ducats for his services in inducing an English captain to remain with his ship in the Tuscan fleet.1 Wotton afterwards accepted a pension from the Duke of Savoy, when commissioned to negotiate for a marriage between Prince Henry and a Savoy princess 2; and shortly after his arrival in Venice, the Spanish ambassador declared that he had applied for a Spanish pension, similar to the pensions given to most of the English council, and following the example of his patron Lord Cecil; promising in return to use his good offices in urging James I to bring about peace in the Low Countries. There is no confirmation, however, of this report in the Spanish Archives, and it was perhaps started by the Spanish ambassador for the purpose of causing distrust between France and England. Indeed, Wotton in one of his dispatches writes to Cecil (himself a pensioner of Spain) as if he regarded it as a discreditable thing to enter into secret relations with Spain.5

4

In the library of Queen's College, Oxford, are two large folio volumes of extracts, copied by the antiquary John Brydall, for the most part from Wotton's dispatches, about diplomatic punctilios-Ambassadors, Ceremonials, Titles, and Visits. The subject was one of immense importance at the time when the great body of diplomatic etiquette was in the process of formation, and the lives of ambassadors were embittered by intricate and interminable quarrels about questions of ceremony. It was the duty of an ambassador to be extremely punctilious about these matters, as the least neglect would reflect discredit on his master, and be made use of by his rivals for a precedent in other Courts. Wotton, therefore, though naturally somewhat careless of ceremony, rightly considered that these fooleries', as he called them, were State matters, and the reader will see how much time and attention he was forced to give to them. Fortunately for him, the most difficult point of all, that of precedence, which caused such storms in other Courts, did not arise in Venice, as he never

1 i, p. 388 n.

3 Canaye to Henry IV, Ambassades, III. ii. 363. Duke of Tuscany, who instructed Montauto to chance, that the Spanish pensions in Italy were Feb. 6, 1604-5.)

2 i, p. 132 n.

This report reached the Grand mention to Wotton, as if by never paid. (Arch. Med. 3005,

Major Martin S. Hume very kindly requested his friend Don Julian Paz, chief archivist at Simancas, to examine the dispatches of the Spanish ambassador at Venice from the time of Wotton's arrival to a date somewhat later than this report. Don Julian Paz writes that there is no mention in them of any pension being asked for or granted to Sir Henry Wotton.

* i, p. 372.

appeared in public in the company of any other ambassador. His main difficulties were caused by questions about titles and visits. Ambassadors of kings (teste coronate) had recently arrogated to themselves the title of 'Eccellenza', and refused to give anything more than 'Illustrissimo' to the envoys of inferior princes-a title with which these diplomatists were by no means satisfied. In regard to visits, a regal ambassador thought it beneath his dignity to pay the first call on a newly-arrived envoy from an inferior prince, but would send his principal secretary to perform this office. This again was resented, and led to many difficulties and quarrels. Another point was this. A newlyarrived ambassador was expected to return the visits of other ambassadors in the order in which they had been paid. But the Nuncio representing the Pope, who claimed sovereignty over kings, expected that his visit should be returned first, even if he had not been the first to call. An English ambassador, however, to whom the Pope was no more than a 'testa coronata', could not acknowledge the Pope's claims, and was bound to take offence at this; and Wotton's successor got into a quarrel with a newlyarrived French envoy on the point of visits, which did much to embitter his stay in Venice.1

No account of the household and life of an ambassador of this date would be complete without some mention of the curious underworld of diplomacy-the nest in each ambassador's house of spies and villains, and one may add, in Wotton's case, of dubious and venal religious controversialists. The devil, as Wotton remarked, built his kingdoms upon the wisdom of the world, and he thought it necessary to fight the devil with his own weapons to imitate, as he put it, the arts though not the ends' of his enemies. Knaves he soon found were as indispensable for his purpose as honest men, and much more costly, although so plentiful in Italy. 'I think the reason is,' Wotton writes, 'because they know themselves to be necessary.'

The number of bravi employed by great men, and living in their houses, forms one of the most sinister features of Italian life in this age, and led to many crimes and murders. Wotton's 'good fellows', as he calls them, were partly Italians of this kind. Some belonged to that body of French and other adventurers which infested Italy 2, and some were English exiles, for the most

1 Carleton's dispatch, Dec. 26, 1611 (S. P. Ven.).

On Aug. 26, 1617, the papal Nuncio wrote that he had had a visit from

part Catholic, who, for a consideration, were willing to betray their own party. Wotton made use of these men for the purpose of spying on the enemies of England, especially the Jesuits, and the English Catholics at Rome. Rome he regarded as part of his charge, and he soon established a secret correspondence with Nicholas Fitzherbert, who had formerly been secretary to Cardinal Allen,1 with an unnamed Italian, living ‘in sinu Apostolorum', and with others who His meritorious were willing to send him secret news.2 curiosity', however, as he called it, principally took the form of robbing the posts, and stealing the letters of the Jesuits. He was well acquainted with the seals used by the Jesuits, and with the names of their confidants and dependants, and had agents placed in Rome, Turin, Milan, Frankfort, and Venice itself, that he might intercept their letters, and 'light upon some of their plots and practices, as they pass from College to College, or from their Colleges to Courts'. For the most part he sent copies, allowing the originals to reach their destination, so as not to' spoil the haunt'. Among the Venetian Papers in the Record Office are a large number of these intercepted letters. It cannot be said that the information contained in them is of much importance; but there was always a chance that he might come on the traces of some plot that was being hatched against James I, similar to those by which the life of Elizabeth had been continually endangered. And moreover, as many an expression shows, Wotton took a good deal of pleasure in this part of his diplomatic duties. For if there was any class of men whom he found it in his kindly heart to hate it was the Jesuits. This wonderful order, which was now guiding the forces of the Catholic reaction to so many victories, was, as we know, the dangerous enemy of all the causes dear to him; he saw Jesuits at the bottom of every wicked scheme, and he exhausts the resources of his quaint 'Giacomo Torre', a native of Navarre, who was living in the house of the English ambassador, and who had offered to go to England and set fire to the house of the Archbishop of Spalatro, and burn his books, and kill that famous convert to Protestantism. The Nuncio made the moral reply that it was not the way of Holy Church to murder heretics; and anyhow, as he wrote, he suspected that the proposal might be a stratagem planned by Wotton to get him to commit himself to the proposition. (Mus. Cor. MS. 2355, quoted in Cigogna, v, p. 616 n.).

1

i, p. 442,

2 In a letter in the Record Office signed 'S. R.', one of Wotton's Italian spies in Rome describes how he went to the eating-houses frequented by the English Catholics, where he could overhear them talking loudly in English, as they did not believe that any one would understand them. (S. P. Ven., Oct. 14, 1606).