CHAPTER III.

THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

Sir Henry Wotton-Lord Essex-Waller the Poet-Provost Allestree-Boyle-Henry More -Dr. Hammond-Bishop Pearson-Bishop Sherlock-Sir Robert Walpole-Lord Bolingbroke Sir William Wyndham-Lord Townshend-John Hales-Bishops Barrow, Fleetwood, Hare, and Monck-Rous-Bard-Mason-Ascham-Collins-Mr. Pepys at Eton.

SIR HENRY WOTTON.

ETON has never seen within her walls a more accomplished gentleman, in the best sense of the word, or a more judicious ruler, than she received in 1624, when Sir Henry Wotton became her Provost. He was born in 1568, at Bocton Hall in Kent, the family mansion of his father, Sir Robert Wotton. He was the youngest of four sons, and as such was destined to receive but a moderate income from his father; but he also received from him, what is far more valuable than all pecuniary endowments, an excellent education, worthy of the talents on which it was bestowed. His boyhood was passed at Winchester, and thence he removed, first, to New College and subsequently to Queen's College, Oxford. He was highly distinguished at Oxford for his proficiency in all academical studies; while he, at the same time, made himself a master of modern languages; and he also displayed, on several occasions, the elegance of his genius in the lighter departments of literature. On his father's death, in 1589, he left England, and made the tour of France, Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries; and on his return, in 1596, he was chosen as Secretary to Queen Elizabeth's favourite the Earl of Essex. the fall of Essex, Wotton fearing to be implicated in the ruin of his patron, fled into France, whence he again went to Italy, and took up his abode at Florence. Soon after his arrival there, the Grand Duke of Tuscany having discovered, from some intercepted letters, a plot to poison James, King of Scotland, employed Wotton

to go to Scotland secretly, and apprise that prince of his danger. Wotton assumed the name and guise of an Italian; executed his commission with great skill, and returned to Florence after having left a strong impression on the Scottish King of his learning, zeal, and diplomatic ability. On James's accession to the English throne, he sent for Wotton to court, gave him the honour of knighthood, and after pronouncing a high eulogium on him, declared his intention thenceforth to employ him as an ambassador.

Accordingly, during the greater part of James's reign, Sir Henry represented his sovereign abroad. His first mission was to Venice, where he formed a close intimacy with the celebrated Paolo Sarpi, and had peculiar advantages of watching the refinements and devices of Italian policy during the contest that was then being carried on between the Roman See and the Venetians; in which the sagacious firmness of the most subtle of Aristocracies was pitted against the craft and intrigue of the Vatican.

Wotton returned from Venice in 1610, when he suddenly found his favour at court unexpectedly clouded. This arose from the discovery of a sentence which he had written at Augsburg, in his outward journey to Venice. As we possess a biography of Sir Henry, from the pen of his friend Izaak Walton, it is best in this and other parts of Sir Henry's career to adopt the quaint but expressive language of the old king of the anglers. Walton

says:

"At his [Sir Henry's] first going Embassadour 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 ingenuousnesse (those that are esteemed the vertuosi of that nation), with whom he passing an evening in merriment 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), 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 Embassadour, in these very words:

"Legatus est vir bonus peregrè missus ad mentiendum Reipublicæ causâ.”

Walton tries to represent this as an unlucky Latin translation

of an English pun. Walton says that Sir Henry "could have been content that his Latin could have been thus Englished

"An Ambassadour is an honest man sent to LIE abroad for the good of his country.

"But the word lie (being the hinge upon which the conceit was to turn) was not so expressed in Latin 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 Jasper Scioppius, a Romanist, a man with a restless spirit and a malicious pen, who in his books against King James prints this as a principle of that religion professed by the King and his Embassadour, 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 Wotton's.

"This coming to the knowledge of King James, he apprehended it to be such an oversight, such a weakness or worse in Sir Henry Wotton, as caused the King to express much wrath against him; and this caused Sir Henry Wotton to write two apologies, one to Velserus (ne of the chiefs of Augusta) in the Universal language, which he caused to be printed and given and scattered in the most remarkable places both of Germany and Italy, as an antidote against the venemous book of Scioppius; and another apology to King James, which were so ingenious, so clear, so choycely eloquent, that his Majesty (who was a pure judge of it) could not forbear at the receit of it to declare publickly, That Sir Henry Wotton had commuted sufficiently for a greater offence.

66 And now, as broken bones well set become stronger, so Sir Henry Wotton did not only recover but was much more confirmed in his Majestie's estimation and favour than formerly he had been.”

It has been truly remarked, that old Izaak must be mistaken in supposing that Sir Henry in this sentence only intended a poor English pun, and forgot that the Latin translation failed to convey his joke. Wotton, we may be sure, thought in Latin, when he wrote the words; and his jest was not without some sharp

earnestness.

Indeed, Sir Henry's opinion of the position of an Ambassador may be gathered from another anecdote which Walton relates of him. "A friend of Sir Henry Wotton's, being desirous of the employment of an Embassadour came to Eton, and requested from

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him some experimental rules for his prudent and safe carriage in his negociations; to whom he smilingly gave this for an infallible aphorism :

"That to be in safety to himself and serviceable to his countrey, he should alwayes and on 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 yourself, if you shall ever be called to any account; and 'twill also put your adversaries (who will still hunt counter) to a losse in all their disquisitions and undertakings.”

Wotton, indeed, seems to have thought that all travellers, though not diplomatists, required some degree of Machiavellian skill. Milton, when about to leave England for his travels in France and Italy, obtained an introduction to Sir Henry, and received from him, among other directions, the celebrated precept of prudence"I pensieri stretti, ed il viso sciolto."

After his first Venetian embassage, Wotton was employed by James in missions to the United Provinces, the Duke of Savoy, to the Emperor, and other German princes on the affairs of the unfortunate Elector Palatine. He was also twice again sent ambassador to Venice; and his final return from "that pleasant country's land" was not till James' death in 1624. Wotton thus passed nearly twenty years as a diplomatist in foreign courts, during which, as well as during his former travels

Πολλῶν ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νοὸν ἔγνω.

Wotton, like Ulysses, thus gained deep insight into the human mind, and also into the varying manners and conventional standards of right and wrong, which prevail among different men, and which the Latin poet indicates, when he translates the Homeric line by

"Qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes."

This knowledge produced in Wotton, not the misanthropy which it too often has generated in men of a less kindly temperament, but a charitable spirit in dealing with each individual phase of human weakness, and a truly catholic love of goodness and of honesty, wherever found, and by whomsoever displayed. The patience, which he eminently possessed, was sorely tried during the first year after his final return to England. Large sums

were due to him from the State, for his diplomatic expenses; he had been forced to sell his little patrimony; and the sordid cares of daily and domestic want were now pressing hard on him in the decline of life. In this strait he received from the Crown the Provostship of Eton, when it fell vacant in July, 1625. His feelings on obtaining it may best be expressed in the language of Walton, who, doubtless, had often heard them from Sir Henry's own lips.

"It pleased God, that in this juncture of time, the Provostship of his Majestie's Colledge of Eton became void by the death of Thomas Murray, for which there were (as the place deserved) many earnest and powerful suitors to the king. Sir Henry, who had for many years (like Sisiphus) rolled the restless stone of a state imployment, and 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 it. 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 settlement for 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. To him Sir Henry Wotton wrote, to use all his interest at Court to procure five hundred pounds of his arrears (for less would not settle him in the Colledge) and the want of it wrinkled his face with care; ('twas his own expression :) and that being procured, he should the next day after, find him in his Colledge, and 'Invidiæ remedium,' writ over his study door.

"This money, being part of his arrears, was by his own, and the help of Nicholas Pey's interest in Court, quickly procured him; and he as 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 harbour to a sea-faring man after a tempestuous voyage; where by the bounty of the pious Founder, his very food and raiment were plentifully provided in kind; where he was freed