On Monday Morning He Dodged
To Pisa, And On The Folowing, Back To Siena.
"Thus by often changing
places I avoyded the Priests inquiring after mee, which is most
dangerous about Easter time, when all men receive the Sacrament."[195]
The conception of travel one gathers from Fynes Moryson is that of a
very exciting form of sport, a sort of chase across Europe, in which the
tourist was the fox, doubling and turning and diving into cover, while
his friends in England laid three to one on his death. So dangerous was
travel at this time, that wagers on the return of venturous gentlemen
became a fashionable form of gambling.[196] The custom emanated from
Germany, Moryson explains, and was in England first used at Court and
among "very Noble men." Moryson himself put out L100 to receive L300 on
his return; but by 1595, when he contemplated a second journey, he would
not repeat the wager, because ridiculous voyages were by that time
undertaken for insurance money by bankrupts and by men of base
conditions.
Sir Henry Wotton was a celebrated product of foreign education in these
perilous times. As a student of political economy in 1592 he led a
precarious existence, visiting Rome with the greatest secrecy, and in
elaborate disguise. For years abroad he drank in tales of subtlety and
craft from old Italian courtiers, till he was well able to hold his own
in intrigue. By nature imaginative and ingenious, plots and counterplots
appealed to his artistic ability, and as English Ambassador to Venice,
he was never tired of inventing them himself or attributing them to
others.
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