"It became normal to have at each of the major courts a resident “ambassador”—a word defined by the English poet and diplomat Sir Henry Wotton in a punning epigram as “a man sent to lie abroad for his country’s good.” Given the time required for travel, and the hazards en route—especially in an age of dynastic and religious warfare—permanent ambassadors offered a convenient substitute for personal summitry. And their detailed reports required the attention of specialist secretaries who oversaw foreign affairs, such as Francis Walsingham in Elizabethan London or Antonio Perez at the court of Philip III. Day-to-day diplomacy tended to slip out of the hands of rulers."
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Poets from EnglandPlaywrights from EnglandUniversity of Oxford alumniAmbassadors of Great Britain and the United KingdomChief Secretaries for Ireland
Original Language: English
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Sources
David Reynolds, Summits: Six Meetings that Changed the Twentieth Century (2007), p. 17
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Wotton
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Henry Wotton
Sir Henry Wotton (March 30, 1568 – December 1639) was an English author and diplomat.
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