succeeded by Thomas Thirlby [q. v.], bishop of Westminster.
In the following year Wotton's services were required to arrange the terms of peace with France. He was sworn of the privy council on 7 April 1546, and on Paget's recommendation appointed peace commissioner with Paget, Hertford, and Lisle. The conference held at Guisnes proved successful, and on 25 May Henry VIII nominated Wotton resident ambassador in France, and commissioner with Tunstall and Lisle to receive the ratification of the treaty from Francis I. He set out on his embassy early in July 1546, and remained in France uninterruptedly for three years.
Henry VIII showed his confidence in Wotton by leaving him 300l. and appointing him executor of his will and privy councillor to Edward VI. Being absent in France he took no part in the appointment of Somerset as Protector, or the measures against Southampton; but he was included in the reconstituted privy council in March. Meanwhile the diplomatic relations between England and France were cordial, and more than one project of marriage between the English and French royal families were proposed. But with the accession of Henry II, on 29 March 1547, the Guise influence became supreme at the French court, and the new king scarcely concealed his determination to support by force of arms the Guise party in Scotland, and to wrest Boulogne from the English at the earliest possible opportunity. To these sources of trouble were added the perpetual disputes about the limits of the English pale, and mutual recriminations and aggressions with regard to the fortifications near Boulogne. France took advantage of England's internal troubles, and declared war on 8 Aug. 1549, and Wotton returned from Paris in time to take part with the majority of his colleagues on the council in deposing the Protector in October. It was proposed to send him as ambassador to the emperor, but on 15 Oct. he was sworn one of the principal secretaries instead of Sir Thomas Smith, who was deprived of the office as being a partisan of Somerset.
Wotton remained secretary for less than a year, giving place on 5 Sept. 1550 to (Sir) William Cecil, and more congenial occupation was found for him in April 1551 in a fresh embassy to Charles V. The occasion of this mission was the emperor's refusal to allow the English ambassador liberty of worship, and his irritation with the English council for its persecution of the Princess Mary, and Sir Richard Morison [q. v.] had neither tact nor firmness sufficient to deal with the situation. Wotton, he acknowledges, ‘had a more mannerly “nay;”’ but Wotton's courage was as great as his tact, and to the emperor's threats he replied that, though Mary ‘had a king to her father, hath a king to her brother, and is akin to the emperor, yet in England there is but one king, and the king hath but one law to rule all his subjects by.’ He had many stormy interviews and theological discussions with Charles, but the imminence of war with France and troubles in Germany made the emperor's threats empty words, and in August the council could afford to recall Wotton. He took his leave on 3 Sept., and reappeared at the council board on 21 Oct., five days after the arrest of Somerset and his friends.
For eighteen months Wotton remained in England, taking an active share in the proceedings of the privy council. On 2 April 1553 he was commissioned with Sir Thomas Chaloner the elder [q. v.] to proffer England's mediation with a view to ending the war between France and the emperor. The genuineness of the council's desire for peace is open to doubt, as the war gave Northumberland his only chance of supplanting Mary without Charles V's interference. On the failure of the duke's conspiracy Chaloner was recalled as a pronounced reformer, and Wotton was left as resident ambassador in France. His chief difficulty consisted in the more or less open support the French king afforded to the protestant exiles like the Dudleys, Carews, and Staffords, and to their plots against Queen Mary, but at the same time their intrigues in France often enabled Wotton to forewarn the English government. Thus he discovered Dudley's secret negotiations with Henry II in 1556, got wind of Stafford's project in 1557 [see Stafford, Thomas], and as early as 1556 reported French designs on Calais. He also used his influence on behalf of the exiles, such as Sir Gawin Carew, his brother-in-law, and succeeded in winning over his predecessor, Sir William Pickering [q. v.], whose disaffection was especially dangerous, as he possessed the key of the cipher which Wotton used in his diplomatic correspondence. On 7 June 1557 Mary declared war on France, and Wotton was recalled, resuming his attendance at the council board on 2 Aug. He had resigned the living of Ivychurch on 28 May 1555, and on 5 June 1557 he was installed treasurer of Exeter Cathedral, but this also he resigned before March following.
In September 1558 Wotton was once more sent to France as commissioner with Arundel and Thirlby for drawing up terms of peace,
