United States or Andorra ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


For eight years after Sir Henry Wotton's going into Italy, he stood very high in the King's esteem, but at last, lost his favour for some time, by an accident too singular to be here omitted.

Upon Sir Henry Wotton's coming a second time to Venice, he was employed as embassador to several of the German princes, and to the Emperor Ferdinando II. and this embassy to these princes was to incline them to equitable measures, for the restoration of the Queen of Bohemia, and her descendants, to their patrimonial inheritance of the Palatinate.

Lord Roos became a papist. Wotton's own nephew, Pickering, had been converted in Spain, on his death-bed, although he had been, according to the Jesuit records, "most tenacious of the corrupt religion which from his tender youth he had imbibed."

SIR P. Not to strangers, For those be they you must converse with most; Others I would not know, sir, but at distance, So as I still might be a saver in them: You shall have tricks eke passed upon you hourly. And then, for your religion, profess none, But wonder at the diversity of all." Sir Henry Wotton's letter to Milton must not be left out of account of Jacobean advice to travellers.

Coventry to the Temple, and thence I to the Six Clerks' office, and discoursed with my Attorney and Solicitor, and he and I to Mr. Turner, who puts me in great fear that I shall not get retayned again against Tom Trice; which troubles me. Thence, it being night, homewards, and called at Wotton's and tried some shoes, but he had none to fit me.

I read several, and very good ones they were, and better, I think, than ever I made when I was a boy, and in rolls as long and longer than the whole Hall, by much. Here is a picture of Venice hung up given, and a monument made of Sir H. Wotton's giving it to the College.

Between Sir Thomas Wyat and the Wotton's family, there had been a long intimacy, and Sir Thomas had really won Mr. Wotton over to his interest, and had he not been prevented by imprisonment, he afterwards declared that he would have joined his friend in the insurrection, and in all probability would have fallen a sacrifice to the Queen's resentment, and the votaries of the Spanish match.

Here we parted and I to Mr. Wotton's, and with him to an alehouse and drank while he told me a great many stories of comedies that he had formerly seen acted, and the names of the principal actors, and gave me a very good account of it. Thence to Whitehall, where I met with Luellin and in the clerk's chamber wrote a letter to my Lord. So home and to bed.

Up, and to my office, there to set my journal for all the last week, and so by water to Westminster to the Exchequer, and thence to the Swan, and there drank and did baiser la fille there, and so to the New Exchange and paid for some things, and so to Hercules Pillars, and there dined all alone, while I sent my shoe to have the heel fastened at Wotton's, and thence to White Hall to the Treasury chamber, where did a little business, and thence to the Duke of York's playhouse and there met my wife and Deb. and Mary Mercer and Batelier, where also W. Hewer was, and saw "Hamlet," which we have not seen this year before, or more; and mightily pleased with it; but, above all, with Betterton, the best part I believe, that ever man acted.

Here I staid and supped and so home, there being Joyce Norton there and Ch. Glascock. Going home I called at Wotton's and took home a piece of cheese. At home Mr. Sheply sat with me a little while, and so we all to bed. This news and my Lord's great kindness makes me very cheerful within. I pray God make me thankful.