Wotton and His Worlds: Spying, Science and Venetian Intrigues (review)

Sir Henry Wotton was one of the multi-talented political figures whose careers spanned the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Gerald Curzon rightly calls him one of the "new men" of his time. He was of gentry rather than aristocratic origins, received a university education at Oxford, acquired practical experience by traveling abroad, and worked for the monarchy in hopes of advancement to high office and material success. These hopes were only partially fulfilled. He served as James VI and I's ambassador to Venice three times between 1604 and 1623, headed diplomatic missions to Savoy and Vienna, and was a key figure in the carrying out of the king's foreign policy. On the other hand, he never became secretary of state, did not always receive the salary owed him, and was once, late in life, arrested for debt. Among his other achievements is that he wrote poems that are still anthologized and the first book in English on the aesthetics of architecture. He ended his career as Provost of Eton, one of the most prominent English schools. Izaak Walton, who admired him greatly, was his first biographer (1670). Logan Pearsall Smith published his substantial Life and Lettersof Sir Henry Wotton in two volumes in 1907. But Wotton has been strangely neglected since Smith's time. Curzon, using a variety of printed sources, attempts successfully to bring him to life for the general reader and to show the significance of his career.

Curzon is not a professional historian, as the back cover of his book acknowledges, but a neuroscientist who served as the archivist and historian of the International Society for Neurochemistry. He learned of Wotton through investigating how the poet John Donne could have learned so quickly of Galileo's astronomical discoveries and their significance. Two works of Donne's, Ignatius His Conclave and An Anatomy of the World, both published in 1611, refer to Galileo's epoch-making observations and theories, which had first been announced in Siderius Nuncius (The Messenger of theStars), published in Venice in 1610. Donne's "And new philosophy calls all in doubt" is often used as a description of the effect of the scientific approach of Galileo. Curzon shows that Wotton sent a copy of Galileo's book to England on the very day the book appeared in Venice. In a covering letter to Sir Robert Cecil, the king's leading minister, he said: "I send herewith unto his Majesty the strangest piece of news (as I may justly call it) that he hath ever yet received from any part of the world." Wotton said of Galileo: "So as upon the whole subject he hath first overthrown all former astronomy" (p. 146). Curzon argues that his copy reached the hands of Donne, a supporter of the king in the Oath of Allegiance controversy, soon after it arrived in London. Curzon is perceptive in explaining the connections among the "new" in Venetian culture in Wotton's time there. These innovations included Monteverdi's Vespers of the Blessed Virgin (1610), Paolo Sarpi's political and theological defense of Venice against the papacy in the time of the Interdict (1606-07), and the art and architecture of the city. Galileo, of course, taught at the University of Padua, in the Venetian territories on the mainland. Curzon also writes skillfully about the rivalry for influence in northern Italy by France and the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs, a rivalry that lay behind the crisis involving Venice and the papacy. He describes vividly the flight to England of Marco Antonio de Dominis, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Spalato (Split), a move that Wotton encouraged and helped to plan. De Dominis, who ultimately returned to the Roman Catholic obedience, only to die...