dispatches a running account of the news of the country in which he resided. Wotton's qualities of mind, and his knowledge of the King's tastes, enabled him to write just the kind of dispatches which that learned and gossip-loving monarch loved; it was no bad policy for James, condemned as he was to peruse so much diplomatic correspondence, to send abroad the best letter-writer of the time; and he often expressed the pleasure he took in reading the Venetian dispatches. Besides a journal of his negotiations with the Republic, Wotton sent week by week the news of Venice, the deaths and elections of Doges, the solemn funerals, the receptions of ambassadors and foreign princes, and all he discovered of what went on beneath the pomp and external show of the majestic and dignified Republic, the mysterious crimes and trials, the menace of foreign intrigue, and plot and counterplot, and the continual unrest of Venetian policy, fluctuating, as he said, like the element out of which the city was built. From Rome, that Africa of monstrous things', he collected, by means of spies and agents, the latest stories of papal intrigues and humorous incidents, and the doings and indiscreet sayings of contemporary pontiffs.

The Venetians watched the course of history, the oscillations of the European balance on which their existence depended, with careful eyes; from their experienced agents and ambassadors abroad couriers were continually arriving with the latest intelligence. Venice was ever 'full of great rumours',' its inhabitants standing with elevated ears '2 to hearken for the freshest news. Each report gave rise to infinite dissertations; discussion was indeed, as Wotton wrote, the disease of the place.3

Ambassadors, as Wotton told the Doge, were creatures whose food was news-as much of the truth as possible, though sometimes they had to 'swallow flies',4--and he carefully listened for the rumours echoing in this Dionysius's ear of Europe, condensing now and then into a long dispatch the essence of all the discourses and opinions of wise Venetians about some contemporary event. Regarding it as his duty to send the King anything 'that might either inform or entertain his excellent mind', he mingled with weightier matter a good deal of 'sport'-gossip and scandal, and, with pardonable vanity, his own jokes and witty repartees. He collected epigrams and pasquils, and his secretaries busied them

1 Stowe MS. 170, f. 61.

3 Stowe MS. 170, f. 191.

2 S. P. Ven., Jan. 1, 1617.

Cal. S. P. Ven., xi, p. 157.

selves in translating for the King satires written in the Venetian dialect. Although the greater part of Wotton's dispatches were addressed to Lord Salisbury, they were all written more or less for the King's eye; and not infrequently he would address a dispatch to James I himself, writing in an especially clear and beautiful hand, and signing it with his old pet name of Ottavio Baldi. Besides his dispatches to the English Government, Wotton corresponded week by week with the other English ambassadors abroad, sending them the news of Venice and Italy, and getting in return from foreign Courts the latest information, which, as he said, gave him some opinion among the Venetians, these swallowers of news.'1 Some of his letters to Sir Dudley Carleton at the Hague, to Sir Thomas Edmondes at Brussels and Paris, to Sir Walter Ashton at Madrid, I have found in various manuscript collections, and many of these are here printed for the first time. During his second embassy at Venice, Wotton also corresponded with Lord Herbert of Cherbury, when, as Sir Edward Herbert, he was ambassador in Paris; but these letters do not seem to have been preserved.2 Although the letters and dispatches of Sir Henry Wotton's still existing in manuscript would, if all were printed, fill many volumes, they are only fragments of what must have been a vast private as well as official correspondence.

Wotton's valuation of himself and his writings was always extremely modest. He was fitter, he wrote, for stitching things together-rhapsody' as he called it-than for commentary, being 'but a gatherer and disposer of other men's stuff at my best value'. Judgement belonged to the King; it was the duty of the King's ambassadors, 'his poor honest creatures abroad,' to supply him with the world's news and opinions; if the King, whose 'poor creature' he was, and otherwise no way considerable', were but satisfied, he would 'go cheerfully forward, without forecasting either the rain or the dust.' But Wotton's dispatches have an historic and literary value beyond what he himself would have imagined. He composed them for the amusement and instruction of the wit-loving James I; but the work I have undertaken will fail of its main purpose, if it is not found that he wrote for the delight of posterity as well.

1 Stowe MS. 168, f. 267.

2 From Sir Henry Wotton, his Majesty's Ambassador at Venice, who was a learned and witty gentleman, I received all the news of Italy.' (Lord Herbert, p. 23.) Elements of Architecture, preface. S. P. Ven., Dec. 26, 1610.

CHAPTER VI

NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE DUKE OF SAVOY: WOTTON'S TEMPORARY

DISGRACE.

1611-1614.

'No season or weather can be ill to go homewards,' Wotton wrote; nor did he hesitate at the thought of a winter journey across the Alps. He had proposed in the previous year that, on his journey to England, he should visit the chief German Protestant Princes, ostensibly out of his own curiosity, but really to urge them to help the reform movement in Venice, and to suggest Sarpi's plan for a union against 'the encroaching Babylonian monarch'. But now, the Venetians, who were always slow and cautious, (for it was a maxim of Republics, Wotton wrote, and especially of this, that they never take physic, but when they are very sick '2), had drawn back, and were unwilling, after the death of the French King, to participate in schemes of this nature. There was, however, in Italy a prince who found himself in a desperate plight, from which it seemed he could only extricate himself by alliance with the Protestant Powers of Europe.

This prince was the crafty and heroic Charles Emmanuel of Savoy. Married to a daughter of Philip II, and often at war with France, he had been an ally and dependant of Spain for many years. But the Spanish domination was too oppressive, and he himself of too independent and ambitious a nature, to endure this yoke any longer than he could help it; and in the 'Great Design' of the French King he had seen his chance for freedom. Being promised the Milanese by Henry IV, he had, with his usual impetuous courage, openly allied himself with that king, affianced his heir to a French princess, and raised troops to co-operate with a French army in driving the Spaniards out of Milan. But now his position had undergone a disastrous change, and he found himself with the troops of Spain on his borders and no ally to protect him. He therefore renewed, on his own account, a project of marriage

1

1 i, p. 455.

WOTTON. I

2 S. P. Ven., Sept. 8, 1617.

I

between his family and that of James I, which had been suggested as early as 1603, and taken up from time to time by Spain, as an alternative to English marriages for Philip III's children. Being no longer sure of a French princess for his eldest son, he wished to marry him to the daughter of James I, and offered one of his daughters as a wife for Prince Henry, hoping, by means of this double alliance with England, to strengthen his position amid the dangers that threatened him.

Either on orders from home, or by invitation from Charles Emmanuel, or perhaps of his own motion, Wotton abandoned his German route, and decided to return by Turin, where the Duke, having these matrimonial projects in view, awaited his arrival with great impatience. Leaving Venice immediately after his audience on December 7, 1610, the ambassador travelled to Padua, accompanied by Bedell, Albertus Morton, and the rest of his suite, and with them a Venetian Protestant convert, a physician named Despotini. At Padua he spent ten days with Lord Cranborne, Salisbury's eldest son, who was lying ill there with fever and home-sickness. He then went to Milan, (where he was offended in his dignity of ambassador by the Spanish governor), and then to Turin, where he arrived on January 8, 1611. The Duke welcomed him with great honours, and entertained him at his own expense. Gregorio Barbarigo, the Venetian ambassador at Turin, (from whose dispatches my information is derived), mentions several incidents of Wotton's stay which are sufficiently picturesque. On Sunday, the day after his arrival, the Duke invited him to a masked festival at Court, and sent him a costume to wear, assai pomposo, with a jewel in the hat of the value of a thousand crowns. Before the festival, however, in the afternoon, when the courtiers were amusing themselves in sledges in the park, (it was evidently frosty weather), and the Duke and his eldest daughter were driving, masked, in their sledge, they stopped opposite the carriage of the English ambassador, ostensibly for the purpose of readjusting the princess's mask, which was causing her discomfort; but really, Barbarigo thought, in order that the ambassador might have a glimpse of her face, when, aglow with the exercise, her natural beauty might seem even greater than it was. On Monday the Duke gave a grand dinner in Wotton's honour, with complimentary toasts to the health of the King, and after dinner showed him the

gallery and library, and then took him to see his sons jousting, placing the ambassador just opposite the young princes, that he might describe them to the King. As Wotton was about to leave on Tuesday, the Duke sent for him and kept him three hours in conversation.1

There is no record of what passed between them; but for the next two years Wotton was mainly occupied in promoting a matrimonial alliance between Savoy and England, and there can be little doubt that he was the bearer of important messages on this subject to the King. The project was indeed one which Wotton would welcome as highly advantageous to the cause nearest his heart. For while in England the plan of marrying the King's son to a Catholic princess of Savoy was supported by the Catholic party for the sake of their religious interests, it was welcomed by the reformers on the other side of the Alps for the very opposite reason. Sarpi, watching the course of the world from his cloister, heard of the project with enthusiasm. If only James I were not 'dottore', some good result might be expected; Spain could not be overcome save by removing the pretext of religion, and this could only be removed by introducing religious reform into Italy; and if James I only knew how to go to work, that could be easily done, both in Venice and Turin. It was therefore not indifference to Protestantism, as Professor Gardiner suggests, but zeal for the cause, and for its advancement in Italy, which made Wotton enthusiastic for the Savoy match.3

1 Ven. Arch., Barbarigo, Jan. 9, 16, 1610-11; see also Cal. S. P. Ven., xii, pp. 107-9.

2 Lettere, ii, p. 311. On Dec. 4, 1612, after hearing of the death of Prince Henry, Sarpi wrote: 'Saranno levate le pratiche di matrimonio, le quali a me piacevano sommamente. . . . Ma noi siamo pur all' istesso, di veder morti solo a favore di Spagna.' (Ibid., pp. 359-60.) Already in 1609 Sarpi had suggested that Savoy might be induced to join the Protestant league, and religious reform introduced by this means into Italy. (Ritter, ii, p. 83.)

3 Gardiner, ii, p. 154. It is, of course, with considerable diffidence that I put myself in opposition to the views of so distinguished an authority as Prof. Gardiner. When, however, he says of Wotton,If he had learned in Italy to be tolerant of differences of opinion, he had also learned to think with indifference of that great cause of Protestantism in which England was sure for a long time to feel the deepest interest' (ibid., pp. 146-7), I can only conclude that he has completely misunderstood Wotton's motives. Prof. Gardiner adds in a note, 'The manifest dislike which he felt for his embassy in Holland in 1614-15 is enough to show how he felt in this matter. Winwood would never have begged to be removed to Italy or Spain. I have taken my view of Wotton from his voluminous unpublished correspondence in the Record Office.' Wotton, as far as I know, never begged to be removed to Spain; it is true that he wished to return to Venice, but Venice was the place where he believed he could do most for the cause of Protestantism.