Note 59 — TO THE MOST HONOURABLE JOHN, LORD MARQUIS OF NORMANBY, EARL OF MULGRAVE,[28] &c. AND KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER.

"Legatus est vir bonus, peregrè missus ad mentiendum reipublicæ causa;" a sentence which Sir Henry wrote in the Album of Christopher Flecamore, as he passed through Germany, when he went as ambassador to Venice. These words, says his biographer, Isaac Walton, "he could have been content should have been thus Englished: An ambassador is an honest man, sent to lie abroad for the good of his country: but the word mentiendum not admitting of a double meaning, like lie, (which at that time signified to sojourn, as well as to utter criminal falshood,) this pleasantry brought my Lord Ambassador into some trouble; Jasper Scioppius, a Romanist, about eight years afterwards, asserting in one of his works, that this was an acknowledged principle of the religion professed by King James, and those whom he employed as his representatives in foreign countries." See the Life of Sir Henry Wotton, p. 38. edit. 1670.—Malone, p. 486. Note.