Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/287

 1920 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 279 also on our domestic history during the period of Charles I's personal government. The Venetian ambassador during most of the time was Giovanni Soranzo, who succeeded Aloise Contarini in July 1629 and was succeeded himself by Vincenzo Gussoni in February 1632. No relation of Soranzo's has survived, but his dispatches are very full and very good. England made peace with France at Susa in April 1629 through the mediation of Contarini and Zorzi (the Venetian ambassador to France). The great difficulty to the negotiators was to prevent Charles I from endeavouring to include in the treaty stipulations in favour of the Huguenots (pp. 2, 17, 91). This was completed by a treaty about trade and navigation, made in March 1632, by which Canada was restored to France (p. 601). Cottington's embassy to Spain and the progress of the negotiations, which led to the treaty with that power in October 1630, are related at length. The negotiation was preceded by a secret mission, conducted by Rubens in the summer of 1629, ' Rubens ', said Sir Thomas Roe to the Venetian ambassador in the Netherlands, was a very able man, agile and full of resource, and marvellously well equipped to conduct any great affair. He had known him before and they were familiar at Antwerp, where he had grown so rich by his profession that he appeared everywhere, not like a painter, but a great cavalier with a very stately train of servants, horses, coaches, liveries and so forth. He said that the painter had two great advantages ; great wealth and much astuteness (p. 130). It is odd that Mr. Hinds, who gives an account of the mission of Rubens in his preface, does not refer to the volume of Original Papers illustrative of the Life of Sir P. P. Rubens as an Artist and a Diplomatist preserved in H.M. State Paper Office, which were collected and edited by W. N. Sains- bury in 1859. However, Mr. Hinds, in his preface, analyses the history of the foreign relations of England during the period very clearly and fully, bringing out with special care the growing alienation of England and Holland caused by the pro-Spanish policy of Charles I, and the king's disregard of his treaty obligations to the Dutch. ' The Venetian ambassa- dors ', he pertinently observes, ' do not seem to have been aware of the deeper treachery of which Charles was guilty towards his allies, or that he had gone to the length of suggesting an alliance with Spain against them if they should refuse his offers of mediation.' ^ Disputes about the herring fisheries, the cloth trade, and the use of English ports by Spanish privateers led to growing exasperation in Holland, and Joachimi, the Dutch ambas- sador, told Soranzo in 1631 that a continuance of the ill treatment and injustice they were receiving might drive the United Provinces to war with England (p. 495). During this period, according to the Venetians, Weston, the treasurer, was the inspirer of the king's foreign policy. They term him ' the sole polestar of the king's wishes and counsels ', and continually enlarge on his power and on the little influence which the two secretaries of State, Sir John Coke and Lord Dorchester, exercised in questions of foreign policy (pp. 74, 142, 151). The king they declared ' by nature desires to be ruled '. . . ' he has no confidence in himself and seems born to be always dependent on the advice of one individual ' (pp. 121, 160). The ^ See GardineT, History of England, vii. 112.