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 £100 to receive £300 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. It was this characteristic of Jacobean politicians which Ben
Jonson satirized in Sir Politick-Would-be, who divulged his knowledge of
secret service to Peregrine in Venice. Greatly excited by the mention of
a certain priest in England, Sir Politick explains:

"He has received weekly intelligence
Upon my knowledge, out of the Low Countries,
For all parts of the world, in cabbages;
And these dispensed again to ambassadors,
In oranges, musk-melons, apricocks--,
Lemons, pome-citrons, and such-like: sometimes
In Colchester oysters, and your Selsey cockles."[197]