The Jacobean Diplomatic Service

Abstract

Legatus,' wrote Sir Henry Wotton in what is quite possibly the only pun in English that was first written in Latin, est vir bonus peregre missus ad mentiendum Reipublicae causa. This rather cynical epigram did not amuse King James I, not because he had no sense of humor, but because it was quoted in the book of a religious controversialist in order to show that Protestants were as equivocating as Jesuits, and Wotton's career suffered accordingly.2 Wotton's difficulties, however, were not all owing to his wit; he was not a particularly effective ambassador. In this he did not resemble most of James's professional diplomatists, a group of overworked and underpaid men who lived comfortless, penurious, tedious, occasionally dangerous lives in their country's service and who often received meager enough rewards at the end. It is frequently overlooked that as a group the Jacobean ambassadors were thoroughly professional, more so than those of some subsequent periods.3 Most of them received their training either from one of the Secretaries of State or, more usually, by serving in a subordinate capacity to some senior ambassador, and they made a career of government service. When Lord Edward Wotton, Henry's older half brother, went on a special mission to France in i6io he expressed his pleasure to the resident ambassador in France, Sir Thomas Edmondes, that they would be working together, since Edmondes was bred as it were in the same school with me under Sir Fra. Walsingham.4 A sampling of some fifteen or so professional diplomatists of the first decade and a half of James's reign who are noted in The Dictionary of National Biography shows that most of them came from landed families of no great importance. There were exceptions: the