Henry Wotton

Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639); studio of Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt, 1620. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Sir Henry Wotton (30 March 1568 - December 1639) was an English poet, prose author, and diplomat. He is often quoted as saying, "An ambassador is an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country." (Wotton was British ambassador to Venice.)

Life

Overview

Wotton, son of a Kentish gentleman, was born at Boughton Park, near Maidstone, and educated at Winchester and Oxford. After spending 7 years on the Continent, he entered the Middle Temple. In 1595 he became secretary to the earl of Essex, who employed him abroad, and while at Venice he wrote The State of Christendom; or, A most exact and curious discovery of many secret passages and hidden mysteries of the times, which was not, however, printed until 1657. Afterwards he held various diplomatic appointments, but court favor latterly failed him and he was recalled from Venice and made Provost of Eton in 1624, to qualify himself for which he took deacon's orders. Among his other works were Elements of Architecture (1624) and A Survey of Education. His writings in prose and verse were published in 1651 as Reliquiæ Wottonianæ. His poems include 2 which are familiar to all readers of Elizabethan verse, "The Character of a Happy Life," "How happy is he born and taught," and "On his Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia," beginning "Ye meaner Beauties of the Night." He was the originator of many witty sayings, which have come down.

Youth and education

Wotton, son of Thomas Wotton (1521-1587) and grandnephew of diplomat Nicholas Wotton, was born at Bocton Hall in the parish of Bocton or Boughton Malherbe, Kent.

He was educated at Winchester School and at New College, Oxford, where he matriculated on 5 June 1584. 2 years later he moved to Queen's College, where he earned a B.A. in 1588.

At Oxford he was the friend of Albericus Gentilis, then professor of civil law, and of John Donne. During his residence at Queen's he wrote a play, Tancredo, which has not survived, but his chief interests appear to have been scientific. In qualifying for his M.A. degree he read 3 lectures De oculo, and to the end of his life he continued to interest himself in physical experiments.

His father, Thomas Wotton, died in 1587, leaving to his son the very inadequate maintenance of 100 marks a year.

Career

About 1589 Wotton went abroad, with a view probably to preparation for a diplomatic career, and his travels appear to have lasted for about 6 years. At Altdorf he met Edward, Lord Zouch, to whom he later addressed a series of letters (1590-1603) which contain much political and other news. These (Reliquiae Wolleniatiae, 585 et seq. 1685) provide a record of the journey.

He traveled by way of Vienna and Venice to Rome, and in 1593 spent some time at Geneva in the house of Isaac Casaubon, to whom he contracted a considerable debt. He returned to England in 1594, and in the next year was admitted to the Middle Temple. While abroad he had from time to time provided Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex, with information, and he now definitely entered his service as an agent or secretary. It was his duty to supply intelligence of affairs in Transylvania, Poland, Italy and Germany.

Wotton was not, like his unfortunate fellow-secretary, Henry Cuffe (who was hanged at Tyburn in 1601), actually involved in Essex's downfall, but he thought it prudent to leave England, and within 16 hours of his patron's apprehension he was safe in France, from where he traveled to Venice and Rome.

In 1602 he was resident at Florence, and a plot to murder James VI of Scotland having come to the ears of the grand-duke of Tuscany, Wotton was entrusted with letters to warn him of the danger, and with Italian antidotes against poison. As "Ottavio Baldi " he travelled to Scotland by way of Norway. He was well received by James, and remained 3 months at the Scottish court, retaining his Italian incognito.

He then returned to Florence, but on receiving the news of James's accession hurried to England. James knighted him, and offered him the embassy at Madrid or Paris; but Wotton, knowing that both these offices involved ruinous expense, desired rather to represent James at Venice. He left London in 1604 accompanied by Sir Albertus Morton, his half-nephew, as secretary, and William Bedell, the author of an Irish translation of the Bible, as chaplain.

Wotton spent most of the next 20 years, with two breaks (1612-1616 and 1619-1621), at Venice. He helped the Doge in his resistance to ecclesiastical aggression, and was closely associated with Paolo Sarpi, whose history of the Council of Trent was sent to King James as fast as it was written.

Wotton had offended scholar Caspar Schoppe, who had been a fellow student at Altdorf. In 1611 Schoppe wrote a scurrilous book against James entitled Ecclesiaslicus, in which he fastened on Wotton a saying which he had incautiously written in a friend's album years before. It was the famous definition of an ambassador as an "honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country," It should be noticed that the original Latin form of the epigram did not admit of the double meaning. This was adduced as an example of the morals of James and his servants, and brought Wotton into temporary disgrace.

Wotton was at the time on leave in England, and made 2 formal defenses of himself, one a personal attack on his accuser addressed to Marcus Welser of Strassburg, and the other privately to the king. He failed to secure further diplomatic employment for some time, and seems to have finally won back the royal favor by obsequious support in parliament of James's claim to impose arbitrary taxes on merchandise. In 1614 he was sent to the Hague and in 1616 he returned to Venice.

In 1620 he was sent on a special embassy to Ferdinand II. at Vienna, to do what he could on behalf of James's daughter Elizabeth, queen of Bohemia. Wotton's devotion to this princess, expressed in his exquisite verses beginning "You meaner beauties of the night," was sincere and unchanging. At his departure the emperor presented him with a jewel of great value, which Wotton received with due respect, but before leaving the city he gave it to his hostess, because, he said, he would accept no gifts from the enemy of the Bohemian queen. After a 3rd term of service in Venice he returned to London early in 1624 and in July he was installed as provost of Eton College. This office did not relieve him from his financial embarrassments, and he was even on an occasion arrested for debt, but he received in 1627 a pension of £200.

He did not neglect the duties of his provostship, and was happy in being able to entertain his friends lavishly. His most constant associates were Izaak Walton and John Hales. A bend in the Thames below the Playing Fields, known as "Black Potts," is still pointed out as the spot where Wotton and Walton fished in company.

He died at the beginning of December 1639 and was buried in the chapel of Eton College.

Writing

Wotton was not an industrious author, and his writings are very small in bulk. Of the 25 poems printed in Reliquiae Wollonianae only 15 are Wotton's. But of those 15, 2 have obtained a place among the best known poems in the language, the lines already mentioned "On his Mistris, the Queen of Bohemia," and "The Character of a Happy Life."

During his lifetime ho published only The Elements of Architecture (1624), which is a paraphrase from Marcus Vitruvius PoUio, and a Latin prose address to the king on his return from Scotland (1633). In 1651 appeared the Reliquiae Woltoniamae, with Izaak Walton's Life.

An admirable Life and Letters, representing much new material, by Logan Pearsall Smith, was published in 1907. See also A.W. Ward, Sir Henry Wotton, a Biographical Sketch (1898).

Critical introduction

by John W. Hales

Sir Henry Wotton, a highly accomplished gentleman and distinguished diplomatist in his day, is now best known to us personally through the affectionate memoir of his humble friend and fellow angler Isaac Walton, and the kindly interest he showed in Milton, whose Comus had excited his warm admiration. He was well born, well bred, and among the most cultivated men of his time. But, immersed in politics and society, he found but little leisure for the studies he loved till his appointment to the provostship of Eton in 1624, when he was some 56 years of age.

Of poetry he wrote but little; but of that little 2 pieces at least have obtained a permanent place in English literature, his "Character of a Happy Life", written probably circa 1614; and the lines, "On his mistress the Queen of Bohemia", circa 1620. Of the apophthegm "the style is of the man," it would be difficult to find better illustrations. As in a mirror, they reflect the high refined nature of a man who, living in the world, and a master of its ways and courtesies, was yet never of it — was never a worldling.

Recognition

Wotton was knighted by James I in 1604.

He received in 1627 a pension of £200, and in 1630 this was raised to £500 on the understanding that he should write a history of England.

3 of his poems ("Elizabeth of Bohemia," "The Character of a Happy Life," and "Upon the Death of Sir Albert Morton's Wife") were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

Publications

Poetry

• Poems (edited by Alexander Dyce). London: T. Richards for the Percy Society, 1843.
• Sir Henry Wotton & Sir Walter Raleigh, Poems. London: William Pickering, 1845.

Non-fiction

• The Elements of Architecture. London: Iohn Bill, 1624.
• A Parallel Betweene Robert late Earle of Essex, and George late Duke of Buckingham. London: 1641,
• A Short View of the Life and Death of George Villers, Duke of Buckingham. London: William Sheares, 1642.
• The State of Christendom: Giving a perfect and exact discovery of many political interregues and secret mysteries of state practised in most of the courts of Europe. London: Samuel Thompson, Robert Horn at Gresham Colledg, Henry Mortlack, & Peter Parker, 1667.

Collected editions

• Reliquiae Wottonianae; or, A collection of lives, letters, poems. London: T. Roycroft for R. Marriott, F. Tyton, T. Collins, & J. Ford, 1672.

Letters

• Letters of Sir Henry Wotton to Sir Edmund Bacon. London: R.W. for F.T., 1661.
• Letters and Dispatches from Sir Henry Wotton to James the First and his Ministers, in the Years MDCXVII-XX. London: W. Nicol, Shakspeare Press, 1850.
• Logan Pearsall Smith, Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton. (2 volumes), Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1907. Volume I, Volume II

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

The Character of a Happy Life, by Sir Henry Wotton

• List of British poets

References

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Wotton, Sir Henry". Encyclopædia Britannica. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 836. . Wikisource, Mar. 20, 2018.
• Edward Chaney, The Evolution of the Grand Tour: Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations since the Renaissance Routledge 2000
• Curzon, Gerald, "Wotton And His Worlds: Spying, science and Venetian intrigues" 2004
• Logan Pearsall Smith, Henry Wotton: Life and Letters 1907

External links

Poems

• Wotton in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900: "Elizabeth of Bohemia," "The Character of a Happy Life," "Upon the Death of Sir Albert Morton's Wife".
• Wotton, Sir Henry (1568-1639) at Representative Poetry Online (2 poems)
• Sir Henry Wotton at PoemHunter (21 poems)
• Henry Wotton at Poetry Nook (26 poems)

Books

• Henry Wotton at the Online Books Page
• The Characters of Robert Devereux and George Villiers (1641)
• Henry Wotton at Amazon.com

About

• Sir Henry Wotton in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Wotton, Henry in the Dictionary of National Biography

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Original article is at Wotton, Sir Henry