page_title: Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, 1st Count of Gondomar
section_title: The embassy to London
hierarchical_section_title: Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, 1st Count of Gondomar / The embassy to London
caption_attribution_description: English: "Effigies eximii viri Dni Didaci Salmienti de Acuna, Comitis de Gondomare," portrait of the 1st Count of Gondomar, engraving, by the British engraver Simon de Passe. 195 mm x 118 mm. Courtesy of the British Museum, London.
context_page_description: Don Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Count of Gondomar, was a Spanish diplomat. He served as the Spanish ambassador to England from 1613 to 1622 and afterwards, as a kind of ambassador emeritus, Spain's leading expert on English affairs until his death.
  The popular notion in England of his day painted him as the head of a Spanish faction at the English court, as privy to the inner thoughts of King James I, and as a fiendish schemer for Popery.
context_section_description: Gondomar's reputation as a diplomat, which brought him to international historical prominence, is based on his two periods of service in England – from 1613 to 1618 and from 1619 to 1622. The excellence of his latinity pleased the literary tastes of King James I, whose character he judged with remarkable insight. He flattered the king's love of books and of peace, and he made skillful use of the king's desire for a matrimonial alliance between the Prince of Wales and the infanta Maria Anna of Spain (the proposed "Spanish Match"). The British historian J. P. Kenyon calls him "a cleverer man than any in England", who was gifted enough to tie England to Spain's interests for the next decade.
  The ambassador's task in the prelude to the Thirty Years' War was to keep James from aiding the Protestant states against Spain and Habsburg Austria, and to avert English attacks on Spanish possessions in the Americas. His success made him odious to the anti-Spanish and Puritan parties. The active part he took in promoting the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh aroused particular animosity. He was attacked by popular pamphleteers — Thomas Scott's extravagant propaganda, Vox populi, was widely believed — and the dramatist Thomas Middleton made him a principal character in the strange political play A Game at Chess, which was suppressed by order of the council.
  The Howards were Gondomar's principal friends at court – Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton (died 1614), Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk, Lord High Treasurer, whose daughter was married to James's favourite, Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admiral, Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, and their protégés. The "Howard faction" preferred a marriage alliance with Spain over one with France, the traditional ally of Scotland, and they preferred to keep out of open warfare with Spain promoted by the more zealous Puritans. Most of the Howards were Catholics, encouraging them towards a spirit of toleration at home. Like many at the English court, they were receiving pensions from Spain, without much effect on their opinions and actions, and Gondomar seldom had the money to follow through. Among the pensioners, in an embarrassing list that surfaced in 1613, at Gondomar's first arrival was the King of England himself.
  Gondomar conceived of his embassy as a sortie in enemy country, and he took for his maxim aventurar la vida y osar morir ("risk your life and dare to die"). His opening challenge was his refusal to strike the colours of Spain at his warships' entry to Portsmouth harbour, in which an appeal to the king averted an exchange of cannon fire. His handling of the unconditional release of the Catholic agitator Luisa Carvajal y Mendoza further established him in James's eyes as a man of unexpected strengths. In 1617 Sarmiento was created Count of Gondomar. The key to Gondomar's success was his relationship with James, whom he brought to admire and like his witty and learned companionship, his candour, within the obvious limits, and his personal integrity. They called themselves the "two Diegos" and drank from the same bottle (Carter 1964:205). It was to Gondomar, after the failure of the Addled Parliament of 1614, that James made his celebrated remark "I am amazed that my ancestors should have allowed such an institution to come into existence".
  A key program for Gondomar at the outset was to block the marriage negotiations between Prince Charles and a sister of Louis XIII of France, a French counterweight to marital alliances being concluded with the Spanish Habsburgs (see the Spanish Match).
  In the matter of Sir Walter Raleigh, it was Gondomar's pressure that cost Sir Walter his head on 29 October 1618. In a moment of weakness, James had shown Gondomar the contract under which Raleigh had sailed, and the restriction upon attacking Spanish settlements, in order to mollify Gondomar's objections to an enterprise on which James had set his heart. Raleigh's attack on San Thomé (near modern Ciudad Guayana) was a public violation; his execution kept the peace with Spain. 
caption: Portrait of Gondomar, engraving by Simon de Passe, 1622
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