seal. Wherein I have just confidence in your majesty's grace, since your very laws do restore them that have been any ways prejudiced in servicio regis. Your Majesty's Long devoted Poor Servant, H. WOTTON." In April 1623, the Provostship of Eton became vacant by the death of Thomas Murray. Williams, the Lord Keeper, notices this event in a letter to the Duke of Buckingham, his master, in the following terms," Mr. Murray the provost of Eton, is now dead: the place stayed by the fellows and myself until your lordship's pleasure be known. Whomsoever your lordship shall name I shall like of, though it be Sir William Becker, though this provostship never descended so low. The king named to me yesterday morning, Sir Albertus Morton, Sir Dudley Carlton, and Sir Robert Ayton, our late Queen's secretary. But in my opinion, though he named him last, his majesty inclined to this Ayton most. It will rest wholly upon your lordship to name the man. It is somewhat necessary to be a good scholar, but more that he be a good husband, and a careful manager, and a stayed man, which no man can be that is so much indebted as the Lord of St. Albans."*-The lord of St. Albans was the famous Bacon. The all-powerful Buckingham, to whom the sycophant prelate addressed himself, paid little attention to his intimation of the royal inclinations. Our Kentish courtier, who * Bacon's Works, Vol. 3, page 636, as quoted by Dr. Zouch. selected well his objects of worship, had gained the influence of the favourite, and by his command he was instituted to the Provostship July 26th, 1624.He did not however obtain this valuable presentation without some sacrifice. Walton tells us, "by means of the interest of all his friends, and quitting the King of his promised reversionary offices, and a piece of honest policy, which I have not time to relate, he got the grant from his majesty." The value of this Provostship in the reign of James the First, is uncertain. Its value a century before is fixed by the following anecdote :-"Sir Thomas Wyatt one day told the King, that he had found out a living of one hundred pounds in the year more than enough, and prayed him to bestow it on him. Truly, said the King, we have no such in England.-Yes, Sir, said Sir Thomas Wyatt, the Provostship of Eton, where a man has his diet, his lodging, his horse-meat, his servant's wages, his riding charges, and one hundred pound besides."*-It is not to be wondered at that a situation so admirably suited to a retiring statesman, should be eagerly coveted. However well qualified Sir Henry Wotton might have been for his new office in point of scholarship, he certainly was deficient in what the Lord Keeper deemed the more necessary qualifications: he had not displayed the conduct of a "" good husband" in his own private affairs, and though perhaps not so much embarrassed as the ex-chancellor, yet he was, at the time of his appointment, oppressed with debts of long standing. The * Lloyd's State Worthies-p. 79. annuity derived from his father's will he had before disposed of to his brother, the Baron,-and he had expended more than the income derived from his state employments, in generous living, and indulging in his fondness for the fine arts. When he took possession of his apartments in the College of Eton, he was actually without the means of furnishing them. There appears at this time to have been arrears of money due to him the from exchequer, and he was compelled to exeriall the interest he had at court, to obtain a payment of £500 to defray his temporary expences. What the exact nature of these arrears was, does not satisfactorily appear; whether portions of established salary unpaid, or claims of remuneration for extraordinary expences incurred during his state employments. Both James the First and his successor, were, it is well known, constantly necessitous, but it is too much to assert, without clear proofs, that either of them would suffer an old and faithful servant to sue in vain for claims justly due to him. It is most probable, that the arrears sought to be obtained by Sir Henry Wotton were of a disputable nature, and might have been the payment of debts incurred by him in his public capacity, where his established salary did not equal his expences. Dr. Zouch, in a note appended to his edition of Walton's lives, has quoted the following passage from the Strafford letters :-"Sir Henry Wotton is at this time under an arrest for three hundred pounds, upon execution, and lies by it. He was taken coming from the Lord Treasurer's, soliciting a debt of four thousand pounds due to him from the King."-The correctness of this assertion may be doubted. In a petition presented to the King in 1628, Sir Henry Wotton gives the following account of his services and claims.—" 1 served the King your father, of most blessed memory, from the time he sent for me, at the beginning of his reign, out of France, twenty years, that is, almost now a third part of my life, in ordinary and extraordinary employments abroad. I had many comfortable letters of his contentment, or at least, of his gracious toleration of my poor endeavours; and I had under his royal hand, two hopes of reversion. The first, a moiety of a six clerk's place in Chancery. The next of the office of the Rolls itself. The first of these I was forced to yield to Sir William Beecher, upon the Jate Duke of Buckingham's former engagement to him by promise, even after your majesty had been pleased to intercede for me with your said ever blessed father. And that was as much in value as my Provostship were worth at a market. The other, of the reversion of the Rolls, I surrendered to the said Duke, upon his own very instant motion, though with serious pro ́mise, upon his honour, that he would procure me some equivalent recompence, I could likewise remember your majesty, the losses I have sustained abroad, by taking up moneys for my urgent use, at more than twenty in the hundred: by casualty of fire, to the damage of near four hundred pounds in my particular; by the raising of moneys in Germany, whereby my small allowance when I was sent to the Emperor's court, fell short five hundred pounds; and other ways." He goes on to beg some portion of the profits derived from the office of the Rolls, "towards the discharge of such debts as he had contracted in public services, yet remaining upon interest;" and the "next good Deanery that shall be vacant by death or remove." An indirect censure is passed in this document upon the conduct of his good lord and patron, Buckingham; but nothing is said of the bargain concluded when he acquired the Provostship; which appears to have been given him as an equivalent to the offices he had been promised, and conditionally, that he should on such appointment resign his claim to them: this is expressly mentioned by his biographer. If a debt of several thousand pounds had been due to him, it is most probable it would have been included in his statement of his claims upon the King, but nothing of the kind occurs. What he requests of the King, he "humbly begs," to use his own words, from his "royal equity," and his "very compassion." If arrears of salary had been due to him, he might have demanded it of his justice. Whatever may have been the nature of his claims, it is certain that a pension of £200 a year was settled upon him immediately after his petition was presented; and this pension was increased to £500 two years afterwards. This augmentation was made in a very handsome and delicate manner; it was connected with a compliment paid to his literary attainments by the king, and was expressly assigned to him to enable him to compose the ancient history of England, and to bestow £100 upon the amanuenses and clerks necessary to be employed in the work. Upon the whole, there are good reasons to believe that Sir Henry Wotton had as little cause to complain of the ingratitude of princes, as most men who have devoted their lives to their service. His employment abroad was of his own selection; and it might probably, with prudent * *Acta Regia-p. 815. |