XVII.—Letters from Sir Henry Wotton to King James I. and others.—Communicated by C. Knight Watson, Esq. M.A. Secretary, in a Letter to A. W. Franks, Esq. Director

Extract

The following Letters need but little introduction on my part. They may be left to tell their own story, and may be useful to illustrate or to correct the history of the period to which they belong. I am indebted to one who is most conversant with that history for the headings prefixed, within brackets, to such of the letters as seemed to him to require some such elucidation. For the letters themselves, and for permission to transcribe them, the Society is under obligations to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and in particular to the courtesy of the Rev. Frederick Chalker, who filled the office of Librarian at that college in the year 1861, when I was allowed access to the valuable collection under his charge. The volume containing them is thus designated in Coxe's Catalogus Codicum MSS. qui in Collegiis Aulisque Oxoniensibus hodie adservantur. Pars. ii. 160, “cccxviij. Codex Chartaceus, in folio, ff. 229, sec. xvij. Ricardi Davis de Sandford Collectaneorum volumen secundum.” The series of Wotton Letters is immediately preceded by one from Henry VIII. to Secretary Knight. So far as I can ascertain, the letters here published are unedited. Their number might easily have been increased from other quarters, and especially from the Collection of State Papers in the Record Office. The present specimens, however, go far to cover the ground occupied by the writer in his diplomatic capacity at Venice and the Hague, while the last of them gives us a glimpse into his private life.