management, have been as profitable to him as it certainly was pleasant. He chose his own time of retirement and in a few months after his return home, he obtained an appointment in every respect suited to his habits, and adapted for his wants. In addition to this he received by successive grants, the pensions above noticed.

When he had been Provost of Eton three years, Sir Henry Wotton, from scruples of conscience, entered into holy orders, which was not strictly required of him, as the office had been previously held by laymen, though considered an ecclesiastical benefice, and under the jurisdiction of a Bishop. It is most probable that Sir Henry had private views in assuming the clerical, stole; we have seen that he petitioned the King for the "next good Deanery," and it is likely that he aimed at annexing other church preferment to his situation of Provost. In this he was however disappointed.

When established in his Provostship, Sir Henry Wotton might have assumed the philosopher bidden adieu to the cares of the world, and enjoyed in perfection the otium cum dignitate so much the object in perspective, of all enterprising men. But he was oppressed with debts, which harassed his mind, and destroyed his independence. He had been too long engaged in politics to withdraw his attention entirely from the arena of the state; and his time of life, and growing infirmities, checked his ardour in the several literary projections in which he at different times indulged.

Sir Henry Wotton enjoyed the Provostship of Eton fifteen years, and died in November, 1639, in the 72nd year of his age. His will, which bears date two years before his death, is curious: "concerning which,"

says Walton, a doubt still remains, whether it discovered more holy wit, or conscionable policy. But there is no doubt, that his chief design was a christian endeavour that his debts might be satisfied." In this will, he bequeathed legacies of pictures and other valuables to the King, Queen, and the Prince their son; and to the Archbishop Laud aud Bishop Juxon, each a valuable picture. Earnestly requesting the prelates, that they would intercede with the King, to procure an order that his creditors should be satisfied out of his

arrears due in the Exchequer." It is satisfactory to be told by Walton, that his honest desires were accomplished.

The whimsical epitaph which he selected for his monumental stone, hardly deserves notice. It is neither original, elegant, nor just, and exhibits the declining faculties of old age.*

a

Sir Henry Wotton was, to use his own words, “ courtier in dangerous times,"-dangerous for honest independence, sound integrity, and dignified conduct. The king he served was a weak vain man, who expected and as far as he could extorted, from all his agents, unconditional submission; who ruled as he thought by divine right, but was himself governed by worthless favourites and abject parasites; who escaped from being a tyrant, by being in his nature a coward. To James however, more than to any king that ever reigned over it, England is indebted, and to his pusillanimity, or if it be a more decent term, his pacific disposition, it owes the improved constitution of government it now

* Hic jacet hujus sententiæ primus author. DISPUTANDI PRURITUS ECCLESIARUM SCABIES.-Nomen alias quære.

enjoys. The genius of liberty to which his regal creed at first gave birth, passed its infancy unmolested and attained an unnatural growth, not by the nurture he afforded it, but by his forbearance. He well knew, and his coward nature trembled at the presence of the giant infant, but his fears forbade him from crushing it when yet feeble and incapable of resistance, by the weight of arbitrary power, and it throve vigorously in privacy and retirement. During his reign occasion was wanting to call forth its strength; in that of his successor it was displayed with energy ill-directed, and all the rashness of headstrong youth; but it had now attained the vigour

*

*The different character of the times in the reign of Elizabeth, and in that of James, was never better drawn than by Clarendon, in his reply to Sir Henry Wotton's parallel between the Earl of Essex and the Duke of Buckingham. Of the reign of Elizabeth, he remarks—

"Twas an ingenuous uninquisitive time, when all the pas sions and affections of the people were lapped up in such an innocent and humble obedience, that there was never the least contestation nor capitulation with the Queen, nor, though she very frequently consulted with her subjects, any further rea sons urged of her actions, than her own will."

In the reign of James, on the contrary:

"Twas a busy querulous forward time, so much degenerated from the purity of the former, that the people, under pretence of reformation, with some petulant discourses of liberty, which their great impostors scattered amongst them, like false glasses to multiply their fears, extended their enquiries even into the chamber and private actions of the King himself. "Twas strange to see how men afflicted themselves to find out calamities and mischiefs, whilst they borrowed the name of some great person to scandalise the state they lived in. A general disorder throughout the whole body of the commonwealth ; nay, the vital part perishing, the laws violated by the judges, religion prophaned by the prelates, heresies crept into the church, and countenanced; and yet all this shall be quickly rectified without so much as being beholden to the King, or consulting with the clergy."

of manhood, it acquired wisdom by experience, and succeeding tyrants strove with its might in vain. A successful courtier under such a king, must be of pliant fibre, and such an one was our Kentish knight. He seems to have placed before himself as an example for imitation, his great uncle the political Dean of Canterbury; like him he sought employment as a state agent at a foreign court, and he aimed at procuring the same reward that his ancestor obtained; "a good Deanery," Sir Henry Wotton was a faithful and an honest servant, and being by good fortune removed from the contami nation of the court during the greater part of his active life, he escaped from the constant exercise of that meanness which would have been required to preserve a station there. Assuredly he wanted the firmness of principle that would have taught him to despise an elevation so obtained. Some allowance must be made for his personal necessities which appear at all times to have been pressing, and to the embarrassed state of his circumstances we may in charity attribute much of that adulation which in the latter part of his life he lavished with an unsparing hand upon every man that attained power, whether Villiers or Bacon, or Williams or Weston. His object in panegyrising such men as these is at all times visible, probably for its attainment at the moment too visible; he sought arrears due to him, from the government, reward for services, and the means of extricating himself from debt. With similar intentions it is to be feared, though not so openly. avowed, he addressed to Charles the 1st, upon his return from Scotland in 1633, a personal panegyric couched in the most flattering terms and embellished, with the graces of Roman language..

This was the weak and faulty part of Wotton's character; in private life, and in the circle of his friends few men appear to more advantage. His loyal and almost affectionate attachment to his mistress the unfortunate Queen of Bohemia, whom he always addressed by the title of "Most resplendent queen, even in the darkness of fortune." The real affection he bore for his nephew Sir Albertus Morton, for Sir Edmund Bacon and his lady, for honest Nicholas Pey, for his Chaplain, for whom he procured from the king a handsome provision; for his domestic friend Nicholas Oudart, whom he informs us he had "trained from a child," and who resided with him until his death, and last, though perhaps not least, for worthy Isaac Walton are all honourable to his memory, and displayed in many delightful traits scattered throughout his published correspondence. It was our intention to have made copious extracts from these parts of the "Reliquiæ," but our limits warn us to forbear.

The literary remains of Sir Henry Wotton are not so important as might be expected from the situations he held, and the opportunities he enjoyed for observation during a long and active life. He does not seem to have set much value upon the efforts of his pen, if a judgment may be formed from what he ventured to commit to the press; the only work he printed being "The Elements of Architecture." This was published in 1624 and was most probably written during his residence at Venice. Being the first work of its kind in England, it attracted some attention on its appearance, but has long since been thrown into the shade by succeeding efforts of more value. It is reprinted by Walton in the Reliquæ. His political work, entitled