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.

The brief life of Henry Frederick, prince of Wales is one of the great ‘what ifs’ of British royal history. What might have been had Henry not died in 1612, aged only eighteen? What if Henry, rather than his younger brother Charles, had succeeded his father James VI & I in 1625? Counterfactual speculation has always been a tantalising prospect, with the art historian Roy Strong going as far as to label Henry’s non-reign ‘England’s Lost Renaissance’. For Strong, Henry’s ambitions to become a champion of the Reformed cause in Europe meant that he — unlike his suspiciously Hispanophile father and popish brother — could promote and patronise European art without paving the way for accusations of partiality to Roman Catholicism. Might Henry’s inclination for a cultured but firmly anti-papal species of politics have effected a more successful fusion of European influence and domestic popularity? Strong thought it a real possibility.¹

Strong’s argument relies on a stark division between the militaristic Henry and his pacifically minded father, who ‘[stood] quite apart’ from Henry’s political and artistic programme, thus sowing the seeds of the mid-century Civil Wars, even before Charles came to the throne.² On this interpretation, Henry’s household became the focus of a ‘reversionary interest’, acting in opposition to James’s policies.³ In recent years, this narrative has been increasingly criticised for overstating the distance between the political stances of Henry’s household and James’s court. Aysha Pollnitz has established that the emphasis on the international Protestant cause seen in Henry’s education had its roots in decisions made by James, while Malcolm Smuts has unpicked the logic of James’s foreign policy, revealing that his vision for Europe was neither as naively irenic nor straightforwardly pro-Spanish as often assumed.⁴ The evidence presented here confirms and builds on this account, drawing on previously overlooked manuscript sources for the English attitudes to one of the major international crises of the day: the Venetian Interdict controversy of 1606.

The way Venetian anti-papal propaganda was brought to bear at court in the early years of James’s reign points to a close match between James and Henry’s stance on foreign policy. As we shall see, there was regular collaboration between the Venetian anti-papal party, Henry’s household and the Jacobean court throughout the early years of James’s reign. At the very moment that Venetian anti-papal propaganda was being sent to Henry, information from Venice was being inserted into James’s own polemic works. It was not only Henry, but James too, who was interested in Italian — and especially Venetian — affairs from the perspective of a broader Reformed cause.

Recognising these connections has various implications for our understanding of the Jacobean court. Firstly, tracing this network reveals the political importance of the Harington family. Discussions of factionalism in James’s reign often focus on Somerset and Buckingham, the best-known favourites. But the rise of the Harington family too is crucial for understanding court dynamics in James’s first decade in England. Secondly, and more broadly, the inclusion in this network of several clergymen suggests a need to pay greater attention to the relationship between Church and court in this period. Scholars have long recognised that the Jacobean episcopacy played a greater role in central politics than their Elizabethan predecessors, but figures lower down the clerical hierarchy — especially younger theologians based in university colleges — also made important contributions.⁵ Their role in elaborating and defending James’s anti-papal vision of the Royal Supremacy in both a domestic and international context awaits fuller recovery.

The Gunpowder Plot and the Venetian Interdict

The early years of James’s reign saw renewed cooperation between England and Venice.⁶ The catalyst for this development was the occurrence of two events which highlighted the threat that papal power posed to the rights of secular rulers, one in England and one in Venice. First, on 5 November 1605, came the discovery of the Catholic Gunpowder Plot to blow up King and Parliament. Then, in April 1606, the Pope declared an Interdict against Venice, banning religious services across Venetian territory. This was the culmination of a longer running dispute, which revolved around papal claims that Venetian laws were impinging on ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

In the months that followed, Venetian writers defended the Republic’s stance in a series of pamphlets read across Europe.⁷ The Venetian thinker with the greatest impact in England was the Servite friar and newly appointed state theologian, Paolo Sarpi. Coming so soon after the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, it is clear why the English were keen to learn from Sarpi’s ideas. Sarpi was writing to defend Venetian laws from papal interference; meanwhile, in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot, the Oath of Allegiance controversy saw King James condemn claims that the Pope could depose a monarch and demand that his Catholic subjects swear an Oath denying this doctrine.⁸ This shared anti-papal moment created a new sense of political and religious alignment between Venice and England.

Sarpi’s Interdict pamphlets were republished in London in English translation, having been sent to England (and probably translated) by James’s recently appointed ambassador to Venice, Sir Henry Wotton.⁹ Sarpi defended Venetian sovereignty as ‘absolute’ and argued that by placing Venice under Interdict, the papacy was impinging on the Republic’s sovereign rights. Sarpi was especially critical of the interpretation put forward by the Jesuit polemicist Robert Bellarmine, who claimed that the Pope possessed indirect temporal jurisdiction.¹⁰ This meant that in the normal course of events, all temporal jurisdiction belonged to the secular ruler. But, if the ruler acted in a manner contrary to religion, the Pope had the right to intervene, as souls were in danger.¹¹ For Bellarmine, this was exactly what had happened in Venice. Sarpi took issue with these claims, arguing that the logical consequence of Bellarmine’s doctrine was that ‘the Pope [became the] supreame temporall Monarch, and the Princes of the world lesse than his vassals’.¹² If, as Bellarmine suggested, the Pope exercised jurisdiction over all sins and was the judge of what constituted a sin, then the Pope could claim temporal power whenever he liked. This paved the way for a total extinction of princely power: as Sarpi summarised, ‘there [would be] no Prince but the Pope’.¹³ James saw the appeal of these arguments from an English perspective, drawing parallels between the papal plots against England and Venice in both his writing and conversation.¹⁴ Sarpi’s arguments had obvious applicability to English concerns about the papal deposing power, which could be rejected as another illegitimate seizure of secular authority.

The Interdict controversy had highlighted the potential for closer Anglo-Venetian cooperation. But it was only after the Interdict was lifted in April 1607 that Sarpi and his close associate, Fulgenzio Micanzio, started to meet representatives of the English embassy regularly. Between 1607 and 1610, William Bedell, Wotton’s Emmanuel-educated chaplain, regularly visited Sarpi and Micanzio at their shared home, the Servite convent, under the pretext of teaching them English. We have a detailed knowledge of these interactions thanks to two lengthy letters Bedell sent back to Adam Newton, the tutor to Prince Henry.¹⁵ Bedell introduced the Servites to various works of Reformed theology and helped Micanzio write a cycle of controversial anti-papal Lent sermons, delivered in the Church of San Lorenzo in spring 1609.¹⁶ The meetings also produced the first Italian translation of the Book of Common Prayer and an annotated Italian edition of Edwin Sandys’s Relation of the State of Religion, a travel account offering analysis of the various Churches of Europe.¹⁷

Venice and Prince Henry’s Education

During their time in Venice, Wotton and Bedell were in close contact with a wider network of individuals back in England who had a deep interest in Venetian affairs. As per the usual practice for diplomats, Wotton sent regular updates to both the King and his Secretary of State, Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury. Importantly, however, there was also a concerted effort to keep the young Prince Henry informed about developments in Venice. A broader circle helped with the diffusion of Venetian anti-papal polemic, bringing these ideas to bear on both James’s polemical efforts and Henry’s education.

Henry’s household was dominated by Reformed conformists, who subscribed to ceremonies stipulated in the Book of Common Prayer but also had strong sympathies for continental Reformed theology.¹⁸ This was a conscious decision by James, representing an attempt to put the principles of his Basilicon Doron into practice.¹⁹ While James had complained in that text about ‘Puritaines’ with a disdain equal to that he expressed for Roman Catholics, his objections were rooted in his conviction that both groups offered dangerous defences of the right to depose a king. James did not, therefore, object to individuals who held Reformed or Scottish Presbyterian sympathies, so long as they respected the Royal Supremacy. Adam Newton, the man James chose as Henry’s tutor, represented just this fusion: despite his sympathies with certain aspects of Presbyterianism, he was a staunch supporter of James’s royal powers.²⁰ During James’s early Scottish rule, and the first decade of his rule in England, Reformed conformists were often the most vociferous defenders of the Royal Supremacy against papal attack, an affinity clarified by the revelation of the Gunpowder Plot.²¹

Salisbury and Newton appear to have worked together to encourage the Prince to become a godly champion of the Reformed cause in Europe. Amongst the papers of Sir Michael Hickes, Salisbury’s secretary and a man of strong Reformed sympathies, we find a letter from Salisbury to Newton from 1607 in which the former had enclosed ‘a malicious libel … written by Persons the Jesuitt’.²² Salisbury expressed his belief that upon reading the tract, the Prince ‘shall find so little left to Monarchy by these Catholick distinctions as he will never beleave that any Prince is other than a servant, if that doctrine be mayntayned’.²³ Bedell’s letters to Newton about the religious situation in Venice are preserved in the same set of papers, as is a letter from Wotton to Sir David Murray, one of Henry’s Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, giving him and Newton a gift of the ‘very best’ Venetian treacle, a concoction thought to have medicinal properties, ‘made purposely with Balsam instead of the oyle of Nutmeggs which is the baser ingredient commonly taken to save charges’.²⁴

Wotton made a sustained effort to cultivate relations with the Prince, and to interest him in Venice. The Venetians had been careful to include Henry in communications from the start of the new reign, when James was presented with a letter from the Doge and Senate to the then nine-year-old Henry which he laughingly described as ‘bigger than the Prince’.²⁵ In 1606, the Venetian ambassador presented a selection of pamphlets defending Venice’s Interdict stance to Henry as well as James.²⁶ Within the next couple of years, largely thanks to Wotton’s efforts, the initially formal connection between Prince and Doge seems to have developed into genuine mutual interest. In January 1608, Wotton sent Henry a New Year’s gift, and took the excuse of a report that Henry had liked the gift to write again in April the same year.²⁷ This time, Wotton addressed political matters, telling Henry that he had informed the Doge of his particular interest in Venetian affairs. Wotton also sent news of recent marriages in the houses of Savoy and Tuscany, adding a light-hearted comment which looked forward to Henry’s own nuptials: ‘Fear not, Sir, There will be left for you a good wife I warrant you.’²⁸ Wotton himself had hopes of a Savoyard match for Henry, thus drawing Savoy — a Catholic dukedom, but one with concerns about Spanish hegemony — into an anti-papal and anti-Spanish alliance.²⁹ In August 1608, Doge Leonardo Donà sent Henry a letter, introducing the new Venetian ambassador, Marc’ Antonio Correr and, concurrently, Wotton wrote introducing Correr’s son, with a description of Venice’s leading families; later, the Doge wrote again, this time introducing the ambassador extraordinary Francesco Contarini.³⁰ As Wotton’s habit of sending gifts suggests, he was always keen to exploit his privileged access to the art and culture of Venice for political leverage. Venetian art offered particularly valuable opportunities for this: in 1610, Wotton helped Henry procure a large shipment, consisting of probably twenty paintings.³¹ It seems Wotton’s close attention paid off. Following the death of Salisbury in 1612, Henry was reportedly a strong supporter of Wotton’s (ultimately thwarted) hopes to succeed him as Secretary of State.³²

Wotton and other members of the Anglo-Venetian network looked to Henry as a future monarch who would be even more sympathetic to their diagnosis of European politics than James. But it is possible to overstate the extent to which Henry became the focus of a ‘reversionary interest’ in the years 1607–12. By the time of his death, Henry’s household had become ‘a semi-independent power base’, but to say, with Kevin Sharpe, that it ‘drew critics of the king’ pushes the point too far.³³ At this stage, James’s policy was still generally to the liking of the firmly anti-papalist and anti-Spanish Anglo-Venetian network, who, as we shall see, occupied important positions at James’s court, at the same time as looking to his successor. Nonetheless, there was certainly an effort to plan ahead and ensure that Henry would build on James’s successes. In later life, as Provost of Eton, Wotton started (but never finished) writing a treatise on education.³⁴ He and others in his circles thought carefully about the purposes of princely education, taking seriously the humanist commonplace that education was an important form of political counsel.³⁵ The Anglo-Venetian network successfully put this theory into practice in Henry’s formative years.

The Role of the Harington Family

The close connection between Salisbury and Newton, attested by Hickes’ papers, was reinforced by the fact that Salisbury’s son, William Cecil, was educated alongside the Prince. Salisbury was keen to ensure that the Prince grew up alongside others of the same age who could act as his future advisors, and he kept in close contact with Newton, Henry and his son.³⁶ But in the case of Henry’s Reformed education, it does not seem that Salisbury was the primary influence. Instead, it is better attributed to the freshly minted ascendancy of the Harington family, led by John Harington, first baron of Exton (1539/40–1613), with whom Salisbury was broadly allied in this period.³⁷

At the death of Elizabeth, the Haringtons were well placed to capitalise on the opportunities of the new reign, and they played an already strong hand with exceptional foresight and timing. The family’s reputation had been damaged by the Essex rising: Harington’s eldest daughter, Lucy, was married to Edward Russell, third earl of Bedford, who was fined and exiled from court for his role in the revolt.³⁸ For James, however, Essexian connections were no disadvantage; he had been cautiously receptive to Essex’s overtures in the lead up to 1601, welcoming the Earl’s emphasis on securing the Stuart succession, and proved eager to rehabilitate the Essex circle.³⁹ Harington, a distant cousin of James, invited the King to visit his Rutland estates during his journey from Scotland to London, an effective piece of manoeuvring which ensured the family quickly gained James’s favour.⁴⁰ James dined at Burley-on-the-Hill on 23 April, where Harington provided a ‘most Royall entertainment’. The following day, James took ‘great pleasure and leisure’ in hunting ‘live haires’ released from baskets with Harington’s ‘best hounds’.⁴¹ Meanwhile, the female members of the Harington family seized the opportunity to travel ‘voluntarily into Scotland, to attend her Majestie [James’s consort, Anna of Denmark] in her journey into England’.⁴² By setting out before Elizabeth’s funeral on 28 April, the Harington party outflanked the Privy Council’s official delegation of potential ladies-in-waiting, sent to meet Anna at Berwick-upon-Tweed. Lucy, countess of Bedford, was swiftly appointed Principal Lady of the Bedchamber, a role she held until Anna’s death in 1619.⁴³ Harington arranged for his son, Sir John Harington (1592–1614), to be educated alongside Prince Henry, while Harington himself was given charge of the education of Henry’s sister, Princess Elizabeth.⁴⁴ The Haringtons played a central role in shaping the circles around Henry (fig. 1). But, importantly, they achieved this by getting close to James.

Figure 1 Prince Henry with Sir John Harington in the Hunting Field, by Robert Peake the Elder, 1603

(The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York / Art Resource / Scala, Florence)

As an executor of the will of Frances Sidney, countess of Sussex, the elder Harington helped found Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge.⁴⁵ Thus, when his son had completed his education alongside the Prince, it not surprising to find that he was sent to study at Sidney for a year (1607–8), before setting out on a tour of Europe, including Venice.⁴⁶ The goal of Harington’s travels was twofold: to supplement his courtly education and to allow Prince Henry to travel by proxy. William Cecil, Viscount Cranborne, too, was encouraged by his father to travel to enhance his knowledge of languages and the world. The younger Cecil’s travels included his own stint in Venice, accompanied by his tutor, Sir John Finet, who was painted there by Domenico Tintoretto (fig. 2).⁴⁷ Salisbury, however, chided his son for not sending Henry letters as frequently as Harington.⁴⁸

Figure 2 John Finet, by Domenico Tintoretto, 1610–11

(Colnaghi)

Harington did indeed send regular letters back to the Prince throughout his travels, offering news and observations from the continent. Several of these letters were written in the ‘noble language’ of Italian, which it was important for both sender and recipient to practice.⁴⁹ Wotton presented Harington to the Doge in January 1609, describing him as Prince Henry’s ‘right eye’. Wotton and Harington also showed the Collegio a miniature of Prince Henry, which Harington had brought with him to Venice.⁵⁰ Later that year, when Wotton announced Harington’s departure, Donà recalled the meeting with fondness:

We seem to see him present here, as he was when he showed us that beautiful portrait of the Prince and told us that he was much more beautiful inside than outside. We do not wonder the Prince loves him; he deserves it.⁵¹

Harington’s time in Venice also coincided with Micanzio’s anti-papal sermons. He wrote to Henry midway through the cycle, expressing his eagerness to see ‘the fruit of the sound sermons of one Father Fulgenzio’ when he had completed his efforts ‘to preach the Gospel’.⁵² Another contemporary letter from Venice, seemingly written by one English Catholic to another, reported that Harington was ‘very great’ with ‘one Fulgentio, A schismaticall & calvinisticall precher’, further attesting to Harington’s admiration.⁵³

Harington’s tone throughout this correspondence was cautious and wary of interception; in one letter he asserts that he would write more, but ‘a wall of paper is too weak to protect any secrets of importance’.⁵⁴ Harington promised Henry a more detailed account on his return to England, keeping a journal (seemingly no longer extant) to discuss with the Prince.⁵⁵ According to Harington’s funeral sermon, he also wrote a regular diary for devotional purposes, setting down ‘how he had either offended or done good’ each day.⁵⁶ It may well have been Samuel Ward, a friend and correspondent of Bedell’s, and future master of Sidney Sussex, who encouraged Harington to take up the habit during his year in Cambridge: Ward famously kept a spiritual diary of his own in his youth.⁵⁷ We do not require the survival of either Harington’s travel or spiritual journal to see that political and religious interests were closely fused in Prince Henry’s godly network.

Samuel Ward and Jacobean Polemical Production

Ward certainly knew Harington during his time at Cambridge (although Ward was at that time still a fellow of Emmanuel, rather than Master of Sidney Sussex): his surviving papers include draft letters to Harington’s tutor, John Tovey, who accompanied him on his travels, and to Harington himself.⁵⁸ The Harington family had forged a close connection between Prince Henry’s circles and Cambridge’s ‘puritan’ colleges (Emmanuel, Sidney Sussex and Christ’s). Henry was not merely a passive recipient of these efforts to interest him in Reformed Cantabrigian theology: Joseph Hall, another Emmanuel theologian and friend of Ward and Bedell’s, was appointed Henry’s chaplain at the Prince’s personal request in 1607, after Henry was impressed by Hall’s Meditations and sermons.⁵⁹ In 1608, Hall published a volume of correspondence, which was dedicated to the Prince and included letters to Adam Newton, David Murray and William Bedell, providing a printed testimony of the cohesiveness of this circle.⁶⁰ Hall’s letters constitute a clear and public statement of the links between Henry’s household and a particular vision of Reformed influence in Europe. The epistolary network he highlighted was composed of increasingly influential people, who had reason to hope for greater influence still at King Henry IX’s accession.

As well as corresponding with Harington and Tovey, Ward continued his regular correspondence with Bedell during the latter’s time in Venice. Ward constitutes another important node in the Anglo-Venetian network of 1607–10, and although we do not have his complete correspondence, enough letters survive to build a sense of his connections. Most interesting is a draft letter from Ward to Bedell written in 1608, preserved in one of Ward’s Latin notebooks in the Muniment Room at Sidney Sussex, which has not — to my knowledge — received any previous scholarly attention.⁶¹ This notebook contains copies of several letters in Ward’s hand. Some are neat copies of letters by others which Ward seems to have considered of particular value. Others, including Ward’s letter to Bedell, appear to be drafts, although reasonably neat drafts written at a late stage (there are crossings out and amendments, but few); Ward probably kept these final drafts for his own reference and then copied out neater versions to send, a common enough practice. The letters generally relate to political and religious controversies: one of the few to have received previous scholarly comment is a letter to Richard Harvey, brother of Gabriel, opposing the inclusion of 1 and 2 Maccabees in the canonical Old Testament.⁶² Though unrelated to Venice, this is a further indication of the importance of the Reformed context for these communications. A final curious feature of the letter to Bedell is the fact it is written in Latin. Conversely, surviving letters from Bedell to Ward are generally written in English. Possibly Ward, who had spent longer in an academic environment, preferred to write in Latin, while Bedell preferred English. But it seems most likely that Ward wrote in Latin to make it easier for Bedell to share his letter with Venetians.

Ward’s letter to Bedell contains news of Newton’s appointment (despite his lay status) as dean of Durham Cathedral, and of James Montagu’s appointment as bishop of Bath and Wells. Montagu was the nephew of John Harington, baron of Exton, and — thanks to his uncle’s patronage — had previously been appointed the first Master of Sidney Sussex.⁶³ Montagu was another Reformed conformist who played a crucial role in Henry’s education; as dean of the Chapel Royal, he could influence the King’s appointments to the Prince’s household.⁶⁴ Ward also describes his own employment situation to Bedell. Given that he had almost reached the maximum number of years for which Emmanuel’s statutes allowed fellows to remain at the College, Ward had agreed to take up a post in Durham, the town which he was originally from.⁶⁵ Ward explained that he had been nominated by Newton, ‘the very worthy tutor of the most serene and extremely talented Prince Henry’, and had promised to move there by the next Easter (presumably Easter 1608, which fell on 6 April).⁶⁶ In the meantime, however, Montagu had been appointed bishop of Bath and Wells and asked Ward to be his chaplain there.⁶⁷ Ward reported that he was initially reluctant to agree, on account of his promise to Newton, but Montagu had personally interceded to release him from this obligation.⁶⁸

The circles about which Ward saw fit to tell Bedell, then, map on to the circles of Reformed conformists around Prince Henry. The letter soon moves on from personal news to political matters. Ward reports that Montagu had recently been called back to London sooner than expected ‘by letters and a messenger sent by the King’.⁶⁹ James wanted Montagu’s help refuting two recently published Catholic polemical tracts, one published anonymously, but really by Robert Persons, and the other by ‘Mattheaus Tortus’, which was a pseudonym for Robert Bellarmine; Ward himself was persuaded that the work was Bellarmine’s by the fact that it ‘matched with the style of that book which he wrote against the Venetians’.⁷⁰ On 15[/25] August 1608, Montagu wrote to Salisbury from Wells saying the works by ‘Person and Vicar’ (the latter a reference to the fact that Tortus was the name of Bellarmine’s almoner) could easily be refuted: ‘as poore a minister as I am I durst undertake to make boethe [of them] weary of gaynsayinge in this argument.’⁷¹ Both tracts were critiques of James’s own work, Triplici nodo, triplex cuneus: Or An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance, which Montagu had had a hand in writing.⁷² This was a defence of the English oath requiring Catholics to deny the papal deposing power, introduced in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot. Now, the King called Montagu to Royston to help him respond to his critics. In late September, the Venetian ambassador noted the King’s receipt of Bellarmine’s reply, and reported that James was ‘preparing the answer [and] intending within a few days to withdaw to Royston with his Theologians’.⁷³ Ward’s letter to Bedell must have been written after the gathering at Royston, probably in October 1608, as he lists the various replies other clergymen had been asked to write.⁷⁴ With Montagu and Ward’s help, James also prepared his own response, entitled ‘A Premonition’, which he prefixed to the 1609 reprint of the Apologie.⁷⁵ James’s Apologie had itself addressed the case of Venice, and the King returned to this theme in a ‘Confutation’ of Bellarmine which James appended to the ‘Premonition’. Here James expressed his wish that Catholic polemicists would ‘cease to vent [their claims of papal temporal jurisdiction] … till they have disproved their owne Venetians, who charge them with Noveltie, and forgery in this poynt.’⁷⁶

Ward’s letter to Bedell allows us to build a more detailed picture of the process of James’s polemical composition. In the letter, Ward asks Bedell for help with one point in particular: the refutation of Cardinal Baronius’s account of the year 1177, which Bellarmine and Persons had cited. Baronius’s Annales was the most substantial work of church history produced in the sixteenth century, and rebuttals became a staple of anti-papal writing. In 1177, Pope Alexander III had met Emperor Frederick Barbarossa outside St Mark’s Basilica in Venice. Discussing this event, Baronius noted the widespread belief that on this occasion, the Pope had stepped on the Emperor’s neck to assert his superiority, but added that there was no evidence that this had really happened.⁷⁷ Both Bellarmine and Persons had seconded Baronius’s denial.⁷⁸ Yet this was a story of great value to Protestant polemicists, epitomising the arrogance with which the Pope asserted his claims over temporal rulers. As the incident was supposed to have taken place in Venice, Ward asked Bedell to search for local accounts confirming the story’s veracity:

Following Baronius Vol. XII on the year 1177, both replies to the Apology deny the story of the neck of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa being compressed by the foot of Alexander III. Since the historians say this happened before the doors of St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, I ask that you diligently search for this in the Annals of the Venetians, which without doubt testify this most clearly, unless I’m much mistaken. The names of the authors and the places in the text should please be noted, & if it can be done conveniently the words themselves, and sent to me in future letters.⁷⁹

Bedell’s reply does not appear to survive. However, a direct rebuttal addressing this point was indeed printed in James’s ‘Confutations’. Responding to Bellarmine’s suggestion that the story of Alexander and Frederick ‘may be justly doubted of’, James asserted that ‘no Historian doubteth of it; and many do avouch it’.⁸⁰ The King cites multiple authorities to back up this claim, including several Italians. These include works by the Venetian historians Pietro Giustiniani and Giacomo Filippo Foresti, as well as Girolamo Bardi’s Vittoria navale ottenuta dalla Republica Venetiana (printed in Venice in 1584), a work which discussed the historical evidence for a depiction of the event painted by Federico Zuccaro (1582) for the recently redecorated Doge’s Palace.⁸¹ It is highly likely that these works owe their inclusion to Bedell.

There is also further evidence of the Anglo-Venetian networks’s interest in Zuccaro’s painting, which was prominently displayed on the wall of the Great Council Chamber of the Doge’s Palace (fig. 3). In 1609, Sir John Harington sent Prince Henry a copy of this very painting: Harington writes in a postscript that he has included a ‘portrait of Alexander III putting his foot on the neck of the emperor with all the circumstances’, which depicted the event ‘no more or less accurately than it is in the chamber of the Great Council in Venice’.⁸² Harington added that he was sending the painting to Henry ‘because this action of the Pope is denied in the recent book under the name of Tortus against the oath of allegiance’; the painting, however, was a ‘perpetual monument’ to the truth of the incident.⁸³

Figure 3 Barbarossa Kisses the Pope’s foot, by Federico Zuccaro, 1582. Sala del Maggior Consiglio, Palazzo Ducale, Venice.

(Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia / Cameraphoto Arte, Venice / Art Resource, NY)

Though we do not have Bedell’s response relating to 1177, we do have another letter of Bedell’s which discusses the rebuttal of Bellarmine. Here, Bedell mentions his ‘last letters’ to Ward in which ‘I signified what I thought of Bellarmines late Booke and was bold to imparte to you what pointes would be of principall use and satisfaction to men indifferently affected here’, confirming the existence of a lost response to Ward’s first request.⁸⁴ By that time (late December), Bedell had had further thoughts about points in Bellarmine’s book that might be addressed. Citing Bellarmine’s attack on James as an apostate, because he had been born of Catholic parents and baptised into the Roman Catholic Church, Bedell notes that Bellarmine does not mention the fact that Queen Elizabeth I had been chosen as James’s godmother and had given him his baptismal font.⁸⁵ For Bedell, this was an important omission, because it proved that James’s Catholic mother, Mary, queen of Scots, had thought Elizabeth a suitable person to ‘instruct the Infant’ in matters of faith, thus making clear that ‘his Majesties mother (what ever [Bellarmine] boldly would beare downe with conjectures) had not that opinion of the Reformed religion which the Popish faction now hath’.⁸⁶ Once again, this very point can be found in James’s response: responding to Bellarmine’s charge of apostasy in his ‘Premonition’, James draws attention to the choice of Elizabeth as his godmother and her gift of his font. He offers these facts alongside other evidence that his mother was not ‘superstitious or Jesuited’.⁸⁷ Given the point’s specificity and the evidence of a similar process in relation to events of 1177, it is highly likely that Ward added this point at Bedell’s suggestion. Once again, Bedell and Ward’s correspondence fed directly into James’s polemical works.

Ward would emphasise his connection to the updated edition of the King’s Apologie by donating English and Latin copies of the book to Emmanuel College Library in September 1609, just before he moved to Sidney Sussex.⁸⁸ He evidently considered these important books to which future scholars should have easy access; Emmanuel’s role as a source of well-educated theologians who could write in support of the King was becoming institutionalised.⁸⁹ Through Ward and Bedell’s discussions, we get a sense of how, under James, the English Royal Supremacy started to be viewed as a model for export. For James, university theologians, like the episcopal hierarchy, were an extension of the court, and he looked to such figures to advise and support him in his diplomatic ambitions.

Ward’s European Network

Ward has traditionally been viewed as an ‘ineffectual’ figure, who led a relatively isolated existence in Cambridge.⁹⁰ This is a reputation in need of substantial revision; in his efforts to learn more about Venice’s anti-papal struggles and bolster the intellectual defences of the Jacobean Royal Supremacy, Ward drew on correspondence with not only Bedell, but also a wider network of contacts in both England and Europe.

In his letter to Bedell, Wards notes that on the ‘day before yesterday’ Montagu had sent him a copy of a letter from Sarpi to François Hotman de Villiers, abbot of Saint-Médard de Soissons.⁹¹ In this letter, a copy of which can also be found in Ward’s notebook, Sarpi recommends various works of history, including several English historians, to whom Sarpi may have been introduced to by Bedell.⁹² Ward writes that ‘from this I conclude that the fame of Padre Paolo is greatly renowned amongst the French’.⁹³ Ward also appears to have sought further information about opinion in France (and elsewhere in Europe), making a habit of asking friends and students from Cambridge to send him news from their travels. As we have seen, Ward corresponded with both Harington and Tovey; another of his informants was Bedell’s cousin, and Ward and Bedell’s contemporary at Emmanuel (matric. 1595), Joseph Alliston, from whom Ward would receive news from Paris a few years later, in April 1612.⁹⁴ This letter was sent on to Ward by Thomas Lorkin, another Emmanuel alumnus (BA, 1601; MA, 1605), who was also in Paris at that time, and with whom Ward kept in regular contact.⁹⁵ Lorkin had left England in 1610 to travel as the tutor of Sir Thomas Puckering, Adam Newton’s brother-in-law, who had, by virtue of his sister’s marriage, been educated alongside Prince Henry.⁹⁶ Like Tovey, Lorkin was a tutor to a member of Henry’s circles who travelled on the continent, and like Tovey, he sent Ward letters, albeit in a slightly later period.

Through his various contacts, Ward kept well informed. Writing to Tovey, he mentions both Isaac Casaubon and the French Gallican jurist (and correspondent of Sarpi’s) Jacques Leschassier (1550–1625), citing both the latter’s defence of the canons of Senlis and his Consultatio, written in defence of the Venetians, with admiration.⁹⁷ Ward made clear to Bedell his desire to learn more about Sarpi and other defenders of Venice. He expressed his sorrow that ‘the controversy between the Pope and the Republic of Venice had calmed so suddenly’, commenting that it could have done far more for the cause of religion had it lasted longer.⁹⁸ He also expressed disappointment at not being able to read the works written on the controversy in Italian, and asked Bedell to send him ‘whatever [works] exist in Latin’, apart from those he already owned, which included Antonio Querini’s Disputationes and Tractatus de Jurisdictio, Giovanni Marsilio’s Vindicatio, Sarpi’s defence of Gerson, and another work by Sarpi.⁹⁹ He also gives the title of another work on the controversy of which he is aware, Apologia pro ecclesiae et Concilii auctoritate adversus Joannis Gersonii … obtrectatores, asking Bedell to send him a copy along with the name of the author. The work, which had appeared in Venice without the name of an author or printer in 1607, was in fact by the French Gallican Edmond Richer.¹⁰⁰ Ward notes that many more books may have been printed but not made it across the Alps.¹⁰¹ Bedell may well have been able to provide Ward with copies of further works; he gathered a large personal collection, donating thirty-seven publications linked to the Venetian Interdict controversy to Emmanuel College Library in 1621, bound in three volumes.¹⁰²

Of the works Bedell donated to Emmanuel, thirteen were in Latin and twenty-four in Italian. As none of the thirteen Latin texts are included on Ward’s lists of books he already possessed, it is likely that Bedell shared either these copies or duplicates with him. Thus, Bedell’s presence in Venice in the wake of the Interdict provided Ward — and by extension the broader group of clergymen who assisted James in the production of his published works — with access to a far greater range of texts related to the Interdict controversy. While the English translations produced during the Interdict will have had the greatest impact on popular perceptions of the controversy, it is this exchange of Latin works which cemented its place at the heart of the political thought of the Jacobean court.

Prince Henry’s Death and the Decline of the Haringtons

In the early 1610s, the Haringtons, Wotton and the Venetian Collegio could look forward to Henry’s continuation of James’s wise policies. At Wotton’s departure from Venice in late 1610, Donà struck just this note of optimism. He recalled once more his meeting with Harington and the miniature in which Henry ‘truly … seem[ed] an Angel’,¹⁰³ expressing his certainty that Henry would continue to display ‘the same good will and disposition towards our Republic’ as his father.¹⁰⁴ But these best laid plans were soon to be rudely interrupted by Henry’s death, probably from typhoid fever, on 6 November 1612. The outpourings of grief in England had echoes in Venice, even though a rapprochement between the Republic and Rome was now well underway: the Collegio voted for the greater honour of sending two Savi of the Collegio, rather than a secretary, to offer condolences to the English ambassador (by that time, Dudley Carleton), and the Senate also sent letters of condolence to James, Anna and Prince Charles.¹⁰⁵ The ascendency of the Harington family did not long outlast the Prince, with the deaths of the elder (23 August 1613) and the younger (26–7 February 1614) John Haringtons following within sixteen months. Responsibility for their substantial debts passed to the countess of Bedford, damaging her position at court.¹⁰⁶

A final member of the Anglo-Venetian network who helps us to understand the political ramifications of these deaths is the Italian Protestant exile Giacomo Castelvetro (1546–1616), who had fled Italy in young adulthood.¹⁰⁷ His subsequent travels took him to both London and Edinburgh: he first came to know James as king of Scotland, becoming the King’s Italian tutor in 1592, before taking up residence in Venice in 1598.¹⁰⁸ During the Interdict period, Castelvetro helped Wotton’s embassy distribute anti-papal propaganda and also developed a relationship with Sir John Harington.¹⁰⁹ Castelvetro’s position became less secure as the hopes of a Venetian break with Rome started to fade. Bedell wrote to him in early 1611, noting that Castelvetro was increasingly exposed and suggesting he return to England.¹¹⁰ These words proved prescient: Castelvetro was imprisoned by the Venetian Inquisition the following year. Once released, thanks to an intervention by Carleton, Castelvetro left Italy and sought permanent refuge in England, where Harington granted him a regular annuity; unfortunately for Castelvetro, within months Harington was dead.¹¹¹

Harington appears to have introduced him to Newton, with whom Castelvetro lived in his final years, and it was Newton who was left in possession of Castelvetro’s manuscripts at the Italian’s death in 1616.¹¹² It seems Harington also introduced Castelvetro to his sister, the countess of Bedford, to whom Castelvetro dedicated an Italian manuscript work, his ‘Brief Relation of all the Roots, Herbs and Fruits eaten raw or cooked in Italy’, in 1614.¹¹³ In this work, Castelvetro complained of English reluctance to eat enough fruit and vegetables, expressing his hope that better acquaintance with the wide array of plant matter eaten in Italy would make them more enthusiastic. This charming manuscript testifies to the breadth of the cultural interests of the Harington circle: Italian horticulture — like Venetian art and architecture — could smooth the way for the acceptance of more polemical Venetian writings amongst the Jacobean elite.¹¹⁴

In England, Castelvetro continued to produce translations on anti-papal themes, but he struggled to attract patronage, and does not even seem to have been rewarded for the ‘Brief Relation’. His struggles are indicative of a broader loss of political influence by the circle around Prince Henry after the Prince’s death — a process quickened by the death of Harington soon afterwards. Had Lucy not been suffering her own financial difficulties, it is probable she would have continued her brother’s regular payments to Castelvetro; but this was not to be, and Castelvetro spent the last months of his life beset by ill-health and poverty. By the mid-1610s, the political purchase of the Anglo-Venetian network had faded with that of the Haringtons.

Conclusion

The shock of Henry’s death in 1612 and the subsequent loss of Harington influence were sources of grave disappointment to the Anglo-Venetian network’s remaining members. Nonetheless, in the first decade of James’s reign, this grouping had played a crucial role in shaping English domestic and foreign policy. These were individuals chosen by James, and on whom the King thought he could rely in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot and the Interdict controversy, when the threat posed by the papacy felt very real. Thus, the men chosen by the king to lead Henry’s education overlapped with the group that he chose to assist with the production of his own polemical works. The Harington family in particular constituted a connecting thread from James’s court to Henry’s household: this was no ‘reversionary interest’. The Anglo-Venetian network of the first decade of James’s reign supported a particular Reformed vision of what the influence of Italian art and culture on England should entail, which was always firmly anti-papal but not always so firmly anti-Catholic. This was as much James’s ‘Renaissance’ as Henry’s.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

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.

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.