ABSTRACT
In 1601, Henry Wotton was dispatched from Florence by the Grand Duke of Tuscany to the court of Scotland disguised as an Italian envoy named Octavio Baldi, in order to expose a plot to poison King James and to present a box of Italian antidotes. The notion of ambassadorial residency-as-exile also points up the challenge of re-integration faced by Wotton on his return to England at the end of each of his embassies to Venice, and particularly at the end of his third and final post. This chapter speaks on Wotton in Italy, yet looking towards England, at the end of his third embassy. It considers his self-conscious importation of Italian culture as key to his strategies of self-presentation in smoothing his return to England. The chapter also considers Wotton’s subsequent career in England as Provost of Eton and writer of educational treatises, and explores his attempts to reconcile this later educational, and his earlier political, identity.
