Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/81

  ‘Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics.’ The poem on the queen of Bohemia was probably written at the end of 1619. It was first printed (with music) in 1624 in Est's sixth set of books, and again in ‘Wit's Recreations,’ 1640, in ‘Wit's Interpreter,’ 1671, and with the second part of ‘Cantus Songs and Fancies,’ 1682. It has been constantly imitated and new stanzas have been written to it. It appears with some variations among Montrose's poems (, Life of Montrose, 1858, Appendix, p. xl). The ‘Character of a Happy Life’ was printed in 1614 with the fifth edition of Overbury's ‘Wife.’ At Dulwich a manuscript copy in the hand of Ben Jonson may be dated 1616; this was printed somewhat inaccurately by Collier in his ‘Memoirs of Alleyn,’ p. 53 (, Dulwich Manuscripts, pp. 59–60). According to the poet Drummond, Jonson had by heart Wotton's ‘Verses of a Happie Lyfe’ (, Conversations, p. 8). The resemblance between this poem of Wotton and a similar poem in ‘Geistliche und weltliche Geschichte’ by a German resident in England, Georg Rudolph Weckerlin [q. v.], does not justify a charge of plagiarism against Wotton, whose poem seems to have been in circulation before Weckerlin wrote (cf. Notes and Queries, 1st ser. ix. 420). ‘A Dialogue’ in verse on a topic of love ‘between Sir Henry Wotton and Mr. Donne’ is given in Donne's ‘Poems’ (1635), but the poem is ascribed to other pens in other collections of the period (cf., Poems, ed. Chambers, i. 79, 232). Dyce edited Wotton's poems for the Percy Society in 1843, and they were included in Hannah's ‘Poems of Sir Walter Raleigh and other Courtly Poets,’ 1870, new ed. 1885, pp. 87 seq.

Sir Henry Wotton should be distinguished from Henry Wotton, son of Edward Wotton [q. v.], and also from Henry Wotton or Wooton, son of John Wooton of North Tudenham, and brother of one Wooton of Tudenham, Norfolk, whose second wife was Mary or Anne, daughter of George Nevill, lord Bergavenny, and widow of Thomas Fiennes, lord Dacre of the South (, Norfolk, i. 205). This Henry Wotton was responsible for the collection of stories from Italian romances, interspersed with verse, entitled: ‘A Courtlie Controversie of Cupids Cautels containing five Tragicall Historyes by three Gentlemen and two Gentlewomen, translated out of French by Hen. Wotton,’ London, 1578, 4to. It was dedicated to the translator's sister-in-law, the Lady Dacre of the South. Two copies, both imperfect, are known—one is in the Bodleian Library, and the other, formerly belonging successively to George Steevens and to Corser, is now in the British Museum (cf., Censuraa Lit., i. 158).

[The main authority is Izaak Walton's Life, which was originally prefixed to Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, 1651, and was included in Walton's collected ‘Lives,’ 1670, and all subsequent editions. The antiquary, William Fulman, prepared a sketch of Wotton's life, which is now in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, with some of Wotton's letters. Bliss seems to have used Fulman's work in his edition of Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ii. 644. See also Dr. A. W. Ward's Biographical Sketch of the Life of Wotton, 1899; Donne's Letters, 1651; Gosse's Life of Donne, 1899; Masson's Milton; Harwood's Alumni Etonienses, pp. 14 seq.; Maxwell Lyte's History of Eton; Cust's History of Eton, 1899; Spedding's Bacon's Life and Letters, iii. 10; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1603–1639.]  WOTTON, NICHOLAS (1497?–1567), secretary of state, diplomatist, and dean of Canterbury and York, was the fourth child of Sir Robert Wotton of Boughton Malherbe, Kent, by his wife Anne, daughter of Sir Henry Belknap. Sir Edward Wotton (1489–1551) [q. v.] was his eldest brother. Nicholas is often said to have been born in 1495, but in his epitaph he is described as ‘fere septuagenarius.’ According to Fuller he was educated at Oxford, where he graduated in civil and canon law, but no record of his matriculation or graduation has been found in the registers or in Wood. Many years later Wotton referred (Letters and Papers, xv. 581) to his having lived at Perugia, and probably he studied at some Italian university. During his stay in Italy he was admitted a brother of the hospital of St. Thomas at Rome, and apparently he witnessed the sack of Rome in 1527. He certainly graduated not only doctor of civil and canon law, but of divinity as well, and in 1536 he was officially described as ‘sacræ theologiæ, juris ecclesiastici et civilis professor’ (ib. xi. 60). He was ‘clericus’ before 9 Dec. 1517, when he was presented by his father to the family living of Boughton Malherbe, and on 6 Sept. 1518 he was presented by Archbishop Warham to the vicarage of Sutton Valence. Wotton, however, preferred the legal to the spiritual duties of his order, and having attracted the notice of Tunstall, bishop of London, was appointed the bishop's official. In this capacity he attended the proceedings of the legatine court which sat in London in June and July 1529 to try the divorce question (, Henry VIII, p. 279), and in June 1530 he