Carol Chillington Rutter

In 1604 the English diplomat Henry Wotton (1568-1639) made a mistake which threatened to ruin his career. Travelling through Germany en route to his new job as ambassador in Venice, he provided an entry for a friend’s autograph book characterising the diplomat as ‘an honest man sent to lie abroad for the sake of his country’. The problem was that the Latin into which Wotton had translated the quip lacked the ambiguity of English, and merely suggested that an ambassador was dishonest. show more It came back to haunt him when it was cited in a scurrilous attack upon James I by the Catholic polemicist Caspar Schoppe in 1611. Wotton was forced to make both a private and a public apology, and the episode has defined his reputation ever since. This is unfortunate because, as Carol Chillington Rutter makes clear in this vivid biography, he merits closer scrutiny.

Such a re-evaluation is timely given the recent revival of interest in diplomatic history. Central to this ‘new diplomatic history’ is the desire to know more about its characters: to recover their backgrounds, connections, and attitudes (or ‘mental worlds’), and to develop a rounded picture of ambassadorial life, rather than examine only formal negotiations. Wotton provides a wonderful case study, and an opportunity to reflect upon the possibility that the 17th century witnessed crucial developments in the art of diplomacy.

Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/lying-abroad-carol-chillington-rutte...

Jason Peacey is Professor of Early Modern British History at UCL. show less