Читать книгу The First Duke and Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne онлайн

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Cavendish was taken early to the Court of James I who made him a Knight of the Bath when he was about 17 or 18, and he was sent from thence to Savoy, with the Ambassador Extraordinary, Sir Henry Wotton. It was thus Cavendish’s fortune to be thrown early in life into the company of a man of considerable culture and no little experience of foreign Courts. Wotton had had an opportunity of earning the deep gratitude of James I in a rather romantic episode; but when that King sent him as his Ambassador to Venice, he was asked (at Augsburg) to contribute to a lady’s album, and he was so imprudent as to write: “An Ambassador is an honest man, sent abroad to lie for the good of his country.” King James was told of this and was so offended that, for five years after Wotton’s return from Venice, he gave him no further employment. Then he relented, and, at the time with which we are now dealing, James sent him as his representative to the Duke of Savoy, who, after having been allied with Spain against France, was now making an alliance with France against Spain.