810 



WOTTON, SIR HENRY. 



WOTTON, SIR HENRY. 



820 



rations. His father, Thomas Wotton, Esq., was twice married : first, to 

 Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Rudstone, Knight, by whom he had 

 three sons ; Edward, knighted by Elizabeth, and in 1603 raised to the 

 peerage as Baron Wotton by James I., and James and John, also both 

 knighted by Elizabeth ; secondly, to Eleanora, daughter of Sir William 

 Finch, of Eastwell in Kent, and widow of Robert Morton, Esq., of the 

 same county, by whom he had Henry, the subject of the present 

 notice. 



Henry's first teacher is stated to heve been his mother; he then 

 had a resident tutor ; afterwards he was sent to Winchester school ; 

 thence, at the age of sixteen, ho was removed to Oxford, and admitted 

 a gentleman commoner of New College ; finally, two years after, in 

 1586, he transferred himself to Queen's College. The first year he 

 was a member of this society he composed, at the desire of the 

 provost, a tragedy entitled 'Tancredo' (in what language is not 

 stated), which, according to Walton, was greatly admired; but it has 

 not been printed. Walton says that about the twentieth year of his 

 age he proceeded Master of Arts, on which occasion he read with 

 great applause three lectures, in Latin, on the eye; and Wood, 

 although he could not discover any record of his admission to this 

 degree, notes that on the 8th of June 1588, he put up a grace or 

 petition, to the university, to be admitted to the reading of any of the 

 books of Aristotle's Logic, which was granted, and was probably for 

 his degree of A.B. After his optical lecture, Walton tells us, he was 

 taken into the closest intimacy by the learned Italian Albericus Gen- 

 tilis, then professor of the civil law at Oxford ; and from him he 

 acquired not only a large knowledge both of law and mathematics, 

 but a complete mastery of the Italian language. In the next year, 

 1589, his father died, leaving to each of his three younger sons an 

 annuity of a hundred marks ; and Walton intimates that this event 

 prevented his remaining so long at Oxford as his friends once intended; 

 afterwards adding however, " In Oxford he stayed till about two years 

 after his father's death ; at which time he was about the two and 

 twentieth year of his age : .... he then laid aside his books, and 

 betook himself to the useful library of travel." But in one of his 

 letters to Lord Zouch, dated 10th July 1592, he says that he had 

 been then three years upon his travels. Walton goes on to state 

 that he was abroad almost nine years, one of which he spent in 

 France, " and most of that in Geneva," where he became acquainted 

 with Theodore Beza (then of great age), and with Isaac Casaubon (in 

 whose house Walton had heard he was lodged) : " Three of the remain- 

 ing eight years," it ia added, " were spent in Germany ; the other five 

 in Italy .... where, both in Rome, Venice, and Florence, he became 

 acquainted with the most eminent men for learning and all manner 

 of arts, as picture, sculpture, chemistry, architecture, and other 

 manual arts, even arts of inferior nature ; of all which he was a most 

 dear lover, and a most excellent judge. He returned out of Italy into 

 England about the thirtieth year of his age, being then rioted by 

 many both for his person and comportment ; for indeed he was of a 

 choice shape, tall of stature, and of a most persuasive behaviour," &c. 

 But, notwithstanding the particularity with which all this is related 

 there must be some error. The account would make Wotton to have 

 got back to England in 1598, or 1597, at the earliest ; and he was now, 

 his biographer proceeds to inform us, taken into the service of the 

 Earl of Essex as one of his secretaries, and " did personally attend 

 the earl'a councils and employments in two voyages at sea against the 

 Spaniards, and also in that (which was the earl's last) iuto Ireland, 

 that voyage wherein he then did so much provoke the queen to anger," 

 &c. Now Essex set out on his first expedition to Spain in June 1596, 

 and on his second in August 1597 ; both dates antecedent to that at 

 which Walton makes Wotton to have been taken into his service. It 

 is probable that Wotton either went abroad sooner, or did not stay 

 away from England so long as his biographer makes him to have done. 

 Essex went to Ireland in March 1599, and returned in September of 

 the same year ; upon which he was immediately placed in free cus- 

 tody, and although afterwards set at liberty, he was again apprehended 

 in February 1601, and, having been brought to trial and convicted of 

 high treason, he was executed on the 25th of that month. Wotton, 

 Walton tells us, as soon as he heard of Essex's second apprehension, 

 and committal to the Tower, " did very quickly, and as privately, 

 glide through Kent to Dover, without so inuch as looking toward his 

 native and beloved Bocton ; and was, by the help of favourable winds 

 and liberal payment of the mariners, withiu sixteen hours after his 

 departure from London set upon the French shore." There is no 

 reason however to suppose that Wotton was involved in the earl's 

 treason, like his brother secretary Cufie, who was hanged. 



From France Wotton proceeded to Italy, and took up his residence 

 among his old friends at Florence, whence after some stay he went on 

 a visit (called his fourth) to Rome, returning to Florence, Walton says 

 "about a year before the death of Queen Elizabeth," which would be 

 about March 1602, or about a year after he had left England. It 

 appears to have been in this first year of his residence abroad that he 

 drew up his treatise entitled ' The State of Christendom, giving a per- 

 fect and exact discovery of many political Intrigues and secret 

 Mysteries of State practised in most of the Courts of Europe ; with 

 an Account of their several Claims, Interests, and Pretensions,' first 

 printed in folio in 1657, and again in 1677. It was immediately after 

 Wotton's return from his visit to Rome that the reiguing grand-duke 



of Tuscany, Ferdinand I., intercepted certain letters discovering a 

 design to take away the life of King James of Scotland, and on the 

 advice of his secretary Signer Vietta, who was an intimate friend of 

 Wotton, resolved to employ Wotton to communicate the affair to 

 Jamea, and accordingly, says Walton, " acquainted him with the secret, 

 and, being well instructed, dispatched him into Scotland with letters to 

 the king ; and with those letters such Italian antidotes against poison 

 as the Scots till then had been strangers to." This mission proved 

 i;he foundation of Wotton's after fortunes. Calling himself Octavio 

 Baldi, and assuming the character of an Italian, he made his way to 

 Scotland, the better to escape notice, through Norway, and found King 

 James at Stirling. Having announced himself as an ambassador from 

 the Duke of Tuscany, he was soon admitted to the royal presence 

 through means of Bernard Lindsey, a gentleman of the bedchamber, 

 not however without having been requested when he came to the 

 presence-chamber door to lay aside his long rapier. Three or four 

 lords were standing " distant in several corners of the chamber ; " on 

 seeing whom he hesitated ; but James desired him to be bold and 

 deliver his message, for he would undertake for the secrecy of all that 

 were present. "Then," continues the narrative, "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, and whispers to the king in his own language 

 that he was an Englishman, beseeching him for a more private con- 

 ference 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 aa 

 much to Octavio Baldi himself as that country could afford." 



A few months after Wotton's return to 1? lorence news arrived of 

 the death of Queen Elizabeth; upon, which, by the grand-duke's 

 advice, he immediately proceeded to England, where he found that 

 James had not forgotten him, but had already been making inquiry 

 after him of his brother Sir Edward, afterwards Lord Wotton, whom 

 the king upon his arrival in London found holding the post of comp- 

 troller of the household. Wotton immediately received the honour 

 of knighthood, and the next year (1604) was sent as ambassador to 

 Venice, accompanied by Sir Albertus Morton, his nephew, as his secre- 

 tary. It was while he stayed for a few days at Augsburg, on his way 

 thither, that he wrote in the album of a German friend his famous 

 definition of an ambassador "Legatus est vir bonus peregre missus 

 ad mentiendum reipublicse causa " (an ambassador is an honest man 

 sent abroad to lie it is commonly rendered, sent to lie abroad for 

 the good of his country) ; which eight years after was published by 

 the learned but rancorous Caspar Scioppius, in a work against King 

 James, as a principle of the religion professed by that king. James 

 was at first very angry with Wotton, but was ultimately appealed by 

 an apology addressed to himself, and another letter on the subject in 

 violent abuse of Scioppius, which Wotton wrote to a friend, Marcus 

 Velserus, one of the duumvirs of Augsburg. In his own account, it 

 is observable, Wottou says nothing about the equivoque in the 

 English term lie, which is made a principal point of the story as it is 

 commonly told ; nor indeed does it appear how he could have had 

 any such double meaning in view while writing in Latin. He had 

 returned from this first mission to Venice before he wrote his letter 

 to Velserus, which is dated at London, 2nd December 1612. The 

 writer of his life, in the ' Biographia Britannica,' says that he came 

 home in 1610, and conceives that he was probably recalled in conse- 

 quence of the publication of his unfortunate definition. Be this as it 

 may, he seems to have remained four or five years from this time 

 without employment. There is some reason however to suppose that 

 he had a seat in the short parliament which met 5th April 1614, and 

 was dissolved 5th June following. There is no printed list of the 

 members of this parliament, but Sir Henry, in a letter dated a few 

 days after its dissolution, speaks of the late House of Commons by the 

 expression " our house." At last, towards the close of 1615, he was 

 sent on a mission to the United Provinces, and on his return in the 

 beginning of the following year he was re-appointed to the Venetian 

 embassy. He resided at Venice three years, and then returned to 

 England, according to the 'Biographia Britannica,' in July 1619, with 

 the hope of being appointed to the place of secretary of state, vacant 

 by the death of Sir Ralph Winwood. But that event had taken 

 place a year and nine months before; so that here again there ia 

 probably some mistake. According to the same authority, he was 

 in 1619, and the following year, sent again abroad, first as ambassador- 

 extraordinary to the Duke of Savoy, and then several times into Ger- 

 many upon the affairs of the elector-palatine ; " after which," it is 

 added, " being remanded a third time to Venice, with directions to 

 take the round thither through Germany, he returned not to England 

 till the year of King James's death," that is to say, in 1625. But he 

 was certainly back here by 1624 at the latest : Walton says that he 

 came to London " the year before King James died ; " and even the 

 account in the ' Biographia Britannica ' proceeds, somewhat inconsis- 

 tently, to inform us that " not long after his arrival, upon the death 

 of Mr. Thomas Murray in 1623, he succeeded him in the provostship 

 of Eton College." Walton's narrative implies that this place was 

 given him by King James, who had previously, it seems, granted him 

 the reversion of the place of master of the rolls, then held by Sir 



