The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume VII. Cavalier and Puritan.
§ 4. Sir Dudley Digges; The Compleat Ambassador
It was at this time that there appeared in print a posthumous publication by Sir Dudley Digges, late master of the rolls (1583–1639), entitled The Compleat Ambassador: or Two Treaties of the Intended Marriage of Qu. Elizabeth of Glorious Memory. In this work, the history of the negotiations as to the Anjou and Alençon matches carried on during Walsingham’s embassy (1570–3, dates covering that of the massacre of St. Bartholomew) became public property in the shape of the despatches of Walsingham, and the replies of Burghley, Leicester and Sir Thomas Smith. No similar revelation had hitherto taken place in England, where, notwithstanding the assiduous exertions of James I’s diplomatists, very little attention had been paid to their activity by outsiders. But the publisher, encouraged by the success of Cabala, a curious medley of letters and papers of the reigns of James and Charles I which appeared in 1654, anticipated a great success for his experiment, and was not deceived. The time was propitious for a study of the diplomatic processes of the most aggressively protestant of queen Elizabeth’s ambassadors, whose policy of securing the alliance of France against Spain was just about to experience a revival. Thus, the book, having rapidly gone into a second edition, was, in due course, translated into French, and came to be repeatedly cited in Wicquefort’s celebrated manual, L’Ambassadeur et ses Fonctions.