Germany in the spring of 1619. At Munich in May he learned much of the designs of the continental catholics against England. In June he visited at Heilbronn the elector palatine, who had been elected king of Bohemia, and was attending in the city a congress of the princes of the union. Distressed by the misfortunes threatening the electress palatine and her husband, Wotton deemed it the bounden duty of James I to intervene effectually in continental politics in the elector's behalf. In August 1619 he had an audience of James at Woodstock, but seems to have been coldly received. In June 1620 he was ordered to Vienna to sound the emperor as to the possibility of staying the war which was overwhelming the new king and queen of Bohemia. Wotton was unable to reach any common basis for negotiation. But although the discussions proved ineffectual the emperor gave Wotton ‘a jewel of diamonds as a testimony of his good opinion of him.’ Wotton at once handed the gift to ‘the Countess of Sabrina,’ an Italian whose house had been appointed by the emperor for his accommodation. He was indisposed, he said, ‘to be the better of any gift that came from an enemy to his royal mistress, the Queen of Bohemia.’ Unable to render her assistance, he returned to his post at Venice in 1621, and remained there until the early months of 1624. Then he came home for good.
Absolutely penniless, Wotton bent all his energies anew to the task of obtaining lucrative employment. In the spring he published his short and jejune tract on architecture, a paraphrase of Vitruvius, which Chamberlain described as ‘well spoken of, though his own castles have been in the air’ (Cal. State Papers, 10 April 1624). James I suggested that he might in course of time succeed Sir Julius Cæsar as master of the rolls, and gave him the reversion. Happily a more suitable office was found for him. In April 1623 Thomas Murray's death had vacated the provostship of Eton. Many candidates had entered the field, among them Wotton's friend Bacon, the disgraced chancellor, and his nephew, Sir Albertus Morton; but Wotton's importunate appeals to secretary Conway were well received, and he was duly instituted to the provostship on 26 July 1624. He had to borrow money to provide for his settlement at Eton. In 1625 he carried a banneret at James I's funeral, and was elected to Charles I's first parliament as member for Sandwich. James I had granted him a dispensation to enable him to hold the Eton provostship without entering holy orders, but Wotton on his own initiative received deacon's orders in 1627, doubtless with a view to preferment in the church. He was still embarrassed pecuniarily. The income of the provostship was no more than 100l. with board, lodging, and allowances. On one occasion he was arrested for debt. In 1627 the king granted him a pension of 200l. In 1628 he laid his continued difficulties before Charles I; he applied for a small allowance reserved from the income of the master of the rolls, the reversion to which he had resigned, and ‘for the next good deanery that shall be vacant by death or remove’ (Reliquiæ, pp. 562 sqq.). In 1630 Wotton's pension was raised to 500l. in order to enable him to write a history of England and to obtain the requisite clerical assistance. In 1637 he applied for the mastership of the Savoy, should its present holder be promoted to the deanery of Durham (ib. pp. 340–2).
Wotton was an amiable dilettante or literary amateur, with a growing inclination to idleness in his later years. He did not neglect his educational duties, and wrote, after long years of cogitation, a suggestive ‘survey of education’ or ‘moral architecture,’ as he termed it, which he dedicated to the king (it was printed posthumously in his ‘Reliquiæ,’ ed. 1672, pp. 73–99); but he found the boys more interesting than their work. ‘He was a constant cherisher,’ says Walton, ‘of all those youths in that school, in whom he found either a constant diligence or a genius that prompted them to learning’—‘one or more hopeful youths’ being ‘taken and boarded in his own house.’ The provost was a familiar figure in the schoolroom, and he gave practical trial of the dictum that learning can be taught through the eye as well as through the ear, ‘for he caused to be choicely drawn the pictures of divers of the most famous Greek and Latin historians, poets, and orators.’ These he fixed to wooden pillars in the schoolroom (lower school) which seem to have been erected about this time. In the Election Hall he placed a picture of Venice which still hangs there. ‘He could never leave the school,’ adds Walton, ‘without dropping some choyce Greek or Latin apophthegme or sentence such as were worthy of a room in the memory of a growing scholar’ (cf. Maxwell Lyte, History of Eton, 1889, pp. 208 sqq.; Cust, History of Eton, p. 81).
Wotton's literary occupations at Eton led to little practical result. His history of England did not progress beyond the accumulation of a few notes on the characters of William I and Henry VI (Reliquiæ, pp. 100–110). He contemplated a life of Martin
