and with the great concourse in its piazze and streets, of men from all nations of Europe and the East, was regarded as the home of pomp and pleasure, and the most admired city of the world. 4 Nor had life in Venice ever appeared in a more splendid 1 Cecil to Wotton, S. P. Fen., Oct. 9, 1604. 2 Scioppius quotes in full the inscription : Legatus est Vir bonus, peregre missus ad mentiendum Reipub. causa. D. lohanni Christophoro Fleckamero in amicitiae perpetuae pignus haec posuit Henricus Wotonius, Serenissimi Angliae, Scotiae, Franciae, et Hiberniae Regis Orator primus ad Venetos. Augustae Vindelicorum XVI. Augusti Mensis Anno Christiana cio 10 cim (Gasp. Scioppii Ecdesiasticus, 1611, p. 13). The full quotation bears the mark of Wotton's Latin style, and convinces me that Wotton translated his joke into Latin for the purpose of writing it in his friend's book. 3 ii, p. 95. . 4 James Howell, Survey of the Seignorie of Venice, 1651, p. 49. WOTTOK. I E 50 SIR HENRY WOTTON guise than at this time. In spite of the decline of Venetian power, the wealth and display of the noble families had gone on increasing ; great palaces had been recently built, or were in the process of erection, and the ceremonies of Church and State, the processions and pageants, which dazzled contemporary visitors, and still shine for us in the great productions of Venetian art, had grown in magnificence and pomp. 1 Venice now lies like a sea-shell on the shores of the Adriatic, deserted by the wonderful organism that once inhabited it; but to picture the city as it was at this time, we must remember the power of that Republic whose ancient wisdom, whose unbroken history of freedom, was then the marvel of Europe, and still remains indeed one of the greatest wonders of history. Certainly there has never existed before, and probably will never exist again, such an enduring con- stitution, such a succession of wise and patriotic statesmen, a government remaining unoverthrown through such a vast tract of history. Unconquered for more than a thousand years, Venice was now the only free corner of Italy, and stood alone in opposing the power of Spain, which was dominant over the rest of the peninsula. Although since the League of Cambrai, the loss of Cyprus, and the partial loss of the Eastern trade, the power of the Republic had been gradually declining, this very falling off of strength had given a greater importance to Venice in European politics. Relying in former years on her maritime empire to supply the two great needs of the State, corn to feed her inhabitants, and soldiers to defend her land dominions, Venice had had no great need of allies out of Italy. But now, harassed on the east by Turks and pirates, she began to look to the north and west for corn and soldiers ; and threatened by the Spaniards in Milan, and Spanish fleets from Naples, and aware that Spain was determined, if possible, on her destruction, she found it necessary to seek alliance with the opponents of the Austro-Spanish power. The renewal therefore of diplomatic relations with England, interrupted during the reigns of Edward VI and Elizabeth, was most welcome to Venice ; for England was the most powerful Protestant State in Europe; and although far away, could come to her aid with ships and sailors. When therefore Wotton was visited by the Venetian Secretary Scaramelli, to arrange for his formal reception by the Republic, it 1 Horatio Brown, Venetian Studies, p. 350. 51 was readily agreed that he should be given tho same honours as the ambassadors of France and Spain. 1 Venice, which was the first State in Europe to form a regular diplomatic service, was still regarded as the best place for the training of an ambassador. Nowhere were envoys more highly honoured, and nowhere did they meet with a more munificent wel- come, the Republic taking advantage of an ambassador's arrival to impress on its own citizens and the world a sense of the power and dignity of the State. As Sir Henry Wotton played on three occasions the principal part in pageants of this kind, it will not be superfluous to give some account of the ceremonial. When the ambassador had rested from his journey, and was comfort- ably settled in his house, he would send word that he was ready for his public reception. For this two days were necessary ; on the first, the giorno d'entrata (which, in Wotton's case, was September 30, a week after his arrival), the ambassador entered his gondola, and, followed by his suite, and all the English in Venice, and the English students at Padua, was rowed by gon- doliers a few miles across the lagoons to the island of S. Spirito. Here they disembarked, and entered the gardens and cloisters of the monastery. Shortly afterwards a company of sixty Venetian senators, ' magnificoes of greatest port,' dressed in their scarlet robes, and led by a nobleman of highest place, wearing a gold- embroidered stole, followed after them across the lagoons in gondolas adorned with black velvet. They were received by the English ambassador at the entrance of the principal cloister ; and after a few compliments, the principal senator led the ambassador to his gondola, and the other senators followed, each walking on the left of one of the assembled Englishmen. They were then rowed back to Venice, past windows and bridges full of sightseers, to the ambassador's lodging, where a great crowd had collected, and where they were received with a loud noise of drums and trumpets. The Venetians led the Englishmen upstairs, and after a short visit, they were conducted down by their hosts to their gondolas. After their departure a Venetian secretary arrived, bringing a cask of malmsey, and a large number of silver dishes, loaded with candles, and confec- tions, and wax, and loaves of sugar. The next day being the giorno d'audienza, the same senators returned, and conducted the ambassador, dressed in his official gown of figured velvet, 1 Cal. S. P. Yen., x, p. 186. E2 52 SIR HENRY WOTTON adorned with lace, and lined with rich fur, 1 and his company to the Piazzetta, where, landing first, they stood in a semicircle to receive the English, and led them through a great crowd of spectators to the entrance of the palace, and up the great stair- case to the Collegia, where the Doge and Cabinet, with a large number of spectators, were waiting to receive them. As the ambassador entered, he made a triple bow to the Doge and senators on either side. At this bow the Doge and Cabinet arose; the ambassador uncovered, and bowing twice as he advanced, he kissed the Doge's hand, who then embraced him. He presented his credentials, and they all sat down, the am- bassador taking the place of honour at the right hand of the Doge. At this first reception Wotton made a speech in Italian, in which, with abundant phrases, he explained the object of his mission, and expressed the esteem of James I for the Republic. The Doge replied in suitable terms, and after the usual com- pliments the ambassador retired, being conducted home again by the Venetian senators who had brought him thither. 2 The Collegia in the Ducal Palace, with ' Venice Enthroned ' painted on the ceiling, and Paolo Veronese's great picture of ' Thanksgiving for the Battle of Lepanto ', remains as it was in Wotton's time, and is known to every visitor to Venice. In Wotton's old age a painting of this room, and his reception in it, hung over his mantelpiece in his dining-hall at Eton. 3 Wotton had good cause to remember this room, for it was the scene during many years of his negotiations. The Anti- collegio, adorned with famous paintings by Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese, Wotton describes as the place ' where the am- bassadors use for a while to take their breath, after the mounting of the palace stairs '.* The Cabinet, or Collegia, by which ambassadors were received, Wotton described as 'the 1 A picture and description of the dress of an English ambassador is preserved in the Museo Correr (Codice Gradenigo, 49, vol. ii, p. 105). 3 Cal. S. P. Ven. x, p. 183. For the reception of ambassadors in Venice see Wicquefort, p. 159 ; Memoires de Philippe de Commines, 1903, vol. ii, p. 207 ; and a detailed account of the reception in 1618 of Albizzi, the Tuscan special envoy (Arch. Med. 3006, Aug. 25, 1618). The anonymous relator states that in spite of the heat, which caused great discomfort, Albizzi performed his part ' con tanto esquisita puntualita che ne restera illustrate il suo nome eternamente'. But fame has concerned itself with other things, and forgotten the exquisite punctiliousness of Albizzi on that hot August day in Venice. I am glad to make some slight reparation in this note. 3 A reproduction of this picture (which is now at Hampton Court) will be found facing p. 49. * S. P. Fen., Nov. 18, 1622. WOTTON'S AUDIENCES 53 stomach of the Republic, where all things are first digested ' ; and his phrase accurately defines the part it played in the machinery of the constitution. Although in theory the Senate was the chief executive body of the State, and was supposed to decide on all important questions of policy and administration, in practice its power was delegated to two committees, the Council of Ten, which had charge of criminal affairs, and the Collegia, com- posed of the Doge and twenty-five principal senators, to whom foreign affairs and matters of general policy were entrusted. The decisions of this body had to be submitted to the Senate for approval ; and though this was generally a matter of form, the majority of the Senate was sometimes of a different political complexion from the Collegia, and would overrule its decisions. The Doge, who presided in the Senate, the Council of Ten, and the Collegio, was in theory little more than a figurehead ; but a prince of ability and character might indirectly wield much power and influence. In his audiences the ambassador always sat at the right hand of the Doge. He wore his official robe, and remained covered, but would raise his hat now and then to emphasize some com- plimentary expression. A Venetian secretary stood by him, and wrote an official account of the audience, taking down his words in shorthand, and describing his ' passions and pauses ', the vary- ing expressions of his face and voice. On one or two occasions of great importance Wotton gave a copy of his speech, but this was quite exceptional. When the ambassador had spoken, the Doge would make a reply ; but being forbidden by law to give a definite answer, he could only ' float in generalities ', as Wotton described it. Other members of the Collegio might join in the discussion ; and then the whole matter, with the Collegio 's deci- sion about it, was referred to the Senate (before which, as before the Council of Ten, no ambassador could appear) ; and when the matter had been voted on by the Senate, the ambas- sador would again be summoned to the Collegio to learn its decision. Readers who would enjoy Wotton's frank and witty speeches, must be referred to Mr. Horatio Brown's Calendars, as the exigencies of space do not permit me to print many of his orations. An extract, however, from his speech of January 16, 1606, in which he congratulated the new Doge, Leonardo Donate, on his election, may be quoted as a specimen of his eloquence. 54 SIR HENRY WOTTON He began by quoting Virgil : ' Most Serene Prince, uno avulso non deficit alter aureus, so must I begin, for I hold it sure that among all the tomes, ancient and modern, you will not find in so small a compass a truer picture of Venice. She is governed now for some thousand two hundred years in the same fashion, with an unfailing display of the highest qualities. True, from time to time she has been shaken, as the storms lash up the lagoons, but she has always recovered in the end, renewed her youth, regained' here the ambassador permitted himself a pun ' her lost serenity. Each time I think on her orderly government, her sound institutions, her exaltation of the worthy, her punishment of the evil, the reverence paid to her magistrates, the encouragement of her youth in the paths of virtue and the service of their country, I am forced to believe that, come what may, she will survive until the final dissolution of the elements themselves.' * Another extract will give an idea of his more familiar style. In the same year the Jesuits had published, and circulated in Italy, Garnett's denial of all connexion with the Gunpowder Plot, and Wotton addressed the Doge as follows: ' Your Serenity, I assure you that when I read that denial, I was astounded to see such desperate impudence ; for a few days earlier I had read certain News-sheets printed here in Venice by these good Fathers, relating their progress in Muscovy, the conversion of a king in Africa, and so on. I said to myself, " All right about Muscovy, it 's a cold country afar away, few go there and few return. About Africa, it 's a country separated from us by the sea, full of strange names, where every now and then a Portuguese or two may land." The Jesuits might have published, had they chosen, the conversion God forgive me of a croco- dile. But now that the ancient friendly relations between Venice and Great Britain have been re-established and envoys sent by both sides, who keep each party fully informed every week of all that is going on, upon my soul I am amazed that the Society should dare to treat Italy as a simpleton.' 2 Equally eloquent, if less witty, are the speeches of the Doges, and especially those of the great Leonardo Donate, who was at the head of the State during the greater part of Wotton 's first embassy. The power of the Venetian State was entrusted to the ablest of the Venetian nobles in their ripe and wise old age. 1 Cdl. S. P. Fen., x, pp. 312, 313. a Ibid., p. 346. THE VENETIAN GOVERNMENT 55 Trained in their youth in administrative and diplomatic work, they acted in middle age as ambassadors and proconsuls; and when, grown old in statecraft, they came to govern the Republic, they possessed a stately bearing then unique in Europe, and a dignity of eloquence which was the inheritance of a thousand years of freedom. In the portraits of Titian, Tintoretto, and the Bassani, we see the noble faces of these profound old men, and the Venice records are full of their wise deliberations and golden speech. Although the long continuance of Venice is a justification of their government, Wotton and other acute observers noted that this preponderance of old men in the State led to excessive slowness and caution. ' Good answers,' he said, ' are cheaper in this State than good resolutions, or at least than hasty ; ' and while in times of peace, the aged senators could weave at leisure their subtle webs of policy, in the sudden emergencies of war their slowness became a danger. ' The abundance of council and curious deliberation,' Wotton wrote, ' by which they subsist in time of peace, is as great a dis- advantage in time of action.' l Sir Dudley Carleton, who succeeded Wotton at Venice, aptly compared the Republic to ' a clock going with many wheels, and making small motions, sometimes out of order, but soon mended, and all without change or variety '. 2 The clock was now slowly running down ; but it had been adjusted with such niceness, that it went for nearly three centuries more before it stopped ; the State maintaining its existence more by the inherited wisdom of its government, than by arms or valour, and preserving internal peace ' rather through good laws ', as Wotton remarked, ' than good dispositions.' Save for his formal audiences in the Collegia, Wotton held little or no communication with the Venetian Government. Such was the suspiciousness of the State, that for an official, or even any Venetian of senatorial rank, to speak without per- mission to an ambassador, was an offence punishable with life- long imprisonment or death. 3 Sometimes he would be per- mitted a secret meeting with a Venetian secretary, or when he 1 ii, p. 228. * Undated letter to Sir William Fleetwood, S. P. Yen., vol. vi. 3 This complete isolation of the foreign ambassadors formed a curious feature of Venetian life, and lasted down to the end of the Republic. ' Le metier d'ambas- sadeur est assez triste ici ; ils n'ont de ressource que celle de vivre ensemble, et ne peuvent absolument voir aucun noble, auxquels il est defendu, sous peine demort, d'entrerchez eux.' (DeBrosses, Lettres ecrites