England’s Lost Renaissance? Anglo-Venetian Politics between the Household of Prince Henry and the Court of James VI & I

Abstract

This article traces an intellectual and religious network that connected the circles of King James VI and I and his son, Henry, prince of Wales. Henry — who died aged only eighteen — has often been presented as a lost Protestant hero, whose anti-papal militarism radically differed from James’s conciliatory pro-Spanish stance. Concentrating on James and Henry’s relations with Venice, this article draws on documents from England and Italy to demonstrate that the ideals and aspirations of the court circles of the royal father and son were not as different as traditionally thought. Through close engagement with Venetian art and political culture, Henry and his household helped to support and further — rather than undermine — James’s foreign policy. This fresh analysis of James and Henry’s circles offers a new perspective on the role of the Harington family as major players in Jacobean politics. It also sheds light on the significant role of clergymen in court life.

Notes

1 Roy Strong, Henry, Prince of Wales, and England’s Lost Renaissance (London, 1986).

2 Ibid., p. 224. For a still influential account of Henry’s militarism, see J.W. Williamson’s The Myth of the Conqueror (New York, 1978). The pacific interpretation of James receives fullest expression in W.B. Patterson, James VI & I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge, 1997), though Patterson makes little mention of Henry.

3 Several historians borrow the term ‘reversionary interest’ from eighteenth-century English politics to describe the role of Henry’s household: John Morrill, The Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor and Stuart Britain (Oxford, 2000), p. 243; Pauline Croft, ‘Robert Cecil and the Early Jacobean Court’, in L. Levy Peck (ed.), The Mental World of the Jacobean Court (Cambridge, 2005), p. 140; Kevin Sharpe, Image Wars: Kings and Commonwealths in England, 1603–1660 (New Haven CT, 2010), p. 113.

4 Aysha Pollnitz, ‘Humanism and the Education of Henry, Prince of Wales', in Timothy Wilks (ed.), Prince Henry Revived (London, 2007), pp. 22–64; Malcolm Smuts, ‘Prince Henry and his World’, in Catherine MacLeod, Malcolm Smuts and Timothy Wilks (eds), The Lost Prince (London, 2012), pp. 19-31; Aysha Pollnitz, Princely Education in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 2015), pp. 314-77.

5 Kenneth Fincham, Prelate as Pastor: The Episcopate of James I (Oxford, 1990), pp. 35-67.

6 Recent overviews include Stefano Villani, Making Italy Anglican (Oxford, 2022), pp. 23-59; Eloise Davies, ‘Reformed but not Converted: Paolo Sarpi, the English Mission in Venice and Conceptions of Religious Change’, Historical Research 95 (2022), pp. 334-47.

7 Gaetano Cozzi, Paolo Sarpi tra Venezia e l’Europa (Turin, 1974); Filippo De Vivo, ‘Francia e Inghilterra di fronte all’Interdetto di Venezia’, in Marie Viallon (ed.), Paolo Sarpi (Paris, 2010), pp. 163-88.

8 Johann P. Sommerville, ‘Papalist Political Thought and the Controversy over the Jacobean Oath of Allegiance,’ in Ethan H. Shagan (ed.), Catholics and the ‘Protestant Nation’ (Manchester, 2005), pp. 162-84.

9 Paolo Sarpi, A full and satisfactorie answer to the late unadvised bull (London, 1606); Paolo Sarpi, Considerationi sopra le censure … contra la Serenissima Republica di Venetia (Venice, 1606); Paolo Sarpi, An apology or apologiticall answere (London, 1607); Paolo Sarpi, Apologia per le oppositioni fatte dall’illustrissimo … Signor cardinale Bellarminio alli trattati … di Giovanni Gersoni (Venice, 1606); De Vivo, ‘Francia e Inghilterra’, p. 184.

10 See Stefania Tutino, Empire of Souls (Oxford, 2010), esp. Ch. 3.

11 For instance, Robert Bellarmine, Risposta del Card. Bellarmino a due libretti (Rome, 1606), pp. 59-62; Sarpi, Apology, pp. 7-9.

12 Sarpi, Apology, p. 12; ‘rendendo il Pontifice Sommo Monarca & temporale, & li Prencipi meno, che vasalli’, Sarpi, Apologia, p. 6r.

13 Sarpi, Apology, p. 20; ‘non vi è piu Principe alcuno, se non il Papa’, Sarpi, Apologia, p. 10v.

14 See, for instance, Archivio di Stato di Venezia [hereafter ASV], Senato, Dispacci degli ambasciatori e residenti, Inghilterra, f. 6, cc. 124v-5r, dispatch of the Venetian ambassador, 11/21 November 1607; Horatio F. Brown (ed.), Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice: Volume 11, 1607–1610 (London, 1904) [hereafter CSPV XI].

15 British Library [hereafter BL], Lansdowne MS 90, fols. 106r-10v and fols. 133r-8v; E.S. Shuckburgh, Two Biographies of William Bedell (Cambridge, 1902), pp. 226-51.

16 BL, Lansdowne MS 90, fol. 135r-v, Bedell to Newton, Venice, [January 1609]; Shuckburgh, Two Biographies, pp. 244-5; Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS. It., XI, 175 [= 6518], cc. 153r-94r, Fulgenzio Micanzio, sermon notes.

17 For the BCP, see Villani, Making Italy Anglican, pp. 30-4; for Sandys, see Davies, ‘Reformed but not Converted’, pp. 338-40; Eloise Davies, ‘Sarpi, Micanzio and Bedell: A New Source for the Anglo-Venetian Encounter at Santa Maria dei Servi’, in Eveline Baseggio, Tiziana Franco and Luca Molà (eds), La chiesa di Santa Maria dei Servi e la comunità veneziana dei Servi di Maria (secoli XIV–XIX) (Rome, 2023), pp. 349-63.

18 For the development of Henry’s household (which had a distinct existence long before Henry’s investiture as Prince of Wales in June 1610), see Michael Ullyot, ‘James’s Reception and Henry’s Receptivity: Reading Basilicon Doron after 1603’, in Prince Henry Revived, p. 70.

19 Pollnitz, Princely Education, pp. 324-8.

20 Ibid., p. 326. For Newton’s intellectual formation, see David McKitterick, ‘Tutor to Prince Henry: Adam Newton and an International Court in the Making’, in Richard Kirwan and Sophie Mullins (eds), Specialist Markets in the Early Modern Book World (Leiden, 2015), pp. 312-30.

21 Pollnitz, Princely Education, pp. 327-8.

22 A.G.R. Smith, ‘Hickes, Sir Michael’, ODNB.

23 BL, Lansdowne MS 90, fol. 61r, Salisbury to Adam Newton, Kensington, 24 August 1607. It is not clear to which of Robert Persons’s works Salisbury is referring; it may be A treatise tending to mitigation towardes Catholike-subjectes in England ([Saint-Omer], 1607).

24 BL, Lansdowne MS 90, fols. 106r-10v and 133r-8v, Bedell to Newton, Venice, 1/11 January 1608 and [January 1609]; Wotton to Murray, 14/24 April 1608, BL, Lansdowne MS 90, fol. 139r.

25 Horatio F. Brown (ed.), Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice: Volume 10, 1603–1607 (London, 1900) [hereafter CSPV X], 21 November/1 December 1603; original in ASV, Senato, Dispacci degli ambasciatori e residenti, Inghilterra, f. 3.

26 CSPV X, 18/28 September 1606; original in ASV, Senato, Dispacci degli ambasciatori e residenti, Inghilterra, f. 5.

27 BL, Lansdowne MS 90, fol. 179r, Wotton to Henry, Venice, 1/11 January 1608.

28 BL, Harley MS 7007, fol. 185r-v, Wotton to Henry, Venice, 14/24 April 1608.

29 See Strong, Lost Renaissance, pp. 59-88.

30 Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge [hereafter TCC], MS R.10.9, insert, Donà to Henry, Venice, 1/11 August 1608, Cambridge; BL, Harley MS 7007, fol. 202r-v, Wotton to Henry, Venice, 1[/11?] August 1608; TCC, MS R.10.9, insert, Donà to Henry, Venice, 25 September/5 October 1609.

31 Robert Hill, ‘Art and Patronage: Sir Henry Wotton and the Venetian Embassy 1604–1624’, in Marika Keblusek and Badeloch Vera Noldus (eds), Double Agents. Cultural and Political Brokerage in Early Modern Europe (Leiden, 2011), pp. 32-7.

32 Queen Anna also supported Wotton, in an apparently joint effort to block the rise of Robert Carr, see Chamberlain to Carleton, London, 27 May 1612 and 17 June 1612, in Norman Egbert McClure (ed.), The Letters of John Chamberlain (Philadelphia PA, 1939), vol. I, pp. 350-52 and pp. 356-60; Hill, ‘Art and Patronage’, pp. 40-1; Jemma Field, Anna of Denmark (Manchester, 2022), pp. 25-6.

33 Sharpe, Image Wars, p. 108.

34 Henry Wotton, ‘A Philosphicall Surveigh of Education’, in Reliquiae Wottonianae (London, 1651), pp. 309-35.

35 For English writing on the relationship between princely education and good counsel, see Joanne Paul, Counsel and Command in Early Modern English Thought (Cambridge, 2020).

36 E.g. BL, Lansdowne MS 90, fol. 56r-v, Salisbury and Suffolk to Newton, 12 August 1607, featuring a postscript to the Prince.

37 For a time, the Haringtons hoped to marry Sir John Harington to Salisbury’s daughter, see Simon Healy, ‘Harington, Sir John’, in Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris (eds), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1604–1629 (Cambridge, 2010). In this period, Salisbury’s religious policy was generally in keeping with the goals of Reformed conformists like the Haringtons, see Pauline Croft, ‘The Religion of Robert Cecil’, Historical Journal 34 (2008), pp. 775-85.

38 Lesley Lawson, Out of the Shadows: The Life of Lucy, Countess of Bedford (London, 2007), pp. 37-45.

39 Alexandra Gajda, The Earl of Essex and Late Elizabethan Political Culture (Oxford, 2012) pp. 37-40; Nadine Akkerman, ‘The Goddess of the Household: The Masquing Politics of Lucy Harington-Russell, Countess of Bedford’, in Nadinne Akkerman and Birgit Houben (eds), The Politics of Female Households. Ladies-in-Waiting across Early Modern Europe (Leiden, 2014), p. 291.

40 Jan Broadway, ‘Harington, John, First Baron Harington of Exton’, ODNB; Ian Grimble, The Harington Family (New York, 1957), p. 144.

41 Anon., The true narration of the entertainment of his Royall Maiestie (London, 1603), sig. E3r.

42 John Stow and Edmond Howes, The annales, or a generall chronicle of England (London, 1615), p. 823.

43 Akkerman, ‘Goddess of the Household’, pp. 290-2; Lawson, Out of the shadows, pp. 46-7.

44 For these arrangements, see Nadine Akkerman, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Hearts (Oxford, 2021), pp. 34-47; Rachel Hammersley, James Harrington: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford, 2019), pp. 31-5.

45 Marion O’Connor, ‘“Silvesta was my instrument ordained”?: Lucy Harington Russell, Third Countess of Bedford, as Family Marriage Broker’, Sidney Journal 34 (2016), pp. 49-50.

46 For a helpful overview of Harington’s travels, see Healy, ‘Harington’.

47 Edward Chaney and Timothy Wilks, The Jacobean Grand Tour (London, 2014), esp. pp. 25-58 and 229-45.

48 Thomas Birch, The Life of Henry, Prince of Wales (London, 1760), p. 132.

49 ‘nobil lingua’, BL, MS Lansdowne 91, fol. 37r, Harington to Henry, Venice, [Lent] 1609.

50 ‘l’occhio dritto’, ASV, Collegio, Esposizioni Principi, r. 20, 3/13 January 1609, cc. 143v-4r; CSPV XI.

51 ‘ci par vederlo qui presente, quando ci mostrò quel bellissimo ritratto del Serenissimo Principe, et che ci considerò, ch’era molto più bello l’interno dell’esterno. Non si meravigliano, che l’Altezza del Principe lo ami, lo merita’, ASV, Collegio, Esposizioni Principi, r. 21, 13/23 November 1609, c. 120v; CSPV XI.

52 ‘la frutta de le sane prediche d’un padre Fulgenzio’, ‘di predicare l’Evangelio’, BL, MS Lansdowne 91, fol. 37r, Harington to Henry, Venice, [Lent] 1609. Harington adds that Micanzio preached ‘the word of God purely and without mixture’ (‘la parolle de dieu purement et sans mescolance’) in BL, Harley MS 7007, fol. 319r, Harington to Henry, Venice, [1609].

53 The National Archives at Kew [hereafter TNA], SP 99/5, fol. 234r, anonymous letter, Venice, 24 March/3 April 1609.

54 ‘un muro di carta e tropo debole per guardare alcune secrete d’importanza’, BL, MS Lansdowne 91, fol. 35r, Harington to Henry, Venice, [21 April/]1 May 1609.

55 Healy, ‘Harington’.

56 Richard Stock, The churches lamentation for the losse of the godly (London, 1614), p. 82.

57 Muniment Room, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge [hereafter Sidney Sussex], MS 45; partially printed in M.M. Knappen (ed.), Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries (Chicago, 1933), pp.103-23. See also Alan Stewart, The Oxford History of Life-writing (Oxford, 2018), vol. II, p. 143.

58 Sidney Sussex, Ward MS I, fol. 48r, Ward to Tovey, Wells, 23 July[/2 August] 1608; Sidney Sussex, Ward MS I, fol. 55r, Ward to Harington, Cambridge, [1608]. John Tovey was the father of Nathaniel Tovey, tutor to John Milton. See Gordon Campbell, ‘Nathaniel Tovey: Milton’s Second Tutor’, Milton Quarterly 21 (October 1987), pp. 81-90.

59 Birch, Life of Henry, pp. 84–5 and 454–5; Peter McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge, 1998), p. 187.

60 Joseph Hall, Epistles, the first volume (London, 1608).

61 Sidney Sussex, Ward MS I, fols. 51r–4r, Ward to Bedell, [London?], [October 1608].

62 Jeffrey Alan Miller, ‘The Earliest Known Draft of the King James Bible: Samuel Ward’s Draft of 1 Esdras and Wisdom 3–4’, in Mordechai Feingold (ed.), Labourers in the Vineyard of the Lord (Leiden, 2018), p. 258; Sidney Sussex, MS Ward I, fols. 64v–8r, Ward to Harvey, [Cambridge?], 12 February 1609.

63 O’Connor, ‘Silvesta’, pp. 49-50.

64 Pollnitz, Princely Education, p. 328.

65 Emmanuel’s statues were designed to ensure preachers left Cambridge for parish roles. Fellows had to leave either within a year of proceeding DD or, if they did not proceed DD, the year in which they could have. See Sarah Bendall, Christopher Brooke and Patrick Collinson, A History of Emmanuel College (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 26-7.

66 ‘serenissimi & optimi indolis principis Henrici dignissimo Tutore’, Sidney Sussex, Ward MS I, fol. 51r, Ward to Bedell, [London?], [October 1608].

67 Ibid.; Mary Anne Everett Green (ed.), Calendar of State Papers Domestic: James I, 1603–1610 (London, 1857), 21 March 1608.

68 Sidney Sussex, Ward MS I, fol. 51r, Ward to Bedell, [London?], [October 1608].

69 ‘literis & nuntio a Rege missis’, ibid.

70 ‘congruit cum stylo illius libri quem contra Venetos conscripsit’, ibid.

71 TNA, SP 14/35, fol. 88r, Montagu to Salisbury, Wells, 15 August 1608.

72 [Robert Persons], Judgment of a Catholicke English-Man ([Saint Omer], 1608); [Robert Bellarmine], Matthaei Torti presbyteri, & theologi Papiensis responsio ad librum inscriptum, triplici nodo, triplex cuneus ([Saint Omer], 1608); [James VI & I], Triplici nodo, triplex cuneus. Or An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance (London, 1607). For Montagu’s role, see David Harris Wilson, ‘James I and His Literary Assistants’, Huntington Library Quarterly 8 (1944), p. 42.

73 ‘va preparando la risposta volendo fra pochissimi giorni retrarsi con i suoi Teologi a Roiston’, ASV, Senato, Dispacci degli ambasciatori e residenti, Inghilterra, f. 7, c. 38r, dispatch of the Venetian ambassador, 29 September/9 October 1608; CSPV XI.

74 Sidney Sussex, Ward MS I, fol. 51r, Ward to Bedell, [London?], [October 1608]. See also Chamberlain to Carleton, London, 21 October 1608, Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. I, p. 264; Johan P. Sommerville, ‘Jacobean Political Thought and the Controversy over the Oath of Allegiance’, PhD thesis, University of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 61-2.

75 Ibid., p. 57; James VI & I, An apologie … with a premonition (London, 1609).

76 James VI & I, Apologie … with a premonition, sig. t3v. For Venice, see also pp. 20, 89 and 106.

77 Cesare Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici XII (Mainz, 1608), anno 1177, no. 86, col. 891.

78 [Bellarmine], Responsio ad librum, pp. 85-8; [Persons], Judgement, p. 100.

79 ‘Uterq[ue] Antapologus secutus Baronium ad an: 1177. Tom XII. negat Historiam Alexandri III. collum Frederici Barbarosae Imperatoris pede comprimentis. Hoc cum narrant Historici factum fuisse Venetiis prae foribus Templi D. Marci, des opum, rogo, ut diligenter inquirantur Annales Venetorum, qui proculdubio clarissime hoc testantur, ni multum fallor. Nomina Authorum & loci quaeso notentur, & si fieri possit verba ipsa, et proximis literis huc mittantur’, Sidney Sussex, Ward MS I, fol. 51r-2r, Ward to Bedell, [London?], [October 1608].

80 James VI & I, Apologie … with a premonition, sig. t2r.

81 Pietro Giustiniani, Rerum Venetarum ab urbe condita historia (Venice, 1560); Giacomo Filippo Foresti da Bergamo, Supplementum chronicarum (Venice, 1483); Girolamo Bardi, Vittoria navale ottenuta dalla Republica Venetiana (Venice, 1584), pp. 133-49. Bardi (c. 1544–94) was a Florentine friar chosen to advise on the redecoration of the Doge’s Palace after the fire of 1577, see Eric Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago, 1981), pp. 378-81; William M. Griswold and Linda Wolk-Simon (eds), Sixteenth-century Italian Drawings in New York Collections (New York, 1994), pp. 94-6; Filippo de Vivo, ‘Historical Justifications of Venetian Power in the Adriatic’, Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003), pp. 167-9.

82 ‘poutrait d’Allessandre iii ce mettant le pied su le col de l’Empereur avec toute les circumstances ne plus ne moins justement comme il est en la sale du grand conseil en Venice’, BL, Harley MS 7007, fol. 319v, Harington to Henry, Venice, [1609]. I have been unable to trace the enclosed image.

83 ‘parceque ce comportement du pape est niè per le dernier livre sous le nom de Tortus contre le serment d’allegeance’, ‘monument purpatual’, ibid.

84 Oxford, Bodleian Library [hereafter Bodl.], Tanner MS 75, fol. 131r, Bedell to Ward, Venice, 26 December [1608]/5 January [1609].

85 [Bellarmine], Responsio ad librum, pp. 96-8.

86 Bodl., Tanner MS 75, fol. 131r, Bedell to Ward, Venice, 26 December [1608]/5 January [1609]. Bedell also adds he is sending Ward another book, which ‘may be of some use in the Answer of Bellarmine’.

87 James VI & I, Apologie … with a premonition, pp. 33-4.

88 Sargent Bush and Carl J. Rasmussen, The Library of Emmanuel College (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 23-4.

89 See further Eloise Davies, ‘Beyond the Jesuit College: The Role of Cambridge’s ‘Puritan’ Colleges in European Politics and Diplomacy, 1603–1625’, in Alex Beeton, Eli P. Bernstein, Emily Kent and René Winkler (eds), The Mind is its Own Place? Early Modern Intellectual History in an Institutional Context, special issue History of Universities 36:2 (2023), pp. 25-46.

90 See especially Hugh Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans (London, 1987), pp. 49 and 82­-3; for Trevor-Roper, Ward compares unfavourably to his fellow Reformed conformist James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh, who cultivated an international scholarly network (pp. 120-65).

91 ‘Nudius-tertius’, Sidney Sussex, Ward MS I, fol. 52r, Ward to Bedell, [London?], [October 1608].

92 Sidney Sussex, Ward MS I, fols. 32-3, Sarpi to the abbot of St Medard [François Hotman], 22 July 1608, copy; original Italian held at Bibliothèque nationale de France, Dupuy 766, fol. 43r; printed in Paolo Sarpi, Lettres italiennes (Paris, 2017), M. Viallon (ed.), pp. 212-15. For a discussion of other copies of this letter, which continued to be circulated throughout the seventeenth century (many of them in England), see Paolo Sarpi, Lettere ai Gallicani (Wiesbaden, 1961), ed. Boris Ulianich, pp. CXC-CXCIV.

93 ‘hinc coniicio famam P. Pauli valde celebrem esse apud Gallos’, Sidney Sussex, Ward MS I, fol. 52r, Ward to Bedell, [London?], [October 1608].

94 Bodl., Tanner MS 74, fol. 8r, Alliston to Ward, Paris, 9 April 1612; John and Jogn Archibald Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses (Cambridge, 1922), vol. I part I, p. 22; Thomas Wharton Jones (ed.), A True Relation of the Life and Death of the Right Reverend Father in God William Bedell (London, 1872), p. 99.

95 ‘Thomas Lorkin (d. 1625)’, in W.A.J. Archbold and Sarah Bakewell, ‘Lorkin, Thomas (c. 1528–1591), ODNB.

96 Newton married Puckering’s sister, Catherine, in 1605; Andrew Thrush, ‘Puckering, Sir Thomas, 1st Bt.’, History of Parliament.

97 Sidney Sussex, Ward MS I, fol. 48r, Ward to Tovey, Wells, 23 July 1608. For Leschassier, see Thierry Amalou, ‘Jacques Leschassier, Senlis et les libertés de l’Eglise gallicane (1607)’, Revue de l’histoire des religions 3 (2009), pp. 445-66.

98 ‘Doleo certe quod tam subito sopitae erant controversiae inter papam & Remp[ublicam] Veneta[rum]’, Sidney Sussex, Ward MS I, fol. 52r, Ward to Bedell, [London?], [October 1608].

99 ‘quotquot Latine extant’, ibid.

100 Fracis Oakley, ‘Complexities of Context: Gerson, Bellarmine, Sarpi, Richer, and the Venetian Interdict of 1606–1607’, The Catholic Historical Review 82 (July 1996), p. 388.

101 Sidney Sussex, Ward MS I, fol. 52r, Ward to Bedell, [London?], [October 1608].

102 Emmanuel College Library, shelf marks 329.3.10-12; Bush and Rasmussen, Library of Emmanuel, p. 24. The inscription on the flyleaf of the first volume reads ‘Hunc librum Collegio Emanuelis D[onum] D[edit] Guilielmus Beadle eiusdem Colleg: socius} Octob 4 Anno 1621’.

103 As Chaney and Wilks note, Donà plays on the (Latin-rooted) Italian pun Angelo/Anglo [Angel/Englishman], Jacobean Grand Tour, p. 175 and 278 n. 41.

104 ‘veramente … pare un Angelo’, ‘continuerà in lui la medesima buona volontà, et dispositione verso la Repubblica nostra’, ASV, Collegio, Esposizioni Principi, r. 22, 27 November/7 December 1610, c. 119v; Horatio F. Brown (ed.), Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice: Volume 12, 1610–1613 (London, 1905) [hereafter CSPV XII].

105 CSPV XII 3 December 1612 and 7 December 1612. Relations between Venice and the papacy had been improved by the death of the anti-papal Donà the preceding July.

106 For Bedford’s financial difficulties following the death of her father and brother, see Helen Payne, ‘Russell [née Harington], Lucy, Countess of Bedford’, ODNB.

107 Diego Pirillo, The Refugee-Diplomat: Venice, England, and the Reformation (Ithaca, 2018), pp. 118-41; Maria Luisa De Rinaldis, Giacomo Castelvetro, Renaissance Translator (Lecce, 2003); Paola Ottolenghi, Giacopo Castelvetro esule Modenese nell’Inghilterra di Shakespeare (Pisa, 1982); K.T. Butler, ‘Giacomo Castelvetro 1546–1616’, Italian Studies 5 (1950), pp. 1-42.

108 Butler, ‘Castelvetro’, pp. 14 and 16-17.

109 Pirillo, Refugee-Diplomat, pp. 118-41.

110 TNA, SP 85/3, fol. 74r, Bedell to Castelvetro, Padua, 24 January/3 February 1611.

111 Butler, ‘Castelvetro’, pp. 26-31; BL, Harley MS 3344, fol. 103r, Giacomo Castelvetro, Album amicorum.

112 Butler, ‘Castelvetro’, p. 38. They passed to Newton’s son, Sir Henry Puckering, who left them to Trinity College, Cambridge, see Jan Broadway, ‘Puckering [formerly Newton], Sir Henry, third baronet’, ODNB.

113 TCC, MS R.3.44a, MS R.3.44b and MS R.14.19, Giacomo Castelvetro, ‘Brieve Raccontro di tutte le Radici, di tutte l’Herbe e di tutti i Frutti che crudi o cotti in Italia si mangiano’; translated as Jane Grigson (ed.), Giacomo Castelvetro: The fruit and Vegetables of Italy (London, 1989).

114 Wotton and Bedell too had horticultural interests, see Henry Wotton, The Elements of Architecture (London, 1624); Bodl., Tanner MS 74, fol. 164v, Bedell to Ward, Bury St Edmunds, 17 February 1619; Two Biographies, p. 258.

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Eloise Davies

Eloise Davies

Eloise Davies is Departmental Lecturer in Political Theory at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford and Tutor in Politics at Oriel College. She holds a BA, MPhil and PhD in History from the University of Cambridge. Her PhD thesis (2021) explored political and religious links between England and Venice in the seventeenth century. She has also published on seventeenth-century English blasphemy legislation (English Historical Review) and the political thought of the medieval saint and mystic Catherine of Siena (Renaissance Studies). She was awarded the Society for Court Studies Essay Prize in 2022.