ABSTRACT

While Italy was not actually in decline in the seventeenth century, Anglo-Italian relations began deteriorating early in Elizabeth I’s reign and continued doing so in the Stuart, civil war, and Interregnum eras. Yet this trend was neither linear nor uniform, and Charles Stuart’s marriage to Henrietta Maria of France in 1625 created hope for the King’s conversion among Catholics which, though disappointed, was also buoyed by his retreat from vigorous anti-Catholic diplomacy. Peace between France and Spain additionally made not just northern Italy but the entire peninsula, including the Papal States, safe ground for English Protestants traveling abroad, who needed only moderate discretion in dealing with ecclesiastical ofcials. War between the Bourbons and Habsburgs in Savoy and Piedmont forced English visitors to Italy to sail south from Marseilles to Genoa before going on to Florence, Rome, or Naples. They generally returned home via Venice and Milan over the Simplon Pass to Geneva, the route in fact followed by Milton.1 Travel and international communication between northern and southern Europe was more vigorous then than at any time since Henry VIII’s break with Rome, and emigration from Italy to England increased, although reverse emigration slowed. As earlier, numerous foreigners came and went, but most native reformers had long since departed for safer havens in northern Europe. Most Protestant visitors were wary of potential problems and English xenophobia remained much unchanged, as conservative educators and popular writers decried Italian inuences, Counter-Reformation culture, and even travel to the peninsula, especially by young men unprotected by tutors, chaplains, or both.