Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/77

 so,’ was an infrequent correspondent (, Donne, i. 170). Wotton contrived to offend Gasper Scioppius, a Roman catholic controversialist who had been a fellow student at Altdorf. Scioppius visited Venice in 1607, and was then preparing a confutation of James I's theology. In 1611 he issued a volume of scurrilous abuse of the king, entitled ‘Ecclesiasticus.’ Incidentally he alluded to an anecdote respecting Wotton which involved the English envoy in disaster. It appears that on his journey to Italy in 1604 Wotton stayed at Augsburg, where Christopher Flecamore or Fleckmore, a merchant, invited him to inscribe his name in his album. Wotton complied by writing the sentence ‘Legatus est vir bonus peregre missus ad mentiendum Reipublicæ causâ,’ ‘which he would have been content should have been thus englished: An ambassador is an honest man, sent to lie abroad for the good of his country’. Scioppius, in noticing this episode, charged James I in his printed diatribe with sending a confessed liar to represent him abroad (Ecclesiasticus, cap. iv.)

About the same date as Scioppius's attack on James I was published (1611), Wotton obtained leave to revisit England. He desired a change of employment. He had already received a grant of the second vacancy among the six clerks (18 March 1610–11; Cal. State Papers, 1617–18, p. 17). While at home at leisure in the following autumn, he paid much court to Prince Henry and to the Princess Elizabeth; the princess inspired him with an enthusiastic esteem, and he celebrated her charms in beautiful verse. Early in 1612 he went to France on diplomatic business, and wrote to Donne from Amiens. On Lord Salisbury's death on 24 May 1612 he was a candidate for the vacant post of secretary to the king. The queen and Prince Henry encouraged his pretensions; but Wotton had at court many enemies who doubted his sincerity. Chamberlain, who usually called him in his correspondence ‘Signor Fabritio,’ declared in October 1612 ‘my good old friend Fabritio will never leave his old trade of being fabler, or, as the devil is, father of lies.’

Finally, Wotton's chances of preferment were ruined by the king's discovery of the contemptuous definition of an ambassador's function which was assigned him in Scioppius's book. James invited explanations of the indiscreet jest. Wotton told the king that the affair was ‘a merriment,’ but he was warned to take it seriously (cf., Progresses, ii. 468–70; Cal. State Papers, 1611–18, pp. 154, 157, 162), and he deemed it prudent to prepare two apologies. One, privately addressed to the king, is not extant, but James admitted that it ‘sufficiently commuted for a greater offence.’ The other in Latin was inscribed to Marcus Walser, a burgomaster of Augsburg and patron of Scioppius; it was dated from London 1612, and is said to have been published then, although it is now only accessible in the ‘Reliquiæ Wottonianæ.’ It was a vituperative assault on Scioppius, who retorted in a tract which was entitled ‘Legatus Latro’ (published under the pseudonym of Oporinus Gravinius at Ingolstadt in 1615). A burlesque trial of Scioppius for his insolence was introduced into the prologue of Ruggles's ‘Ignoramus,’ when that piece was performed in the king's presence at Cambridge on 6 May 1616.

Through 1613 Wotton persistently sought official employment in vain, and his obsequious bearing diminished his reputation (cf., Progresses, ii. 66; cf. , Memoirs, iii. 468). In the spring of 1614, still disappointed of office, he entered the House of Commons as M.P. for Appleby. He stoutly supported the king's claim to lay impositions on merchandise without appeal to parliament. The right belonged, he argued, to hereditary, although not to elective, monarchs. In the autumn his subservience was rewarded by an invitation to resume diplomatic work abroad. In August 1614 he was sent to The Hague to negotiate with the French ambassador in the Netherlands concerning the inheritance of the duchies of Juliers, Cleves, and Berg, which was disputed by Wolfgang William, count palatine of Neuberg, and the elector of Brandenburg. By November 1614 the envoys contrived to bring about an arrangement on paper (the treaty of Xanten) between the claimants, whereby the disputed territories were provisionally divided between them; but the question was not settled, and the dispute contributed largely to the outbreak of the thirty years' war. Wotton also superintended the resumption of negotiations for the amalgamation of the Dutch and English East India companies, and for the settlement of disputes with Holland in regard to the Greenland fisheries; but the discussion on these points also proved abortive, and was broken off in April 1615. In the following autumn Wotton was at home, but he was sent again to Venice early next year, and he completed there a second uneventful term of three years' service. He mainly occupied himself in purchasing pictures and works of art for the king and Buckingham.

Wotton travelled home slowly through