procurations of Priviledges and Courtesies with the German Princes and the Republick of Venice for the English Merchants and vvhat he did by direction of King James vvith the Venetian State concerning the Bishop of Spalato's return to the Church of Rome But for the particulars of these and many more that I meant to make known I vvant a vievv of some Papers that might inform me his late Majesties Letter Office having now suffered a strange alienation and indeed I want time too for the Printers Press stays for what is written so that I must haste to bring Sir Henry Wotton in an instant from Venice to London leaving the Reader to make up what is defective in this place by the small supplement of the Inscription under his Arms which he left at all those Houses where he rested or lodged when he return'd from his last Embassy into England Henricus Wottonius Anglo-Cantianus Thomae optimi viri 〈◊〉 minimus à serenissimo Jacobo Iâ—… Mag. Britâ—… Râ—…ge in equestrem titulum adscitus ejusdemqâ—… 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 â—…ublicam Venetam Legatus Ordinarius â—…mel ad confoeder at 〈◊〉 Provinciarum Ordines in Juliacensi â—…tio Bis ad Carolum Emanuel Sabâ—…diae Dâ—… semel ad unitos superioris Germaniae Principes in Coâ—…ventu Heilbrunensi postremo ad Archiducem Leopoldum Ducem Wittembergensem Civitates imperialâ—…s Argentinam Ulmamqueâ—… ipsum Romanorum Imperatorem Ferdinandum secundum Legatus Extraordinarius tandem hoc didicit Animas fieri sapientiores quiescendo To London he came the year before King James died who having for the reward of his forreign service promised him the reversion of an Office which was fit to be turned into present money which he wanted for a supply of his present necessities and also granted him the reversion of the Master of the Rolls place if he out-lived charitable Sir Julius Caesar who then possessed it and then grown so old that he was said to be kept alive beyond Natures Course by the prayers of those many poor which he daily relieved But these were but in hope and his condition required a present support For in the beginning of these imployments he sold to his elder Brother the Lord Wotton the Rent-charge left by his good Father and which is worse was now at his return indebted to several persons whom he was not able to satisfie but by the Kings payment of his Arrears due for his forreign Imployments He had brought into England many servants of which some were German and Italian Artists this was part of his condition who had many times hardly sufficient to supply the occasions of the day For it may by no means be said of his providence as himself said of Sir Philip Sidney's wit That it was the very measure of congruity He being alwayes so careless of money as though our Saviours words Care not for to morrow were to be literally understood But it pleased the God of providence that in this jucture of time the Provosthip of His Mayesties Colledge of Eaton became void by the death of Mr. Thomas Murray for which there were as the place deserv'd many earnest and powerfull Suiters to the King And Sir Henry who had for many years like Siciphas rolled the restless stone of a State-imployment knowing experimentally that the great blessing of sweet content was not to be found in multitudes of men or business and that a Colledge was the fittest place to nourish holy thoughts and to afford rest both to his body and mind which his age being now almost threescore years seemed to require did therefore use his own and the interest of all his friends to procure that place By which means and quitting the King of his promised reversionary Offices and a piece of honest policy which I have not time to relate he got a Grant of it from His Majesty And this was a fair satisfaction to his mind but money was wanting to furnish him with those necessaries which attend removes and a settlement in such a place and to procure that he wrote to his old friend Mr. Nicholas Pey for his assistance of which Nicholas Pey I shall here say a little for the clearing of some passages that I shall mention hereafter He was in his youth a Clerk or in some such way a Servant to the Lord Wotton Sir Henry's Brother and by him when he was Comptroller of the Kings Houshold was made a great Officer in His Majesties House This and other favours being conferred upon Mr. Pey in whom there was a radieal honesty were alwayes thankfully acknowledged by him and his gratitude exprest by a willing and unwearied serviceableness to that Family even till his death To him Sir Henry Wottâ—… wrote to use all his interest at Court to procure Five hundred pounds of his Arrears for leâ—… would not settle him in the Colledge and the want of such a summe wrinckled his face with care 't was his own expression and that money being procured he should the next day after find him in his Colledge and Invidiae remedium writ over his Study door This money being part of his Arrears was by his own and the help of honest Nicholas Pey's interest in Court quickly procured him and he 〈◊〉 quickly in the Colledge the place where indeed his happiness then seemed to have its beginning the Colledge being to his mind as a quiet Harbor to a Sea-faring man after a tempestuous voyage where by the bounty of the pious Founder his very Food and Rayment were plentifully provided for him in kind and more money then enough where he was freed from all corroding cares and seated on such a Rock as the waves of want could not probably shake where he might sit in a Caelm and looking down behold the busie multitude turmoyl'd and tossed in a tempestuous Sea of trouble and dangers And as Sir William Davenant has happily exprest the like of another person Laugh at the graver business of the State Which speaks wen rather wise then fortunate Being thus setled according to the desires of his heart his first study was the Statutes of the Colledge by which he conceiv'd himself bound to enter into Holy Orders which he did being made Deacon with all convenient speed shortly after which time as he came in his Surplice from the Church service an old Friend a person of Quality met him so attired and joyed him of his new habit to whom Sir Henry Wotton replied I thank God and the King by whose goodness I now am in this condition a condition which that Emperor Charles the Fifth seem'd to approve who after so many remarkable Victories when his glory was great in the eyes of all men freely gave up his Crown and the many cares that attended it to Philip his Son making a holy retreat to a Cloysteral life where he might by devout meditations consult with God which the rich or busie men seldome do and have leisure both to examine the errors of his life past and
yet in the Clouds It was said at first that he had been stung with a denial of his Captains place who died in England whereof thus much indeed is true that the Duke before he would invest him in the said place advising first as his manner was with his Colonel he found him to interpose for one Powel his own Lieutenant a Gentleman of extraordinary valour and according to Military custome the place was good that the Lieutenant of the Colonels Company might well pretend to the next vacant Captainship under the same Regiment Which Felton acknowledged to be in it self very usual and equitable besides the special merit of the person So as the aforesaid conceit of some rancour harboured upon this denial had no true ground There was another imagination that between a Knight of the same County whom the Duke had lately taken into some good degree of favour and the said Felton there had been ancient quarrels not yet well healed which might perhaps lye festring in his brest and by a certain inflammation produce this effect But that carries small probability that Felton would so deface his own act as to make the Duke no more then an oblique sacrifice to the fumes of his private revenge upon a third person Therefore the truth is that either to honest a deed after it was done or to slumber his conscience in the doing he studied other incentives alledging not three hours before his execution to Sir Richard Gresham two only inducements thereof The first as he made it in order was a certain libellous Book written by one Egglestone a Scottish Physician which made the Duke one of the foulest Monsters upon the earth and indeed unworthy not only of life in a Christian Court and under so vertuous a King but of any room within the bounds of all humanity if his prodigious predictions â—…d the least semblance of truth The second was the Remonstrance it self of the Lower House of Parliament against him which perchance he thought the fairest cover so he put in the second place Whatsoever were the true motive which I think none can determine but the Prince of darkness it self he did thus prosecute the effect In a by-Cutlers Shop on Tower-hill he bought a ten penny Knife so cheap was the instrument of this great attempt and the sheath thereof he sewed to the lining of his Pocket that he might at any moment draw forth the Blade alone with one hand for he had maimed the other This done he made shift partly as it is said on Horse-back and partly on foot to get to Portsmouth for he was indigent and low in money which perhaps might have a little edged his desperation At Portsmouth on Saturday being the 23. of August of that currant year he pressed without any suspicion in such a time of so many pretenders to Imployment into an inward Chamber where the Duke was at breakfast the last of his repasts in this world accompanied with men of quality and action with Monsieur de Soubes and Sir Thomas Fryer And there a little before the Dukes rising from the Table he went and stood expecting till he should pass through a kind of Lobby between that Room and the next where were divers attending him Towards which passage as I conceive somewhat darker then the Chamber which he voided while the Duke came with Sir Thomas Fryer close at his ear in the very moment as the said Knight withdrew himself from the Duke this Assasinate gave him with a back blow a deep wound into his left side leaving the Knife in his body Which the Duke himself pulling out on a sudden effusion of spirits he sunk down under the Table in the next Room and immediately expired Certain it is that some good while before Sir Clement Throckmorton a Gentleman then living of grave judgement had in a private conference advised him to wear a Privy-Coat whose Counsel the Duke received very kindly but gave him this answer That against any popular fury a Shirt of Mayl would be but a silly defence and as for any single mans assault he took himself to be in no danger So dark is Destiny One thing in this enormous accident is I must confess to me beyond all wonder as I received it from a Gentleman of judicious and diligent observation and one whom the Duke well favoure That within the space of not many minutes afterâ—…d fall of the body and removal thereof into the first Room there was not a living creature in either of the Chambers no more then if it had lien in the Sands of Aethiopia whereas commonly in such cases you shall note every where a great and sudden conflux of people unto the place to hearken and to see But it should seem the very horrour of the fact had stupified all curiosity and so dispersed the multitude that it is thought even the murtherer himself might have escaped for who gave the blow none could affirm if he had not lingred about the House below not by any confused arrest of conscience as hath been seen in like examples but by very pride in his own deed as if in effect there were little difference between being remembred by a vertuous fame or an illustrious infamy Thus died this great Peer in the 36 year of his age compleat and three dayes over in a time of great recourse unto him and dependance upon him the House and Town full of Servants and Suiters his Dutchess in an upper Room scarce yet out of her Bed and the Court at that time not above six or nine miles from him which had been the Stage of his Greatness I have spent some enquiry whether he had any ominous presagement before his end Wherein though both ancient and modern Stories have been infected with much vanity yet oftentimes things fall out of that kind which may bear a sober construction whereof I will glean two or three in the Dukes Case Being to take his leave of my Lords Grace of Canterbury then Bishop of London whom he knew well planted in the Kings unchangeable affection by his own great abilities after courtesies of course had passed between them My Lord sayes the Duke I know your Lordship hath very worthily good accesses unto the King our Soveraign let me pray you to put his Majesty in mind to be good as I no wayes distrust to my poor Wife and Children At which words or at his countenance in the delivery or at both my Lord Bishop being somewhat troubled took the freedome to ask him whether he had never any secret abodement in his mind No replyed the Duke but I think some adventure may kill me as well as another man The very day before he was slain feeling some indisposition of body the King was pleased to give him the honour of a visit and found him in his Bed where and after much serious and private discourse the Duke at his Majesties departing embraced him in a very unusual and passionate manner
in it self To begin therefore by your Gracious Leave this kind of Intelligence with your Highness I have charged this Gentleman with the humble Presentation of a Secret unto you not long since imparted to this State and rewarded with a Pension to the Inventer and to his Posterity the scope being indeed of singular use and at the first hearing of as much admiration namely a way how to save Gunpowder from all mischance of Fire in their Magazines to which they have been very obnoxious by a kind of fatality The thing it self in a small Bulk with the description thereof according to mine own Trial and Observations will be consigned to your Highness apart from this Letter And so having laid a beginning to these poor Philosophical Services with hope of incouragement therein by Your favourable acceptation I will conclude with my humblest prayers to the Soveraign Lord of all Nature and Fountain of all Knowledge to continue his sweet and dear Blessings upon Your Highness To whom I remain c. To the DUKE May it please your Grace HAving some dayes by sickness been deprived of the comfort of your sight vvho did me so much honour at my last access I am bold to make these poor lines happier then my self and withal to represent unto your Grace whose noble Patronage is my refuge when I find any occasion to bewail mine own fortune a thing which seemed strange unto me I am told I know not how truly that his Majesty hath already disposed the Venetian Ambassage to Sir Isaac Weake from whose sufficiency if I should detract it would be but an argument of my own weakness But that vvhich herein doth touch me I am loth to say in point of Reputation surely much in my livelihood as Lawyers speak is that thereby after seventeen years of forraign and continuaâ—… employment either ordinary or extraordinary I am left utterly destitute of all possibility to subsist at home much like those Seal-fishes which sometimes as they say oversleeping themselves in an Ebbing-water feel nothing about them but a dry shore when they awake Which comparison I am fain to seek among those creatures not knowing among men that have so long served so gracious a Master any one to whom I may resemble my unfortunate bareness Good my Lord as your Grace hath vouchsafed me some part of your love so make me worthy in this of some part of your compassion So I humbly rest Your Graces c. H. WOTTON 1626. My dear Nic. Pey THis is the account of me since you saw me last My going to Oxford was not meerly for shift of air otherwise I should approve your counsel to prefer Boughton before any other part whatsoever that air best agreeing with me and being a kind of resolving me into my own beginnings for there was I born But I have a little ambitious vanity stirring in me to Print a thing of my Composition there which would else in London run through too much noise before hand by reason of the Licences that must be gotten and an eternal trick in those City-Stationers to rumour what they have under Press From Oxford I vvas rapt by my Nephevv Sir Edmund Bacon to Redgrave and by himself and by my sweet Niece detained ever since so I say for believe me there is in their conversations and in the freedom of their entertainment a kind of delightful violence In our vvay hither vve blanched Pauls Perry though vvithin three miles of it vvhich vve are not tender to confess being indeed our manifest excuse for thereby it appears the pains of the vvay did not keep us thence In truth vve thought it coming immediately from an infected place an hazardous incivility to put our selves upon them for if any â—…nister accident had fallen out about the same time for Coincidents are not always Causes vve should have rued it for ever Here vvhen I had been almost a fortnight in the midst of much contentment I received knowledge of Sir Albertus Morton's departure out of this World vvho vvas dearer unto me then mine own being in it What a vvound it is to my heart you vvill easily believe But His undisputable Will must be done and unrepiningly received by His own Creatures vvho is the Lord of all Nature and of all Fortune vvhen he taketh novv one and then another till the expected day vvherein it shall please him to dissolve the vvhole and to vvrap up even the Heaven it self as a Scrol of Parchment This is the last Philosophy that we must study upon the Earth let us now that yet remain while our Glasses shall run by the dropping away of Friends re-inforce our Love to one another which of all Vertues both spiritual and moral hath the highest priviledge because Death it self shall not end it And good Niâ—… exercise that â—…ove towards me in letting me know c. Your ever poor Friend H. WOTTON To the KING 1627. May it please Your Majesty THe Gracious Aspect which I have ever observed in Your Majesty towards me doth bind me though there were no other reason next under God to approve all my actions to Your Judgement Let me therefore most humbly make known unto Your Majesty that it hath pleased the Fountain of all good thoughts to dispose my mind by his secret Providence to enter into the sacred Orders of his Church having confirmed in me for which his high Name be ever blessed the reverence and love of his truth by a large experience of the abuses thereof in the very seat and sink of all corruption Rome it self to which my wandring curiosity carried me no less then four times in my younger years where I fixed my Studies most upon the historical part in the politick management of Religion which I found plainly converted from a Rule of Conscience to an Instrument of State and from the Mistress of all Sciences into a very hand-maid of Ambition Neither do I repent me of bending my observation that way For though the Truth perhaps may more compendiously appear in ordine doctrinae yet never more fully then when we search the original veins thereof the increase the depravations and decayes in ordine temporum This is the Point wherein I have travelled most and wherein I will spend the remainder of my days hoping that the All-sufficient God will in the strength of his mercy enable my weakness either by my Voice or Pen to celebrate his Glory Now though I was thus far confident in my self with all humility be it spoken that neither my life nor my poor erudition would yield much scandal to others and likewise might well have presumed that this resolution could no wayes offend Your Majesties religious heart but might rather be secure in Your favour and encouragement yet having been imployed so many years abroad in civil use I thought it undutifull to change my calling without the fore-knowledge and approbation of my Dear Soveraign This is the humble Message of these few lines unto
excuse is accepted but because they did not aftervvards vvithout a second demand send him vvord that they vvould be at leisure incrassatus est sanguis on the Spanish side A much deeper and incurable case is fallen out betwixt the French and the Extraordinary Ambassador of Parma vvho after the French sent first unto him as they say though he affirms it vvas the Spaniard did yet visit the Spaniard before them belike according to the method of his devotion and proximity to his Master or of Authority in this Court howsoever hereupon the Duke of Angolesme assigned the same Ambassadour a day to visit him and vvhen he came alla buona he shut his Gates upon him Which is here generally the worse interpreted because he is a Bishop seeming an affront to both his qualifications In such a touchy time as this I had almost had my share to whom after the three French Ambassadors had sent their three Secretaries for prevention of the Spaniard as far as Cloyster Newburg vvhere I made my stop they vvere likewise the first here that sent to visit me but came all three together and vvith them Monsieur de Beaugie the Ordinary Agent Whereupon fell a little disputation between us Whether visits of respect between Representants of equality being received in specie should be paid in individuo vvhich seemed unto me no good complemental Logick but finding afterwards first that their Commissions vvere the same then that the Emperor had sent to their several Lodgings and the Popes Nuncio though visited in gross had visited them apart I made an end of this scruple yet not before a promise that if your Majesty should send more Ambassadors hither they vvill proceed a la pareille vvith them having gained thus much by this small debate that perchance they think me not over-punctual nor altogether supine I have likewise received and rendered to the Spanish Ambassador all due formalities and from all other Ambassadors and Agents except the Popes and the Duke of Parma's vvhose habits make us incommiscible Of the rest I need not speak at all of the French and Spanish I vvill presume to speak my opinion as far as may conduce to the main I find the French surely of good intention towards a peace here but not hasty either to believe in truth that the Crowns of Hungaria or Bohemia vvere Hereditary Here at their first coming they had more credit as I receive from a good hand then they seem to have novv vvhich is thought to proceed from the Spanish Ambassador vvho in this Court is not only the Supream Counsellor but hath in truth a Dictatoriam potestatem as the French find the reason being not very obscure for vvhen I put in the major that the Emperors resolutions depend upon necessities and in the minor that his necessities depend upon Spain I think I may spare the conclusion Thus stand the publick Ministers here and thus they stand one vvith another vvhich I thought fit to set down because it hath some influence into the general business Novv to proceed to the scope of my employment in matter of substance I had Audience of the Emperor as the French the second day after my arrival vvhere vvhat I said vvill best appear to your Majesty out of the Memorial vvhich I aftervvards sent unto him at his own requisition here following vvord for vvord as I have translated it out of the Italian in vvhich language the Emperor treateth most vvillingly The Proposition of Henry Wotton Knight Ambassador Extraordinary from his Majesty of Great Britain delivered in the Name of his sovereign-Sovereign-Lord the King with all real intention to his Sacred Imperial Majesty the 23 of August stylo vet did contain four points FIrst That his Imperial Majesty would be pleased to make known his inclination towards a sincere Treaty upon the present Motions Secondly That it will please him by one or two or more to inform the said Ambassador of all the fundamental Arguments in the merit of the Cause which shall be most faithfully represented by him to the King his Master Thirdly Either his Imperial Majesty vvill refuse or agree to enter into Treaty In the first case It vvere vain for Representants of Princes of good intentions to spend further the Reputation of their Masters In the second His Majesty of Great Britain doth think it most convenient that both the Parties together with their Confederates be contented to condescend to a cessation of Arms for some competent time lest vvhile their Reconcilements vvere in Treaty their passions be more exasperated then before Fourthly That for the furthering of their Reconcilement His Imperial Majesty would be pleased to free the passages of Curriers from Vienna to Prague vvhich shall be procured likewise on the other side Besides these substantial points the said Ambassador did touch three Considerations about the Person of His Soveraign Lord the King which did render Him with His Imperial Majesty of indubitable credit although interessed by so strait Bonds in the contrary side First His Majesties clearness in the beginning of these Motions Secondly His Neutrality in the progress thereof Thirdly His Equity in the present Touching the first point the Ambassador declared in His Majesties Name with high and holy affirmations that He had had in Election of His Son-in-Law to the Crown of Bohemia no participation of Counsel or fore-knowledge VVhich His Majesty did not only affirm for Himself but as indubitably in the Person of His Son-in Law that he had no way fore-practised that Election For the second point of Neutrality the Ambassador said that His Majesty had not yet given the Title of King to His Son-in-Law or of Queen to His Daughter in any Letter either publick or private nor had permitted the same Title in any Sermons within His Kingdomes As for the third point of Equity the Ambassador shewed most evidently the great moderation and aequanimity of the King his Master in not having setled any firm judgement touching the merit of the Cause upon information from that side vvherein His Majesty is most interessed vvithout first requiring farther knowledge from the Emperor himself by an express Minister This vvas the Memorial of my Proposition Four days after the Emperor sends me vvord that his Answer vvas ready giving me my choice vvhether I vvould receive it from himself or else from the Baron of Eckemberg his Principal Counsellor and vvhether verbally or in vvriting or both In this gracious option I took hold of the vvriting because scripta manent and vvished I might have it from the Baron vvithout the Emperors farther trouble till from it might rise some nevv occasion To the Baron I vvas called two days after vvhom I found infirmer of his feet then of his head for in truth he is a Gentleman of strong conceit and fair delivery though as most of the Court are tainted vvith the Iesuit From him I received besides complements and many thanks for the honour that your Majesty
between Princes and Neighbouring Estates by Constitutions of the Empire may faithfully be continued it is provided That the two Armies here near encamped with all possible speed remove out of the places where they were pitched without any detriment to either Party and that they lodge not together in one place Secondly it is concluded That if perchance any Elector Prince Confederate State of either Party or indeed either of them in gross should require upon necessity a Passage by virtue of Ordinances of the Empire for the Defence and Security of them and their Subjects having first peaceably given sufficient Caution neither of them ought to deny it Provided the same requisition be seasonably made not upon rash and precipitate Advice when the Army be upon the Frontiers or indeed within the Territories of them with complaint or discommodity of the Subject Thirdly Forasmuch as We Maximilian Duke of Bavaria and other Electors Princes Catholick Estates and Alliants have excluded from this present Treaty the Kingdom of Bohemia with the Incorporated Provinces and other States Hereditary of the House of Austria and comprehended within the Treaty only the Electorals and Countries belonging to Electors Princes and States Confederates of either Party under which also is contained the Electoral Palatinate with all Inheritances thereunto belonging scituate within the Empire They ought not to be expended further seeing at this present we persist not in these differences that having nothing common with the rest but we will keep good Correspondence with them without any suspition Which likewise We Ioachim Ernest Marquess of Brandenburg do agree to the Resolution of the Electors Princes and States Catholick touching the Kingdom of Bohemia and the United Provinces with other Inheritances appertaining to the House of Austria for Us our Alliants Electors Princes and States and We will no less on our side that the said Kingdom of Bohemia with the United Provinces and Countries Hereditary to the House of Austria be not comprised in this Treaty understanding as well this Declaration to be for the Electoralities Principalities and Estates scituate and being within the Empire Fourthly Whereas during this Treaty divers times mention hath been made of the Griefs of the Empire not yet decided the decision of the same is remitted to some more convenient time seeing this was too short and the Grievances touched not only those of either Party but in general all both Catholick and Evangelical States of the whole Empire concerning which for this present there is no sufficient Power or Authority to determine And seeing both of either Party pretend losses and damages done and received by either side and particularly at the Village of Sandthaim and thereabouts it shall be shortly treated of reasonable restitution for the same All vvhich things vve Maximilian Duke of Bavaria and vve Ioachim Ernest Marquess of Brandenburg as vvell for us as for the above-named our Confederates Electors Princes and States do promise to maintain and keep inviolably In vvitness of vvhich vve have set to our Hands and Seals the 3. July 23. June An. 1620. Locus O Sigilli Maximilian Locus O Sigilli Ioachim Ernest. A Dispatch by Ralph from Venice 1621. SIR I Choose at the present to vvrite thick and small for the closer conveyance of that vvhich followeth first to your faithfull hands and by them immediately unto our Soveraign Lord the King The deputed Cardinals of the Congregation or Committee in Rome touching his Majesties Matrimonial Treaty vvith Spain having resolved negatively even after six Assemblies the Cardinal Ludovisio and the Spanish Ambassador vvent joyntly to the Pope to pray him that by no means the negative resolution might be divulged as yet but suppressed for a time because some turns vvere to be done by the concealment thereof Hereupon the Venâ—…tian Ambassador by name Reniero Zen the most diving man that ever the Republick hath held in that Court and of much confidence vvith the Pope upon old acquaintance observing that the foresaid Congregation had voted and that their censures vvere concealed comes to the Cardinal Ludovisio the Popes Nephew before-named and extracts from him the vvhole matter vvith the means and reason of the suppression This I have received from a credible and I vvould say from an infallible fountain if it did not become my simplicity in a point so much concerning the eternal dishonour of a great King to leave alwayes some possibility of mis-information Yet thus much more I must adde not out of intelligence but from sober discourse that although the present Pope hath been hitherto esteemed more French then any of his Predecessors a great vvhile yet is not the King of Spain such a Bankrupt in Rome but that he might easily have procured an assent in the fore-named Congregation or at least a resolution sooner then after five or six meetings of the deputed Cardinals unless delays had been studied Be it how it vvill as to his Majesty doth belong the Soveraignty of judgement so to his poor honest Creatures abroad the liberty of relation and a frank discharge of our zeal and duties To vvhich I vvill subscribe my unworthy Name Venice Feb. 15 25. 1621. A Dispatch about the King of Bohemia's Affairs at Venice 1622. Right Honourable I Have formerly acquainted his Majesty through your hands how my self being then in Padoua under Physick of late my familiar evil I vvas recalled to Venice by the arrival here of Seignor Filippo Calandrini expresly sent to sollicit some contribution from this Republick to the support of Count Mansfelt's Army vvherein my joynt endeavour vvas required by Letters from the Elector himself as then at the Hague And likewise I vvas thereunto the better enabled by very carefull instruction from Sir Dudley Carlton under cypher of the vvhole business how it stood Neither did I need any new immediate Command from his Majesty to serve in the Cause of his own descendents especially after your Letters of the 19th of January by Order vvhereof I had before in his Royal Name made a general exploration here of their good vvill towards us and now by the present imployment of the foresaid Calandrini as also upon Letters from the Elector to this Duke vvhereof the delivery and pursuit vvas recommended to me I found apt occasion to descend à Thesi ad Hypothesin vvhich vvith vvhat discretion it hath been handled I dare not say but sure I am vvith as much zeal and fervour as the capacity of my heart could hold vvhereof the accompt is now due as followeth Two full Audiences I had upon this Subject at mine own demand and a third at their calling as long as both the former In my first to make it appear more serious then an ordinary duty I told them I vvould do that vvhich I had never done before For vvhereas vve commonly leave the reference of our Propositions to a Secretary of the State vvho stands alwayes by the Ambassador and is the transporter both of our Arguments and of
Rome where in the English Colledge he had very many Friends their humanity made them really so though they knew him to be a dissenter from many of their Principles of Religion and having enjoyed their company and satisfied himself concerning some Curiosities that did partly occasion his Journey thither he returned back to Florence where a most notable accident befel him an accident that did not only find new employment for his choice Abilities but introduce him a knowledg and an interest with our King Iames then King of Scotland which I shall proceed to relate But first I am to tell the Reader That though Queen Elizabeth or she and her Council were never willing to declare her Successor yet Iames then King of the Scots was confidently believed by most to be the man upon whom the sweet trouble of Kingly Government would be imposed and the Queen declining very fast both by age and visible infirmities those that were of the Romish perswasion in point of Religion even Rome it self and those of this Nation knowing that the death of the Queen and the establishing of her Successor were taken to be critical days for destroying or establishing the Protestant Religion in this Nation did therefore improve all opportunities for preveting a Protestant Prince to succeed Her And as the Pope's Excommunication of Queen Elizabeth had both by the judgement and practice of the Jesuited Papist exposed her to be warrantably destroyed so if we may believe an angry Adversary a secular Priest against a Iesuit you may believe that about that time there were many indeavours first to excommunicate and then to shorten the life of King Iames. Immediately after Sir Henry Wotton's return from Rome to Florence which was about a year before the death of Queen Elizabeth Ferdinand the Great Duke of Florence had intercepted certain Letters that discovered a design to take away the life of Iames the then King of Scots The Duke abhorring the Fact and resolving to indeavor a prevention of it advised with his Secretary Vietta by what means a caution might be best given to that King and after consideration it was resolved to be done by Sir Henry Wotton whom Vietta first commended to the Duke and the Duke had noted and approved of above all the English that frequented his Court. Sir Henry was gladly called by his Friend Vietta to the Duke who after much profession of trust and friendship 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 poyson as the Scots till then had been strangers to Having parted from the Duke he took up the Name and Language of an Italian and thinking it best to avoid the line of English intelligence and danger he posted into Norway and through that Country towards Scotland where he found the King at Sterling being there he used means by Beâ—…ard Lindsey one of the Kings Bed Chamber to procure him a speedy and private conference with his Majesty assuring him That the business which he was to negotiate was of such consequence as had caused the Great Duke of Tuscany to enjoyn him suddenly to leave his Native Country of Italy to impart it to his King This being by Bernard Lindsey made known to the King the King after a little wonder mixt with jealousie to hear of an Italian Ambassador or Messenger required his Name which was said to be Octavio Baldi and appointed him to be heard privately at a fixed hour that Evening When Octavio Baldi came to the Presence-Chamber-door he was requested to lay aside his long Rapier which Italian-like he then wore and being entred the Chamber he found there with the King three or four Scotch Lords standing distant in several corners of the Chamber at the sight of whom he made a stand which the King observing bade him be bold and deliver his Message for he would undertake for the secresie of all that were present Then 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 English man beseeching Hini for a more private conference 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 as much to Octavio Baldi himself as that Countrey could afford from which he departed as true an Italian as he came thither To the Duke at Florence he return'd vvith a fair and gratefull account of his imployment and vvithin some few Moneths after his return there came certain News to Florence that Queen Elizabeth vvas dead and Iames King of the Scots proclaimed King of England The Duke knowing travel and business to be the best Schools of vvisdom and that Sir Henry Wotton had been tutor'd in both advis'd him to return presently to England and there joy the King vvith his new and better Title and vvait there upon Fortune for a better imployment When King Iames came into England he found amongst other of the late Queens Officers Sir Edward vvho vvas after Lord Wotton Comptroller of the House of vvhom he demanded If he knew one Henry Wotton that had spent much time in forreign Travel The Lord replied he knew him vvell and that he vvas his Brother then the King asking vvhere he then vvas vvas answered at Venice or Florence but by late Letters from thence he understood he vvould suddenly be at Paris Send for him said the King and when he shall come into England bid him repair privately to me The Lord Wotton after a little vvonder asked the King If he knew him to vvhich the King answered You must rest unsatisfied of that till you bring the Gentleman to me Not many Moneths after this Discourse the Lord Wotton brought his Brother to attend the King vvho took him in His Arms and bade him welcome by the Name of Octavio Baldi saying he was the most honest and therefore the best Dissembler that ever he met with And said Seeing I know you neither want Learning Travel nor Experience and that I have had so real a Testimony of your faithfulness and abilities to manage an Ambassage I have sent for you to declare my purpose which is to make use of you in that kind hereafter And indeed the King did so most of those two and twenty years of his Raign but before he dismist Octavio Baldi from his present attendance upon him he restored him to his old Name of Henry Wotton by vvhich he then Knighted him Not long after this the King having resolved according to his Motto Beati pacifici to have a friendship vvith his Neighbour-Kingdoms of France and Spain and also
to proceed to Excommunication of the Republick who still offered to shew both reason and ancient custom to warrant their Actions But this Pope contrary to his Predecessors moderation required absolute obedience without disputes Thus it continued for about a year the Pope still threatning Excommunication and the Venetians still answering him with fair speeches and no complyance till at last the Popes zeal to the Apostolick Sea did make him to excommunicate the Duke the whole Senate and all their Dominions and that done to shut up all their Churches charging the whole Clergy to forbear all sacred Offices to the Venetians till their Obedience should render them capable of Absolution But this act of the Popes did but the more confirm the Venetians in their resolution not to obey him And to that end upon the hearing of the Popes Interdict they presently published by sound of Trumpet a Proclamation to this effect That whosoever hath received from Rome any Copy of a Papal Interdict publish'd there as well against the Law of God as against the Honour of this Nation shall presently render it to the Councel of Ten upon pain of death Then was Duado their Ambassador call'd home from Rome and the Inquisition presently suspended by Order of the State and the Flood-gates being thus set open any man that had a pleasant or scoffing wit might safely vent it against the Pope either by free speaking or by Libels in Print and both became very pleasant to the people Matters thus heightned the State advised vvith Father Paul a Holy and Learned Frier the Author of the History of the Council of Trent vvhose advice vvas Neither to provoke the Pope nor lose their own Right he declaring publickly in Print in the name of the State That the Pope was trusted to keep two Keys one of Prudence and the other of Power And that if they were not both used together Power alone is not effectual in an Excommunication And thus these discontents and oppositions continued till a report was blown abroad that the Venetians were all turned Protestants which was believed by many for that it was observ'd the English Ambassadour was so often in conference with the Senate and his Chaplain Mr. Bedel more often with Father Paul whom the People did not take to be his Friend And also for that the Republick of Venice was known to give Commission to Gregory Justiniano then their Ambassadour in England to make all these Proceedings known to the King of England and to crave a Promise of his assistance if need should require and in the mean time they required the King's advice and judgement which was the same that he gave to Pope Clement at his first coming to the Crown of England that Pope then moving him to an Union with the Roman Church namely To endeavour the calling of a free Council for the settlement of Peace in Christendom and that he doubted not but that the French King and divers other Princes would joyn to assist in so good a work and in the mean time the sin of this Breach both with His and the Venetians Dominions must of necessity lie at the Pope ' s door In this contention vvhich lasted almost two years the Pope grew still higher and the Venetians more and more resolv'd and careless still acquainting King James with their proceedings which was done by the help of Sir Henry Wotton Mr. Bedel and Padre Paulo whom the Venetians did then call to be one of their Consulters of State and with his Pen to defend their just Cause which was by him so performed that the Pope saw plainly he had weakned his Power by exceeding it and offered the Venetians Absolution upon very easie terms which the Venetians still slighting did at last obtain by that which was scarce so much as a shew of acknowledging it For they made an order that in that day in which they were Absolv'd there should be no Publick Rejoycing nor any Bonfires that night lest the Common People might judge that they desired an Absolution or were Absolved for committing a Fault These Contests were the occasion of Padre Paulo's knowledge and interest with King James for whose sake principally Padre Paulo compiled that eminent History of the remarkable Council of Trent which History was as fast as it was written sent in several sheets in Letters by Sir Henry Wotton Mr. Bedel and others unto King James and the then Bishop of Canterbury into England and there first made publick both in English and in the universal Language For eight years after Sir Henry Wotton's going into Italy he stood fair and highly valued in the Kings opinion but at last became much clouded by an accident which I shall proceed to relate At his first going Ambassadour into Italy as he passed through Germany he stayed some days at Augusta where having been in his former Travels well known by many of the best note for Learning and Ingeniousness those that are esteemed the Virtuosi of that Nation with whom he passing an evening in merriments was requested by Christopher Flecamore to write some Sentence in his Albo a Book of white Paper which for that purpose many of the German Gentry usually carry about them and Sir Henry Wotton consenting to the motion took an occasion from some accidental discourse of the present Company to write a pleasant definition of an Ambassadour in these very words Legatus est vir bonus peregrè missus ad mentiendum Reipublicae causâ Which Sir Henry Wotton could have been content should have been thus Englished An Embassadour is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his Country But the word for lye being the hinge upon which the Conceit was to turn was not so exprest in Latine as would admit in the hands of an Enemy especially so fair a construction as Sir Henry thought in English Yet as it was it slept quietly among other Sentences in this Albo almost eight years till by accident it fell into the hands of Iasper Scioppius a Romanist a man of a restless spirit and a malicious Pen who with Books against King Iames Prints this as a Principle of that Religion professed by the King and his Ambassadour Sir Henry Wotton then at Venice and in Venice it was presently after written in several Glass-windows and spitefully declared to be Sir Henry Wottons This coming to the knowledge of King Iames he apprehended it to be such an oversight such a vveakness or vvorse in Sir Henry Wotton as caused the King to express much vvrath against him and this caused Sir Henry Wotton to write two Apologies one to Velserus one of the Chiefs of Augusta in the universal Language vvhich he caused to be Printed and given and scattered in the most remarkable places both of Germany and Italy as an Antidote against the venomous Books of Scioppius and another Apology to King Iames vvhich vvere both so ingenious so clear and so choicely Eloquent that his Majesty vvho vvas
carriage in his Negotiations to whom he smilingly gave this for an infallible Aphorisâ—… That to be in safety himself and serviceable to his Countrey he should alwayes and upon all occasions speak the truth it seems a State-Paradox for sayes Sir Henry Wotton you shall never be believed and by this means your truth will secure your self if you shall ever â—…e called to any account and 't will also put your Adversaries who will still hunt counter to a loss in all their disquisitions and undertakings Many more of this nature might be observed but they must be laid aside for I shall here make a little â—…op and invite the Reader to look back 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 shall say 〈◊〉 little of Sir Alberâ—… 〈◊〉 and Mr. William Bedel whom I formerly mentioned I have tâ—…ld you that are â—…y Reader that 〈◊〉 Sir Hâ—…y Woâ—…s 〈◊〉 going Ambassador into Italy his Cousin Sir Albert Mortoâ—… went his Secretary and am next to tell you that Sir Albertus died Secretary of State to our late King but cannot am not able to express the sorrow that possest Sir Henry Wâ—…tton at his first hearing the news that Sir Albertus was by death lost to him and this world and yet the Reader may partly guess by these following expressions The first in a Letter to his Nicholas Pey of which this that followeth is a part And My dear Nick When I had been here almost a fortnight in the midst of my great contentâ—…nt I received notice of Sir Albertus Morton 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 out of this World who was dearer to me then mine own being in it what a wound it is to my heart you that know him and know me will easily believeâ—… but â—…our Creators Will must be done and unrepiniâ—…gly râ—…ived by his own Creatures who is the Lord of all Nature and of all Fortune when he taketh to himself now one and then â—…ther till that expected day wherein it shall please him to dissolve the whole and wrap up even the Heaven it self 〈◊〉 Scrâ—…le of Parchment This is the last Philosophy that we must study upon Earth let us therefore that yet remain here as our dayes and friends waste reinforce our love to each other which of all vertues both spiritual and moral hath the highest priviledge because death it self cannot end it And my good Nick c. This is a part of his sorrow thus exprest to his Nick Pâ—…y the other part is in this following Elogy of which the Reader may safely conclude 't was toâ—… hearty to be dissembled Tears wept at the Grave of Sir Albertus Morton by Henry Wotton SIlence in truth would speak my sorrow best For deepest wounds can least their feelings tell Yet let me borrow from mine own unrest A time to bid him whom I lov'd farewell Oh my unhappy lines you that before Have serv'd my youth to vent some wanton cries And now congeal'd with grief can scarce implore Strength to accent Here my Albetus lies This is that Sable Stone this is the Cave And womb of Earth that doth his Corps embrace While others sing his praise let me ingrave Thâ—…se blâ—…ding numbers to adorn the place Here will I paint the Characters of Woe Here will I pay my Tribute to the Dead And here my faithful Tears in showres shall flow To humanize the Flints on which I tread Whâ—…re though I mourn my matchless loss alone And none between my weakness judge and me Yet even these pensive Walls allow my moan Whose dâ—…leful Ecchoes to my plaints agree But is he gone and live I rhyming here As if some Muse would listen to my lay When all dis-tun'd sit waiting for their dear And bathe the Banks where he was wont to play 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in 〈◊〉 lâ—…ss Bliss with happy Souls Discharg'd from Natures and from Fortunes Trust Whil'st on thâ—… fluid Globe my Hour glass rowls And runs the â—…est of my remaining dust H. W. This concerning his Sir Albertus Morton And for what I shall say concerning Mr. William Bedel I must prepare the Reader by telling him That when King Iames sent Sir Henry Wotton Ambassador to the State of Veniâ—… he sent also an Ambassador to the King of France and another to the King of Spain with the Ambassador of France went Ioseph Hall late Bishop of Norwich whose many and useful Works speak his great Merit with the Ambassador of Spain went Ia. Wadsworth and with Sir Henry Wotton went William Bodâ—…l These three Chaplains to these three Ambassadours were all bred in one University all of one Colledge all Benefic'd in one Diocess and all most dear and intire Friends But in Spain Mr. Wadsworth met vvith temptations or reasons such as were so powerful as to perswade him who of the three was formerly observ'd to be the most averse to that Religion that calls it self Catholick to disclaim himself a Member of the Church of England and declare himself for the Church of Rome discharging himself of his attendance on the Ambassador and betaking himself to a Monasterial life in which he lived very regularly and so died When Dr. Hall the late Bishop of Norwich came into England he wrote to Mr. Wadsworth 't is the first Epistle in his Printed Decads to perswade his return or to shew the reason of his Apostasie the Letter seemed to have in it many sweet expressions of love and yet there was in it some expression that was so unpleasant to Mr. Wadsworth that he chose rather to acquaint his old Friend Mr. Bedel with his motives by which means there past betwixt Mr. Bedil and Mr. Wadsworth divers Letters which be extant in Print and did well deserve it for in them there seems to be a controversie not of Religion only but who should answer each other with most love and meekness which I mention the rather because it too seldom falls out to be so in a Book-War There is yet a little more to be said of Mr. Bedel for the greatest part of which the Reader is referred to this following Letter of Sir Henry Wottons writ to our late King Charles the first May it please Your most Gracious Majesty HAving been informed that certain persons have by the good wishes of the Archbishop of Armagh been directed hither with a most humble Petition unto Your Majesty that You will be pleased to make Mr. William Bedel now resident upon a small Benefice in Suffolk Governor of Your Colledge at Dublin for the good of that Society and my self being required to render unto Your Majesty some testimony of the said William Bedel who was long my Chaplain at Venice in the time of my first employment there I am bound in all Conscience and Truth so far as Your Majesty will vouchsafe to accept my poor judgement to affirm of him That I think hardly a fitter man for that Charge could have been propounded unto Your Majesty in Your whole Kingdom for singular Erudition and Piety Conformity to the Rites of the Church and
Zeal to advance the Cause of God wherein his Travels abroad were not obscure in the time of the Excommunication of the Venetians For it may please Your Majesty to know that this is the man whom Padre Paulo took I may say into his very soul with whom he did communicate the inwardest thoughts of his heart from whom he professed to have received more knowledge in all Divinity both Scholastical and Positive than from any that he had ever practised in his dayes of which all the passages were well known to the King Your Father of most blessed memory And so with Your Majesties good favour I will end this needless Office for the general Fame of his Learning his Life and Christian temper and those Religious Labours which himself hath dedicated to Your Majesty do better describe him then I am able Your MAJESTIES Most humble and faithful Servant H. WOTTON TO this Letter I shall add this That he was to the great joy of Sir Henry Wotton made Governor of the said Colledge and that after a fair discharge of his duty and trust there he was thence removed to be Bishop of Kilmore In both which places his life was so holy as seemed to equal the primitive Christians for as they so he kept all the Ember-weeks observed besides his private devotions the Canonical hours of Prayer very strictly and so he did all the Feasts and Fast dayes of his Mother the Church of England to which I may add that his Patience and Charity were both such as shewed his affections were set upon things that are above for indeed his whole life brought forth the fruits of the Spirit there being in him such a remarkable meekness that as St. Paul advised his Timothy in the Election of a Bishop That he have a good report of those that be without so had he for those that were without even those that in point of Religion whereof the Roman perswasion of which there were very many in his Diocess did yet such is the power of visible Piety ever look upon him with respect and reverence and testified it by a concealing and safe protecting him from death in the late horrid Rebellion in Ireland when the fury of the wild Irish knew no distinction of persons and yet there and then he was protected and cherished by those of a contrary perswasion and there and then he dyed not by violence or misusage but by grief in a quiet Prisonâ—… 1629. And with him was lost many of his learned Writings which were thought worthy of preservation and amongst the rest 〈◊〉 was lost the Bible which by many years labour and conference and study he had translated into the Irish Tongue with an intent to have printed it for publick use More might be said of Mr. Bedel who I told the Reader was Sir Henry Wottons first Chaplain and much of his second Chaplain Isaac Bargrave Doctor in Divinity and the late learned and hospitable Dean of Canterbury as also of the Meriâ—… of many others that had the happiness to attend Sir Henry in his forreign imployments But the Reader may think that in this digression I have already carried him too far from Eaton Colledge and therefore I shall lead him back as gently and as orderly as I may to that place for a further conference concerning Sir Henry Wotton Sir Henry Wotton had propos'd to himself before he entred into his Collegiate life to write the life of Martin Luther and in it the History of the Reformation as it was carried on in Germany For the doing of which he had many advantages by his several Embassies into those paâ—…ts and his interest in the several Princes of the Empire by whose means he had access to the Records of all the Haâ—… Toâ—…s and the knowledge of many secret passages that â—…ll not under common viewâ—… and in these he had made a happy progress as it well known to his worthy friend Dr. Dâ—…a the â—…te Reverend Bishop of Saliâ—…bury but in the midst of this design His late Majesty King Charles the first that knew the value of Sir Henry Wottons 〈◊〉 did by a perswasive loving violence to which may be added a promise of 500 l. a year force him to lay Luther aside and betake himself to write the History of England in which he proceeded to write some short Characters of a few Kings as a foundation upon which he meant to build but for the present meant to be more large in the story of Henry the sixth the Founder of that Colledge in which he then enjoy'd all the worldly happiness of his present being but Sir Henry dyed in the midst of this undertaking and the footsteps of his labours are not recoverable by a more than common diligence This is some account both of his inclination and the employment both of his time in the Colledge where he seemed to have his Youth renewed by a continual conversation with that Learned Society and a daily recourse of other Friend of choicest breeding and parts by which that great blessing of a chearfull heart vvas still maintained he being alwayes free even to the last of his day from that peevishness which usually attends Age. And yet his mirth was sometimes damp'd by the remembrance of divers old Debts pâ—…ly contracted in his forreign Imployments for which his juâ—… Arrears due from the King would have made satisfaction but being still delayed with Coâ—…t-promises and finding some decayes of health he did about two years before his death out of a Christian desire that none should be a lose by it make his last Will concerning which a doubt till remains whether it discovered more hâ—…y wit or conscionable policy But there is no doubt but that his chief design vvas a Christian endeavour that his Debts might be satisfied And that it may remain as such a Testimony and a Legacy to those that lov'd him I shall here impart it to the Reader as it vvas found vvrit vvith his own hand IN the name of God Almighty and All-meroifâ—…l I Henry Wotton Provost of his Majesties Colledge by Eaton being mindful of mine own mortality which the sin of our first Parents did bring upon all flesh Do by this last Will and Testament thus dispose of my self and the poor things I shall leave in this World My Soul I bequeath to the Immortal God my Maker Father of our Lord Jesus Christ my blessed Redeemer and Mediator through his all-sole sufficient satisfaction for the sins of the whole World and efficient for his Elect in the number of whom I am one by his meer grace and thereof in oft unremoveably affâ—…d by his holy Spirit the true 〈◊〉 Comforter My body I bequeath to the Earth if I shall end my transitory dayes at or near Eaton to be â—…ed in the Chappel of the said Colledge as the Fellows shall dispose thereof with whom I have liv'd my God knows in all loving affection or If I shall dye near Bocton
Seat is nought Now after these premisses if the House be found to beat his years vvell vvhich is alwayes a token of sound constitution Then let him suddenly run backwards for the Method of censuring is contrary to the Method of composing from the Ornaments vvhich first allure the Eye to the more essential Members till at last he be able to form this Conclusion that the Work is Commodious Firm and Delightfull vvhich as I said in the beginning are the three capital Conditions required in good Buildings by all Authors both Ancient and Modern And this is as I may term it the most Scientifical vvay of Censuring There are two other vvhich I must not forget The first in Georgio Vassari before his laborious Work of the lives of Architects vvhich is to pass a running examination over the vvhole Edifice according to the properties of a well shapen Man As vvhether the Walls stand upright upon clean footing and Foundation vvhether the Fabrick be of a beautiful Stature vvhether for the breadth it appear vvell burnished vvhether the principal Entrance be on the middle Line of the Front or Face like our Mouths vvhether the Windows as our Eyes be set in equal number and distance on both sides vvhether the Offices like the Veins in our Bodies be usefully distributed and so forth For this Allegorical review may be driven as far as any Wit vvill that is at leasure The second vvay is in Vitruvius himself lib. 1. cap. 2. vvhere he summarily determineth six Considerations vvhich accomplish this vvhole Art Ordinatio Dispositio Eurythmia Symmetria Decor and Distributio Whereof in my conceit we may spare him the first two for as far as I can perceive either by his Interpreters or by his own Text which in that very place where perchance he should be clearest is of all other the cloudiest he meaneth nothing by Ordination but a well setling of the Model or Scale of the whole Work Nor by Disposition more then a neat and full expression of the first Idea or Designment thereof which perchance do more belong to the Artificer then to the Censurer The other four are enough to condemn or absolve any Fabrick whatsoever Whereof Eurythmia is that agreeable Harmony between the breadth length and height of all the Rooms of the Fabrick which suddenly where it is taketh every Beholder by the secret power of Proportion wherein let me only note this That though the least error or offence that can be committed against sight is excess of height yet that fault is no where of small importance because it is the greatest offence against the Purse Symmetria is the convenience that runneth between the Parts and the Whole whereof I have formerly spoken Decor is the keeping of a due Respect between the Inhabitant and the Habitation Whence Palladius did conclude that the principal Entrance was never to be regulated by any certain Dimensions but by the dignity of the Master yet to exceed rather in the more then in the less is a mark of Generosity and may alwayes be excused with some noble Emblem or Inscription as that of the Conte di Bavillacqua over his large Gate at Verona where perchance had Leen committed a little Disproportion Patet Ianua Cor magis And here likewise I must remember our ever memorable Sir Philip Sidney whose Wit was in truth the very rule of Congruity who well knowing that Basilius as he had painted the State of his Mind did rather want some extraordinary Forms to entertain his Fancy then room for Courtiers was contented to place him in a Star-like Lodge which otherwise in severe Iudgement of Art had been an incommodious Figure Distributio is that useful Casting of all Rooms for Office Entertainment or Pleasure which I have hâ—…ndled before at more length then any other Piece These are the Four Heads which every man should run over before he pass any determinate Censure upon the Works that he shall view wherewith I will close this last part touching Ornaments Against which me thinks I hear an Objection even from some well-meaning man That these delightful Crafts may be divers wayes ill applyed in a Land I must confess indeed there may be a Lascivious and there may be likewise a superstitious use both of Piâ—…ure and Sculpture To which possibility of mis-application not only these Semi-liberal Arts are subject but even the highest perfections and endowments of Nature As Beauty in a light woman Eloquence in a mutinous man Resolution in an Assassinate Prudent Observation of hours and humours in a corrupt Courtier Sharpness of wit and argument in a seducing Scholar and the like Nay finally let me ask what ART can be more pernicious then even RELIGION it self if it self be converted into an Instrument of ART Therefore Ab abuti ad non uti negatur consequentia Thus having stitched in some sort together these Animadversions touching Architecture and the Ornaments thereof I now feel that contemplative spirits are as restless as active for doubting with my self as all weakness is jealous that I may be thought to have spent my poor observation abroad about nothing but Stone and Timber and such Rubbage I am thereby led into an immodesty of proclaiming another Work which I have long devoted to the service of my Countrey Namely A Philosophical Survey of Education which is indeed a second Building or repairing of Nature and as I may term it a kind of Moral Architecture whereof such Notes as I have taken in my forraign transcursions or abodes I hope to utter without publick offence though still with the freedom of a plain Kentish-man In the mean while I have let these other gleanings fly abroad like the Bird out of the Ark to discover what footing may be for that vvhich shall follow FINIS A Philosophical SURVEY OF EDUCATION OR Moral Architecture BY HENRY WOTTON Kt. PROVOST OF ETON COLLEDGE THE Epistle Dedicatory TO THE KING May it please your Majesty I Need no other Motive to dedicate this Discourse which followeth unto your Majesty then the very Subject it self so properly pertaining to your Soveraign Goodness For thereby you are Pater Patriae And it is none of the least Attributes wherewith God hath blessed both Your Royal Person and Your People that You are so On the other side for mine own undertaking thereof I had need say more I am old and childless and though I were a Father of many I could leave them nothing either in Fortune or in Example But having long since put forth a slight Pamphlet about the Elements of ARCHITECTURE which yet hath been entertained with some pardon among my Friends I was encouraged even at this age to assay how I could build a Man For there is a Moral as well as a Naturaler Artificial Compilement and of beâ—…er Materials Which truly I have cemented together rather in tâ—… plain Tuscan as our VITRUVIUS termeth 〈◊〉 then in the Corinthian form Howsoever if Yoâ—… Majesty be graciously
pleased to approve any part of it who are so excellent a Iudge in all kind of Structure I shall much glory in mine own Endeavour If otherwise I will be one of the first my self that shall pull it in pieces and condemn it to Rubbage and Ruine And so wishing Your Majesty as to the Best of Kings a longer Life then any of the soundest Works of Nature or Art I ovâ—… rest Your Majesties Most devoted poor Subject and Servant H. WOTTON A SURVEY OF EDUCATION THis Treatise vvell may it now proceed having since the first Conception thereof been often traversed vvith other thoughts yea and sometimes utterly forsaken I have of late resumed again out of hope the common flatterer to find at least some indulgent interpretation of my pains especially in an honest Endeavour of such publick consequence as this is above all other For if any shall think Education because it is conversant about Children to be but a private and domestick duty He vvill run some danger in my opinion to have been ignorantly bred himself Certain it is that anciently the best composed Estates did commit this care more to the Magistrate then to the Parent And certain likewise That the best Authors have chosen rather to handle it in their Politicks then in their Oeconomicks As both Writers and Rulers vvell knowing vvhat a stream and influence iâ—… hath into Government So great indeed and so diffusive that albeit good Laws have been reputed alwayes the Nerves or Ligaments of humane Society Yet are they be it spoken vvith the peace of those grave Professors no vvay comparable in their effects to the rules of good Nurture For it is in civil as it is in natural Plantations vvhere young tender trees though subject to the injuries of Air and in danger even of their own Flexibility vvould yet little vvant any after-underproppings and shoarings if they vvere at first vvell fastned in the root Now my present labour vvill as I foresee consist of these pieces First there must proceed a vvay how to discern the Natural Capacities and inclinations of children Secondly Next must ensue the culture and furnishment of the Mind Thirdly the moulding of behaviour and decent forms Fourthly the tempering of affections Fifthly the quickning and exciting of Observations and practical Judgement Sixthly And the last in Order but the principal in Value being that vvhich must knit and consolidate all the rest is the timely instilling of conscientious Principles and seeds of Religion These six branches vvill as I conceive embrace the vvhole business through vvhich I shall run in as many several Chapters or Sections But before I lanch from the shoars let me resolve a main question vvhich may be cast in my vvay Whether there be indeed such an infallible efficacy as I suppose in the care of Nurture and first Production For if that supposal should fail us all our Anchorage vvere loose and vve should but vvander in a vvilde Sea Plutarch I remember to the same purpose in the first of his Tractates vvhich place this subject vvell deserved endeavoureth by sundry similitudes vvhere in that man had a prompt and luxurious fancy to shew us the force of Education All vvhich in sooth might have been vvell forborn had he but known vvhat our own Countrey-men have of late time disclosed among their Magnetical Experiments There they tell us that a rod or bar of iron having stood long in a window or elsewhere being thence taken and by the help of a cork or the like thing being ballanced in water or in any other liquid substance where it may have a free mobility will bewray a kind of unquietude and discontentment till it attain the former position Now it is pretty to note how in this Natural Theorem is involved a Moral conclusion of direct moment to the point we have in hand For if such an unpliant and stubborn mineral as Iron is above any other will acquire by meer continuance a secret appetite and as I may term it an habitual inclination to the site it held before Then how much more may we hope through the very same means Education being nothing else but a constant plight and Inurement to induce by custome good habits into a reasonable creature And so having a little smooth'd my passage I may now go on to the Chapters THE FIRST CHAPTER OR SECTION Touching the Search of Natural Capacities and Inclinations OF the two things propounded in this Chapter I must begin with Capacities For the manurement of Wits is like that of Soyls where before either the pains of Tilling or the charge of Sowing Men use to consider what the mould will bear Heath or Grain Now this peradventure at the first view may seem in Children a very slight and obvious enquiry That age being so open and so free and yet void of all Art to disguise or dissemble either their appetites or their defects Notwithstanding we see it every day and every where subject to much error Partly by a very pardonable facility in the Parents themselves to over-prize their own Children while they behold them through the vapors of affection which alter the appearance as all things seem bigger in misty mornings Nay even strangers and the most disâ—…nteressed persons are yet I know not how commonly inclined to a favourable conceit of little ones so cheap a thing it is to bestow nothing but Hope There is likewise on the other side as often failing by an Undervaluation for in divers Children their ingenerate and seminal powers as I may term them lie deep and are of slow disclosure no otherwise then in certain Vegetables which are long before they shoot up and appear and yet afterwards both of good and great increase which may serve to excite care and to prevent despair in Parents for if their Child be not such a speedy spreader and brancher like the Vine yet perchance he may prove proles tarde crescentis Olivae and yield though with a little longer expectation as useful and more sober fruit then the other And I must confess I take some delight in these kind of comparisons remembring well what I have often heard my truly Noble and most dear Nephew Sir Edmund Bacon say out of his exquisite Contemplations and Philosophical Practice That Nature surely if she be well studied is the best Moralist and hath much good Counsel hidden in her bosome Now here then will lie the whole business to set down before-hand certain Signatures of Hopefulness or Characters as I will rather call them because that Word hath gotten already some entertainment among us whereby may be timely descried what the Child will prove in probability These Characters must necessarily be either impressed in the outward person like stamps of Nature or must otherwise be taken from some emergent act of his mind wherein of the former sort The first is that which first incurreth into sight namely the Child's colour or complexion as we vulgarily term it and
may speak both openly and safely Yea let me adde this with confidence that if Nature her self the first Architectress had to use an expression of Vitruvius windowed your brest if your Majesty should admit the eyes of all men not only within the privatest parts of your Bed-Chamber but even into the inwardest closets of your heart no other thing at all would there appear save the splendor of your Goodness and an undistemper'd serenity of your Vertues What said I if you would admit As if those whom the Supreme Power hath set on high and in the light could be hid from our eyes or cover as it were by a drawn cloud the wayes of their Lives and Government Herein no doubt Obscurity and Solitude it self is more vailed then Majesty Thinks that Abissine Emperor whom men report to appear to publick view but once a year that therefore it is less known what he doth in secret Know we not at this day that Domitian even in his closest Cabinet wherein each day he shut up himself did nothing but stick flyes with a pointed Bodkin Lay Tiberius hid in his recess to the Islands of Caprea when among so many wounds and tortures of his conscience which as so many furies tormented him many tokens of a distracted mind did daily break forth Surely no. Your Majesty hath taught the Princes of your own and future times the only and most wholsome way of self-concealing in that you indeavour nothing to be concealed There are certain creatures of ingrateful aspect as Bats and Owls condemn'd by nature to hate the light I know also that some in power have also held it among the secrets of State and as a great mystery of craft to be served at a distance as if reverence did only dwell in Dens and Caves not in the light Whence then these Subtilties of Government In a word and freely they walked in crooked paths because they knew not the shortest way to be good But your Majesty doth not shun the eyes and access of your Subjects delight not in covert nor withdraw your self from your own people you do not catch at false veneration with a rigid and clouded countenance yea sometime you vouchsafe to descend even to some familiarity without offence to your dignity for thus you reason with your self in the clearness of your own bosome If it were not above our power to lye concealed yet were it below our goodness to desire it then which nothing surely can be in effect more popular for good Kings all good men openly revere and even the worst do it silently Whilest Vertues beauty not unlike some brightest Rayes strikes into the most unwilling eyes Wherefore as of late I took in hand Tranquillus Suetonius who hath laid open the very bowels of the Cesars to beguile in the time of your absence with some literate diversion the tedious length of those dayes and fell by chance upon that passage so lively describing the wailings of Augustus after the Varian defect often crying out Render me Quintilius Varus my Legions my desires of Your Majesty instantly flamed out and my wishes gowed for your Return for it seemeth then much juster for England to have solicited her SISTER with these panting suspirations then Augustus the Ghost of Quintilius Restore to me Scotland my Sister our King Restore the best of men whom none but the wicked love not none but the ignorant praise not Restore both the Director and Rule it self of Morality whereby we may become not the gladder only but the better too while at hand we may contemplate a thing most rare One in highest Place not inaulging to himself the least excess Since therefore such you are O best of Kings suffer I humbly pray if rather by Prayers then Arguments you choose to be inclined That the nine Nations of different Language for I reckon them no fewer over which you gently reign may glory in your being such and may each declare it not in their native Dialects alone which would not give sufficient compass to our joyes but however in this also more publick Tongue That even forraigners may know your Britany which formerly bestowed upon the Christian World their first and most renowed Emperor is not become so barren yet as not to afford even at this day a Type of the highest-famed King Having now thus I hope somewhat smooth'd the way to your patience in hearing good it will be henceforth out of the whole state of your Life and Carriage thus far summarily to pick up some particulars as those do who make their choice of Flowers For I please my self more in the choice then in the plenty of my Matter Although I am not ignorant neither that in this kind of speaking the diligence or ambition of the Ancients was so profuse that perhaps Timeus said not unwittily That Alexander the Macedonian sooner subdued all Asia then Isocrates did write his Panegyrick Certainly there seems then to have been too great an indulgence to Art while the Wits of Orators were wanton in that fertile age of Eloquence but it becometh me mindful both of my simplicity and age to touch rather the heads of your praises then to prosecute them all that even the succinctness of my speech may as it were resemble the passage of my fleeting years In the first place is offered the eminent Nobleness of your Extraction whereby in a long Order of antecedent Kings your lustre is above them all your Father himself not excepted This in brief I will deduce more clearly Your Great Great-Grandfather Henry the Seventh whether more valiant or fortunate I know not being almost at once an Exile and a Conqueror united by the Marriage of Elizabeth of York the white Rose and the red the Armories of two very powerful Families which being in division had so many years polluted their own Countrey with bloud and deadly Fewds The more blessed Colligation of the Kingdomes then that of the Roses we owe to the Happiness of your Father who even for that alone were to be remembred ever with highest veneration But in you singly most Imperial Charles is the conflux of the glory of all Nations in all Ages which since the Romans have possessed Britany either by right or by Arms in you I say alone whom the Cambrians first the English-Saxons Scots Normans and finally the Danes do acknowledge with us to be the branch of that Stock that hith erto hath worn the Crown In this perchance if the meanness of the comparison be not rejected not unlike to Europes famous Ister which rolling along through vast Countreys is ennobled with the waters of so many famous streams One not obscure among our Authors hath written that our Ancestors would not acknowledge the Norman Rule in England for legitimate which had so weak a beginning until Maud marrying with Henry the First had brought into the world a child of the bloud of the ancient Saxon Kings she was Sister to David Nephew twice removed
off King Ethelred your Progenitor How much is there now a nobler cause for our imbracing your Majesty with open arms who are descended unto us from so plentiful a Race of Kings since the access of the most ancient Cambrian Bloud to the rest of your Nobility by Queen ANNE your Mother a Lady of a great and masculine Mind And how much the more truly may we now repeat that which in the former Age Buchanaâ—… a Poet next the Ancients of most happy invention sang to your Grand-mother I wish with happier fate From numberless Progenitors you hold Transmitted Scepters which they sway'd of old But all these hitherto you scarcely account your own I pass then to such as are your own peculiar which conferre no less of lustre then they admit Three particulars we observe O best of Kings which Appellation I now again willingly and shall often use in your Beginnings of no small importance to your succeeding Progress as for the most part the first favour of Principles continues in the after-growths First That you were not born to the supream hope of Soveraignty so as flattery though an evil swift and watchful which attends the Cradles of Potent Heirs more gently pressed on your tender years And the whiles your native goodness drank in with a draught more uncompounded the generous liquor of Integrity for no doubt how the earliest dispositions of private persons much more of Princes be at first formed and as it were instilled that I may so speak is of highest importance to the Commonwealth whereof they are to become afterwards not only the Props but also the Precedents Next That you succeeded a Brother of no small Natural Endowments which begat thence-forward in your Parents a more industrious and closer sedulity for it surpasseth care for the accomplishment of their only Son Nay your own spirits daily grew the more intent when now the weight of so vast an expectation was lodged on your self alone Then were advanced to you such who faithfully instructed in learning that youth of yours as yet unapt for business Then such were sent for who as your strength increased dressed you in the exercises of the Horse which I call to mind with how graceful a dexterity you managed until afterwards at a solemn Tilting I became uncertain whether you strook into the beholders more Joy or Apprehension In the third place It comes to mind that for some time while Nature was as it were in strugling you were somewhat weak of limbs and far below that vigour which now with gladness we admire which I may judge to have befallen by the secret Councel of Providence thereby at that time to render more intense the care of furnishing your mind as became the Heir then secretly designed of a King whom Malignants themselves deny not to have been the wisest of all Princes from many Ages past From your first Essaies I shall hasten to your stronger times not unmindful of my promised business After your forraign Travels obnoxious to many hazards you came unto the Crown whence it appeared how much your self then dared to adventure when the while at home each one was trembling for your sake But the favour of Heaven brought you back safely to us not so much as coloured with out-landish Dye not unlike another Ulysses who accounted it sufficient even by Homers witness To have known the Morals of Men and Cities When you had assum'd the Crown before all other things there was resplendent in you a Religious mind the Support of Kingdomes the Joy of good men The Chappel Royal was never more in order The number of eminent Divines daily increased Sermons in no age more frequented In none more learned And the example of the Prince more effectual then the Sermons No execrations rashly proceeded from your mouth Your ears abhorring not only any wanton but even the least sordid word which perchance under Edward the 4th while toyish Loves did raign passed for Courtly eloquence Neither stopped this piety within the Walls of Court but was diffused also through the Kingdome The Church Revenues were not touched Temples here and there new founded Dâ—…apidations repaired And which Posterity will chiefly speak of the Riches of your Kingdome excited by your most religious exhortation for restauration of the Church consecrated to the Apostle of the Nations out of question the amplest and equally ancient of the Christian world which had sustained the injuries of time Where your Majesties care was greatly conspicuous in demolishing those private dwellings which disgraced the aspect of so goodly a Fabrick And not less in imposing the management of that whole business upon that most vigilant Prelate who for his singular fidelity and judgement hath lately merited far higher place Now next to God how tender was your affection to your People When the Sickness raged by your Command recourse was had to publick Fastings When we were pressed with greater fear then evil of Famine the Horders of Provisions were constrained to open their Garners and the prices of grain abated Among these most pious cares I cannot omit one peculiar Elogy proper to your own providence whereof I must repeat the Original a little higher There were hatched abroad some years agone or perhaps raked up out of Antiquity certain Controversies about high points of the Creed which having likewise flown over to us as flames of Wit are easily diffused lest hereabout also both Pulpits and Pens might run to heat and publick disturbance Your Majesty with most laudable temper by Proclamation suppressed on both sides all manner of debates Others may think what pleaseth them In my opinion if I may have pardon for the phrase The Itch of disputing will prove the Scab of Churches I shall relate what I have chanced more then once to observe Two namely arguing about some subject so eagerly till either of them transported by heat of contention from one thing to another they both at length had lost first their Charity and then also the Truth Whither would restless subtilty proceed if it were not bounded there is of captiousness no end but seasonable provision was made against it To these praises of Piety I will adde a very great evidence of Gratitude and almost a greater of Constancy towards George Villiers Duke oâ—… Buckingham him when amidst the dangers of the Spanish journey he had been the nearest of your attendants your Majesty afterwards as in requital bore safely with you at home through all the rocks of either Fortune till an unforeseen day was his conclusion We observed also no ordinary beams of your Favour to be cast upon another of your trusty Associates in the same Journey a Person of approved Judgement Neither do I recount these only among the arguments of an heart mindful of faithful Offices which indeed is Kingly but likewise of singular obsequiousness towards your Father even when deceased to whom the Duke of Buckingham had been for many years a Favourite as iâ—… Your Majesty
had reputed your self as much the Heir of his Affections as you were of his Kingdomes An Example rare among the Memorials of all Ages This Duke was indeed amiable in many respects which seldome are concurrent Each limb of his body almost very exactly composed yet doubtful it was whether his shape or gracefulness excelled undubitably of an undaunted spirit equally intent upon his cares whether imposed or assumed There was present with him in the midst of so many distractions an incredible temper and equability I will not deny his appetite of glory which generous minds do ever latest part from but above all the most pleasing was That he had no austerity of behaviour nothing outwardly tumerous but was obvious affable and almost to all men free and open as if in so high a felicity he had scarce been sensible of his happiness for which alone he may seem to have deserved a more gentle end Hence forward there began to be powerful and so daily holds on in your Majesties most important cares a person unquestionably of an habitual moderate life and sober counsel and the oftner tryed the more acceptable not sway'd to vanity born to a solid prudence whom to name might be injurious for he that is described ingenuously may be known without a name But the highest Empire over your affections is deservedly challenged alone by the most worthy Consort of your Royal Bed Her self likewise proceeding from a long descent of Kings But sufficient it is to know she is THE DAUGHTER OF HENRY THE GREAT AND THE SISTER OF LEWIS THE JUST Whom for dearest pledges already of either Sex for the comeliness of chastest graces and which chiefly blesseth the nuptial bed For congruity of dispositions Your Majesty so religiously and so particularly doth love that justly you appear to have passed from the Title of the best Patron to that of the best Husband To Chastity you have added Temperance her nearest Companion which in miserable and impotent men who would not pass by with silence but these in a King in one so young of such vigorous age and in such a promptness of satisfying all desires I know not whether we should more commend or admire them Now after these Elogies which in part beget affection in part also astonishment to doubt once of the justness of your times were most unjust Yet shall I not think amiss to repeat a little at large a thing of noble example in a person of obscure condition There fell out at London I know not what tumult for one rescued from the Serjeants hands whom for debt they were leading to Prison Amidst those confusions one or other as oft it chances died of sudden hurts whereupon one John Stamford a man of a ready hand who had fatally run into the broyl was apprehended as guilty of murther He wanted not intercessors of great power about your Majesty and there seemed an assured hope of obtaining his pardon as the vulgar believed because he had attended on the Duke of Buckingham in his Chamber and among the followers of his own condition had been for some time very acceptable to his Lord for his singular ability of body and skil in wrestling whereof the remembrance as then was fresh which perchance had made the poor man the more audacious But neither the intercessions of the living nor the mans own well known valour nor finally the remembrance of such a Favourite but lately dead whom he had served could prevail with Your Majesty above Justice but that which is glorious to speak he concluded his life at the Gallowes Fresher is the remembrance of that Noblemans Death a Baron of very ancient linage who suffered publickly for a fact unworthy of his Birth But if a witty Authors old observation may yet have place that some examples are nobler others greater I should verily believe the Barons Nobler but Stamfords Greater But whither doth this pleasant meditation transport me while I revolve these things At Common-Law Your Majesty hath in the Courts of strict Justice able Judges which pronounce severely you have also a most learned Chancellour for right and equity not inferiour to the ancient Pretors who for the peoples relief qualifieth that severity But these are in distinct Courts placed apart And if one should ask by chance Why not together since that might seem the more dispatching way I will deliver my opinion It was the Wish of our Ancestors out of a most grave providence that Justice and Lenity which have their seat disjoyned in the inferiour Magistrate might be consociated in the only brest of the Soveraign And truly so it is for your Majesty being composed as it were according to the wishes of those our Fore-Fathers hath so tempered these together that neither the evil presume nor the good repine Hitherto I would be understood to have only spoken of the restraint of common vices which swarm in all parts of the world for of more hainous transgressions among our selves by Gods goodness we have not a word no not so much as a dream we suffer under an excellent ignorance we know not what a Rebel is what a plotter against the Common-weal nor what that is which Grammarians call Treason the names themselves are antiquated with the things and in truth no marvel for what wretch unless he were of all mortal men the most stupid and wicked and as foolish as malicious would violate the quiet of so just and pious a Moderator Now as you maintain your Justice which I may call the health of your Kingdome in a most even ballance that is neither too much strething nor slackning the Reins so neither do you omit what concerneth security The like else would befal Empires that happens to our bodies which subsist dangerously if nothing but meer health sustain them Wherefore after a War with two mighty Kings together with various event as it chances in humane affairs and quieted by new Consederations on either side your principal care at home was to repair the Maritime strength as became the Defender of Insular Kingdomes Hence was the Navy Royal yearly more increased and furnished and more commodious Harbours chosen for the Ships and of readâ—…er issue upon sudden occasion Your Majesty not only commanding but with your own eyes surveying the places as if in a matter of that moment you might scarce trust another mans Then a more exact view of Arms then formerly had been used and generally the Militia at set times much better trained Amidst these things it were unhandsome to pass by with silence that which the prudent of the time have noted namely that Your Majesty is more frequent at the Councels of State as we call them then any of our former Kings except happily we cast back our eyes upon Edward the Sixth whom they say even in his Child hood to have been seldome absent In that assembly of your Councel the chief Prelates adde reverence the Nobles chosen out of both Kingdomes dignity Some are
there whom forraign experience some whom the knowledge of our Laws adorns and the learned and faithful Sagacity of your Secretaries watched over all accidents but above these the presence it self of the Soveraign breaths alwayes I know not what of happiness Your presence only have I said That is little yea of those who participate in your Counsels have I many times heard not uninquisitive I acknowledge for which pardon me I beseech you how attentively as often you are pleased to be present you revolve things propounded how patiently you hear with how sharp judgement you ponder the particulars how stiff you are for I will use no milder word in good resolutions and how stout in great Finally in secret affairs what a close secrecy you command and how severely you exact an account thereof in this also your own example leading your Commandement For besides other there are two things which Your Majesty hath most blessedly bound together namely There was neâ—…r Prince since the Constitution of Empires a safer preserver of a secret and yet none whose secrecy and silence we less may fear which we read anciently noted of that excellent man Julius Agricola who was the first Roman that invaded the skirts of your Caledonia for Your Majesty doth not nourish secretly in your bosome fierce and crafty thoughts nor cover the embers of offence till they break forth into heat but out of a high and most Noble Candor if any chance to be conceived Your Majesty vents them and as I may say exhales them Truly I confess I do not more willingly insist in the reverence of any of your Vertues then in this very attribute of your heroical ingenuity for as the supreme Character of the MOST HIGH is Verity so what can more become or more magnificently deck his REPRESENTANTS on earth then Veracity it self Hitherto we have observed your obsequiousness towards your Parents constancy towards your Friends fidelity towards your Consort and towards cherishing of the Commonwealth not only the affection of a King but of a Father Neither amidst these as the condition of the times and the perplexed state of things would bear did you neglect the offices of an excellent Brother towards your only Sister whom I have alwayes thought the only Person of her Sex greater then all troubles and even by her obscurity the more resplendent indeed placed within the chances of Fortune but out of her command Whom how much Your Majesty loves nay how much you esteem did appear by a late Ambassage when in the depth of her Widow mournings your Majesty to carry her consolations sent the chief of your Nobility and him a Personage of most ancient vertue and behaviour that to a most affectionate Legation some addition might be made of Dignity from the choice it self of the Ambassador This of Consolation Concerning her Support did not Your Majesty give leave to a Marquess of the chief Nobility in Scotland though tyed here to your Person by neaâ—… and assiduous Attendance to exercise his valour abroad through intricacies most studied in such a stop of passages through hazards by Sea and Land through Places and Towns beset with Plague and Famine where it was almost easier to conquer then to get entrance and harder to suffer then to act If after this Success was wanting yet was not the generous affection of a King not the valour of his Subjects not expences of divers kinds not Legations the while upon Legations to appease if it were possible by equal conditions and by friendly Treaty the frenzy of the time for the rest we must repose our selves in Solon's advice Let no man glory before his End Now amongst so many cares wherewith even â—…e best of Kings are chiefly opprest it will not be â—…pleasant to enquire a little how elegantly Your Majesty doth dispose your vacant hours You delight in the use of the great Horse whom already dressed no man doth more skilfully manage or better break if rough and furious Insomuch as I doubt whether it were more aptly or deservedly done of him who hath lately erected an Equestrian Statue to Your Majesty of solid brass the lively work of Lisierius To this I must adde Musick both instrumental and vocal which under you grows every day more harmonious and accurate as being fitted to the judgement of your ear This lest it should seem too tender a delight you temper as it were with hunting In which Image of War you do so exercise your vigorous spirits that it is hard to say whether you love the pleasure more or the labour or whether you had rather wish the killing or the long standing of the Game But the most splendid of all your entertainments is your love of excellent Artificers and Works wherewith in either Art both of Picture and Sculpture you have so adorned your Palaces that Italy the greatest Mother of Elegant Arts or at least next the Grecians the principal Nursery may seem by your magnificence to be translated into England What can be more delightful then those sights nay I am ready to ask what more learned then to behold the tongueless eloquence of lights and shadows and the silent poesie of lines and as it were living Marbles Here would the spectator swear the limbs and muscles design'd by Tintoret to move there the birds of Bassano to chirp the oxeâ—… bellow and the sheep to bleat Here the faces of Rafael to breathe and those of Titian even to speak there a man would commend in Correggio delicateness in Parmesano conâ—…innity Neither do the Belgians want their praise who if they paint Landskips all kind of vegetables seem in their verdure the flowers do smile the hills are raised the valleys in depression In your Statuary vvorks the like learned variety of vvhich some glory in a kind of vivacity some in tenderness of parts but those are the entertainment of your eye Now to recreate your mind sometimes a Book of choisest subject but oftnest Men you read knowing full vvell how much it doth import a Prince to understand the conditions of his people There are times also vvhen you refresh your thoughts in the rehearsal of some ancient Epigrâ—… with no less acuteness then they vvere composed Thus have I cursorâ—…ly run over your serious times and your remâ—…ions but the very pleasure I have taken in passing through these though but very lightly doth I know not how infuse into my pen now in motion a new spirit to represent vvith Your Majesties leave though it be but to my self your true pourtraiture in little and as it vvere in one short view together vvhich I thus conceive in my fancy I may say your stature is next a just proportion your body erect and active your colour or complexion hath generally drawn more from the vvhite Rose of York then the red of Lancaster your hair nearer brown then yellow your brow proclaimeth much fidelity a certain verecundious generosity graceth your eyes not such as vve read of
was indeed a diamond of the time and both of an hardy and delicate temper and mixture But it seems this Earl like certain vegetables did bud and open slowly Nature sometimes delighting to play an afrer-game as well as Fortune which had both their turns and tides in course The Duke was Illiterate yet had learned at Court first to sift and question well and to supply his own defects by the drawing or flowing unto him of the best Instruments of experience and knowledge from whom he had a sweet and attractive manner to suck what might be for the publick or his own proper use so as the less he was favoured by the Muses he was the more by the Graces To consider them in their pure Naturals I conceive the Earls Intellectual faculties to have been his stronger part and in the Duke his Practical Yet all know that he likewise at the first was much under the expectation of his after-proof such a Solar influence there is in the Soveraign aspect For their Abilities of discourse or pen the Earl was a very acute and sound speaker when he would intend it and for his writings they are beyond example especially in his familiar Letters and things of delight at Court when he would admit his serious habits as may be yet seen in his Impresses and Inventions of entertainment and above all in his darling piece of love and self love his Stile was an elegant perspicuity rich of phrase but seldome any bold Metaphors and so far from Tumour that it rather wanted a little Elevation The Dukes delivery of his mind I conceive not to be so sharp as solid and grave not so solid and deep as pertinent and apposite to the times and occasions The Earl I account the more liberal and the Duke the more magnificent for I do not remember that my Lord of Essex in all his life time did build or adorn any house the Queen perchance spending his time and himself his means or otherwise inclining to popular wayes for we know the people are apter to applaud house-keepers then house-raisers They were both great cherishers of Scholars and Divines but it seems the Earl had obtained of himself one singular point that he could depart his affection between two extreams for though he bare alwayes a kind of filial reverence towards Dr. Whitgift both before and after he was Archbishop yet on the other side he did not a little love and tender Mr. Cartwright though I think truly with large distinction between the Persons and the Causes however he was taxed with other ends in respecting that party They were both fair-spoken Gentlemen not prone and eager to detract openly from any man and in this the Earl hath been most falsly blemished in our vulgar Story only against one man he had forsworn all patience namely Henry Lord Cobham and would call him per Excellentiam the Sycophant as if it had been an Embleme of his name even to the Queen her self though of no small insinuation with her and one Lady likewise that I may civilly spare to nominate for her sex sake whom he used to term the Spider of the Court yet generally in the sensitive part of their Natures the Earl was the worst Philosopher being a great Resenter and a weak Dissembler of the least disgrace And herein likewise as in the rest no good Pupil to my Lord of Leicester who was wont to put all his passions in his pocket In the growth of their Fortunes the Duke was a little the swifter and much the greater for from a younger Brothers mean estate he rose to the highest degree whereof a Subject was capable either in Title or Trust. Therein I must confess much more consortable to Charles Brandon under Henry the Eight who was equal to him in both For matter of Donative and addition of substance I do not believe that the Duke did much exceed him all considered under both Kings For that which the Earl of Essex had received from her Majesty besides the Fees of his Offices and the disposition of great Summes of money in her Armies was about the time of his Arraignment when faults use to be aggravated with precedent benefits valued at three hundred thousand pounds sterling in pure gift for his only use by the Earl of Dorset then Lord Treasurer who was a wise man and a strict Computist and not well affected towards him And yet it is worthy of note in the Margent of both Times that the one was prosecuted with silence and the other with murmure So undoing a measure is popular judgement I cannot here omit between them a great difference in establishing of both their Fortunes and Fames For the first the Duke had a care to introduce into near place at the Court divers of his confident Servants and into high places very sound and grave Personages Whereas except a Pensioner or two we can scant name any one man advanced of the Earls breeding but Sir Thomas Smith having been his Secretary who yet came never further though married into a noble House then to the Clerk of the Councel and Register of the Parliament not that the Earl meant to stand alone like a Substantive for he was not so ill a Grammarian in Court but the Truth is in this point the Cecilians kept him back as very well knowing that upon every little absence or disassiduity he should be subject to take cold at his back For the other in the managing of their Fames I note between them a direct contrary wisdome For the Earl proceeded by way of Apology which he wrote and dispersed with his own hands at large though till his going to Ireland they were but aiery objections But of the Duke this I know that one aâ—…ing offered for his ease to do him that kind of Service He refused it with a pretty kind of thankful scorn saying that he would trust his own good intentions which God knew and leave to him the pardoning of his Errours and that he saw no fruit of Apologies but the multiplying of discourse which surely was a well setled Maxime And for my own particular though I am not obnoxious to his memory in the expression of Tacitus Neque injuria neque beneficio saving that he shewed me an ordinary good Countenance And if I were yet I would distinguish between Gratitude and Truth I must bear him this Testimony that in a Commission laid upon me by Soveraign Command to examine a Lady about a certain filthy accusation grounded upon nothing but a few single names taken up by a Foot-man in a kennel and straight baptized A list of such as the Duke had appointed to be poysoned at home himself being then in Spain I found it to be the most malicious and frantick surmize and the most contrary to his nature that I think had ever been brewed from the beginning of the World how soever countenanced by a Libellous Pamphlet of a fugitive Physician even in Print and yet
that all Nations prosecuted him with love and wonder as fast as the King with Grace and to his last he never lost any of his lustre His swiftness and nimbleness in rising may be with less injury ascribed to a Vivacity then any Ambition in his nature since it is certain the Kings eagerness to advance him so surprized his youth that he seemed only to submit his shoulders without resistance to such burdens as his Highness would be pleased to lay on him and rather to be held up by the violent inclination of the King then to climb up by any Art or industry of his own yet once seated he would not affront that judgement that raised him by an unseasonable diffidence of himself but endeavoured with an understanding boldness to manage those imployments which his modesty would never suffer him to court During the Reign of his first Master I cannot but say he enjoyed an indifferent calm in his Fortune and Favour for though there were some boisterous interruptions by the clamour of the people yet shortly again their affections were as violent and almost as senseless toward him as ever their accusations were before or after Insomuch as the Chief Rulers among them performed frequent visits to him when he was somewhat diseased in his health and out of a zealous care of him would have begot in him some jealousie that his Physicians and nearest Attendants about him being perhaps of the same Religion with the King of Spain had a purpose by poyson to revenge some injuries these people had conceived in the right of that Nation And here the Fortunes of our great Personages met when they were both the Favourites of the Princes and Darlings of the people But their affections to the Duke were but very short lived And now 't is seasonable to say somewhat of the disposition and spirit of this time since the Disparity of those we treat of will be in that discerned and the Earl be found by so much to have the advantage that there will be little need of conferring the particulars of their lives 'T was a busie querulous frowardtime so much degenerated from the purity of the former that the people under pretences of Reformation with some petulant discourses of Liberty which their great Impostors scattered among them like false glasses to multiply their fears began Abditos Principis sensus quid occultius parat exquirere extended their enquiries even to the Chamber and private actions of the King himself forgetting that truth of the Poet Nusquam Libertas gratior extat quam sub Rege pio 'T was strange to see how men afflicted themselves to find out calamities and mischiefs whilest they borrowed the name of some great persons to scandalize the State they lived in A general disorder throughout the whole body of the Commonwealth nay the vital part perishing the Laws violated by the Judges Religion prophaned by the Prelates Heresies crept into the Church and countenanced and yet all this shall be quickly rectified without so much as being beholding to the King or consulting with the Clergy Surely had Petronius now lived he would have found good cause to say Nostra regio tam praesentibus plena est numinibus ut facilius possis deum quam hominem invenire For my part whether the frenzy was nourish'd in the warm brest of young men who are commonly too much in love with their own time to think it capable of reformation or whether it was fomented by riper heads that had miscarried in their propositions of advancement and are violent in the successes of Queen Elizabeth or whether it was only the revolution of time that had made them unconcerned in the loyal fears that governed sixty years since I shall not presume to guess but shall rather wish for the spirit and condition of that time as he did for wars and commotions Quoniam acerbissima Dei flagella sunt quibus hominum pertinaciam punit ea perpetua oblivione sepelienda potius quà m memoriae mandanda esse King James being no sooner dead but such as had from his beginning impertinently endeavoured to supplant him and found that he was so deeply rooted in his Soveraigns acceptance that there should be no shaking him with clamorous objections found some means to commend over his condition and transcendent power as they termed it as a matter of publick consequence to the people and from this instant to his fatal end he stood as it were exposâ—…d notwithstanding all the shelter of the Soveraigns regard to all the calumnies and obloquies the impudent malice of the Rabble could fling on him and in all their pretences of Reformation as if their end were only his shame not amendment they rather cudgeâ—… then reprâ—…hend him Of this wilde rage not within the main purpose of an Apology I shall give one or two instances insisting on them only as they were mentioned in the indigested noise of the people not as they were marshalled with other imployments in any publick Declaration or Remonstrance There were two errours chiefly laid to his charge and so eagerly urged that in them he was almost concluded an Enemy to the King and Countrey which certainly in the next Age will be conceived marvellous strange Objections the one being a strong Argument of his Worth the other a piece of its Reward the first was the plurality of Offices though they were immediately conferred on him by the King or else such as he was promoted to by his Majesties own allowance to acquire to the which there was no condition but his Majesty was a witness if not a surety for the performance and yet for the execution of them never man studied more to apt himself nor descended to meaner Arts to give general content And here possibly it concerned his Mirth to see his ambition prosecuted of some who desired to ease him of this Guilt by undertaking his Trust. The other was the preferment of his Kindred upon whom his Majesty delighting to give all gracious expression of his affection to the Duke would to enliven any branch that grew from the same Stock confer both Honour and Living And this surely had so little signification of offence in the Dukes conscience that he thought he should have sinned against the Law of Nature and a generous disposition that it would have been an eternal brand to his name and memory if being so seized of this great Kings favour he had no regard but to his own advancement And 't is not improbable that his noble care of his Family confirmed him in the estimation of his Master who knew that all Fountains ought to bestow themselves upon their Neighbour-brooks and could have hoped for little effects from his service whose care was only directed for himâ—…f Now whether the importunate clamour upon these two faults whereof he found no regret but comfort in himself made him so to esteem of the popular discretion and honesty or whether he esteemed it the same
ignominy to have his allegiance exalted with blasphemy as for attending the Prince out of Spain he was called our Redeemer or to have his mis-fortunes mistaken into disloyalty when his Enterprizes succeeded not according to the impossible expectation of the people certain it is that all his later time he wholly neglected all compliance with them 'T is not unlikely he might wonder that in all the scrutinous enquiry for Reformation there was never the least blemish of dislike towards any great man but such as were in the immediate regard and estimation of the King As if all misdemeanours had been committed within the Verge of his Majesties own Chamber I shall not confer any of these particulars with the Earl When the noise of the people had disquieted him into action from Court which was his Orb though he could not put off the place or rather the Title of Command he committed himself a most willing Pupil to the directions of such as were generally thought fit to manage affairs of that nature and here it cannot be deny'd but as he was a vigilant and observant Student in the contemplative part so he improved the courage of the whole Army by his example And surely there is no cause to doubt he would in short time have made so glorious a progress in his profession however he seemed shaped for easier skirmishes as the world should have seen that promptness and alacrity in his nature that could happily have travelled in any path he could direct it had he not been cut off by that exâ—…crable Treason as makes all good men tremble and Posterity shall start at it and had he not been marvellously secured in the tranquillity of his own soul from any of that guilt the Rabble had conferred on him it had been no hard matter to have fortified himself against the knife of a Villain though it were sharpened in the lewdest forge of revenge the great Patron of Murther hath countenanced since the spilling of the first bloud But he that was unsafe only in the greatness of his own spirit could not be perswaded to wear any privy-coat but which he never put off of a good conscience And the same Providence that conveyed him into grace with so different marks from other men would not suffer him to fall but by such a fate as may determine all the Monarchies of the world and which had been seldome acted but upon the most Eminent and Honourable Persons of their times And here again he may be said to meet with the Earl that they both died by the people though by very different affections which continued so preposterous as Iustice upon the One for Iustice is the execution of the Law was interpreted a Conspiracy And Treason upon the Other conceived Religion And yet one had the Royal Sacrifice of his Soveraigns sorrow which the other wanted In contriving and contracting his Friendships he was provident and circumspect enough as may appear by those Marriages in which he linked his House and in the observation of them he was so severe and real as he wanted some of that which is usually the poyson of Noble minds Suspicion looking no further into the affections of those he chose then the Testimony of their own hearts though this Confidence sometimes was like to prove dangerous to him And here the Earl had the day too For his friends were Skreens between him and envy and his own infirmities taken from him and imposed on them when the Duke was so far from that ease or being discharged of the burthen that belonged to them that he was traduced with all the mistakes of all his friends kindred and dependants as if he were the mischievous Agent they only improvident and surprized Instruments 'T is true they were neither of them much skilled in that Paradox of charity loving their enemies and yet the Dukes easiness to reconcilement and too soon forgetting the circumstances of Grudges betrayed him often to the injuries of such as had not the same spirit Concerning the parts and endowments of his Mind if the consideration of Learning extend it self not further then drudgery in Books the Dukes imployments forbids to suspect him for any great Scholar but if a nimble and fluent expression and delivery of his Mind and his discourse was of all Subjects in a natural and proper dialect be considered he was well letter'd but if he had that Eloquence of Nature or Art I am sure he wanted that other accident which the best Iudge attributed to the Earl as an Eloquence that passed the other two the pity and benevolence of his hearers insomuch that his words and speeches were never entertained with that candour or common charity of Interpretation as civilly belongs to all Delinquents witness that speech in the fulness of his joy he let fall to his Majesty in the behalf of his people which was immediately perverted and carpt at as an aggravation of his other imaginary and fantastick offences He was besides not only of an eminent affection to learning in conferring dignities and rewards upon the most learned men either of which is seldome without judgement and he was the Governour in a Province of Learning which was an Argument he confuted the people by when he suffered himself to be chosen Chancellour of the University of Cambridge even at the time when they had concluded his destruction as a man odious to all Subjects In his Liberalities and rewards of those he fancied he was so chearfully magnificent and so much at the mercy of his Dependants that if they proved improvident or immodest in their Suits the inconveniency and mischief was surely his insomuch as he seemed wholly possest from himself and to be only great for their use and he had then so happy a bravery in deriving of his Favours and conferred them with so many noble circumstances as the manner was as obliging as the matter and mens understandings oft-times as much puzled as their gratitude If the Earl sided him here his bounty fell upon more unthrifty men for there are many Families owe their large possessions only to the openness of the Dukes hand though much be lost too in the ingratitudes of the Receivers But that which shined with most lustre in him and which indeed flowed in his nature much above its proportion in other men was an admirable affability and gentleness to all men And this was the pomp and glory of all his Titles Insomuch as though his Memory were a place so taken up with high thoughts and unlikely to have any room for matters of so small importance he was ever known to entertain his younger acquaintance with that familiarity as if they had been stairs by which he ascended to his greatness He had besides such a tenderness and compassion in his nature that such as think the Laws dead if they are not severely executed censured him for being too merciful but his charity was grounded upon a wiser Maxime of Stâ—…te Non
minus turpe Principi multa Supplicia quà m Medico multa Funera And he believed doubtless that Hanging was the worst use man could be put to And now me thinks to believe a man drest in all these real ornaments of Honour could be an Enemy to the Publick to his Countrey is as ingenuous as to believe a man of a solemn friendlyness to ten thousand men and of a resolved hatred to mankind Of all imputations that was the most unskilful which accused him of a purpose and design to enrich himself Certainly that was never in his vows and possibly the Auditors of his Revenues do not find his Estate so much increased from the time of his first Master though he enjoyed a glorious Harvest of almost four years which if it had been brought in to his own use could not but have made an envious addition Since then till their Evenings these two great Persons can hardly meet Let not the violence of their deaths reconcile them since the same consideration might as well unite the great King of France and the Marshal Byron and many others of more different conditions He that shall continue this Argument further may haply begin his Parallel after their deaths and not unfitly He may say that they were both as mighty in Obligations as ever any Subjects and both their Memories and Families as unrecompenced by such as they had raised He may tell you of the Clients that burnt the Pictures of the one and defaced the Arms of the other lest they might be too long suspected for their Dependants and fiâ—…d dis-advantage by being honest to their Memories He may tell you of some that grew strangers to their houses lest they might find the Tract of their own foot-steps that might upbraid them with their former attendance He may say that both their Memories shall have a reverend savour with all Posterity and all Nations He may tell you many more particulars which I dare not do CRUX FIDEI COTI-CULA A VIEW OF THE LIFE AND DEATH OF George Villiers Duke of Buckingham THE LIFE and DEATH OF GEORGE VILLIERS Late Duke of Buckingham I Determine to write the Life and the End the Nature and the Fortunes of GEORGE VILLIERS late Duke of Buckingham esteeming him worthy to be Registred among the great examples of Time and Fortune which yet I have not undertaken out of any wanton pleasure in mine own Pen nor truly without often pondering with my self before-hand what Censures I might incur For I would not be ignorant by long observation both abroad and at home That every where all greatness of power and Favour is circumvested with much prejudice And that it is not easie for Writers to research with due distinction as they ought in the actions of eminent Personages both how much may have been blemished by the envy of others and what was corrupted by their own felicity unless after the period of their Splendour which must needs dazle their beholders and perhaps oftentimes themselves we could as in some Scenes of the fabulous Age excite them again and confer a while with their naked Ghosts However for my part I have no servile or ignoble end in my present labour which may on either side restrain or embase the freedome of my poor judgement I will therefore steer as evenly as I can and deduce him from his Cradle through the deep and lubrick waves of State and Court till he was swallowed in the Gulf of fatality I find him born in the year of our Saviour 1592. on the 20th of August at Brookeby in Leicestershire where his Ancestors had chiefly continued about the space of 400 years rather without obscurity then with any great lustre after they had long before been seated in Kinalton in the Country of Nottingham He was the third Son of George Villiers Knight and Mary late Countess of Buckingham and Daughter to Anthony Beaumont of Coleorton Esquire names on either side well known of Ancient extraction And yet I remember there was one who in a wilde Pamphlet which he published besides other pityful Malignities would scant allow him to be a Gentleman He was nurtured where he had been born in his first Rudiments till the years of ten and from thence sent to Billisden-School in the same County where he was taught the principles of Musick and other slight Literature till the thirteenth of his age at which time his Father died Then his beautiful and provident Mother for those Attributes will not be denyed her took him home to her house at Goodby where she had him in especial care so as he was first as we may say a Domestick Favourite But finding him as it should seem by nature little studious and contemplative she chose rather to endue him with conversative Qualities and Ornaments of youth as Dancing Fencing and the like Not without aim then perchance though far off at a Courtiers life To which lessons he had such a dexterous proclivity as his Teachers were fain to restrain his forwardness to the end that his Brothers who were under the same training might hold pace with him About the age of eighteen he travelled into France where he improved himself well in the Language for one that had so little Grammatical foundation but more in the exercises of that Nobility for the space of three years and yet came home in his natural plight without affected sorms the ordinary disease of Travellers After his return he passed again one whole year as before at Goodby under the Wing and Counsels of his Mother And then was forward to become a Suiter at London to Sir Roger Ashton's Daughter a Gentleman of the Bed-chamber to King James and Master of the Robes About which times he falls into intrinsecal society with Sir John Greham then one of the Gentlemen of his Majesties Privy-Chamber who I know not upon what Luminaries he spyed in his face disswaded him from Marriage and gave him rather encouragement to wooe Fortune in Court Which advice sank well into his fancy for within some while the King had taken by certain Glances whereof the first was at Apthorpe in a Progress such liking of his person that he resolved to make him a Master-piece and to mould him as it were Platonically to his own Idea Neither was his Majesty content only to be the Architect of his fortune without putting his Gracious hand likewise to some part of the work it self Insomuch as it pleased him to descend and to avale his goodness even to the giving of his foresaid friend Sir Iohn Greham secret directions how and by what degrees he should bring him into favour But this was quickly discovered by him who was then as yet in some possession of the Kings heart For there is nothing more vigilant nothing more jealous then a Favourite especially towards the wayning time and suspect of saciety So as many Arts were used to discuss the beginnings of new affection which lye out of my Road being a
part of another mans Story All which notwithstanding for I omit things intervenient there is conveyed to Mr. Villiers an intimation of the Kings pleasure to wait and to be sworn his servant And shortly after his Cup-bearer at large And the Summer following he was admitted in Ordinary After which time Favours came thick upon him liker main Showers then sprinkling Drops or Dews for the next St. Georges-day he was Knighted and made Gentleman of the Kings Bed Chamber and the very same day had an annual Pension given him for his better support of one thousand pounds out of the Court of Wards At New-years-tide following the King chose him Master of the Horse After this he was installed of the most Noble Order And in the next August he created him Baron of Whaddon and Viscount Villiers In January of the same year he was advanced Earl of Buckingham and sworn here of his Majesties Privy-Counsel as if a Favourite vvere not so before The March ensuing he attended the King into Scotland and vvas likewise sworn a Counsellor in that Kingdome vvhere as I have been instructed by unpassionate men he did carry himself vvith singular sweetness and temper vvhich I held very credible for it behoved him being new in favour and succeeding one of their own to study a moderate style among those generous Spirits About New-years-tide after his return from thence for those beginnings of years vvere very propitious unto him as if Kings did chuse remarkable dayes to inaugurate their Favours that they may appear acts as vvell of the Times as of the Will he vvas Created Marquess of Buckingham and made Lord Admiral of England Chief Justice in Eyre of all the Parks and Forrests on the South-side of Trent Master of the Kings-Bench Office none of the unprofitable pieces Head-Steward of Westminster and Constable of Windsor-Castle Here I must breath a vvhile to satisfie some that perhaps might otherwise vvonder at such an Accumulation of Benefits like a kind of Embroidering or listing of one Favour upon another Certainly the hearts of great Princes if they be considered as it vvere in abstract vvithout the necessity of States and Circumstances of time being besides their natural extent moreover once opened and dilated vvith affection can take no full and proportionate pleasure in the exercise of any narrow Bounty And albeit at first they give only upon choice and love of the person yet vvithin a vvhile themselves likewise begin to love their givings and to foment their deeds no less then Parents do their Children But let us go on For these Offices and Dignities already rehearsed and these of the like nature vvhich I shall after set down in their place vvere as I am ready to say but the facings or fringes of his Greatness in comparison of that trust vvhich his most Gracious Master did cast upon him in the one and twentieth year of his Reign vvhen he made him the chief Concomitant of his Heir apparent and only Son our dear Soveraign now being in a journey of much Adventure and vvhich to shew the strength of his privacy had been before not communicated vvith any other of his Majesties most reserved Counsellors at home being carried vvith great closeness liker a business of Love then State as it vvas in the first intendment Now because the vvhole Kingdome stood in a zealous trepidation of the absence of such a Prince I have been the more desirous to research vvith some diligence the several passages of the said Journey and the particular Accidents of any moment in their vvay They began their motion in the year 1623 on Tuesday the 18th of February from the Marquess his house of late purchase at Newhall in Essex setting out vvith disguised Beards and vvith borrowed Names of Thomas and Iohn Smith And then attended vvith none but Sir Richard Greham Master of the Horse to the Marquess and of inward trust about him When they passed the River against Gravesend for lack of silver they vvere fain to give the Ferry-man a piece of two and twenty shillings vvhich struck the poor fellow into such a melting tenderness that so good Gentlemen should be going for so he suspected about some quarrel beyond Sea as he could not forbear to acquaint the Officers of the Town vvith vvhat had befallen him vvho sent presently Post for their stay at Rochester through vvhich they vvere passed before any intelligence could arrive On the brow of the Hill beyond that City they vvere somewhat perplexed by espying the French Embassador vvith the Kings Coach and other attending him vvhich made them baulk the beaten Road and teach Posthackneys to leap Hedges At Canterbury vvhither some voice as it should seem vvas run on before the Mayor of the Town came himself to seize on them as they vvere taking fresh Horses in a blunt manner alledging first a Warrant to stop them from the Councel next from Sir Lewis Lewkver Master of the Ceremonies and lastly from Sir Henry Manwaring then Lieutenant of Dover-Castle At all vvhich confused fiction the Marquess had no leasure to laugh but thought best to dismask his Beard and so told him that he vvas going covertly vvith such slight company to take a secret view being Admiral of the forwardness of his Majesties Fleet vvhich vvas then in preparation on the Narrow Seas This vvith much ado did somewhat handsomely heal the disguisement On the vvay afterwards the Baggage Post-Boy vvho had been at Court got I know not how a glimmering vvho they vvere but his mouth vvas easily shut To Dover through bad Horses and those pretty impediments they came not before six at night vvhere they found Sir Francis Cottington then Secretary to the Prince now Baron of Hanworth and Mr. Endymion Porter vvho had been sent before to provide a Vessel for their Transportation The foresaid Knight vvas conjoyn'd for the nearness of his place on the Princes affairs and for his long Residence in the Court of Spain vvhere he had gotten singular credit even vvith that cautious Nation by the temper of his Carriage Mr. Porter vvas taken in not only as a Bed-chamber servant of Confidence to his Highness but likewise as a necessary and useful Instrument for his natural skil in the Spanish Tongue And these five vvere at the first the vvhole Parada of this Journey The next morning for the night vvas tempestuous on the 19th of the foresaid Moneth taking ship at Dover about six of the Clock they landed the same day at Bullâ—…yn in France near two hours after Noon reaching Monstruell that night like men of dispatch and Paris the second day after being Friday the one and twentieth But some three Posts before they had met vvith two German Gentlemen that came newly from England vvhere they had seen at New-market the Prince and the Marquess taking Coach together vvith the King and retaining such a strong impression of them both that they now bewrayed some knowledge of their persons but vvere out-faced by
praises and Elogies according to the contrary motions of popular waves And now to summe up the fruit of the Journey discourses ran thus among the clearest Observers It was said that the Prince himself without any imaginable stain of his Religion had by the sight of Forraign Courts and observations of the different Natures of people and Rules of Government much excited and awaked his spirits and corroborated his judgement And as for the Marquess there was note taken of two great additions which he had gained First he was returned with encrease of Title having there been made Duke by Patent sent him which was the highest degree whereof an English Subject could be capable But the other was far greater though closer for by so long and so private and so various consociation with a Prince of such excellent nature he had now gotten as it were two lives in his own Fortune and Greatness whereas otherwise the estate of a Favourite is at the best but a Tenant at will and rarely transmitted But concerning the Spanish Commission which in publick conceit was the main scope of the Journey that was left in great suspence and after some time utterly laid aside which threw the Duke amongst free Wits whereof we have a rank Soil under divers Censures The most part were apt to believe that he had brought down some deep distaste from Spain which exasperated his Councels Neither was there wanting some other that thought him not altogether void of a little Ambition to shew his power either to knit or dissolve Howsoever the whole Scene of affairs was changed from Spain to France there now lay the prospective Which alteration being generally liked and all alterations of State being ever attributed to the powerfullest under Princes as the manner is where the eminency of one obscureth the rest the Duke became suddenly and strangely Gracious among the multitude and was even in Parliament highly exalted so as he did seem for a time to have overcome that natural Incompatibility which in the experience of all Ages hath been noted between the Vulgar and the Soveraign Favour But this was no more then a meer bubble or blast and like an Ephemeral fit of applause as estsoon will appear in the sequel and train of his life I had almost forgotten that after his return from Spain he was made Lord Warden of the Cinque-Ports which is as it were a second Admiralty and Steward likewise of the Mannour of Hampton-Court Dignities and Offices still growing of trust or profit And the King now giving not only out of a beneficent disposition but a very habitual and confirmed custome One year six moneths two dayes after the joyful reception of the Prince his Son from Spain King James of immortal memory among all the lovers and admirers of Divine and Humane Sapience accomplished at Theobalds his own dayes on Earth Under whom the Duke had run a long Course of calm and smooth prosperity I mean long for the ordinary life of favour and the more notable because it had been without any visible Eclipse or Wave in himself amidst divers variations in others The most important and pressing care of a new and Vigorous King was his Marriage for mediate establishment of the Royal Line Wherein the Duke having had an especial hand he was sent to conduce hither the most Lovely and Vertuous Princess Henrietta Maria youngest Daughter to the Great Henry of Bourbon of whom his Majesty as hath been said had an ambulatory view in his Travels like a stolen taste of something that provoketh appetite He was accompanied with none of our Peers but the Earl of Mountgomery now Lord Chamberlain a Noble Gentleman of trusty free and open nature and truly no unsuitable Associate for that he himself likewise at the beginning of King James had run his Circle in the wheeling vicissitude of Favour And here I must crave leave in such of high quality or other of particular note as shall fall under my pen whereof this is the first not to let them pass without their due Character being part of my professed ingenuity Now this Ambassy though it had a private shew being charged with more formality then matter for all the essential Conditions were before concluded could howsoever want no Ornaments or bravery to adorn it Among which I am near thinking it worthy of a little remembrance that the Duke one solemn day Gorgeously clad in a suit all over-spread with Diamonds and having lost one of them of good value perchance as he might be dancing after his manner with lofty motion it was strangely recovered again the next morning in a Court full of Pages Such a diligent attendant was Fortune every where both abroad and at home After this fair discharge all Civil Honours having showred on him before there now fell out great occasions to draw forth his spirits into action a breach first with Spain and not longafter with France it self notwithstanding so streight an affinity so lately treated with the one and actually accomplished with the other As if indeed according to that pleasant Maxime of State Kingdoms were never married This must of necessity involve the Duke in business enough to have over-set a lesser Vessel being the next Commander under the Crown of Ports and Ships But he was noted willingly to embrace those Overtures of publick employment For at the Parliament at Oxford his Youth and want of Experience in Maritime service had somewhat been shrewdly touched even before the sluces and flood-gates of popular liberty were yet set open So as to wipe out that objection he did now mainly attend his charge by his Majesties untroubled and serene Commands even in a tempestuous time Now the men fell a rubbing of Armour which a great while had layn oyled The Magazines of Munition are viewed The Officers of Remains called to account frequent Councels of War as many private conferences with expert Sea-men a Fleet in preparation for some attempt upon Spain The Duke himself personally imployed to the States General and with him joyned in full Commission the Earl of Holland a Peer both of singular grace and solidity and of all sweet and serviceable virtue for publick use These two Nobles after a dangerous passage from Harwich wherein three of their Ships were foundred arrived the fifth day at the Hague in Holland Here they were to enter a treaty both with the States themselves and with the Ministers of divers allied and confederate Princes about a common diversion for the recovery of the Palatinate where the King 's only Sisters Dowry had been ravished by the German Eagle mixed with Spanish Feathers A Princess resplendent in darkness and whose virtues were born within the chance but without the power of Fortune Here it were injurious to over-slip a Noble act in the Duke during this Imployment which I must for my part celebrate above all his Expences There was a Collection of certain rare Manuscripts exquisitely written in Arabick and sought
Hercule Telemene and Piombino vvhich vve may perchance not improperly call the Fetters of Hetruria Of stature he vvas somewhat above the mean a gross body not apt to motion and as quiet a Countenance His Moneys vvere the purest and least corrupted vvithin the Italian bounds and his Markets the best ordered for prices of comestible Ware vvhere in all his Towns a man might have sent out a Child for any flesh or fish at a rated price every Morning To vvhich temper more septentrional unlimber Nations have not yet bent themselves On the other side there vvas nothing brought into Florence from the Field to the least sale but by a long insensible servitude paid somewhat This vvas the Civil and Natural habit of that Prince and more might be said if I vvere not pounded vvithin an Epistle This Duke vvhile I vvas a private Traveller in Florence and vvent sometime by chance sure I am vvithout any design to his Court vvas pleased out of some gracious conceit vvhich he took of my fidelity for nothing else could move it to imploy me into Scotland vvith a Casket of Antidotes or Preservatives vvherein he did excel all the Princes of the World and vvith a Dispatch of high and secret Importance vvhich he had intercepted touching some practice upon the Succession to this Crown so as I am much obliged to his Memory though it vvas a painful journey for that Honour and other Favours and Beneficences and especially because I came thereby first into the notice of the King your Father of ever blessed memory vvhen your Majesty was but a blooming Rose vvhich afterwards drevv on my imployment to the Republick of Venice THE ELECTION OF THE DUKE OF VENICE With other Papers concerning that STATE prefixed A Letter to the KING December 9. 1622. May it please your most Sacred Majesty BY this right honest and learned Gentleman by name Adolphus Ryplingham who hath spent some time abroad in the best observations I send your Majesty more Melon-seeds of all sorts which have been diligently chosen and will I hope take better then the former In my Letter to Master Secretary Calvert I have discharged other duties among which some will come very seasonably unto your Majesty about Christmass-time to increase your recreation For it is indeed a merry piece of service that I have sent your Majesty a testimony of your conscience from Rome Now for this Letter I have reserved a private and voluntary subject which I have taken the freedom most humbly to present unto your Majesties benign censure It is the preface to one of mine own poor labours comprehending the argument thereof and the motives In which as yet unfinished lucubration for so I may justly call it having been for the most part born in the night I have had occasion to fall upon some weighty considerations of Church and State while I did search the progress of this Republick among the clouds and confusions of the middle Age. Between which times it was a kind of refreshment and yet withal but a miserable pleasure to contemplate how the Empire grew lank and the Popedom tumorous proportionably till Superstition like a wild and raging fire could at length be contained neque suis terminis neque alienis These remarkable points I have now touched to procure from your Majesty some pardon for a bold invocation therein of your Royal Name being confident that this hâ—…gh Theoreme of State which I handle though my self but a poor Student in meaner speculations may prove not unworthy in the subject it self to receive some lustre from your gracious countenance To conclude the trouble that I have given your Majesty instead of some present more valuable to inaugurate the new approaching year I do humbly submit the death or life of this work to your only doom and though that ancient conceit was well commended when it was first born Mallem Augusti judicium quam Antonii Beneficium yet I must crave leave to think it somewhat ignoble And for my part to assure your Majesty that I shall more rejoyce in the approbation of your judgement then in the fruition even of your own benefits And so I most humbly commit your most dear and Royal Person to God's continual love remaining Your Majesties faithful Vassal and long devoted poor Servant Ottavio Baldi Praefatio in Historiam Venetam HEnricus Wottonius Anglo-Cantianus postquam quatuor decem ferè annorum spatium legationibus apud Venetos exhauseram Anno unici Mediatoris supra Millesimum sexcente simum vicesimo secundo Aetatis meae quinquage simo tertio jam labente de illorum Imperio scribere sum aggressus ut si non satis vigilasse foris prâ—… publico munere at saltem vixisse videar Quippe levi profectò distant discrimine silentes à defunctis nec multum interest nos terminet fatalis dies an praestinguat inertia Igitur libido saepius sopita nunc ardentius rediit revolvendi vetera novaque ut ex radicibus eliciam quo Fati ductu queîs maximè institutis quibusque Artibus tam Inclyta Christiani Orbis Civitas tot saecula superaverit inter varias Mari Terraque tam cladium quam victoriarum vices nec minora fortasse ipsius Otii quam Belâ—…i mala Hujus faelicitatis progressus fulcimenta retrò quaerenti duo praecipuè si rectè aestimo Fontes recludent Historia temporum Imperii forma Quae quà m potero brevissime quasi delibatim expediam Ut hoc qualecunque conceptum Opus delectu magis rerum quam ubertate gestiat simul etiam ne in alienae Reipublicae arâ—…nis longiùs haerendo Hospitis verecundiam violarem Te verò sapientissime Jacobe Rex Domine sub cujus indulgentis Iudicii praesidio imbecillitas nostra civilibus ministeriis incubuit quam quidem natura potiùs ad simplicior a studia damnaver at Te inquam Clarissimum saeculi Lumen in exordio prasentium curarum invocare liceat ut tanti nominis velut adflatu quodam alacriùs incaeptum peragam Sed quia non levia meditamur quod ante ingressum ingenui Authores solent id quoque profiteor ne sine obtrectatione sine blanditiis sensus quos per omnem laboris partem res ipsa suggerit liberrimè prolaturum ne argumenti dignitatem dehonestet servilis oratio Jam urbem Venetam c. A Letter concerning the Original of Venice Right Honourable and my very good Lord I Owe your Lordship even by promise some account of my foreign Travels and the Observations which I have taken touching this City and Republick are these The general position of the City of Venice I find much celebrated even by the learnedest of the Arabians as being seated in the very middle point between the Equinoctial and the Northern Pole at 45. degrees precisely or next hand of latitude yet their Winters are for the most part sharper then ours though about 6. degrees less of elevation perchance by vicinity tothe chilly tops
most affectionate poor Friend to serve you HENRY WOTTON Feb. 1613. SIR ONe Reason of my writing now unto you is because it seemeth a great while unto me since I did so Another to give you many thanks which upon the casting up of my reckonings I find I have not yet done for that Gelding wherewith you so much honoured me which in truth either for goodness or beauty runneth for one of the very best about this place And I have had a great deal of love made unto me for him by no small ones After this I must plainly tell you that I mean to perswade you I am sorry I cannot say to invite you for my Mind would bear that word better then my Fortune to bestow your self and your whole Family upon us this Shrovetide if it be but for three dayes at the conjunction of the Thames and the Rhene as our ravished Spirits begin to call it The occasion is rare the expence of time but little of money inconsiderable You shall see divers Princes a great confluence of Strangers sundry entertainments to shorten your patience and to reward your travel Finally nothing spared even in a necessitous time I will adde unto these Arguments that out of your own Store at home â—…ou may much encrease the beauty of this Assembly â—…nd your Daughters shall not need to provide any great splendour of Cloathing because they can â—…pply that with a better contribution as hath been â—…ell authenticated even by the Kings own testimony of them For though I am no longer an Ambassador yet am I not so bank-rupt of Intelligence but that I have heard of those rural passages Now let me therefore with this hobling Pen again and again pray you to resolve upon your coming if not with all the fair Train yet your self and my Lady and my Nephew and his Wife or at the least of leasts the Masculine We begin to lay off our mourning habits and the Court will shortly I think be as merry as if it were not sick The King will be here to morrow The Friday following he goeth to Windsor with the Count Palatine about the Ceremony of his Instalment In the mean time there is expected the Count Henry of Nassaw to be at the said Solemnity as the Representant of his Brother Yesternight the Count Palatino invited all the Counsel to a solemn Supper which was well ordered He is a Gentleman of very sweet hope and hath rather gained upon us then lost any thing after the first Impression And so Sir having ended my Paper I will end my Letter with my hearty prayers for the prosperity of your self and yours ever resting Your faithfull poor Friend to serve you HENRY WOTTON To the King 1615. May it please Your Sacred Majesty I Beseech your Majesty to pardon me a little short repetition how I have spent my time since my departure from your Royal sight because I glory in your goodness I have been imployed by your favour in four several Treaties differing in the Matter in the Instruments and in the Affections The first was for the sequestration of Juliers wherein I was joyned with the French The second for the provisional possession of the two Pretendents wherein contrary to the complaint of the Gospel the Labourers were more then the Harvest The third was for a defensive League between the united Provinces and the united Princes Who though they be separate Bodies of State do now by your onely Mediation make one Body of Strength The fourth was for the composing of some differences between your own and this People in matter of Commerce which hath exceeded the other Three both in length and in difficulty for two Reasons as I conceive it First Through the sensibleness of the Subject which is private Utility next because it had a secret commixture of publick respects and those of no light consequence For surely it importeth more to let the King of Spain dispense alone the Commodities of the East then for either of us to want them Now of the three former Treaties I have given your Majesty an accompt in divers Dispatches according to my poor apprehensions As for this last they that have eased my weakness in the conduct thereof I mean my good Associates by whose light and leadings I have walked will ease me likewise by your gracious leave in the Relation By them it may please your Majesty to understand in what fair terms we have left it somewhat resembling to my fancy those Women of Nombre de Dios who they say are never brought to bed in the place where they conceive but bring forth their children in a better Air And so I hope that our travels and unformed conceptions will take life in your own Kingdome which will be more honour to their Birth For our parts I dare affirm of these your Commissioners that now return unto the comfort of your gracious Aspect That they have discharged their Duties and their Consciences with all faithfull care of your Majesties Commandments I am confident likewise that they will give me their honest Testimony And we are bound joyntly to profess unto your Majesty from whom we receive our estimation the respects and kindnesses that have been here done us as your Vassals And so with my continual prayers to God for your blessed Being I here remain till your Majesty shall vouchsafe me again the grace of your eyes Your Majesties long devoted poor Servant HENRY WOTTON To the Marquess of Buckingham January 25. 1619. My most Noble Lord I Will be bold by this opportunity to give His Majesty through your Lordships hands an account of a Command which I had from him at Theobalds about sounding how the Venetian Ambassador stood satisfied with the late determination touching his predecessor Donato I did visit the said Ambassador immediately at my return from the King and saluted him as by express Commandment interjecting some words of mine own gladness that he had received contentment in this tender point which would signalize his beginnings This I said because in truth I had found him always before the more passionate in it by some reflection upon himself His answer after due thanks for His Majesties gracious remembrance of him from abroad was that for his own part he was Contentissimo and had represented things home in the best manner He hoped likewise it would be well tasted there also though with some doubt because the State out of their own devotion towards His Majesty might form a confidence of expecting more I replied that the King upon the matter if we consider disgrace had done more then themselves for he was but once banished at Venice and twice here viz. once from the verge of the Court and secondly from London which was as much as could be done with preservation of rational immunities and more then would have been done at the suit of of any other Ambassador here resident or perhaps of any of their own hereafter if the like
Case shall occur For as I told him it was the Kings express will that his particular respect to the Republick and to him in this business should not be drawn into Examples With this point he was not a little pleased for his own glory and said that indeed Master Secretary Nanton had told him so This was the sum of what passed between us omitting impertinencies Let me end my dear Lord as I am bound in all the use either of my pen or of my voice with an humble and hearty acknowledgement of my great obligations towards your Lordship which will make me resolve and in good faith unhappy till I can some way shew my self Your Lordships most thankeful and faithful Servant H. W. To the KING From Augusta the 8 18 of August 1620. May it please Your most Sacred Majesty FRom this place I determined to make my first Dispatch unto Your Majesty hoping in such Cities and Courts vvhereunto I had address on the vvay to take up somewhat that should be considerable and till then unwilling to entertain Your solicitous Mind vvith immaterial things I have hitherto been vvith five several Princes and Communities the Duke of Loraign the Arch-Duke Leopoldus the Town of Strasburg the Duke of Wirtenberg and the Town of Ulme in the same order as I have set them down among whom I spent in all twelve days and the rest of the time in uncessant journeys vvhereof I shall now render Your Majesty a full account in the substance retrenching impertinencies Unto the Duke of Loraign I had no credential address from Your Royal hand and yet to pass silently like a stream through his Land by a Prince of so near conjunction in blood with You and interessed in the scope of my errand as a member of the Empire had been some incongruity Therefore excusing as I might justly the want of Letters vvith my purpose to have taken another way till I heard that the French King had cleared the confines of Loraign by drawing such Forces as lay hovering there with some hazard of Passengers over the River of Marne towards Normandy I say after this excuse I told him I knevv Your Majesty vvould be singularly pleased to understand by me of his health and that I had in transitu conferred vvith him Your Christian ends vvherein You could not but expect at his hands a concurrence both of Counsel and Affection This I said to dravv civilly from him as much as I could being a Prince cumbred as I found him vvith the German troubles on the one side and the French on the other and therefore bound to study the passages of both especially having a State vvhich perhaps is harder for him to keep neutral then himself In the rest of my discourse I possessed him vvith two main heads of mine Instructions First vvith Your Majesties innocency in the Bohemian business at the beginning next vvith Your impartiality therein even to this hour both vvhich did render You in this cause the fittest Mediator of the World And so I shut up all vvith this That God had given Your Majesty two eminent blessings the one Peace at home the other vvhich vvas surely the greater and the rarer a Soul desirous of the like abroad vvhich You found Your self tied in the Conscience of a Christian King to prosecute by all possible means and therefore though You had before in the beginning of the Bohemian Motions sent Your good meaning by a solemn Ambassage to the Emperor in the Person of a dear and zealous Servant of great Quality even before any other King had entred into it vvhich through the crudity of the matter as then took not the vvished effect yet novv hoping that time it self and the experience of vexation had mollified the affections and better digested the difficulties You had not refused by several Ambassages to both sides and to all the intervenient Princes and States to attempt again this high and Christian Work Thus much though in effect extracted from Your Majesties own directions I have here once rehearsed to save the repetition thereof in my following Audiences at other places The Dukes answer was more tender then free lamenting much the present condition of things commending as much Your Majesties good mind proclaiming his own remitting the vvhole to those great and vvise Kings that had it in hand and concluding vvith a voice me thought lower then before as if he had doubted to be overheard though in his private Chamber that the Princes of the Union vvould tell me vvhat his affections vvere in the Cause For vvhich I gave him thanks commending in all events to his continual memory that Your Majesties Daughter my gracious Lady and her Descendents vvere of the Bloud of Loraign Yea said he and the Elector likewise This vvas all that passed from him of any moment After vvhich he brought me to Monsieur de Vaudemont vvhose principal business as I hear at the present is to vvork the Dukes assent and the Popes dispensation for a Marriage between his own Son and his Brothers Daughter a thing much affected by that People and no doubt fomented by France to keep so important a Province from Strangers In the mean vvhile de Vaudemont's Son for improvement of his merit and fame is bestowed in the Command of those Troops vvhich vvere suffered to pass the Rheine at Brysack on Whitson-Monday last Before I leave Loraign I cannot but advertise Your Majesty that at Faltsbourg a Town in the confines of that Province towards Elsatia inhabited and built by many good men of the Religion the Ministers came unto me bewailing the case of the Inhabitants vvho for some thirty years had possessed that place quietly till of late by instigation of the Jesuits at Nancy the Duke had given them vvarning to be gone vvithin the term of two years vvhereof some good part vvas expired Their request unto me vvas that by Your Majesties gracious Mediation they might be received into a place vvithin the Palatine Jurisdiction near their present seat which they offered to enlarge and fortifie at their own charge upon the grant of reasonable immunities vvhich I have assumed to treat by Letter vvith Your Majesties Son-in-lavv needing no other commission from Your Majesty in things of this nature then Your own goodness The Arch-Duke Leopald I vvas forced to seek three days journey from his ordinary seat where being at his private sports of the field and no fit things about him he desired me to turn back half 〈◊〉 days journey to Mulzham the notorious nest of Jesuits commanding the Governors of his Towns in the mean time to use me vvith all due respects among vvhom he made choice of an Italian by name Ascanio Albertine a man of singular confidence vvith him and surely of very fair conditions to sound me though in a merry fashion and half laughing as there was good cause how I would taste it if he should receive me in the Jesuits Colledge for at Mulzham those
were his Hosts being destitute of other habitation I answered him as merrily as it was propounded that I knew the Jesuits had every where the best rooms more splendent then true fitter to lodge Princes then Monks and that their habitations were always better then themselves Moreover that for mine own part though I was not much afraid of their infection and that Saint Paul did not refuse to be carried in a Ship which was consecrated to false Gods yet because on our side they were generally and no doubt justly reputed the true causes of all the troubles of the Christian World I doubted it would be a scandalous Reception and that besides those Artificers vvould go near to make appear on my part a kind of silent approbation of their Order and course This was my answer which being faithfully transported by the Italian the Arch-Duke made choice of another mean house in the Town vvhere he received me truly in a noble sweet fashion to whom having presented Your Majesties Letters and Love he disposed himself with sharp attention to hear me To him besides that which I had said to the Duke of Loraign I added two things The first that not only Your Majesty was clear of all fore-knowledge or counsel in the business of Bohemia but likewise Your Son-in-law himself of any precedent practice therein till it was laid upon him as You knew by his own high affirmations and most infallible testimonies The second that though Your Majesty to this hour did continue as equal betwixt both parties as the Equinoctial between the Poles yet about the time of my departure You were much moved and the whole Land likewise with a voice I know not how spread abroad that there were great preparations to invade the Nether Palatinate which if it did fall out Your Majesty should have just reason to think Your Moderation unthankfully requited the said Palatinate being the Patrimonial Lands of Your own Descendents and no way connexed with the Bohemian Business Whereupon I perswaded him fairly in Your Majesties Name being a Personage of such authority in the present actions to keep them from any such precipitious and impertinent rupture as might preclude all Mediation of Accord and because Your Majesty had now which was a second Argument of Your equity sent several Ambassadors to the Fountains for Your better information in the merit of the Cause by Your own Instruments I besought him to illuminate me who was the weakest of Your Creatures as far as he should think fit and to assist me with his best advice towards this good end whereunto besides the dear Commandment of the King my Master I would confer mine own plain and honest zeal His answer to all the points which he had very orderly laid up was this Of Your Majesties own clearness he professed much assurance of Your Son-in-law as much doubt charging him both with close practice with the Bohemians at the time of the Emperors Election at Francfort and more foully with a new practice either by himself or by others to introduce the Turk into Hungary Of any design upon the Lower Palatinate he utterly disavowed all knowledge on his part yet would not deny but the Marquess Spinola might perchance have some such aim and if things went on as they do men would no doubt assail their enemies wheresoever they should find them In such ambiguous clouds as these he wrapped this point Of the Emperors inclination to an agreement he bade me be very assured but never vvithout restitution of the usurped Kingdom vvhich vvas not a loss of easie concoction especially being taken from him by the Count Palatine his Subject as he often called him and once added that he thought he vvould not deny it himself Of the merit of the cause he said he had sent divers records and papers to the Emperor vvhere I should find them Lastly he acknowledged himself much bound unto Your Majesty for the honour You had done him to take such knowledge of his Person and was contented to bestow some thanks upon me for mine honest inclination which he would present before my arrival at Vienna I had almost omitted a point touched by him that he had knowledge of some English Levies coming toward the Palatinate About which I cleared him with confessing that Your Majesties People and some of Your principal Nobility had taken Alarm upon a voice of an Invasion there and meant voluntarily to sacrifice themselves in that action but vvithout any concurrence of Your Majesty thereunto either by money or command To which he replied that in truth so he had heard and made no question of Your Royal Integrity In the afternoon of this day he took me abroad with him in his Coach to shew me some of his nearer Towns and Fortifications and there descended into many familiarities and amongst other to shew us how to make Frogs leap at their own skins a strange purchase me thought at a time when Kingdoms are in question But it may be it was an Art to cover his weightier Meditations Amongst other discourse there was some mention of Your Majesties Treaty with Spain in point of Alliance which I told him was a concluded business for that warrant I had from Your own Royal mouth in Your Gallery at Theobalds having let fall none of Your syllables Whereupon he said That he did not despair upon so good an occasion to salute Your Majesty in Your own Court The morning following he sent unto me Seignior Ascanio with express desire that since Your Majesties intentions were so clear I would as frankly acquaint him whether in mine Instructions I had any particular form of accord to project unto the Emperor which himself likewise at my second Audience did somewhat importunely press excusing his curiosity with a good meaning to prepare the Emperor in as good manner as he could to accept it My answer was that Your Majesty thought it first necessary on both sides to dispose the affections and then by reciprocal Intelligence between Your Servants from Vienna and Prague to collect some measure of Agreement for otherwise if we should find both Parties fixed in extream resolutions it were a folly to spend any further the Honour of our Master Here again he told me that I should find the Emperor peswasible enough if his Reputation may be saved and for his own part he thought that the Count Palatine being the Inferior might yield without prejudice of his To terms of this height he revolved and of the same complexion are his Letters to Your Majesty that I send herewith of which I must needs say that in some part Olent Patrem Henricum so they call a Jesuit of inward credit with him Always true it is that they were couched in the Colledge for his Secretaries were absent as the Italian told me at his ordinary place of residence At my leave-taking he spake with much reverence of Your Majesty with much praise of Your Christian mind and with much
to yield some releasment to certain restrained Persons of the Roman Faith I have taken a conceit upon it that in exchange of his Clemency therein the great Duke would be easily moved by the Kings gracious request to interceed with the Pope for Master Mole 's delivery To which purpose if it shall please his Majesty to grant his Royal Letters I will see the business duely pursued And so needing no arguments to commend this proposition to his Majesties goodness but his goodness it self I leave it as I began in your Noble hand Now touching your Lordships familiar service as I may term it I have sent the Complement of your bargain upon the best provided and best manned Ship that hath been here in long time called the Phoenix And indeed the cause of their long stay hath been for some such Vessel as I might trust About which since I wrote last to your Lordship I resolved to fall back to my first choice so as now the one Piece is the work of Titian wherein the least Figure viz. the Child in the Virgins lap playing with a Bird is alone worth the price of your expence for all four being so round that I know not whether I shall call it a Piece of Sculpture or Picture and so lively that a man would be tempted to doubt whether Nature or Art had made it The other is of Palma and this I call the speaking Piece as your Lordship will say it may well be termed for except the Damsel brought to David whom a silent modesty did best become all the other Figures are in discourse and action They come both distended in their Frames for I durst not hazard them in Rowls the youngest being 25 years old and therefore no longer supple and pliant With them I have been bold to send a Dish of Grapes to your Noble Sister the Countess of Denbigh presenting them first to your Lordships view that you may be pleased to pass your censure whether Italians can make Fruits as well as Flemings which is the common glory of their Pensils By this Gentleman I have sent the choicest Molon seeds of all kinds which his Majesty doth expect as I had Order both from my Lord of Holderness and from Mr. Secretary Calvert And although in my Letter to his Majesty which I hope by your Lordships favour himself shall have the honour to deliver together with the said Seeds I have done him right in his due Attributes yet let me say of him farther as Architects use to speak of a well chosen foundation that your Lordship may boldly build what Fortune you please upon him for surely he will bear it vertuously I have committed to him for the last place a private Memorial touching my self wherein I shall humbly beg your Lordships intercession upon a necessary Motive And so with my heartiest prayers to Heaven for your continual health and happiness I most humbly rest Venice Dec. 2 12 1622. Your Lordships ever obliged devoted Servant H. W. POSTSCRIPT My Noble Lord It is one of my duties to tell your Lordship that I have sent a servant of mine by Profession a Painter to make a search in the best Towns through Italy for some principal Pieces which I hope may produce somewhat for yourâ— Lord ships contentment and service To the Earl of Holderness 1622 3 Right Honourable and my very good Lord IN a late Letter from your Lordship by my Servant I have besides your own Favours the Honour of Imployment from the King in a piece of his Delight which doth so consort with the opportunity of my Charge here that it hath given me acquaintance with some excellent Florists as they are styled and likewise with mine own disposition who have ever thought the greatest pleasure to consist in the simplest Ornaments and Elegancies of Nature as nothing could fall upon me more happily Therefore your Lordship shall see how I will endeavour to satisfie this Command I had before Order by Mr. Secretary Calvert to send his Majesty some of the best Melon-seeds of all kinds which I have done some Weeks since by other occasion of an express Messenger and sent withall a very particular Instruction in the Culture of that Plant. By the present Bearer I do direct unto your Lordship through the hands either of my Nephew or Mr. Nicholas Pey as either of them shall be readiest at London for some beginning in this kind of Service the Stem of a double Yellow Rose of no ordinary nature For it flowereth every moneth unless change of the Clime do change the property from May till almost Christmas There hath gone such care in the manner of the Conveyance as if at the receiving it be presently put into the earth I hope it will prosper By the next commodity I shall send his Majesty some of the rarest Seeds Now for mine own Obligations unto your Lordship whereof I have from some Friends at home very abundant knowledge What shall I say It was in truth my Lord an argument of your noble Nature to take my fortune into your Care who never yet made it any great part of mine own business I am a poor Student in Philosophy which hath redeemed me not only from the envying of others but even from much solicitude about my self It is true that my most Gracious Master hath put me into civil practice and now after long Service I grow into a little danger of wishing I were worth somewhat But in this likewise I do quiet my thoughts For I see by your Lordships so free and so undeserved estimation of me that like the Criple who had lain long in the Pool of Bethesda I shall find some body that will throw me into the water when iâ—… moveth I will end with my humble and hearty thanks for your Favour and Love To the PRINCE May it please Your Highness BEside that which I have now represented unto your Highness by my 〈◊〉 to your worthy Secretary I must 〈◊〉 crave leave herein to be delivered oâ—… 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 wherewith my Pen is in travel I have observed in your Highness among other noble Endowments of your Mind a quick and delightfull apprehension of the fundamental Causes of all Secrets both natural and artificial that have been brought to your View which surely is the highest pleasure of a discoursive Soul Now of this part of your Highness's delectation I am serious to take hold For having been a long Lover of Philosophy and from the contemplative Part being slid into the practical I shall hope for pardon if I take so much freedome from the ingenuity of mine own Nature and Studies as to entertain your Highness now and then with some Experiments especially such as do not end in wonder but reach to publick Useâ—… For meer Speculations have ever seemed to my conceit as if Reason were given us like an half Moon in a Coat of Arms only for a Logical Difference from inferiour Creatures and not for any active power
Your Majesty The Almighty who hath indued Your Majesty with excellent Vertues and so early taught You the rare Consort between Greatness and Goodness long protect Your Royal Person and Estates under his singular Love Your Majesties most faithfull and devoted Vassal H. Wotton To my Dear Dynely S. P. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pauca meo Gallo sed quae legat ipsa Licoris IT were an injury to use a Cipher by a Friend so warmly and so justly commended hither by you nay almost to write a Letter but that I am tender to trouble him and lade him with our privacies Of Himself first let me say thus much that I think surely he is the fittest stranger that could have been chosen to overcome among our Academicks the envy of a stranger For he hath a fair carriage and very discreet temper and by the prompt use of our Language is almost naturalized already And I cast no doubt of the inward furniture per quel gusto saporito that we have taken in a short conversation with him wherein you that procured us the benefit of his company must answer for the poorness of his entertainment Now for my self I have not yet entred into the first Order of the Church by a strange accident upon which there lyes likewise some civil note The Bishop of Lincolne sometimes Lord Keeper is the Prelate from whom I resolved to take it not for any personal respect but because he is our Diocesan and Visiter at this Colledge and to whom I acknowledge a kind of homage for the place I hold which fell into his disposing formally by Lapse This Bishop you must know on this very day seven-night came to London about ten of the Clock in the morning to perform an Election of the Scholars at Westminster whereof he is Dean usual at this time of the year as with us In the evening of that day Sir Iohn Cooke Secretry visits him with Command from His Majesty to be presently gone What Questions thereupon passed between them upon such a surprise I omit Basta He went away the next morning at eight of the Clock and so I am put upon another means which before my next unto you will be done For I abound in choice but I am a little curious 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will tell you hereafter the Reasons of my curiosity You will note as I touched before upon this That the Dukes power is great even in his absence and that he hath in Court very vigilant Instruments both Spiritual and Temporal I want time to explain my self but it shall follow Of the present Voyage let me venture to say a little I am afraid we shall unite all France if it be thither yet the provisions are fair and the Duke resolved and he is departed with the Souldier and from the Coast as beloved a man and with as many acclamations there as imprecations within the Land Such a floating thing is the Vulgar Of this more at leasure Tuus H. Wotton From the Colledge this 10th of Iuly 1627. To the KING My Most Dear and Dread Soveraign AS I gave Your Majesty fore-knowledge of my intention to enter into the Church and had Your Gracious Approvement therein so I hold it a second duty to Your Majesty and satisfaction to my self to inform you likewise by mine own hand both how far I have proceeded and upon what Motives that it may appear unto your Majesty as I hope it will an act of conscience and of reason and not of greediness and ambition Your Majesty will be therefore pleased to know that I have lately taken the degree of Deacon and so far am I from aiming at any high flight out of my former Sphear that there I intend to rest Perhaps I want not some perswaders that measuring me by their affections or by Your Majesties goodness and not by mine own defects or ends would make me think that yet before I die I might become a great Prelate And I need no perswasion to tell me that if I would undertake the Pastoral Function I could peradventure by casualty out of the Patronages belonging to Your Royal Colledge without further troubling of Your Majesty cast some good Benefice upon my self whereof we have one if it were vacant that is worth more then my Provostship But as they were strucken with horrour who beheld the Majesty of the Lord descending upon the Mount Sinai so God knows the nearer I approach to contemplate his greatness the more I tremble to assume any cure of souls even in the lowest degree that were bought at so high a priceâ—… premant torcular qui vindemiarunt Let them press the Grapes and fill the Vessels and taste the Wine that have gathered the Vintage But shall I sit and do nothing in the Porch of Gods House whereinto I am entred God himself forbid who was the Supream Mover What Service then do I propound to the Church or what contentment to mine own mind First for the point of Conscience I can now hold my place Canonically which I held before but dispensatively and withall I can exercise an Archidiaconal Authority annexed thereunto though of small extent and no benefit yet sometimes of pious and necessary use I comfort my self also with this Christian hope That Gentlemen and Knights Sons who are trained up with us in a Seminary of Church-men which was the will of the holy Founder will by my example without vanity be it spoken not be ashamed after the sight of Courtly Weeds to put on a Surplice Lastly I consider that this resolution which I have taken is not unsutable even to my civil imployments abroad of which for the most part Religion was the Subject nor to my observations which have been spent that way in discovery of the Roman Arts and Practices whereof I hope to yield the World some account though rather by my Pen then by my Voice For though I must humbly confess that both my Conceptions and Expressions be weak yet I do more trust my deliberation then my memory or if Your Majesty will give me leave to paint my self in higher terms I think I shall be bolder against the judgements then against the faces of men This I conceive to be a piece of mine own Character so as my private Study must be my Theater rather then a Pulpit and my Books my Auditors as they are all my Treasure Howsoever if I can produce nothing else for the use of Church and State yet it shall be comfort enough to the little remnant of my life to compose some Hymnes unto his endless glory who hath called me for which his Name be ever blessed though late to his Service yet early to the knowledge of his truth and sense of his mercy To which ever commending Your Majesty and Your Royal Actions with most hearty and humble prayers I rest Your Majesties most devoted poor Servant To the KING 1627. May it please Your most Gracious Majesty HAving been informed that certain persons have by the
good wishes of the Archbishop of Armagh been directed hither with a most humble Petition unto Your Majesty that You will be pleased to make Mr. William Bedel now Resident upon a small Benefice in Suffolk Governour of Your Colledge at Dublin for the good of that Society And my self being required to render unto Your Majesty some testimony of the said William Bedel who was long my Chaplain at Venice in the time of my first Imployment I am bound in all Conscience and Truth as far as Your Majesty will Vouchsafe to accept my poor judgement to affirm of him that I think hardly a fitter Man for that Charge could have been propounded unto Your Majesty in Your whole Kingdome for singular Erudition and Piety Conformity to the Rites of Your Church and zeal to advance the Cause of God wherein his travels abroad were not obscure in the time of the Excommunication of the Venetians For it may please Your Majesty to know that this is the Man whom Padre Paulo took I may say into his very soul with whom hee did communicate the inwardest thoughts of his heart from whom he prosessed to have received more knowledge in all Divinity both Scholastical and Positive then from any thaâ—… he had ever practised in his dayes of which all the passages were well known unto the King Your Father of most blessed Memory And so with Your Majesties good Favour I will end this needless office For the general fame both of his Learning â—…nd Life and Christian Temper and those religious Labours which Himself hath dedicated unto Your Majesty do better describe him Your Majesties most humble and faithfull Vassal H. Wotton To the DUKE My most noble Lord WHen like that impotent man in the Gospel I had lain long by the Pools side while many were healed and none would throw me in it pleased your Lordship first of all to pity my infirmities and to put me into some hope of subsisting hereafter Therefore I most humbly and justly acknowledge all my ability and reputation from your favour You have given me in couragement you have valued my poor endeavours with the King you have redeemed me from ridiculousness who had served so long without any mark of favour By which Arguments being already and ever bound to be yours till either life or honesty shall leave me I am the bolder to beseech your Lordship to perfect your own work and to draw his Majesty to some setling of those things that depend between Sir Julius Casar and me in that reasonable form which I humbly present unto your Lordship by this my Nephew likewise your obliged Servant being my self by a late indisposition confined to my Chamber but in all estates such as I am Your Lordships H. WOTTON SIR I Send you by this Bearer to keep you in mirth a piping Shepherd done by Cavalier Bassaw and so well as may merit some place in your Chamber which I hear is the Center of good Musick to which out of my pieces at home I have commanded James to add a Messara playing upon a Timbril done by Allessandro Padovano a rising Titian as we esteemed him Good Sir let us know some true passages of the plight of the Court I have laid about for some constant intelligence from forraign parts being strangely relapsed into that humour in my old age Shall I tell you why In good faith for no other use that I mean to make of news but only that when God shall call me to a better I may know in what state I leave this World Your affectionate Friend to serve you H. WOTTON To M r. Nicolas Arnauld SIR THis young Gentleman my very near Kinsman having gotten enough of Venetiâ—… Italian to seek better and being for that end directed by me to Siena I will take the boldness to commend him to your disposing there assuring myself that you have gained much friendship and power wheresoever you are by that impression which you have left in us here And so with those thanks which were long since due for your kind remembrance of me by a Letter from Florence I commit you to Gods dear blessings and love and lever rest From Venice Your very affectionate poor Friend to serve you H. WOTTON To the Lord Treasurer Weston My most honoured good Lord I Most humbly present though by some infirmities a little too late a strange New-years Gift unto your Lordship which I will presume to term the cheapest of all that you have received and yet of the richest materials In short it is only an Image of your Self drawn by memory from such discourse as I have taken up here and there of your Lordship among the most intelligent and unmalignant men which to pourtrait before you I thought no servile office but ingenuous and real and I could wish that it had come at the Day that so your Lordship might have begun the New Year somewhat like Plato's definition of Felicity with the contemplation of your own Idea They say That in your forraign Employments under King James your Lordship won the Opinion of a very able and searching Judgement having been the first discoverer of the Intentions against the Palatinate which were then in brewing and masked with much Art And that Sir Edward Conway got the start of you both in Title and Employment at home because the late Duke of Buckingham wanted then for his own Ends a Martial Secretary They say That under our present Soveraign you were chosen to the highest charge at the lowest of the State when some instrument was requisite of undubitable integrity and provident moderation which Attributes I have heard none deny you They discourse thus of your Actions since that though great Exhaustions cannot be cured with sudden Remedies no more in a Kingdom then in a Natural Body yet your Lordship hath well allayd those blustering clamors wherewith at your beginnings your House was in a manner dayly besieged They note that there have been many changes but that none hath brought to the Place a judgement so cultivated and illuminated with various Erudition as your Lordship since the Lord Burghley under Queen Elizabeth whom they make your Parallel in the ornament of Knowledge They observe in your Lordship divers remarkable combinations of Vertues and Abilities rarely sociable In the Character of your Aspect a mixture of Authority and Modesty In the Faculties of your Mind quick Apprehension and Solidity together In the style of your Port and Train as much Dignity and as great Dependency as was ever in any of your Place and with little noise or outward fume That your Table is very abundant free and noble without Luxury That you are by nature no Flatterer and yet of greatest power in Court That you love Magnificence and Frugality both together That you entertain your Guests and Visiters with noble courtesie but void of complement Lastly that you maintain a due regard to your Person and Place and yet are an Enemy to frothy
this manner into your desires yet I hope it will please you to excuse it because I do it not only with willingness but in truth with pleasure for it falleth out that I have a little skill or at least an interest of Affection in the things that you wish from hence and therefore even mine own nature doth lead me to serve you besides my duty I have begun with a very poor Present of Strings for your Musick whereof I will provide hereafter better store and if it be possible of better quality by the first Ship your Honour shall receive some Lutes of Sconvels and Mango and withal a Chest of Glasses of mine own chusing at Murano wherein I do somewhat pretend and those Artificers are well acquainted with me Thus much in private For the Publick I have made by this Bearer a Dispatch unto the whole Body of His Majesties most Honourable Councel wherein your worthy Person is comprehended and therefore I hope that writing twice to your Honour now at once it may serve by your favour for some redemption of my former silence The subject of my Dispatch is as high as ever befel any forraign Minister wherein though mine own Conscience I thank God doth set me at rest yet I shall be glad of your Honourable approbation if it will please you to afford it me And so I humbly commit your Honour to Gods blessed love remaining At your commandment Much honoured Sir SInce I had the favour and the delight of any Letters from you you have had the trouble of two or three from me besides the present vvhich I hope vvill find you according to my continual vvishes in perfect health though you live in a Theater of Tragical Actions this year I am here newly delivered of one of the most fastidious pieces of my life as I account for my part the Week of our Annual Election of Scholers both into this Seminary and out of it for Kings Colledge in Cambridge vvhereunto hath been a marvellous Concourse and much distraction in our Votes through Letters from Court Pardon me Sir a Question by the vvay Have you no Child of your own or at least of some of your Friends vvhom you could vvish trained in this course I vvould fain beg some employment from you vvhich makes me offer you this or any other of those poor services vvhich lie vvithin my circumference as this Bearer hath particular charge from me This is that Nicholas Oudart for vvhom you did a great favour in procuring the Cardinal Infanta's Letters to Mechelen in his behalf which took so good effect as he is now personally flown over to consummate that business having information from his Correspondents there that it is ripened for him He hath served me from a little Page and of late years hath managed the chief part of my Domestick Affairs so as if it were not for his own urgent occasion I could hardly miss him that short time vvithin vvhich I expect his return You will find him I hope worthy of your love I am sure of your trust His profession is Physick towards vvhich he is very vvell grounded in the learned Languages But his Scope novv is Business not Knowledge If there shall by chance remain any thing to be added unto your former honourable Courtesie for the expedition of his Cause and Return you have given us both good cause to be confident both in your power and friendship And so Sir leaving him in your loving arms I rest for ever Your obliged and faithful Friend to serve you H. WOTTON To the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury July 30. 1637. May it please your Grace WE very humbly acknowledge that your Grace hath made us confident in your favour both by your former Letters vvhich are the true images of your mind and by that report vvhich Mr. Weaver and Mr. Harison brought us from your most Reverenced Person yet till after the Term vvhen vve might suppose your Grace somewhat freer then before though ever environed vvith more Honour then Ease vve vvere tender to trouble you vvith any prosecution on our parts of your good Intents towards this Collegiat Body about the yet unperfected though well imprimed Business of New Winsor But now after due Remembrance of our humble Devotions I am bold to signifie unto your Grace in mine own and in the name of the rest that having according to the fair Liberty which you were pleased to yield us consulted with our Councel at Law about some convenient form for the setling of that which his Majesty hath already granted by your Grace's Intercession we find the King can no way be bound but by his own goodness neither can we wish his Majesty in better or in safer Bonds therefore we hope to propound an Expedient which to my understanding will as Astronomers use to say save all appearances Namely c. Master Clâ—…avers Election shall be the more honoured by being a single example in whose Person we are sorry for nothing but that he needs not thank us for his choice And so doubting as little of your Grace's favour as we do of your Power in the consummating of our humble and as we hope they will appear of our moderate desires I ever with most hearty zeal remain From the Colledge this 30. of july 1637. At all your Grace's commands H. WOTTON Right Honourable and our very good Lord the Lord Keeper IT is so open and so general for any that flie unto your Lordships Tribunal to receive there a fair and equitable measure as it hath we know not how wrought in us a kind of unnatural effect For thereby we have been made the slower to render your Lordship our most humble thanks in our own proper Case because we knew not how to single it from the common benefit which all find in your goodness But we can now forbear no longer to joyn among our selves and with the universal voice in a blessing upon your Name And as we bring a true and humble acknowledgment in our particular that this Colledge is bound to celebrate your Honour for that charitable Injunction wherewith you have sustained a great and important portion of the livelihood of so many young Plants of good Literature till a further discussion of our Right so likewise we most humbly beseech your good Lordship in the sincerity of our own desires of quietness and in the confidence of our cause that you will be pleased to entertain with favour a Petition which our Councel will present unto your Lordship for some Day of bearing that shall best sort with your great affairs And so with all our joynt and hearty Prayers both of Young and Old for your long preservation We rest Your most humble and devoted Servants My most honoured Lady YOur young Kinsman shall be welcome hither at your pleasure and there shall want no respects on my part to make the place both fruitful and chearful unto him Touching the other part of your last
pardon to pass a little gentle Expostulation with your Lordship You are pleased in your Letter to except my inconveniences as if in the Nobleness of your Nature notwithstanding your desire you would yet allow me here a liberty of mine own Judgement or Affection No my Good Lord That priviledge comes too late even for your self to give me when I once understand your mind For let me assure your Lordship that I have such a conscience and real feeling of my deep Obligations towards your Noble Person as no value nor respect under Heaven can purchase my voice from him on whom you have bestowed it It is true that the King himself and no longer then three or four dayes before the date of your Letters so nimble are the times did write for another but we shall satisfie his Majesty with a pre-election and yours shall have my first nomination which howsoever will fall timely enough for him within the year For there belongs after they are chosen a little soaking as well as a baking before into our Boys And so not to insist any longer upon such a poor obedience I humbly lay my self and whatsoever is or shall be within my power at your Lordships feet remaining Your Lordships in the truest and heartiest devotions Worthy Sir ALL health to your self and to yours both at home and abroad Sorry I was not to be at Eton when Mr. B. your Nephew and my Friend came thither to visit me being then in procinct of his travels But I had some good while before at another kind visitation together with your Sons and Mr. S. given him a Catholick Rule which was given me long since by an old Roman Courtier with whom I tabled in Siena and whose Counsels I begged for the government of my self at my departure from him towards the foresaid Court where he had been so well versed Sinor Arrigo saies he There is one short remembrance will carry you safe through the whole World I was glad to hear such a preservative contracted into so little room and so besought him to honour me with it Nothing but this saith he Gli Pensiere streâ—…ti il viso sciolto That is as I use to translate it Your Thoughts close and your Countenance loose This was that moral Antidote which I imparted to Mr. B. and his fellow-travellers when they were last with me having a particular interest in their vvell doings both as they are yours and as they have had some training under my poor Regiment To vvhich tyes of friendship you have added a third that they are now of the Colledge of Travellers vvherein if the fruit of the time I have spent vvere answerable to the length I might run for a Deacon at least If I had not been absent vvhen Mr. B. came last I vvould have said much more in private between us vvhich shall be supplied by Letter if I may receive a safe form of address from you I continue mainly in the same opinion vvhich I touched unto them That after their impriming in France I could vvish them to mount the Pirenies into Spain In that Court as I hear you have an assured Friend And there they may consolidate the French vivacity vvith a certain Sosiego as they call it till they shall afterwards pass from Barcolona over to Italy vvhere lies the true mean between the other two humours You see Sir by this discourse that I am in mine own Countrey at leisure I pray pardon it vvhatsoever it be because it proceedeth from hearty good vvill And so I rest At your Commands H. W. Sir My Servant the Bearer hath somewhat to say unto you about a piece of Painting vvhich I vvould fain send to your House in the Countrey covered till it come thither because it is soberly naked and ready to be set up being in a gilded Frame already 1633. Right Honourable I Received such a Letter from you touching my poor Pamphlet of Architecture vvhich I yet preserve among my preciousest Papers as I have made it a Resolution to put nothing forth under my Name vvithout sending one of the first Copies unto your indulgent hands There is born a small welcome to the King from Scotland whom I have not yet seen since his Return I know not how out of a little indignation They have sent us over from Leiden from France from Polonia c. a tempest of Panegyricks and Laudatives of their Princes whereupon I debated with my self What Have we not as good a Theam and Theater as they Or do we want Sense or Zeal to express our Happiness This stirred my very Bowels and within a while my Pen such as it is I confess the Subject is so high as I fear may condemn my Obscurity to have undertaken it but withall so true as I hope vvill not mis-become mine ingenuity Howsoever I submit it to your judgement and if in charity you shall be pleased to like any thing in it I humbly beseech you that you would be pleased to take some occasion of speaking favourably of it to the King himself for though I aim at nothing by it save the very doing of it yet I should be glad to have it impressed by better judgements then my own And so I most humbly rest At c. To Dr. CASTLE Worthy Sir TIll the receipt of your last and the like from others of both Universities and one from Bruxels Ejusdem Argumenti I thought in good faith that as I have lived I thank God with little Ambition so I could have died with as much silence as any man in England But now I see that the most unvaluable things may serve to make a noise And I have now no more to say but that while the foresaid report shall be false the under-writer is Truly Yours H. Wotton My dear Nic. MOre then a voluntary motion doth now carry me towards Suffolk especially that I may confer by the way with an excellent Physician at B. whom I brought my self from Venice where as either I suppose or surmise I first contracted my infirmity of the Spleen to which the very Seat is generally inclined and therefore their Physicians who commonly study the inclinations of places are the likeliest to understand the best remedies I hope to be back by It wrinckles my face to tell you that my will cost me 500 l. that done my thoughts are at rest and over my Study door you shall find written INVIDIAE REMEDIUM Let me end in that word and ever rest Your heartiest poor Friend H. WOTTON POSTSCRIPT I Forbear to write further having a world of Discourse to unload unto you like those that weed not a Garden till it be grown a Wood. To Iz. Wa. In answer of a Letter requesting him to perform his promise of Writing the Life of Dr. Donne My worthy Friend I Am not able to yield any reason no not so much as may satisfie my self why a most ingenuous Letter of yours hath lain so long by me as it
meaning is not yet understood unless perchance that were their meaning not to be understood The two best to my fancy were those of the two Earls Brothers The first a small exceeding white Pearl and the word Solo candore valeo The other a Sun casting a glance on the side of a Pillar and the Beams reflecting with this Motto Splendonte refulget In which devices there seemed an agreement the elder Brother to allude to his own nature and the younger to his fortune The day was signalized with no extraordinary accident save only between Sir Thomas Haward and Sir Thomas Sommerset who with a counter-buff had almost set himself out of the Saddle and made the others Horse sink under him but they both came fairly off without any further disgrace Of the merits of the rest I will say nothing my Pen being very unfit to speak of Launces To this solemnity of the publick Ambassadors only the Arch-duke was invited for the healing of the distaste he had taken for the preference of the Venetian at the marriage But I doubt the Plaister be too narrow for the sore which he seemed not much discontented that men should note in his whole countenance that day Towards the evening a challenge passed between Archie and a famous Knight called Sir Thomas Parsons the one a fool by election and the other by necessity which was accordingly performed some two or three dayes after at Tilt Tornie and on foot both compleatly armed and solemnly brought in before their Majesties and almost as many other meaner eyes as were at the former Which bred much sport for the present and afterwards upon cooler consideration much censure and discourse as the manner is The departure of the Count Palatine and my Lady Elizabeth is put off from the Thursday in the Easter-week till the Tuesday following which day I think will hold The Commissioners that accompany her have the titles of Ambassadors to give them precedency before Sir Ralph Winwood at the Hague and likewise in any encounters with Almaign Princes Sir Edward Cecil goeth as Treasurer to keep up that Office in the name though it be otherwise perhaps from a General rather a fall then an ascent Before this journey there is a conceit that the Duke of Lenox will be naturalized a Peer of our Parliament and my Lord of Rochester be created Earl of Devonshire The forraign matter is little increased since my last unto you from Cambridge The Savoy Ambassador not yet arrived The Turks designs hitherto unknown and marching slowly according to the nature of huge Armies In which suspence the Venctians have augmented their guard in the Gulf enough to confirm unto the world that States must be conserved even with ridiculous fears This is all that the VVeek yieldeth My Lord and Lady have received those Letters and loving salutations which my Foot man brought And so with mine own hearty prayers to God for you and for that most good Neece I commit you both to his blessing and love Your faithfullest of unprofitable Friends H. WOTTON I pray Sir remember me very particularly to my Cousin Nicholas your worthy Brother for whose health our good God be thanked Sir James Cromer is this week dead of an Aposteme in his stomack and in him the name unless his Lady as she seemeth to have intention shall revive it with matching one of her four Daughters with a Cromer of obscure fortune which they say is latent in your Shire From my Chamber this Thursday St. George his Eve 1613. SIR THe last week by reason of my being in Kent was a week of silence and this I think will appear unto you a week of wonder The Court was full of discourse and expectation that the King being now disincumbred of the care of his Daughter would towards this Feast of St. George fill up either all or some at least of those places that had lien vacant so long and had been in this time of their emptiness a subject of notorious opposition between our great Viscount and the House of Suffolk Thus I say ran the opinion When yesterday about six of the Clock at evening Sir Thomas Overbury was from the Council-Chamber conveyed by a Clerk of the Council and two of the Guard to the Tower and there by Warrant consigned to the Lieutenant as close Prisoner Which both by the suddenness like a stroke of Thunder and more by the quality and relation of the person breeding in the Beholders whereof by chance I was one very much amazement and being likely in some proportion to breed the like in the Hearers I will adventure for the satisfying of your thoughts about it to set down the fore-running and leading Causes of this accident as far as in so short a time I have been able to wade in so deep a water It is conceived that the King hath a good while been much distasted with the said Gentleman even in his own nature for too stiff a carriage of his fortune besides that scandalous offence of the Queen at Greenwich which was never but a palliated cure Upon which considerations His Majesty resolving to sever him from my Lord of Rochester and to do it not disgracefully or violently but in some honourable fashion He commanded not long since the Arch-Bishop by way of familiar discourse to propound unto him the Ambassage of France or of the Arch-Dukes Court whereof the one was shortly to be changed and the other at the present vacant In which proposition it seemeth though shadowed under the Arch-Bishops good will that the King was also contented some little light should be given him of His Majesties inclination unto it grounded upon his merit At this the Fish did not bite whereupon the King took a rounder way commanding my Lord Chancellor and the Earl of Pembroke to propound joyntly the same unto him which the Arch-Bishop had before moved as immediately from the King and to sweeten it the more he had as I hear an offer made him of assurance before his going off the place of Treasurer of the Chamber which he expecteth after the death of the Lord Stanhop whom belike the King would have drawn to some reasonable composition Notwithstanding all which Motives and impulsives Sir Thomas Overbury refused to be sent abroad with such terms as vvere by the Council interpreted pregnant of contempt in a Case vvhere the King had opened His vvill vvhich refusal of his I should for my part esteem an eternal disgrace to our occupation if vvithall I did not consider how hard it is to pull one from the bosome of a Favourite Thus you see the point upon vvhich one hath been committed standing in the second degree of power in the Court and conceiving as himself told me but two hours before never better then at that present of his own fortunes and ends Now in this vvhole matter there is one main and principal doubt vvhich doth travel all understandings that is Whether this were done without
it the greatest glory under Heaven to die at his feet and that no man living should go before him if there vvere occasion to advance his dominions vvith some other such Martial strains vvhich became him vvell The conclusion of his speech had somewhat of the Courtier beseeching the Lords if the restraint he had endured vvere not in their judgements a sufficient punishment of his errour that then they vvould continue it as long as it should please them and add unto it any other affliction of pain or shame vvhatsoever provided that afterwards he might be restored again into his Majesties favour and their good opinions To tell you vvhat they all severally said that day vvere to rob from the liberty of our discourse vvhen vve shall meet In this they generally agreed both Counsellors and Judges to represent the humiliation of both the Prisoners unto the King in lieu of innocency and to intercede for his gracious pardon Which vvas done and accordingly the next day they vvere enlarged upon a submission under vvriting This is the end of that business at vvhich vvere present as many as the room could contain and men of the best quality vvhom the King vvas desirous to satisfie not only about the point in hand but in some other things that vvere occasionally awaked vvhich I likewise reserve to our private freedom The Kings Officers are returned from my Lady Elizabeth vvhom they left at Goltzheime the last of May vvhere His Majesties expence did cease This place vvas chosen for her consignment in stead of Bacherach suspected of contagion She vvas at Andernach feasted by the Elector of Cullen at Confluence or Cobolentz as they call it by the other of Trier and at Mentz by the third of those Ecclesiastick Potentates very Royally and kindly and vvhich vvas less expected very handsomly The Count Maurice and his Brother vvith troops of Horse and a guard of Foot accompanied her to Cullen and entred themselves into that City vvith her I need not tell you that though themselves vvere vvithin the Horse and most of the Foot vvere vvithout the Walls VVhich is here by the vviser sort of Interpreters thought as hazardous an act as either of them both had done in the heat of VVar and indeed no vvay justifiable in foro sapientiae And therefore such adventures as these must appeal ad forum Providentiae vvhere vve are all covered by his vigilant mercy and love to vvhich I commit you and my sweet Neece in my hearty prayers Your faithfull poor Friend Uncle and Servant H. WOTTON SIR I Send you a sprigg of some Flowers vvhich I have newly received out of Piedmont in Winter and Summer the same and therein an excellent type of a Friend I am bold likewise to keep my self in the memory of my Neece till I see her vvith a poor pair of Gloves of the newest fashion Inventore Henrico Wottono Sculptore Crocio The 18. of Iune 1613. Friday the 25. Iune 1613. SIR I Told you in my last that I vvould take the Commencement at Cambridge in my vvay towards you vvhere I shall be God vvilling to morrow seven-night This I now repeat to save the telling of it again by the next Carrier fore-seeing that I shall then be impatient of so much delay as a line of mine own effusion vvhich even now doth torture me vvhile I contemplate some of those green Banks that you mention vvhere vvhen I have you by me to express my contentment in the Italian phrase Non scrivero al Papa fratello The Ambassador of Savoy departed yesterday making much hast homewards or at least much shew of it vvhere he is likely to come timely enough to the vvarming of his hands at that fire vvhich his Master hath kindled vvhose nature in truth doth participate much of the flint as vvell as his state But is not all this out of my vvay Sir Believe it my spirits do boyl and I can hold my Pen no longer then till I have vvished all Gods blessings to be vvith you and vvith that best Neece of the World Your poor Uncle and faithfull Servant H. WOTTON Albertus vvas yesterday vvith me at the Court. And though there be great disproportion in the space yet I dare conclude that as much strength as did carry him to Greenwich vvill bear him to Redgrave Iuly 2. 1613. SIR WHereas I vvrote unto you that I vvould be at Cambridge as on Saturday next I am now cast off again till the Kings return to London vvhich vvill be about the middle of the vveek following The delay grows from a desire of seeing Albertus his business setled before vve come unto you vvhere vve mean to forget all the vvorld besides Of this vve shall bring you the account Now to let matters of State sleep I vvill entertain you at the present vvith vvhat hath happened this vveek at the Banks side The Kings Players had a new Play called All is true representing some principal pieces of the Raign of Henry 8. which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of Pomp and Majesty even to the matting of the Stage the Knights of the Order with their Georges and Garter the Guards with their embroidered Coats and the like sufficient in truth within a while to make greatness very familiar if not ridiculous Now King Henry making a Masque at the Cardinal Wolsey's House and certain Canons being shot off at his entry some of the Paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped did light on the Thatch where being thought at first but an idle smoak and their eyes more attentive to the show it kindled inwardly and ran round like a train consuming within less then an hour the whole House to the very grounds This was the fatal period of that vertuous Fabrique wherein yet nothing did perish but Wood and Straw and a few forsaken Cloaks only one man had his Breeches set on fire that would perhaps have broyled him if he had not by the benefit of a provident wit put it out with bottle Ale The rest when we meet till when I protest every minute is the siege of Troy Gods dear blessings till then and ever be with you Your poor Uncle and faithfull Servant H. WOTTON I have this week received your last of the 27 of Iune wherein I see my steps lovingly calculated and in truth too much expectation of so unworthy a guest Novemb. 5. 1613. SIR NOw I begin but why not before That question shall be answered by the next Carrier or by a special Messenger the next week at which time you shall have an account of all that hath passed and some prognostication also upon the future for my Pen is grown bold and eager with rest as Dogs that are tied up At the present all my care is to let you know that I have received your last with the enclosed which although I well understand my self yet I have not had time since the decyphering to acquaint the party with it
which shall be done as soon as I have sealed this and sent it to the Carriers I thought now to have said no more but lest it lose the grace of freshness I pray let me tell you that yesterday morning the Viscount Rochester was very solemnly in the Banqueting hall in the sight of many great ones and small ones created Earl of Somerset and in the afternoon for a farther honouring and signalizing of the day my Lord Cook brought in by the said Earl was sworn a Privy Counsellor to counterpoise the difference of the profit between the Common-pleas and the Kings Bench. I will turn over the leaf though I die for it to remember the heartiest love of my soul to that good Niece to that sweet Niece to whom I have much to say by the next opportunity Our dear Saviour keep you both in his continual love Your faithful Servant H. WOTTON Touching the project of our House believe it Sir I boyl in it and am ready to begin again that I may tell you how busie I have been in the matter but let this also be put over till the following week which is likely to fall heavy upon you Written on the day of our great Preservation for which our God be ever glorified On Tuesday the 16th of November SIR AN express Messenger will ease us both of the trouble of a cypher but I was in pain whether I should send another or be that Messenger my self being now as near you as Royston and scant able to obtain pardon of mine own severity for not passing farther yet this may be said for me that the present occasion required little noise and besides I am newly ingaged into some business whereof I will give you a particular account when I shall first have discharged that part which belongeth to your self My Lord my Brother having been acquainted with the matter inclosed in your last to me dispatched the very next day Mr. Pen down to Boughton for such writings as had passed at your marriage which having consulted with his Lawyers he found those things to stand in several natures according to the annexed Schedule For the point of your coming up he referreth that to your own heart and I have only charge from him to tell you that without any such occasion as this which seemeth to imply your affectionate respect of his Daughter your own Person and conversation shall be ever most welcome and dear unto him As for my Lady through whose knowledge and myself through whose hands you have passed this point of confidence if you could behold us and compare us with my Lord you should see though no difference in the reality yet some in the fashion For to him you must allow the sober forms of his age and place but we on the other side are mad with gladness at the hope we have now taken by this occasion of enjoying both you and my Niece this Winter at London and we are contented to profess it as profusely as it is possible for a better Pen to set it down Nay for my part who in this case have somewhat single I flatter my self yet farther that the Term whereof not much now remaineth will accelerate your coming vvhich if you resolve I pray then let me only by this Bearer know it that I may provide you some fit Lodgings at a good distance from White-Hall for the preservation of blessed liberty and avoidance of the comber of kindness vvhich in troth as vve have privately discoursed is no small one Novv touching my self It may please you Sir to understand That the King vvhen he vvas last at Hampton called me to him and there acquainted me vvith a general purpose that he had to put me again into some use Since vvhich time the French Ambassador and very lately having at an Audience of good length besought His Majesty I knovv not vvhether voluntarily or set on by some of our own to disincumber himself of frequent accesses by the choice of some confident Servant to vvhom the said Ambassador might address himself in such occurrences as did not require the Kings immediate ear It pleased him to nominate me for that charge vvith more gracious commendation then it can beseem me to repeat though I vvrite to a Friend in vvhose breast I dare depose even my vanities But lest you should mistake as some others have been apt to do here in the present constitution of the Court vvhich is very ombragious the Kings end in this application of me I must tell you that it is only for the better preparing of my insufficiency and vveakness for the succeeding of Sir Thomas Edmunds in France towards which His Majesty hath thought meet first to indue me vvith some knowledge of the French businesses vvhich are in motu And I think my going thither vvill be about Easter Thus you see Sir both my next remove and the exercise of my thoughts till then vvherewith there is joyned this comfort besides the redemption from expence and debt at home vvhich are the Gulfs that vvould swallovv me that His Majesty hath promised to do something for me before I go I should novv according to the promise of my last tell you many things vvherewith my Pen is swoln but I vvill beg leave to defer them till the next opportunity after my coming to London And they shall all give place novv to this one question Whether there be any thing in this intended journey that you vvill command Which having said I vvill end ever resting Your faithfullest poor Friend and Servant H. WOTTON June 8. 1614. SIR IT is both morally and naturally true that I have never been in perfect health and chearfulness since we parted but I have entertained my mind when my body would give me leave with the contemplation of the strangest thing that ever I beheld commonly called in our Language as I take it a Parliament which hath produced nothing but inexplicable Riddles in the place of Laws For first it is aborted before it was born and nullified after it had a being insomuch as the Count Palatine whose Naturalization was the only thing that passed in both Houses is now again an Alien And whereas all other Parliaments have had some one eminent quality that hath created a denomination some being called in our Records mad Parliaments some merciless and the like This I think from two properties almost insociable or seldom meeting may be termed the Parliament of greatest diligence and of least resolution that ever was or ever will be For our Committies were as well attended commonly as full Houses in former Sessions and yet we did nothing neither in the forenoon nor after whereof I can yield you no reason but this one that our diversions were more then our main purposes and some of so sensible nature as took up all our reason and all our passion in the pursuit of them Now Sir what hath followed since the dissolution of this Civil Body let me rather
predatory I have forgotten for memoria primò senescit whether I told you in my last a pretty late experiment in Arthritical pains it is cheap enough Take a rosted Turnip for if you boyl it it will open the pores and draw too much apply that in a Poultice to the part affected with change once in an hour or two as you find it dried by the heat of the flesh and it will in little time allay the pain Thus much in our private way wherein I dare swear if our Medicines were as strong as our wishes they would work extreamly Now for the Publick where peradventure now and then there are distempers as well as in natural bodies The Earl of Holland vvas on Saturday last the day after your Posts departure very solemnly restored at Council Table the King present from a kind of Eclipse wherein he had stood since the Thursday fortnight before All considered the obscuration vvas long and bred both various and doubtfull discourse but it ended vvell All the cause yet known vvas a verbal challenge sent from him by Mr. Henry Germain in this form to the now Lord Weston newly returned from his forraign imployments That since he had already given the King an account of his Embassage he did now expect from him an account of a Letter of his vvhich he had opened in Paris and he did expect it at such a time even in the Spring garden close under his Fathers Window vvith his Sword by his side It is said I go no farther in such tender points that my Lord Weston sent him by Mr. Henry Percy between vvhom and the said Lord Weston had in the late journey as it seems been contracted such friendship as overcame the memory that he vvas Cousin-German to my Lord of Holland a very fair and discreet answer That if he could challenge him for any injury done him before or after his Embassage he vvould meet him as a Gentleman vvith his Sword by his side vvhere he should appoint But for any thing that had been done in the time of his Embassage he had already given the King an account thereof and thought himself not accountable to any other This published on Thursday vvas fortnight the Earl of Holland vvas confined to his Chamber in Court and the next day morning to his House at Kensington vvhere he remained vvithout any further circumstance of restraint or displeasure Saturday and Sunday on vvhich dayes being much visited it vvas thought fit on Munday to appoint Mr. Dickenson one of the Clerks of the Council to be his Guardian thus far that none vvithout his presence should accost him This made the vulgar judgements run high or rather indeed run low That he vvas a lost and discarded man judging as of Patients in Feavers by the exasperation of the fits But the Queen vvho vvas a little obliquely interested in this business for in my Lord of Holland's Letter vvhich vvas opened she had one that vvas not opened nor so much as they say as superscribed and both the Queen's and my Lord of Holland's vvere inclosed in one from Mr. Walter Mountague vvhereof I shall tell you more hereafter The Queen I say stood nobly by him and as it seems pressed her own affront It is too intricately involved for me so much as to guess at any particulars I hear generally discoursed that the opened dispatch vvas only in favour if it might be obtained of Monsieur de Chateau Neuf and the Chevalier de Jarr vvho had both been here but vvritten vvith caution and surely not vvithout the Kings knowledge to be delivered if there vvere hope of any good effect and perchance not vvithout Order from His Majesty to my Lord Weston afterwards to stop the said Letters upon advertisement that both Chateau Neuf and de Jarr vvere already in the Bastille But this I leave at large as not knowing the depth of the business Upon Munday vvas seven-night fell out another quarrel nobly carried branching from the former between my Lord Fielding and Mr. Goring Son and Heir to the Lord of that Name They had been the night before at Supper I know not vvhere together vvhere Mr. Goring spake something in diminution of my Lord Weston vvhich my Lord Fielding told him it could not become him to suffer lying by the side of his Sister Thereupon these hot hearts appoint a meeting next day morning themselves alone each upon his Horse They pass by Hide-Park as a place vvhere they might be parted too soon and turn into a Lane by Knights-bridge vvhere having tyed up their Horses at a Hedge or Gate they got over into a Close there stripped into their Shirts vvith single Rapiers they fell to an eager Duel till they vvere severed by the Host and his servants of the Inne of the Prince of Orange vvho by meer chance had taken some notice of them In this noble encounter vvhere in blood vvas spent though by Gods providence not much on either side there passed between them a very memorable interchange of a piece of courtesie if that vvord may have room in this place Sayes my Lord Fielding Mr. Goring If you leave me here let me advise you not to go back by Piccadillia-hall lest if mischance befall me and be suddenly noised as it falleth out in these occasions now between us you might receive some harm by some of my friends that lodge thereabouts My Lord replyes Goring I have no vvay but one to answer this courtesie I have here by chance in my Pocket a Warrant to pass the Ports out of England vvithout a Name gotten I suppose upon some other occasion before If you leave me here take it for your use and put in your own Name This is a passage much commended between them as proceeding both from sweetness and stoutness of spirit vvhich are very compatible On the solemn day of Saturday last both this difference and the Original between the Earl of Holland and the Lord Weston vvere fairly reconciled and forgiven by the King vvith shaking of hands and such Symbols of agreement And likewise Sir Maurice Dromand vvho had before upon an uncivil ture on his part between him and my Lord of Carlile been committed to the Tower was then delivered at the same time and so it all ended as a merry Fellow said in a Maurice But whether these be perfect cures or but skinnings over and Palliations of Court will appear hereafter Nay some say very quickly for my Lord Westons Lady being since brought to bed of a Daughter men stand in a kind of suspence whether the Queen will be the Godmother after so crude a reconcilement which by the Kings inestimable goodness I think may pass in this forgiving week For foreign matter there is so little and so doubtfull as it were a misery to trouble you with it The States confuted Treaty is put to the stock and the Prince of Orenge by account gone to the Field two days since having broken the business
as they say by three demands the resignment of Breda and Guelder the dismantling of Rheinberge and the equality of free exercise of Religion on either side The States are strong in Arms weak in Money owing above six hundred thousand pounds sterling in bare Interest besides the Capital The Enemy hath neither Money nor Men nor Agreement Arena sine calce yet I hear and ex bonis Codicibus that the States are absolutely resolved to besiege no Town this year unless it be some such place as may haply fall gently into their lap They will range with divided Troops I will have a care in my Letters to the Kings only Sister for that is now her published style even in Sermons so to commend your Frank unto her whom she was wont to call when he went first over her little Pig that he may speedily have a Captains place God bless him and bless your whole name to which I am so much tied both by the alliance of the sweetest Niece that ever man had and by your own kindness since her departure to Heaven And so I rest Your indissoluble Servant H. WOTTON Your Hester is re-entred into the green sickness faulte de je seay quoy I pray burn this hasty Letter when you have read it SIR If you have as I remember once you told me the Will of Sir William Pickering I pray favour me with a Copy of it for a certain purpose out of which if I pick any good you shall be partaker of it I have been for the most part sick since I wrote last unto you but am now chearful again To my Noble Nephew many chearful years SIR IT is worth the noting how commonly the casual firings of Houses in Towns do follow one another and so methinks do the inflammations of spirits in Courts For after the solemn quenching of our late quarrels there is fallen out a new and shrewdly pursued between Mr. Harbert Price a Sewer to the Queen and Mr. Eliot Page to the King The beginning they say was upon very sleight occasion but because a young Lady is an ingredient in the story I will pass it over To field they went two days since upon hot and hasty blood which somewhat saves it from a deliberate Duel both shooting the Bridge in several Boats yet the matter being before suspected my Lord Chamberâ—…ain sent one Mr. Haies a Scottishman and a good Surgeon though of late an ordinary Courtier on the Queens side in quest of them who found them both on the Surry side a mile or two below Bridge closed and I hear on the ground But Mr. Price already hurt in three places in one of his sides in â—…is face and in three of his fingers the other is come off untouched This Price hath been formerly bred a Souldier and sometimes they say a Lieutenant in the Low Provinces Mr. Eliot scarce yet a man in years but for height and strength at his full prime and in both above the common scantling The King is herewith highly offended succeeding so freshly upon the late reconcilements And it is doubted they will at least lose their places The journey to Scotland continueth hotly and His Majesty removeth House to Theobalds that way on Saturday come fortnight But first must be censured the Bishop of Lincoln for too many words and the Citizens of London in their undertakings in Ireland for too few deeds which I believe will both trench deep I shall stay long enough in London not intending to be gone before the Kings remove to tell you the event and truly without your benificent courtesie I had been wrapt in a strange riddle for I could neither have staid â—…or departed I received the Communion in St. Bartholomews on Sunday last being Easter-day in the same Pew with your Hester and her Mother your Hester either becomes a little tincture of the Green sickness well or that becomes her well well she looks I am sure and in my fancy draws towards the countenance of her Sister Stanhop more and more but stealingly My Niece Margaret is come home from her Artisan in Southwark with some pretty amendment The manner of his cure in those imperfections is somewhat strange he useth no bindings but oyls and stroakings of which I take him to be in all my reading both the Instrument and the Author My Niece Ann will prove one of the handsomest Creatures of the World being much grown and having rectified a little squinting or oblique look which she had in one of her eyes so far as the remainder will turn to a beauty Her Mother hath of late been much troubled and I think as much in her fancy which is the greater cure as in her body with a pain in her right side which changeth place and therefore is sure but a flatuous infirmity yet it hasteneth her removing to better Air. From my Lady my Sister at Canterbury we hear nothing I believe she is in travail with her own thoughts about desacing the inscription of the Tomb as far as Catholica and Catholica amount unto And I could wish as she took your advice in the invention and word upon the Marble she had done so in the rest but in that you were no apt Counsellor Now for foreign matters We have fair tydings from Germany that the Princes hold fast together and things go well and I am of opinion thaâ—… when those parts have learnt as well as the lower Provinces to spend a Summer upon the siege of a Town the War will nestle there as well as below For they abound in strong places and War it self is a great refiner of spirits in little time The States are in the Field earlier then heretofore and in all judgement it importeth no less then the countenancing and covering of a general revolt of the geheerten Provinces as they call them of that more in my next And so Sir leaving you in our blessed Saviours love I rest From my Lodging in S. Martins-lane by the Fields April 25. 1633. Your Suiscerato servidore H. WOTTON SIR When I have sent you as I will do by the next Carrier a new character I will open my files St. Martins-lane by the Fields June 3. 1633. To my Noble Nephew long and chearful years SIR THis other day at the Cock-pit in Shoe-lane where my self am rara avis your Nephew Mr. Robert Bacon came very kindely to me with whom I was glad to refresh my acquaintance though I had rather it had been in the Theater of Redgrave I asked him of his Brother your Frank and he told me he had been so hindered by winds as he thought he was not yet gotten over At which I was sorry for he hath lost the honour of taking Rheinberge He may come yet timely enough to see Guelders yielded and after that to have his share in Iuliers which they write from the Camp will be the next piece and so the States will be Masters of all the tract that lies between
both how they stand at your arrival there being every day changeable and how they incline in the future and particularly to sound the affections and the matter how far they be capable of any reasonable measure of agreement that from thence We may take judgement whether it shall be fit for Us to adde any others unto you in a main Treaty with safety of Our Honour and benefit of the Cause or to send others in your room and to release you from that business to your ordinary Residence at Venice Wherein We are contented to defer thus much to your discretion that if you shall find things desperate and the Emperours Party absolutely victorious you may then after a Currier dispatched unto Us with advertisement of all circumstances take your way to Venice If otherwise you shall find the Forces on both sides to stand within such terms of equality as the event is like in probability to continue dubious and uncertain you shall then attend the issue till the blow shall be strucken and upon all important variations of occurrences you shall signifie the same unto Us. 2. According to this scope of your imployment you shall hold with all those Priâ—…s from the highest to the meanest and from those that are most remote in respect to those that are nearest unto Us in nature and Alliance the same language assuring them all that We constantly continue in Our own Principles that is in first desiring the quiet of Christendome and particularly of those parts by all possible means wherein We have formerly expressed by a noble Ambassage of one of Our nearest Servants before Our Brother the French King did enter into it and before Our Selves shall be drawn to any other resolution which We thought meet to make publickly known both by Our said former Ambassador the Vicount Doncaster and now by you leaving the rest to God and time 3. Touching your address first or second to one part or other We leave it to your discretion upon the place when you have consulted with the Princes of the Union in general or with their Sub-director for the time whither you may best direct your self whom you shall pray in Our Name to assist you therein with their best advice as likewise in all things else concerning the present Affairs That after this exploration of the business being much altered since our first Ambassage We may know what it shall be fit for Us further to direct 4. Whereas We are informed that the Ambassadors of Our Brother the French King have Instructions to propound two things 1. A Surceasance of Arms 2. An Imperial Diet you shall signifie that in the first of these motions We mainly concur with Him and in the other so far as by the directions of Our Dear Son-in-Law you shall find convenient for the publick good and His own 5. Touching the Dukes of Saxony and Bavaria and any other Prince not comprised within the Union you shall desire them heartily in Our Name to joyn with Us for the common tranquillity that things may not pass to a further irritation of those Princes and States and particularly of Our Selves which otherwise profess Pacifical and Christian ends fortifying your exhortation therein with the best reasons that you can collect out of the present Affairs as they shall appear unto you 6. To all Princes whom it may any way concern you shall make it known that in the Election of Our Son-in-Law to the Crown of Bohemia We had no part by any precedent Counsel or practice which We affirm in the faith and truth of a Christian Prince And are likewise informed of his own clearness therein by vehement affirmations and by most probable Circumstances A Copy of my Dispatch to the King from Vienna Septemb. 7. 1620. May it please my most Gracious Soveraign IF Your Majesty since my last Accompt from Augusta of what I had handled with the Duke of Loreign and Wirtenberg with the Arch-duke Leopold and with the Communities of Strasburg and Ulm shall have expected to hear before now what I do in this place the obligation of Your own goodness and bounties towards me besides the conscience of my charge and duty may in the mean while have assured Your Majesty that no diligence or fidelity on my part hath been wanting in the pursuit of Your Commands and Christian ends as I hope shall appear by this Dispatch Wherein first It may please Your Majesty to understand that I have been ten dayes here in Vienna after I had been four whole dayes stayed by the Emperour at Cloâ—…ster-Nyberg on the Dannby not above a Dutch mile or little more from this Town whilst a House and all other things were preparing for my reception Which course was likewise held with the French Ambassadors in the same measure During vvhich time of my stay the Emperour sent me some Provisions and vvithal the young Baron of Harach to conduct me hither and here continually to assist me for procurement of my Audiences or any other conveniences being a Gentleman of the Emperours Bed-chamber twice heretofore employed in foreign Ambassages Son-in-lavv to the Count Eckemberg the Emperors Favorite and Son to the next of his Counsellors in grace and credit though the young Baron of Mersberg Captain of his Guard vvas sent to the French yet I perceive in the choice of this other Gentleman an equality of respect towards your Majesty vvas used An hour after my arrival here he sent to bid me vvelcome the Count of Mecaw heretofore Lord Chamberlaine to the Emperour Matthias and a Counsellor to this in tertiis quartisve I am placed near to the Court in the House of the Baron de Gabriana vvith rich furniture and good attendance and hitherto at the Emperors charge vvhich vvithin a vvhile must cease of vvhich I have given the Reason in my Letter to Mr. Secretary Nanton In the mean time I must profess unto your Majesty that no circumstance of due regard to the Honour of your Name hath been here omitted but all done vvith unexpected freedom in so much as to accompany me at my Table are sent and admitted Gentlemen of both Religions and of the best degree vvhich in the meaner Courts of Germany I have noted to pass vvith more restraint Thus much concerning my Reception vvhich is the formal part Novv before I pass unto the material it is a piece of curiosity to tell unto your Majesty vvhat discords I here finde amongst the publick Instruments vvhich seem somewhat considerable The French Ambassadours have been here about seven vveeks and to this hour are unvisited by the Spanish though close adjoyning them upon a meagre punctuality for thus it standeth The French arrived on the Munday at night the Spaniard sent immediately to vvelcome them his Secretary ex forma They have Audience the next morning following that passed the Count Ognate demands leave to visit them in the afternoon they desire to be excused being a day of ordinary dispatch The
our earnest longing being to see a good end of our gracious Masters blessed designs we cannot but think of ways to keep on foot the contentment of Traffick with you and communicate them though but raw indigested conceptions of our own to be produced further if your judgement and hope warrant them This granted that both Parties have affection to Treat doth warrant the freedom of access to the Instruments Whereupon we propound as followeth That whereas His Majesties Son-in-law for ought we can find is resolute to hold both the Title and Possession of this Kingdom it may be advised whether the Emperor may be drawn to content himself with the Title and such a compensation by a yearly proportion of Money as competerit and equal Arbitrators shall judge to be fit Hereto may be added the quitting of Austria on the one part and restitution of the Palatinate on the other As for banished Men on both sides and particular Rights both Civil and Criminal the same Arbitrators may deal therein according to equity Having besides Sir Francis Nethersale's faithful endeavors sounded with our best lines and we cannot say found the depth but a kind of scantling vve offer you to measure vvhether this heat of War and Confusion may by such a Chanel be drawn to a peaceable Haven the perfect good steering of vvhich vve present to your great practice in affairs of consequence to the good guidance vvhereof vve offer all our powers and endeavors vvhile they may be of use but if vve find no other ground of hope here then vve have hitherto vve are resolved to dravv towards home and in that case your Lordship finding occasion may continue your addresses to Sir Francis Nethersole of vvhose careful correspondence you may rest assured Wherewith vve rest From Prague October 18. St. vet 1620. Your Lordships in all true affection to serve you Edw. Conwey Rich. Weston J. Dickenson Secr. assistant Octob. 1620. Amico Veteri S. P. ACcepi quas ad me Wormatia dederas Octobris 10. quibus effusiùs respondebo per unum ex meis quem isthac in Angliam destinavi intra triduum Iamdiu scis legatos Gallicos me simul singulos Nobiles utriusque Nationis cum totidem famulis in Bohemiam ablegasse ad explorandam Coronati Electoris mentem super eadem ferè Concordiae formula quam ipsemet mihi Stutgardae injeceras quamque commemorati legati credo etiam hauserant ex eodem fonte Ex nostris Nobilibus Gallus nomine Sigonius solus rediit Is Anglum in Oppidulo Austriae superioris quod Freystadt vocant reliquit sub potestate morbi Duo Famuli Pragae periere ex Febre Hungarica quae perexiguo intervallo distat à peste Literae intactae pervenerunt per quas incipio conjectari quam operosares sit circa quam sudamus Nemo te melius novit quantulum legati valeant in turbatis temporibus Igitur rectè videris exuto Civili munere militare subiisse Utcunque benè speramus de eventu qualiscunque demum fuerit te faciam brevi certiorem Interim hoc scias velim natos hic rumores per omnium ora de magna Bohemorum strage super Sigonii Galli reditu tanquam ipse id attulisset quod profectò in hac Aula est familiaris ludus Somniant quae volunt cuicunque ex Castris advenienti aliquid affingunt praecipuè paulò ante Mercurii aut Sabbati diem quo hinc Cursores in omnes oras avolant quia falsa impressio interdum causa est magnorum motuum The Memorial Exhibited to his Imperial Majesty by Henry Wotton Knight Ambassadour Extraordinary from the King of Great Brittain after his Audience of the 17. of November 1620. Translated ad verbum from the Italian 1. THe said Ambassadour began with thanks in the King his Masters Name for the good Reception he had found here in all points of due respect to the honour of his Majesty whom he served 2. After this he said that as his Majesty had to this hour conserved himself purely neutral in the Business of Bohemia so he would remain hereafter till more liquid information then he had yet seen from either side touching the merit of the cause and would proceed with all real intention in the Christian Office of a Mediatour without entring into those of a Judge and much less of a Party 3. That although his said Majesty was resolved to suspend his judgement forasmuch as might concern the differences between the Emperour and Bohemians yet he found himself tyed both by nature and by reason not to leave the Patrimonial inheritance of his own descendents that is neither the inferiour nor superiour Palatinate in the hands of any alien Usurper the said Patrimony being a thing seperate from the rest of the present Controversie and so understood in the Treaty of Ulm by the common consent of the Lieutenants of the Union and the League 4. That as his Majesty of Great Brittain would be unwillingly perswaded without the Emperours own affirmation that the Marquess Spinola was by his Order entred hostility into the lower Palatinate so much less could he believe that his said Imperial Majesty would lend any Authority ex post facto to so injust an intrusion by way of proscription or otherwise with which the moderate proceeding of his Majesty in the whole progress of this Cause from the very first motions should be ill recompenced Lastly The Ambassadour besought his Imperial Majesty according to the declaration of his Will already passed to condescend actually to a sincere Treaty upon the Bohemian Business to which the French Ambassadours and himself had already joyntly disposed the other part A Copy of the Emperors Answer to my Audience 28. Nov. 1620. AD ea quae Serenissimi Magnae Britanniae Regis Legatus nuper cùm ore tenus tùm scripto proposuit Sacratissima Caesarea Hungariae Bohemiaeque Majestas Dominus noster Clementissimus benignè respondet uti animum suum ad solidae amicitiae atque benevolentiae studia cum serenitate sua sinceré continuanda proclivem jam tum ab initio Legationis suae dicto Domino Legato declaravit ita etiamnum eidem sâ—…se proposito firmiter inhaerere Ad negotium autem Bohemicum quod attinet in quo Majestati suae Caesareae Regiaeque non alia Controversia est quam quae Principibus cum subditis suis rebellibus ad obedientiae metam reducendis esse solet certó sibi persuadet Serenissimum Magnae Britanniae Regem pro singulari sua prudentia atque integritate evidentem quae pro Majestate sua Caesarea militat causae justitiam atque aquitatem agnoscere observare eoque magis gratum habet quod Affinitatem Genus Foedera Regio sanè judicio infra Conscientiae legem hactenus sese locâsse scripserit Optâsset autem Majestas sua Caesarea at hoc ipsum tot auxiliaribus copiis è Serenitatis suae Regnis atque Provinciis
Of the event vvhereof the Prince of Transilvania undertook by the 15 th of this Month aut circiters to give knowledge hither I must profess unto your Majesty that I did little expect for my part so much formality from the said Prince in hoc statu rerum as to attend a return from Silesia having before as hath been written so closely begun here to practice of his own reconcilement But the truth is and vvell he knows it that he may be heard vvhen he listeth by reason of the Turk at his back under vvhose shadovv he vvill â—…it himself Novv touching mine own peculiar duties For vvith Bethelem Gabor and the Hungarians I have nothing to do in single consideration as your Majesties Servant till vve shall hear vvhether the Elector your Son-in-lavv and that Kingdom vvill treat vvith the Emperor conjunctively or no. Before the going of de Preaux I had one access to the Emperor and two other vvhile he vvas away The first after consultation here vvith the French Ambassadors about the Answer vvhich we had vvith no small loss of time and advantage so late received from Bohemia addressed unto me by Sir Francis Nethersale in French as it came to him from the Camp The other two touching your Majesties declaration of your self in the Palatine cause and intercession against the Emperors Bann as they call it about vvhich I shall need to trouble your Majesty no further then vvith the perusal of such Marginal Notes as I have added both to the foresaid French Paper and to the Emperors two Answers in Latine vvhich come herewith and contain all that may concern your latter directions in two Letters from Master Secretary Nanton Yet I must not omit that between the second and third of these Audiences I vvas visited by the Baron of Eckenberg the Emperors inwardest Counsellor and Favorite vvho spent an hour or two at my Lodging vvith much protestation of his Masters respect towards your Majesty of his grief that things were gone on to such expence of blood of his vvishes that your Son-in-lavv had rather taken your Majesties counsel then the Duke of Bovillons of his forgiving nature of his desire to recover only his own and to redeem this Imperial House from open scorn Lastly that the King of Spain also had vvritten hither hovv glad he vvould be that your Majesty might have all possible satisfaction This vvas after the Emperor had been informed of his success at Prague vvhereunto there vvas as to all other fair discourse of this kind but one only reply on my part That your Majesty might justly promise your self very good respect here and good offices from Spain by the merit of your own moderation in the Bohemian Cause and by your Christian endeavors for the common quiet vvith such perseverance I must not forget likewise to inform your Majesty that my self visiting here the Spanish Ambassador as I have usually done after my Audiences vvith the Emperor and falling as I thought might vvell become me into vvonder at Spinola's intrusions enough to inflame all Christendom vvhich your Majesty measuring other Princes by the equity of your own heart had no reason to expect He asked me after a little deliberation Whether the Marquess of Buckingham were not a Gentleman of Honour I need not profess how glad I vvas of such occasion to do your Majesties Dearest Servant and mine own most Noble Patron all the right that my voice could utter but in truth on the other side extreamly surprized vvith so impertinent a question to my discourse till he eased me vvith the sight of a Paper out of his Cabinet It vvas the Copy of a Letter vvritten by my Lord Marquess in your Majesties Name to the Spanish Ambassador residing vvith you vvherein your Majesty did thus far justifie the Spanish proceedings As never to have made any promise that they would not assail the Palatinate Whereupon this Ambassador inferred that the said Letter vvritten by so Noble a Personage and in your Majesties Name vvas a high discharge for Spain in the point of real dealing I replied That indeed I had never heard of any direct promises or denial made about that matter but that your Majesties Servants employed therein whereof I vvas one my self to the Arch-Duke Leopoldus did rather complain of Answers obseure and ambiguous and very different from our plain English style This vvas all that passed between the Conde d'Ogniate and me into vvhich I have a little digressed Novv then to recollect hovv vve stand here in point of Negotiation The Prince of Transilvania hath prefixed the 15 th day of this Month or thereabout as I said before for his Term within which he will signifie in what manner he intendeth to Treat according to the Answer out of Silesia The Emperor on the other side did take the term of forty days for the declaring of his mind fully to me and the French Ambassadors which expire by our computation on the 27. of this said Month intending in the mean time to preconsult with his Friends or rather as we perceive with his Fortunes And howsoever Not to Treat of any Province or part as then reduced to his obedience So as plainly enough he chose that respite to contemplate the intervenient changes For at first he was more tractable he spake of no Friends whose advices were before to be asked he demanded no term to think farther on the matter he added no restriction all these are the suggestions of his prosperity And so we stand in point of business In the state of the Provinces I can deliver nothing but fluctuation and submission the ordinary consequences of Victory The first were the Bohemians who forgetting both Oaths and Contracts yielded up the Original Patent of their Combination to the Duke of Bavaria as the Emperors Commissary The next were the Moravians who after the Count Bucquoy had taken Trigla one of their wealthiest and summoned Zuam the chiefest of their Towns resolved in a full Assembly of their States to submit themselves by Deputies who are hourly expected here The other Appendants to the Bohemian Crown are likely to follow the Moravian example being incomparably as hath well appeared the most resolute piece of the whole knot and that which gave vigour to the rest dum Troja stabat What the Hungarians shall determine of themselves I will set down in a Postscript for which I have long suspended the dispatch of this Bearer I cannot conclude without representing unto your Majesty in all event two humble remembrances vvhereof your higher wisdom may perchance make some use The first is That I conceive the French King bound to joyn with your Majesty in the Palatine Cause I do not mean only by reason of state and jealousie of this spreading House cujus gliscit potentia as I may modestly say nor by Ancient obligation and gratitude to the said Electoral Line or to your own Kingdoms in the needful days of hi Father but by a fresher band
our affections to the Senate The Tribunal vvhere vve speak being not diffinitive vvhich is no small disadvantage I now promised to ease his memory my self vvith an extract of vvhat I had said vvhich vvas accordingly sent him the next morning containing two principal heads 1. The merit of the Cause 2. The community of the Interest Both as clear as the Sun For touching the first the question now vvas only de recuperatione proprii violently invaded In the course of vvhich action it did appear by pregnant inferences lately published together vvith those intercepted Letters vvhich Frier Hiacintho an out-cast from this Town did carry in his Wallet that the Duke of Bavaria had practised the Electorate of Rhine before the true Elector vvas called to the Crown of Bohemia vvhich I thought the fitter to be touched for that I knew the Duke had newly received a Copy of the said divulged Letters from his Agent at the Hague and it vvas a point of great impression Now their Interest vvas as plain as the Case it self For if such violences shadowed vvith Imperial Authorities should likewise be countenanced and comforted vvith success vvhat could hinder vvithin a vvhile the same Torrent to overflow Italy and especially this Dominion circondato da affetti poco sicuri d'ogni intorno as I told them I might vvell say even vvith modesty These premisses being laid I inferred that his Majesty upon a Cause so just and a common Interest so clear vvas most confident in the vvisdome of this grave Senate that having spent vvith palpable benefit in their last Motions of fresh memory qualche bona summa indeed about two millions of Duckats to maintain a diversion so near at hand as il Piede delli Monti they vvould find it more reasonable to foment the like further off all diversions and revulsions both Politick and Natural being so much the more effectual by how much the more remote Lastly that though his Majesty in exchange of that open frank and voluntary Declaration which he made of himself heretofore in time of their Troubles might now expect the like again from them ex aequo and that no Prince living knevv better what the declared Authority of a Dominion so eminent vvould import to the sum of the business Yet not to press his Friend too far his Majesty vvould be contented vvith a silent Contribution without noise under any form that should best please them and in such proportion as should be conformable to their Love whereby they should oblige his Royal Person and Progeny not to be wanting unto them in any of their own just Occurrents This was the substance of my first Audience and of my Memorial sent to the Secretary At my second after I had pressed the same Inducements more effectually and informed them that the Elector was now gone in Person to add vigor to his Subjects so as their help could never come in a better season I fell to tell the Duke that though it could not become my simplicity to prescribe any form to so wise a Prince yet I would â—…rave leave to insinuate thus much that they might under the Name of the States with whom their Confederacy was already known pass their good will towards his Majesty and his Son-in-law without any further imaginable noise by adding what they should please moreover to that Contribution whereunto they are tied by League of 50000 Florins or 5000 l. sterling per mensem for which surcrew whatsoever it should be the States would be answerable to the Elector Nay farther I told him albeit now by long service and by the very conscience of my zeal towards them I might presume to merit some part of their confidence yet I would therein dispence even with mine own ambition and undertake as much likewise for Signior Calandrini leaving it free unto them to exercise their friendship through the hands of Signior Surriano their own Minister at the Hague without acquainting us here with their determination for the more silent carriage thereof yet withal I was not tender to re-intimate unto them that both the King my Master did merit a Noble and open Proceeding and on the other side this Republick was by Gods blessing so powerful as they should not need to smother their Resolutions in so just a Cause In conclusion I told him that I did languish for the Senates answer for well I knew that they are much guided like the wisdom of a Merchant by accidents which makes them so prone to defer still hearkening how things fall or rise and accordingly shaping their Counsels Between these Audiences Signior Calandrini did likewise twice interceed in name of the States whose perswasion as their Instrument he spent apart from mine though otherwise our agreement was well enough known On Wednesday last some five or six days after my second Audience I was called to college and the Senates Answer read unto me very loud and treatably as the Duke willed the Secretary whereof yet I required a second reading for Copies are not usually granted which I must note for another disadvantage of moment in negotiating with this State because they may appeal from our Memories In this Answer were repeated with some new beautifying the three points wherein they did pretend to have prevented his Majesties former imploration of their concurrence when he wrote his own Letters in behalf of his Son-in-law The three points were these 1. Their Contribution to the States by which they maintain in those Provinces 4000 men 2. Their Entertainment and Pensioning of the Count Mansfelt with intent to fix him where he is who else might have been drawn away by other offers 3. Their Promise to joyn with the French King and Savoy in the Rhetian business All which three they call Points of Common Interest with his Majesty and of Common Benefit to the Elector by way of Diversion and two of them Actual Ingagements of this Republick Now to these in the foresaid Answer they added a fourth for a little stronger excuse at the present namely a fresh and sharp Insurrection amongst the Grisons where the Patriots of the Dieci dritture seemed to have overmatched the Party of the Arch-duke Leopoldo with such considerable success that the Canâ—…on of Surick who are nearest the truth are likewise in some motion to help them so as this State expecteth also to be called to that Feast and well inclined thereunto This was all the new garnishment that I could observe in their Answer Towards the end whereof I was much surprized with their telling me in plain terms that his Majesty was well satisfied with those former Demonstrations of their good will in the Common Cause represented unto him by their Ambassador Laâ—…do as he had written hither To which Point though the last of theirs I replied first That indeed his Majesty whose excellent heart doth believe always the best of his Friends had no reason to mislike their former Answer And so far I had co-operated with their
singular virtue and piety and resolution in good but likewise to consider him relatively he is an excellent Husband Brother and Friend I call Favorites the Friends of Kings as your Majesty who is so well versed in the best of Books knows I may do with very good warrant For was not Hushai the Archite so styled to David and after him Zahud to Solomon Nay had not the Highest of all Examples in the time of his Humane lowness both among the living a Beloved that lay on his bosome and another also whom he calls his Friend even when he called him from the dead Thus much I could not abstain to let fall from my pen by the way against all murmurers at any singularity of affection which abound both in States and Families But of these three Relations I will now only contemplate that which respecteth your Majesty which indeed is as clear and visible as the rest For surely all the Parliaments that our most Gracious Sovereign hath hitherto assembled and all the Actions that he hath undertaken abroad either of himself or by combinations and his private Counsels at home have principally levelled at your support and restorement as the Deliberations likewise that went before in the latter time of your most blessed Father So as your Majesty in the justness of your Cause and in the sweetness of your Nature doth stand firmly invested in both the titles of as beloved a Sister as you were a Daughter And I am confident that our living and loving God who did accept the zeal of your Royal Brother and bless his own and the publick devotions at home with almost a miraculous conversion of the infirmity which raged into health and of the sterility which was feared into plenty will likewise find his own good time to favour our pursuits abroad Your Majesties second comfort is the universal love of all good Minds To which I may justly add a particular zeal in him who is nearest his Majesty to foment his best desires towards you which he hath expressed sundry times within my hearing The last and inwardest consolation that I can represent unto your Majesty is your self your own soul your own vertues your own Christian constancy and magnanimity Whereby your Majesty hath exalted the glory of your sex conquered your affections and trampled upon your adversities To conclude you have shewed the World that though you were born within the chance yet without the power of fortune And so having sought to redeem so long a silence I tear with too long a trouble I will promise your Majesty to commit no more of the former fault and humbly beg your pardon for the other ever and ever remaining Your Majesties poor Servant with all humble and hearty devotion HENRY WOTTON To my most dear and worthy Friend Mr. John Dinely at the Hague My ever most dear Jack Dinely THe Queens last Letter wherewith her Majesty did too much honour me coming when my voices of any value were no more in mine own power was nearer a torment then a surprizal It shall teach me to reserve my self as wiser men do for such supervenient temptations I must confess above all strength if the least possibility had been lest It is true I could have given him a latter place but in that I should have disgraced the suiter and disrespected the Commander I have therefore rather chosen to put him in the Vanguard the next year being the Son of a Souldier then now in the Rear And this is the summe of my humble answer to her Majesty though in other terms Your Anthony who is my Guest every Saturday night is well grown in stature and more in knowledge I verily believe he will prove both a wise and learned man and certainly good We have passed over quocunque modo the most troublesome Election that I think was here ever seen Wherein according to my usual fashion I have lost four or five friends and yet I thank God not gotten the value of one Harrington So as they are angry at me on the one side and they laugh at me on the other If my most gracious Mistress will in her goodness be pleased to drown her displeasure till the next turn I shall chearfully in the mean time bear the weight of mine own simplicity I have gotten with much adoe some of the Psalms translated by my late most blessed Master for the young Prince of Bohemia which is one of your memorials that have slept too long by me and I have ransacked mine own poor Papers for some entertainment for the Queen which shall be sent together Though it be now a misery to revisit the fancies of my youth which my judgement tells me are all too green and my glass tells me that my self am gray Till my next let me trouble you no farther The love of God be with us and we are well Your poor true Friend HENRY WOTTON From the Colledge at midnight the 12. of August 1628. I hear that one hath offered to the Prince of Orenge an invention of discoursing at a great distance by Lights Is it true A Noble Lady who is desirous to bestow her Son at Leyden would fain be first informed what commodity for education the place doth yield wherein you shall do me and her a great favour To my very worthy and ever dear Friend Mr. John Dinely at the Hague My ever dear Jack Dinely YOur last of the 6th of October vvere vvelcome beyond all expression intimating a hope that I shall see your self shortly vvhich vvill be mille Epistolae I do not see how you can fail of the thing vvhereof you vvrite if you come quickly The Letter in your behalf from our Royal Mistress to his Majesty here is too faint being moulded in your own modesty Therefore I have a little invaded it vvith some violence unto you When you consult vvith me about the Personage that should first or second or tertiate your business vvith the King I must answer as Demosthenes did of Action My Lord Thresorer My Lord Thresorer and so again We contemplate him not only in the quality of his Place but already in some degree of a Privado and even the fresh introducement of Sir F. Cottington to the Counsel-Table is no small argument of his strength though otherwise a Subject of merit I hear likewise that his own sorraign imployments have given him a great taste of things abroad So as you vvill not find him incurious to discourse vvith you And I verily believe that he vvill take an address of you from the Queen unto him as the principal Personage to the heart vvherein methinks it vvere fit and proper that her Majesty vvould be pleased likewise to favour you vvith some lines to my Lord Conaway because they vvere joyned in Ambassage unto Her at Prage This is all that I shall need to say till your own coming Your little Anthony prospers extreamly vvell and I dare now say he vvill prove a good Scholar And
so being in truth in no very chearfull disposition at the present but newly come out of two or three fits of an Ague I vvill trouble neither of us both any further ever resting From London ready to return to my Coll. at Eton this 13. of Nov. 1628. Your poor professed Friend HENRY WOTTON If the Queen have not heard the Epitaph of Albertus Morton and his Lady it is vvorth her hearing for the passionate plainness He first deceas'd She for a little tryed To live vvithout him Lik'd it not and died POSTSCRIPT In a Letter under this date to her Majesty I conclude vvith a supplication that She vvill be pleased to receive a Page at the joynt suit of the House of Bacons A Boy of singular spirits vvithout aggravation of her charge for he shall vvant no means to maintain himself in good fashion about so Royal a Mistress I pray heartily further this motion and be in it your self Nuncius laetitiarum Part of a Letter to the Lord Treasurer Earl of Portland ut videtur THis is the reckoning of my unpleasant time whereby your Lordship sees that my silence hath been a symptome as I may term it of my infirmity from all outward respects and duties contracting my thoughts about my self But can that serve my turn No in troth my good Lord For I should while my self was in contemplation have remembred that I was bound to congratulate with your Lordship even for mine own sake especially when I found by the long use of two or three Physicians the exhaustion of my Purse as great as other evacuations It would breed wrinckles in my face if I should stay any longer upon this point I will chear my self that your Lordship did love me even before I was so worthy of your compassion I have tasted the benefit of your discourse I have enjoyed your hospitality I have been by your favour one of your familiar guests I have had leave to interchange some good tales and stories in your company and to exercise my natural freedom Besides we have been conjoyned in a serious business wherein I do even yet hope for some good by your means So as I have had in your Lordship the interests both of earnest and of pleasant conversation which gives me the boldness to assure my self that I am still not only within your Lordships remembrance but likewise within your loving care But I dig in a Rock of Diamonds To the KING 1628. May it please Your most Sacred Majesty IT is more to be bound to Your Majesties judgement then to be bound to Your favour Therefore I do not only joy but glory though still with humble acknowledgement and feeling what my self am that You have been pleased as I understand from my Lord of Dorchester to apply my Pen to so noble an end being confident that the very care not to disgrace Your Majesties good pleasure and indulgent choice of me will invigorate my weakness But before I enter into the description of others actions and fortunes which require a free spirit I must present at Your Royal feet and even claim from Your natural equity and goodness such compensation as it shall please You in that which followeth I served the King Your Father of most blessed memory from the time he sent for me at the beginning of his Raign out of France retaining then some gracious remembrance of my service with him in Scotland twenty years that is almost now a third part of my life in ordinary and extraordinary imployments abroad I had many comfortable Letters of his contentment or at least of his gracious toleration of my poor endeavours And I had under his own Royal hand two hopes in reversion The first a moiety of a six Clerks place in Chancery The next of the Office of the Rolls it self The first of these I was forced to yield to Sir William Beecher upon the late Duke of Buckingham's former engagement unto him by promise even after Your Majesty had been pleased to intercede for me with Your said ever blessed Father And that was as much in value as my Provostship were worth at a Market The other of the Reversion of the Rolls I surrendred to the said Duke in the Gallery at Wallingford-House upon his own very instant motion the said Duke then intending it upon the now Attorney Sir Robert Heath though with serious promise upon his honour that he would procure me some equivalent recompence before any other should be setled in the place The truth of my humble claim and of his sincere intentions towards me I present herewith unto Your Majesty in a Letter all under his own hand I could likewise remember unto Your Majesty the losses I have sustained abroad by taking up moneys for my urgent use at more then twenty in the hundred by casualty of fire to the damage of near four hundred pounds in my particular by the raising of moneys in Germany whereby my small allowance when I was sent to the Emperors Court fell short five hundred pounds as Seignor Burlamachi too well knoweth and other wayes Now for all this that I may not press Your Majesty with immoderate desires I most humbly beg from Your Royal equity and I may say from Your very compassion but two things First That Your Majesty will be pleased in disposing of the Rolls to which I was assigned to reserve for me some small proportion towards the discharge of such debts as I contracted in publick service yet remaining upon interest Next That You will be likewise pleased to promise me the next good Deanry that shall be vacant by death or remove whereof I also had a promise from Your blessed Father then at Newmarket and am now more capable thereof in my present condition And thus shall Your Majesty restore me both to the freedom of my thoughts and of my life otherwise so intricated that I know not how to unfold it And so with my continual prayers to the Almighty for his dearest and largest blessings upon Your Royal Person I ever rest Whitehall Feb. 12. Styl vet 1628. Your Majesties most faithfull poor Subject and Servant HENRY WOTTON To my most worthy Friend Mr. John Dinely Esq at Boston in Lincolnshire My dear Jack Dinely YOu see I keep my familiarity though you be the governor of Princes And I see by your Letter that I am every where in your remembrance even where so many natural pledges divide you The Parliament is since your going dissolved by the King upon such reason as in good faith all sober minds must approve even while they wish it otherwise Never was there such a morning as that which occasioned the dissolution since Phacton did guide his Fathers Chariot We are now cheared with some forraign news but I am still sorry that we must fetch our comfort from abroad and from the discords of Italy instead of the harmony of England Our Lords sit often and vvere never more close insomuch as it is as
be at Mr. Alkinds House in the Strand or otherwise peradventure vvith your Friend in Lombard-street vvhereof you shall have notice in time I am yours every where H. WOTTON From the Colledge April 21. 1639. SIR I should be sorry for your departure towards our Royal Mistress before some short meeting at least between us for I have much discourse to unlade in your honest brest and I can tell you vve had need lay up discourse safely vvhich I hope you vvill take for some excuse of my seldome vvriting unto you for I suspect a certain natural frâ—…edom in mine own Pen. In the Scottish Affairs it is one mystery that we know not what to believe Only this we can say That there is nothing to be praised in it on their part and I could wish there were as little to be feared on ours Deus operatur omnia suaviter And to his Power and Mercy vve must leave our selves Your ever faithful poor Friend H. WOTTON From the Colledge April 17. 1639. Sir My Coach-man is yet crasie from a late great sickness but if it please you to specifie the time of your conveniency my Geldin shall vvait upon you at Branford A poinct nommé SIR I long novv to hear of nothing more then a little Deynleiolus and if it prove of another Gender in Grammer then let Philosophy comfort you that says It is Natures method to begin ab Imperfectiori But by my contemplation of your own and your Wives complexion and of her late sicknâ—…ss I should imagine that Fortior pars trahet sexum We are sorry to hear that the Scottish Gentlemen vvho have been lately sent to that King found as they say but a brusk vvelcome vvhich makes all fear that there may be a rebullition in that business We have a nevv strange voice flying here that the Prince Palatine is towards a Marriage I apprehend much the event of your new Ambassage from the States being carried by a man who hath had his vvhole fortune out of France but the vvisdom of the Instrument may mollifie all I should be glad to knovv vvhether his Son-in-law Constantinus Hugeinus be in his company Lastly I should be glad to hear that you are un tantino promoved in your own ends for vvhen the first vvay is plained all will go smoothly Let us howsoever love one another and God love us both Your poor Friend H. WOTTON A TABLE OF THE Several Tracts contained in this Book 1. THe Elements of Architecture 2. A Survey of Education 3. Aphorisms of Education 4. Characters of some Kings of England 5. Vita Henrici Sexti 6. Ad Regem è Scotia reducem H. W. Plausus Vota 7. A Panegyrick to King Charles 8. The Parallel 9. The Disparity 10. The Life of the Duke of Buckingham 11. The Great Action between Pompey and Caesar. 12. A Character of Ferdinand Grand Duke of Tuscany 13. The Election of the New Duke of Venice with other Papers concerning that State 14. A Meditation on Gen. 22. 15. A Meditation on Christmass day 16. Letters to several Persons 17. Poems 18. Letters to Sir Edmund Bacon 19. Additional Letters to several Persons Never before Printed FINIS * In his Chronicle * Cambden in his Britannia * Hollinshed * Sir Edward Bish Clarentieux King of Arms M. Charls Cotton and Mr. Nick Oudert sometime Sir Hen. Wotton's Servant * St. Austin's Confession * Watson in his Quodlibets * Emanuel Colledge in Cambridge * August 1627. * Sept. 3. 1629. * 1 Tim. 3. 7. * * Juven * * In it were Italian locks picklocks screws to force open doors and many things of worth and rarity that he had gathered in his forreign Travel * Lege vulgata de vita parentibus Scioppii p. 127. * Ibidem p. 132. * Ecclesiasticus Scioppii p. 371. * 8. April Sess. 4. * See what is published of the Life and Parents of Scioppius pag. 127. * April 8. Ses. 4. Memorandum That this Recantation was to my knowledg never Printed at Rome or elsewhere through more haste belike to his death or otherwise upon further consideration that things extorted with fear carry no credit even by the Praetors Edict Quod metus causa Tacit. lib. 1. Annal. * Aristot. 2. l. Polit c. 6. * Ioannes Heurnius Instit. Medicin lib. 7. cap. 2. Opidum quidem aedificatum eleganter sed imprudenter positum Under-digging or Hollowing of the Earth Our Artizans call them Teeth and Cartouzes * By the first Theor. * Which is the sole Prerogative of perpendicular Lines and right Angles Lumen est diffusivum sui alieni * A 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hom. Epig. The Italians call it una stanza dannata as when a Buttery is cast under a Stair-case or the like * Arist. lib. 1. cap. 5. de part Anim. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 De nugis Curial c. * Capâ—… Aristotle in Rhetoricis * Averhoes * La Promissiâ—…ne Ducalâ—… Mar. 6. 1635. JAME'S 27. Styl nov a 1. The Style of the Emperours Chancery when he treateth with Kings is not Majestas which he reserveth for himself but either Serenitas or Regia Dignitas This made him angry when he heard that the French Ambassadours styled Bethlem Gabor Serenissimum who on the other side gave them leave to entitle him how they would adding this Reason That they were not Ambassadours which could make or unmake Kings b 2. Of these words he taketh advantage which were in your Majesties Credentiall Letter delivered by me c 3. I wonder he should touch this point wherein I had cleared both the Arch-duke Leopoldus and the Emperour himself namely that the first subsidiary Troops sent towards the Palatinate were-meerly Voluntaries without Your Majesties Contribution and defensively intended before any noise of the Invasion d 4. In declaring Your Majesties Will and determination from the beginning touching the Palatinates if they should be assailed I told the Emperour that though in the single Business of Bohemia You had suspended Your judgement till more liquid proofs yet You found Your Self tyed both by Nature and Reason not to suffer the Patrimonial Inheritance of Your Own Descendents in the hands of an Alien Usurper e 5. At this Audience I told the Emperour that Your Majesty would hardly be perswaded without his own affirmation that Spinola had invaded the Palatinate by his express Order And much less believe that he would lend any approbation thereunto ex post facto by way of Ban or otherwise Which action of Spinola the Emperour doth here assume But whether such was his meaning from the beginning or that his success in Bohemia hath bred this resolution may be somewhat questionable Alwayes sure it is that he affirmed unto the French Ambassadors long since that the Marquess Spinola was to come into Bohemia f 6. Of this term of 40 dayes and the following restriction not to treat touching any Province that in the mean time shall be reduced to his obedience I have written the true cause in my Letter to Your Majesty g 7. In Letters from M. Secretary Naunton of the 23. of Sept. which came so late unto my hands that the Emperors Ban was already formally touched and ready to be put to the Print h 8. This I think was added out of meer conjecture For wee have heard nothing of the Electors Actions since his retiring into Silesia i 9. So as upon my Intercession the Emperor hath granted some suspence of the Banne Which I required for two principal Reasons 1 Because the King my Masters moderation in the Bohemian Business not Cause Who was so much interessed in the Persons did justly merit from the Emperor an exchange of temperate proceeding 2. Because such an Imperial Proscription would but more and more inflame the minds of all Princes interessed by reason of Bloud or State in the subsistence of the Palatine and would be the cause of a perpetual War in the bowels of the Empire contrary to the Christian endeavours and wishes of Your Majesty Whose good intentions were now so manifested to the World by sundry Ambassages that You were satisfied in Your Own Conscience and justified before God and man whatsoever should ensue I told him besides that I thought Your Majesty would take it kindly if at Your request this Proscription were forborn When I had first enquired out her Lodging Authoris Incerti
suorum nosse ingenia Est quando veterum Epigrammata recensendo Animum oblectas non minori Acumine quà m componebantur Sic seria tua sic remissiora cursim peragravi At ipsa quam cepi in his quanquà m ita levitèr delibandis Voluptas Calamum jam currentem nescio quo modo novo Impetu exstimulat ut Majestatis Tuae veram Effigiem in Contractiori Modulo quasi sub uno simul intuitu si tantum Veniae indulseris vel mihimet ipsi repraesentem Quam sic Mente concipio Staturam dicerem Justae proximam Corpus erectum Agile Color in Universum ex EBORACENSI Albore quà m LANCASTRIA Rubedine plus hausit Caesaries nigella quà m flavae propior Frons multum Fidei praefert O ulos generosa quaedam Verecundia honestat non qualem olim de Syllâ sed de Pompeio legimus In Gestubus nihil affectatum In toto etiam Aspectu nil Turgidi nil Efferati sed alliciens ac decora Suavitas Alacritatem Vigorem celerior incessus prodit Alioquin sedati Affectus Compositi Mores Propositi Promissi tenacissimus Amans Veri Vitiorum Osor. Justus Constans Fortis non simplicitèr tantùm sed scientèr Bonus Talis es Talemque quanto Applausu recipiemus Videre Mihi videor dum Horrida interdùm Tranquilla simul contendo quotiescúnque RICHARDUS ille TERTIUS Eboraco forsan suo aut longinquiùs Londinum remearet Proceres circa se conciret Quà m nutabant Nobilium Capita Quà m pallebant Ora Quam sollicitas inter se suspiciones ac murmura conferebant Ac si dirus repentè Cometes aut infaustum aliquod Sidus suprà Horizontem emersisset Sed contrà Justi Bonique PRINCIPIS Reditus nihil aliud omninò est quà m ipsa Solis Anastrophe Cùm Vernalibus radiis deformem Hiemem expellit ac blando Tepore cuncta circumquâque refovet exhilarat Euge igitur Rex omnibus Bonis Gratissime Sed in quae Vota desinam Veteribus in usu erat quorum Exemplo percitus exiguum hunc laborem audacter nimiùm subivi post Trajani Tempora sub Laudatissimo quoque Imperatore hujuscemodi acclamandi Formula Vive ANTONINE Regna THEODOSI AUGUSTO faelicior TRAIANO Melior Sit autem Hic Imperii Tui novissimus Character quòd Optanda sunt Laudandis Pauciora Igitur postquam hoc tantum ex Ardenti Affectu voverim ut CAROLUS Optimus REX DOMINUS noster Regnet Vivatque Sibimetipsi soli Diuque similis Finis esto O Fortunatos nimium Bona si sua norint A PANEGYRICK TO King CHARLES BEING OBSERVATIONS Upon the Inclination Life and Government of our Late SOVERAIGN VVritten in Latin By Sir HENRY WOTTON Knight Provost of Eton Colledge a little before his Death And now Englished by a Friend of the Authors TO OUR Young CHARLES DUKE of CORNWALL EARL of CHESTER c. HENRY WOTTON wisheth long life THese following Vowes and Acclamations wherewith Your Father the best of Kings was received at his Return from Scotland I dedicate not unadvisedly to Your Highness that when you shall be seasoned with Erudition now your Ornament from many Ancestors you may draw from this whatever small memorial a Treasure more glorious then a triple Diadem namely AN HEREDITARY IMAGE OF VERTUE TO THE KING At His Return from SCOTLAND Sir HENRY WOTTON's Vows and Acclamations Imperial CHARLES my King and Master ACustome it was anciently among the civiller Nations so oft as they enjoyed a just and a Gracious King that their mute felicity might not contract a dulness in their brests to pour forth their affections and joyes in elogies wishes and applauses But chiefly then when any nobler occasion invited the rejoycers expressions Which sacred customes Emulation in some sort having transported me and dispell'd the chilness from my brest which the weight of age hath introduced I shall with flagrant confidence betake my self to celebrate this Day whereon your Majesty doth restore your Self to us and us unto our selves So far indeed am I from being discouraged by the weakness of my own elocution that I am even ready to esteem my self thereby the abler For what need is here of dressings Rhetorical Wherefore over sollicitously ballance the weight of words Susfice it this day simply to rejoyce Sincerity is a plain and impolite thing the less tricked the more chearful and Eloquence while it adorneth corrupteth our gladness Nor is it my fear that this shall seem a flatterers act as it were ambitiously prostrate at Fortunes feet which in truth were unworthy of that ingenuous modesty derived from my Parents unbefitting that blessed Rest of mind I drew from liberal Studies Yet doth one solitude at the very entrance I confess surround me lest namely even with true praises I offend that modesty wherewith Your Majesty useth so sweetly to season your other Vertues for whereas you are most stout in all things else that requires Validity of Body or Constantness of Mind I only doubt lest you should beat this dayes Applauses and Elogies by so much the more tenderly by how much they are the more justly due We read that Germanicus and yet how great a Personage not long before the battel against the Chatti did under the disguise of a beasts skin that he might not be observed by night approach his souldiers tents to catch up by dark what they conceived of him So do those commonly with most tenderness admit their own commendations who most deserve them Whence I sufficiently foresee the necessity of assuring my access to your Sacred Ears not by Arguments drawn from the slight Magazines of Rhetorick but by others of a soberer sort I shall therefore affirm it most equitable that neither the gallant nor the baser lives of Princes be pressed down in ignoble silence But that both good and bad be transmitted equally to the knowledge of Posterity in a like freedome of writing as living and with no less reverence of Truth then of Majesty Those least vertuous examples failing Vertues themselves by degrees decay These that evading the power of Laws yet may be bridled through some awe of Record This to you I may dare to speak my most Gracious Master and even that I may dare I owe to your self alone who now have so lived 33 years and so reigned near to nine That you dread not truth Most famous was of old and will live for ever that answer of Virginius Rufus to Cluvius You know Virginius saith he what credit is due to History wherefore if you read any thing in my books otherwise then you would have it pardon me To whom Virginius Thou canst not Cluvius be ignorant of this That therefore I did what I have done that it might be free for you to write what you pleased This was indeed the confidence of a gallant but yet of a private man How much more eminent may the joy be of this day for a King returned of whose Life and Morals we
Formalities Now in the discharge of your Function they speak of two things that have done you much honour namely That you have had always a special care to the supply of the Navy And likewise a more worthy and tender respect towards the Kings only Sister for her continual support from hence then she hath found before They observe your greatness as firmly established as ever was any in the Love and which is more in the estimation of a King who hath so signalized his own Constancy Besides your addition of Strength or at least of Lustre by the Noblest Alliances of the Land Among these Notes it is no wonder if some observe That between a good willingness in your affections to satisfie All and an impossibility in the matter and yet an importunity in the Persons there doth now and then I know not how arise a little impatience which must needs fall upon your Lordship unless you had been cut out of a Rock of Diamonds especially having been before so conversant with liberal Studies and with the freedom of your own Mind Now after this short Collection touching your most honoured Person I beseech you give me leave to add likewise a little what Men say of the Writer They say I want not your gracious good will towards me according to the degree of my poor Talent and Travels but that I am wanting to my self And in good faith my Lord in saying so they say truly for I am condemned I know not how by nature to a kind of unfortunate bashfulness in mine own business and it is now too late to put me in a new Furnace Therefore it must be your Lordships proper work and not only your Noble but even your Charitable goodness that must in some blessed hour remember me God give your Lordship many healthful and joyful years and the blessing of that Text Beatus qui attendit ad attenuatum And so I remain with an humble and willing Heart c. To the Queen of Bohemia July 1636. Most resplendent Queen even in the darkness of Fortune THat was wont to be my style unto Your Majesty which You see I have not forgotten For though I have a great while forborn to trouble You with any of my poor lines yet the memory of Your sweet and Royal Vertues is the last thing that will die in me In these months of my silence I have been busie if any work of my brains may be termed a business about certain compositions of mine own partly imposed and partly voluntary whereof some would fain be strugling into the light but I do check their forwardness because I am afraid they will be born before their time in the mean while I have gotten a subject worthy to exercise my pen unto Your Majesty which is the choice of the New Lord Treasurer upon which place Your Majesty hath alwayes some dependance in Your Domestick Affairs I believe Your Majesty hath never personally seen him therefore I will take the boldness to paint him before You though I must speak as yet more out of the universal opinion then from my own experience for Your Majesty knows my nature I am always one of the last intruders Now the best and the shortest draught that I can make of him vvill be this There is in him no tumour no sowreness no distraction of thoughts but a quiet mind a patient care free access mild and moderate Answers To this I must add a solid judgement a sober plainness and a most indubitable character of Fidelity in his very face so as there needs not much study to think him both a good man and a wise man And accordingly is his Family composed more order then noise and his nearest Instruments carefully chosen for he wanted no offers But above all there is a blessed note upon him that his Majesty hath committed his Moneys where he may trust his Conscience Upon the whole matter it is no marvel that the Charge lay a full year under Commission For the King himself as we hear did openly profess that he had spent the most of that time not in deliberating whom he might choose but in wooing of him whom he had chosen to undertake it For it is a hard matter indeed if so good a King had not been the Orator to draw a man out of the settled repose of a learned Life into such an ocean of publick Solicitude able to swallow an ordinary Spirit But God who hath raised him to it hath made him fit for it This is all that I was in travel to advertise Your Majesty upon the present occasion my next will be touching the two sweet Princes Your Sons whose Fame I have only hitherto enjoyed in the common Voice having by some weakness in my Legs and other symptomes of Age and by mine own retired Studies been confined to privacy But I hope to make known unto Them how much I reverence my Royal Mistress their Mother and the Images of her Goodness at the solemn Meeting the next Moneth in Oxford For an Academy will be the best Court for my humour And so I humbly rest Your Majesties ever faithfull ever devoted poor Servant H. W. To the Lord Treasurer Iuxon May it please Your good Lordship I Was in hope long since to have waited on your Lordship with an a count I dare not say of any fruit yet at least of some use of my private time But through certain fastidious fumes from my Spleen though of late I thank God well allayed I have been kept in such Jealousie of mine own conceptions that some things under my Pen have been born very slowly In the mean while remembring an old Pamphlet of mine of the Elements of Architecture which I cannot in any modesty suppose that your Lordship had ever seen though it hath found some vulgar favour among those whom they call gentle Readers I have gotten such a Copy as did remain to present unto your Lordship And because my fortunes were never able to erect any thing answerable to my Speculations in that Art I have newly made at least an essay of my Invention at least in the Structure of a little poor Standish of so contemptible value as I dare offer it to your Lordship without offence of your integrity If I could have built some Rural Retreat worthy of your Reception according to the six Precepts of my Master Vitruvius I would have invited and entertained your Lordship therein how homely soever yet as heartily as you were ever welcomed to any place in this world and I would then have gloried to have under my Roof as worthy a Counsellor and Treasurer as ever served the best of Kings But as I am I can say no more for your Lordships gracious respects and goodness towards me then that I live in a tormenting desire some way to celebrate the honour of your Name and to be known Your most humble professed and obliged Servant H. WOTTON To the KING 1637. May it
please my most Gracious Soveraign IF I were not more afraid to break the Laws of that humble Modesty which becometh the meanness of my desert then I am to exceed the bounds of Your Majesties Royal Goodness I should be a poor Suppliant unto Your Majesty to confer upon me the Mastership of the Savoy in case Dr. Belcanquel my good Friend shall as the voice goeth be removed to the Deanry of Durham wherein the Remove and the Substitution are but one stroke of Your Benignity God knows and the value of the Thing it self may speak as much that I do not aim therein at any utility Only it may be some ease of expence and Commodity of Lodging when I shall come as I am afraid shortly to oversee certain poor things of mine own at Press wherewith yet I hope Your Majesty whose Honour only I study will not be displeased I have further considered with my self that the said place is not incompatible with that which I now hold by Your Majesties intercession with Your ever blessed Father as it may please You to remember though You forget nothing so easily as Your own bounties which place here never before subsisting in the Memory of man without some Addition I have now near fourteen years sustained in that integrity as I found it and with as good Scholars sent annually to Your Royal Colledge at Cambridge of my particular Choice as have gone thither since the Foundation whereof I could shew Your Majesty a published Testimony out of that University in Dr. Winterton's Dedication of Dionysius de situ orbis unto me if it were not a miserable thing for me to make up so slight a merit even with a vanity Besides this I most humbly confess that though my fortunes are poor and my Studies private yet I cannot deny certain Sparkles of honest ambition remaining in me whereby I desire the World should know that my most Vertuous and most Dear and Royal Master hath not utterly forgotten me And so I most humbly rest Your Majesties most humble faithfull hearty Subject and Servant H. W. To the Archbishop May it please your Grace EMboldened by your favour I humbly present herewith to your Grace and through your onely hands which in our lower Sphear is via Lactea my Letter to his Majesty and the Copy thereof If it shall pass the file of your Judgement my poor Lines will have honour enough but if they take effect by the vertue of your Mediation I shall be sorry that I cannot be more Your Grace's then I am and will ever be H. W. To Mr. MILTON SIR IT was a special favour when you lately bestowed upon me here the first taste of your acquaintance though no longer then to make me know that I wanted more time to value it and to enjoy it rightly and in truth if I could then have imagined your farther stay in these parts which I understood afterward by Mr. H. I would have been bold in our vulgar Phrase to mend my draught for you left me with an extream thirst and to have begged your conversation again joyntly with your said Learned Friend at a poor meal or two that we might have banded together some good Authors of the ancient time Among which I observed you to have been familiar Since your going you have charged me with new Obligations both for a very kind Letter from you dated the 6th of this Moneth and for a dainty piece of entertainment that came therewith Wherein I should much commend the Tragical part if the Lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in your Songs and Odes whereunto I must plainly confess to have seen yet nothing parallel in our language Ipsa mollities But I must not omit to tell you that I now only owe you thanks for intimating unto me how modestly soever the true Artificer For the Work it self I had viewed some good while before with singular delight having received it from our common Friend Mr. R. in the very close of the late R's Poems Printed at Oxford whereunto is added as I now suppose that the Accessory might help out the Principal according to the Art of Stationers and to leave the Reader Con la bocca dolce Now Sir concerning your Travels wherein I may challenge a little more priviledge of discourse with you I suppose you will not blanch Paris in your way therefore I have been bold to trouble you with a few Lines to Mr. M. B. whom you shall easily find attending the young Lord S. as his Governour and you may surely receive from him good directions for the shaping of your farther journey into Italy where he did reside by my choice some time for the King after mine own recess from Venice I should think that your best Line will be thorow the whole length of France to Marseilles and thence by Sea to Genoa whence the passage into Tuscany is as diurnal as a Gravesend Barge I hasten as you do to Florence or Siena the rather to tell you a short story from the interest you have given me in your safety At Siena I was tabled in the house of one Alberto Sciâ—…ioni an old Roman Courtier in dangerous times having been Steward to the Duca di Pagliano who with all his Family were strangled save this only man that escaped by fore-sight of the Tempest with him I had often much chat of those affairs into which he took pleasure to look back from his native harbour and at my departure toward Rome which had been the Center of his Experience I had won confidence enough to beg his advice how I might carry my self securely there without offence of others or of mine own conscience Signor Arrigo mio says he I Pensieri stretti il viso sciolto That is Your thoughts close and your countenance loose will go safely over the whole World Of which Delphian Oracle for so I have found it your judgement doth need no Commentary and therefore Sir I will commit you with it to the best of all securities Gods dear love remaining Your Friend as much at command as any of longer date H. WOTTON POSTSCRIPT Sir I have expresly sent this my Foot-boy to prevent your departure without some acknowledgement from me of the receit of your obliging Letter having my self through some business I know not how neglected the ordinary conveyance In any part where I shall understand you fixed I shall be glad and diligent to entertain you with Home-Novelties even for some fomentation of our friendship too soon interrupted in the Cradle Right Honourable MAster Nicholas Pey through whose hands all my businesses did pass both in my former employments here and now hath betray'd your Honour unto me in some things that you would desire out of this Country which if he had not done he had betray'd me For I have long wished nothing more then some occasion to serve you and though this be a kind of intrusion to insert my self in