Wotton, Sir Henry 1568-1639
English traveller, diplomat, scholar and poet

Born in Boughton Malherbe, Kent, he was educated at Winchester and Oxford, then spent the next seven years in Bavaria, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and France. On his return he became the confidant of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. Following Essex's downfall (1601), Wotton went to France, then to Italy, and was sent by Ferdinand, Duke of Florence, on a secret mission to James VI of Scotland. James later knighted him and sent him as ambassador to Venice (1604), then to the German princes and Emperor Ferdinand II. He returned to England a poor man in 1624, was made Provost of Eton, and took orders. His tracts, letters, and so on were collected as Reliquiae Wottonianae (1651, prefixed by Izaak Walton's Life of Wotton). One of his few poems is 'The Character of a Happy Life'. It was Wotton who described an ambassador as an honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of his country.