his diplomatic correspondence, extended over three periods of office at Venice (September 1607 to December 1610; May 1616 to May 1619; and March 1621 to October 1623), together with special missions to Savoy, the States-General, and the German Courts. Of these periods of service, by far the most important, and that which gave the tone to the rest, was his first embassy at Venice, which marked the renewal of diplomatic intercourse between the two States. Although Venice had not recovered the position which she held in Europe before the League of Cambray, her Government, as that of a self-governed constitutional polity, at home still stood strong and firm super antiquas vias; while in her foreign policy she contrived, with fair success, to depend upon the alliances secured to her by the efforts of her diplomacy for covering that loss of actual strength which she could never expect to make good. Both the Turkish peril and the domination of the power of Spain, closely allied with the Austrian Habsburgs over all the rest of Italy, obliged the Venetians to seek the friendship of those Powers whose policy was adverse to that of the Habsburg house-of France, of the Protestant Princes of Germany, and of Protestant England. The policy of Venice was thus, almost as a matter of course, anti-papal. Although the movement against Rome, which was the very essence of the 'plan' or 'system' of Fra Paolo (Sarpi), was political rather than religious in its origin, it soon assumed both aspects; and the design for uniting Protestant Europe, under the headship of King James, into a great anti-papal league went hand in hand with the progress of the conflict between Venice and the Papacy.

Wotton, though at the time engaged in one of those trade disputes with Venice which belonged to the routine of his ambassadorial work, threw himself heart and soul into this conflict; and, notwithstanding that its settlement, in a sense mainly favourable to Venice, was actually achieved by the astute intervention of Henry IV in the person of Cardinal Joyeuse, he was justified in claiming for James I a share in this satisfactory result. According to Venetian usage the ambassador's dealings with the Government of the Republic were limited to his formal audiences in the Collegio, a committee composed of the Doge and twenty-five leading senators, by which all matters of foreign policy were discussed, and which

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Wotton aptly calls the stomach of the State.' His speeches on these occasions, according to Mr Smith, testify to his skill, elegance, and wit as a speaker of Italian. Private interviews with any foreign ambassador were prohibited to Venetians of senatorial rank except in quite special instances; hence the importance attaching to Wotton's private interviews with Sarpi, over which a deep veil of secrecy had to be thrown.

It was, then, in the Collegio that, on September 5, 1606, Wotton, instructed by Salisbury to convey to the Doge the King's promise of assistance in the struggle with the Pope, though limited by the conditions formulated by the secretary in the words,' that it shall be at all times as far as the state of the King's own affairs shall let him,' had committed the boldest indiscretion of his life. But the spirit which dictated his communication to the Collegio, the courage with which it was made, and the effect which it unmistakably exercised, raised it far beyond the level of an indiscretion. Without passing over the restrictive clause added by the secretary, the ambassador had made a definite offer of the King of England's assistance, with all his counsels, friends and forces both terrestrial and maritime, sincerely and seriously'; and the Republic had at once accepted the offer as it stood, and thanked the King for his heroic resolution.' It is true that Salisbury had thereupon done his best to draw the King out of his engagement, and that, as to his headship of a Protestant league, Wotton, who had again brought the proposal before the Collegio, was obliged to confess that he had not been authorised by the King to make it. But the worst effect of the September declaration had been indisputable; and, as Spain wished for peace, Henry IV had seized the opportunity of bringing it about on terms which were a substantial triumph for the 'system' of Sarpi. The style' in which it was sought to take vengeance upon Fra Paolo himself is well known, as is Wotton's letter, sent in after days to his brother provost of King's, with the portrait of

'a great canonist, which was the title of his ordinary service with the State; and certainly in the time of the Pope's inter

• Sarpi told Dohna that Protestant princes should have agents rather than ambassadors in Venice, as the latter were so strictly watched.

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dict they had their principal light from him. When he was either reading or writing alone, his manner was to sit fenced with a castle of paper about his chair and overhead; for he was of our Lord of St Alban's opinion, that all air is predatory, and especially hurtful when the spirits are most employed. You will find a scar in his face, that was from a Roman assassinate that would have killed him as he was turned to a wall near to his convent; and, if there were not a greater Providence about us, it might often have been easily done, especially upon such a weak and wearyish body.'

After the settlement, Wotton, whose Venetian letters of this time reveal those high spirits which animate courageous men in full action-not only on the field of battle-was eager to carry on the struggle. Early in 1609 he forwarded to King James, through Francesco Biondi, propositions of 'Maestro Paolo' for aggressive action against the Papacy, and for the introduction of religious reform into Italy. The former was to be carried out by a combination with those German Princes in whose councils at this time an unprecedented activity obtained, and who, if they but followed the eager advice of Christian of Anhalt, would not be found wanting at the critical hour-car il fault que nous entreaydions pour détruire et démolir Babilon.' We have already hinted that Mr Smith might have made more abundant use than he has thought necessary of the documents edited by Ritter, which illustrate the relations between the German and the Venetian movements in this period. Wotton was in direct contact with Christoph von Dohna, the Palatine councillor and agent; and, while the French ambassador, De Fresne-Canaye, was plying his English colleague with warlike proposals, the latter suggested to Salisbury, 'out of his own weak judgment,' that James might easily manage to involve Henry IV in an Italian war, and thus 'kindle such a work as will not easily end till the day of Christ, whose work indeed it is.'

Meanwhile the religious propaganda had been deliberately set on foot. A French Protestant named Papillon was collecting adhesions to, and subscriptions for, the scheme of a religious congregation with a pastor of its own; and Wotton's chaplain, William Bedell, was translating the English liturgy into Italian for the use of this congregation, to which already, by the end of 1607,

the Genevan Protestant pastor, Giovanni Diodati, had begun to minister. James' vanity, as well as his principles, made him specially anxious to intervene in this part of the work; and in March 1607 two boxes containing copies of the King's 'Apologia pro Juramento Fidelitatis' had arrived as his contribution to the propaganda. Wotton, though he had not been able to circulate them without difficulty, asked for more of both the King's and other books of little import-Jewell's 'Apology' in particular. A year later we find him impressing upon the King anew the importance of such efforts; but, notwithstanding their and Bedell's assiduity, this part of the scheme was foredoomed to die a natural death; for, as observed above, it was not religious dogma that divided Venice into Papalini and patriots, and no Corpus Christi procession there had ever been more splendid than that which took place during the Interdict.

About a year after Wotton's return home from his first Venetian embassy, the royal favour which he had gained was manifested by his being sent on a special mission to Turin, to which he had paid a visit (either by the King's orders or of his own initiative) on his way back to England. The mission, which crossed the Alps in the spring of 1612, was one of great state; and at Turin the ambassador and his suite were overwhelmed 'with infinite honours and entertainments.' For what was in question was the realisation of part of a double marriage scheme with the Court of Savoy, at which Wotton had been for some time at work, but of which the other half-a match between the Princess Elizabeth and the Prince of Piedmont-had fallen through; happily, if one calls to mind the English Succession question of later days. The proposal to marry Henry Prince of Wales to the Infanta Maria, who was believed to be well disposed towards the religion,' was, however, still open, or seemed to be so. Mr Smith seems to us to be wholly right in his view (which controverts that of the late Dr Gardiner) that Wotton's endeavour to knit an alliance with Charles Emmanuel the Great' of Savoy was made wholly with the view of advancing the cause of Protestantism in Italy. But it was out of Wotton's power to follow the alternating phases in the policy of Charles Emmanuel, who, since the death of Henry IV, had veered from the French alliance to

a rapprochement towards Spain, and had then been again alienated from Spain by the Montferrat Succession quarrel; while his negotiations with the German Protestant Princes, who dangled before his eyes the prospect of the Imperial Crown, possessed little reality.

In the matter of Wotton's mission, however, its inevitable failure was due rather to James I than to Charles Emmanuel; for how could the Duke be expected to join a league against Spain and at the same time consent to a matrimonial alliance which, as the ambassador had to explain to him, could not take place without Spanish sanction? The tortuous policy of Charles Emmanuel was confronted by the even more incalculable duplicity of James I, and the whole project collapsed. Wotton's diplomatic credit had, though without his own fault, suffered from the negotiation; and, as fate would have it, just about this time his unfortunate Augsburg epigram about ambassadors and their duties reached the King's ears. The death of Salisbury, of whom, before his temporary disgrace, Wotton had been thought a possible successor, had deprived him of a good friend; and, though about 1612 fortune had seemed to smile on Sir Henry as it had never shone before, his evil star seemed to be once more in the ascendant. However, it was not long before he recovered royal favour-perhaps through a temperate but effective speech which he had made as a member of the Addled Parliament, asserting the hereditary right of the Crown to levy impositions on merchandise.

In the summer of 1614 he was sent out on another special mission, this time to the Hague. He was to try his best, in conjunction with the statesmen of the Dutch Republic and the diplomatic representatives of France, to settle the Jülich-Cleves controversy-that 'great nightmare of history,' as Mr Smith calls it, reminding one of Disraeli's comparison of it in the House of Commons to the sister nightmare of the Schleswig-Holstein question. It had reached an acute stage after, in 1613, one of the two 'possessing' princes, Wolfgang Wilhelm of Neuburg, had become a Catholic and claimed the protection of the Catholic League. We are unable here to review the efforts of the 'peace-loving' ambassador, as Mr Smith not very felicitously calls Wotton-efforts of which the course is summed up by Wotton himself in a letter printed