enabled to separate young men from those who might protect them; and many references to imprisoned tutors will be found in his dispatches. Wotton was indefatigable in his attempts to obtain the release of these unfortunate men, and in particular of 'worthy Mr. Mole', governor of Lord Roos, who, when in Rome in 1608, had translated passages about Babylon and Antichrist from the writings of Duplessis-Mornay, and had been arrested in consequence, and confined in the prisons of the Inquisition. It was believed, indeed, that Lord Roos had betrayed him to the papal authorities, in order to rid himself by this means of his earnest and elderly tutor. In spite of Wotton's efforts, and the intercessions of many other people of greater influence, Mole remained in prison till his death thirty years later. The Roman Catholics tried their famous controversialists on him, one after the other, with undiscouraged persistence; but thirty years of argument seem only to have confirmed his conviction that Rome was the Apocalyptic Babylon, and the Pope Antichrist.1

1 Appendix III.

CHAPTER V

WOTTON'S FIRST EMBASSY IN VENICE-continued.

NEGOTIATIONS

WITH THE REPUBLIC; RELIGIOUS PROPAGANDA, 1604-1610

WOTTON'S intercessions in criminal cases I have already mentioned; his other and more important negotiations with the Republic can be divided into two classes—matters of trade; and matters of international policy, in which the religious question and anti-papal propaganda had a large

concern.

Owing to the long breach of diplomatic relations between Venice and England, there were a number of trade disputes waiting settlement when Wotton arrived in Venice. Indeed, the trade between the two countries had diminished to such an extent that, as Wotton wrote in 1607, not more than four or five English ships a year arrived in Venice. The cause of this falling off was partly the discovery of the Cape passage, and partly the fact that the English Levant Company, (the charter of which was first granted in 1581), had found it more profitable to send its wool and tin and other products direct to Constantinople; or to load its cargoes of currants and wine at Zante, or at the other Greek islands, without sailing up the Adriatic to Venice. The Venetians, however, wishing to regain their ancient position as the chief exchange mart between the East and the West, had recently attempted to ruin this English trade in the Levant; they had forbidden English ships to lade currants at Zante, and had taken other steps which had resulted in what was practically a trade war between the two countries. Their policy was now to remove the restrictions on English trade to Venice, on the understanding that the direct trade to the East should be given up. As the result of a disagreement between James I and the Levant Company, the King was not unwilling to agree to this; and Wotton was instructed to procure the repeal of a number of regulations extremely hampering to

1 S. P. Ven., Sept. 7, 1607. For a clear account of the trade between England and Venice see Mr. Horatio Brown's introduction to Cal. S. P. Ven., x, pp. liii-lvii.

English merchants, on the understanding that the direct trade to Constantinople should be abandoned. But the Venetians trading to England suffered from heavy import duties and other restrictions; and the Republic naturally demanded that these should be removed. James I seems soon to have lost interest in the matter, and little or nothing was done to meet the Venetian demands. In Venice, however, Wotton succeeded, after years of persistence, in getting one of the principal grievances of the English merchants removed-a heavy anchorage tax levied only on English ships.1

Another great question was that of piracy. During the long years of war with Spain, piracy had been regarded in England as legitimate warfare; and it had by no means ceased with the peace of 1604. James I was really anxious to suppress it; but as various members of his council shared in the profits, and cart-loads of plunder and money were sent by pirates to the Lord High Admiral, the King found it difficult to enforce his orders. You should come with me to the Levant,' one English pirate would say to another, 'to find those sound and solid Venetian ducats, which one may take without any risk.' 2 Of these pirates the most famous was Captain John Ward, who lived at Tunis in a marble palace almost as magnificent as the palace of the Bey, and who, as Wotton wrote, had kept the Venetians in such awe, both within and without their own seas so long, and has done with them almost as he liked.3 And not only was the Adriatic swarming with English pirates, but the merchant ships went armed as well, and prepared to do a little plundering when the opportunity offered. The Venetians, indeed, regarded every English vessel as more or less a pirate ship; and Wotton himself, in writing to Lord Salisbury, admitted that the English sailors were 'many times not very innocent' in those matters.4

As laudation of England, and a lofty sense of English generosity and virtue, formed an indispensable part of Wotton's rhetoric as English envoy, the word 'pirate' had a particularly unpleasant sound in his ears. Although the negotiations for the suppression of piracy were conducted by the Venetian ambassador in England, he was frequently embari, p. 403.

2 Cal. S. P. Ven., x, p. 212.

i, p. 415 n. Surely our masters and mariners, upon confidence in the timorousness of the Venetian generals, are many times not very innocent.' (S. P. Ven., Feb. 6, 1605).

It

rassed by complaints of the misdeeds of English buccaneers. was therefore a great advantage for him when he could complain, as he sometimes could, of an honest English merchantman wrongfully captured as a pirate by the Venetian galleys. To prevent incidents of this kind, and to enable the Venetians to distinguish between pirates and honest merchants, an arrangement was negotiated by Wotton in 1605, by which the right of search claimed by the Venetians in the Adriatic Gulf was allowed; and it was agreed that English vessels, on meeting the Venetian galleys, should strike their foretopsail, heave to, and send their ship's boat with their papers on board. Any disobedience to these orders would expose the ship to be taken as a pirate.1 On the whole the arrangement seems to have worked well. During his first year Wotton was continually troubled with complaints about piracy; but afterwards the pirates were taken under the protection of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and the English ambassador in Venice was not so frequently held responsible for their acts."

Out of acts of piracy committed by Englishmen, or the refusal to allow the right of search claimed by the Venetians, arose several lawsuits, which occupied a good deal of Wotton's time. The most complicated of these was in regard to the Venetian ship Soderina, which was captured by English pirates in 1607, and taken into Tunis, where the cargo was disposed of to the Turks, who sold it again to certain English merchants. The Venetians demanded the restitution of the cargo; but when they finally obtained this in 1609, the English merchants sent in a bill of counter-claims, amounting to more than the value of the pirated merchandise. Almost equally complicated was the case of the English ship the Costley, taken as a privateer by the Venetian galleys off Strivali, with contraband goods on board, and run into the port of Canea. When Wotton at last succeeded in getting the ship and cargo restored, it was found that both were badly injured, and the owners began an action for damages against the Venetian authorities. Wotton found the case of the Costley useful to counterbalance the Venetian claims in regard to the Soderina, and brought it before the attention of the Doge in no less than twelve audiences. His speeches are preserved in the Venetian archives; but the dust of three centuries lies heavy on the records of these old lawsuits, and we will not Cal. S. P. Ven., x, pp. lxix, 242. Ibid., xi, p. 4.

1

2

disturb it. Neither case was settled when Wotton left Venice in 1610.1

But Sir Henry Wotton's main interests and objects in his Venetian embassy were of a larger scope than mere questions of trade and piracy. He had a definite conception of the part England should play in the affairs of Europe; a definite foreign policy, for the furtherance of which his position in Venice was of great importance. The basis of his policy was the old plan, inherited from the age of Elizabeth, of a league of the Protestant States of Europe, joined together to oppose the power of Spain and the Catholic party. But this project of an Evangelical union was now somewhat modified by the circumstances of recent history. As a consequence of the triumphs of the Catholic reaction, the Papacy had not only subdued its adversaries in many places, but had also increased its powers over its own adherents. This had led to a reaction; the more independent of the Catholic princes had begun to resent the arrogant claims of the Pope to temporal supremacy, and the oppressive dominion of the AustroSpanish power. It became the wisest policy therefore of Protestant statesmen to form a union, not ostensibly religious in purpose, but capable of including all the powers, Protestant and Catholic alike, which were opposed to the Pope and Spain. The formation of such an anti-papal league was Wotton's great ideal, the cause for which throughout his active career he laboured with persistence and enthusiasm.

Nor was he in this opposed to the policy of his master the King of England. James I, though incompetent to deal wisely with any practical situation, and too much swayed by his admiration for Spain, was not without noble ambitions and enlarged conceptions, and had adopted, partially at least, the plan of forming under his own leadership some such union of the antipapal powers of Europe. But the object of James was above all peace; he wished to be strong enough to enter into friendship with Spain on equal terms, and so put an end to religious warfare. Wotton's plan was of a bolder and more aggressive nature. It had been the policy of the more active of the Elizabethan Protestants to deliver a counter-attack on Spain in its own territories; and Wotton, who, when in the service of Essex, had joined in two expeditions sent out for this purpose, still retained this conception of carrying the war into the

See Cal. S. P. Ven., xi, pp. xxxi-xxxiii.