Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, conde de Gondomar

Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, conde de Gondomar (November 1, 1567 - October 2, 1626), was a Spanish diplomat.

The embassy to London

His reputation as a diplomat is based on his two periods of service in Britain from 1613 to 1618 and from 1619 to 1622. The excellence of his latinity pleased the literary tastes of James I, whose character he judged with remarkable insight. He flattered the king's love of books and of peace, and made skilful use of his desire for a matrimonial alliance between the Prince of Wales and the infanta Maria Anna, the "Spanish Match". The ambassador's task 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 in pamphlets, 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.

Related Topics:
James I - The Prince of Wales - Spanish Match - Protestant - Habsburg - The Americas - Puritan - Walter Raleigh - Thomas Middleton - A Game at Chess

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In 1617 Sarmiento was created Count of Gondomar. In 1618 he obtained leave to come home for his health, but was ordered to return by way of Flanders and France with a diplomatic mission. In 1619 he returned to London, and remained till 1622, when he was allowed to retire.

Related Topics:
1617 - 1618

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On his return he was named a member of the royal council and governor of one of the king's palaces, and was appointed to a complimentary mission to Vienna. Gondomar was in Madrid when the prince of Wales— afterwards Charles I— made his journey there in search of a wife. He died at the house of the constable of Castile, near Haro in the Rioja.

Related Topics:
Vienna - Madrid - Charles I

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Gondomar was twice married, first to his niece Beatrix Sarmiento, by whom he had no children, and then to his cousin Constanza de Acuña, by whom he had four sons and three daughters. The hatred he aroused in England, which was shown by widespread mockery of an intestinal complaint from which he suffered for years, was a tribute to the zeal with which he served his own master.

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Gondomar collected, both before he came to London and during his residence there, a fine library of printed books and manuscripts. Orders for the arrangement, binding and storing of his books in his house at Valladolid appear frequently in his voluminous correspondence. In 1785 the library was ceded by his descendant and representative the marquis of Malpica to Charles III of Spain, and it is now in the Royal Library at Madrid.

Related Topics:
Valladolid - 1785 - Charles III of Spain

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A portrait of Gondomar, attributed to Diego Velázquez, was formerly at Stowe, Buckinghamshire. It was mezzotinted by Robert Cooper.

Related Topics:
Diego Velázquez - Stowe, Buckinghamshire - Mezzotint

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Authorities

Gondomar's missions to England were largely dealt with in Samuel Rawson Gardiner's History of England (London, 1883-1884) and more recently in Glyn Redworth, The Prince and the Infanta: The Cultural Politics of the Spanish Match (New Haven, 2003).

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In Spanish, Don Pascual de Gayangos wrote a useful biographical introduction to a publication of a few of his letters--Cinco Cartas politico-literarias de Don Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, conde de Gondomar, issued at Madrid in 1869 by the Sociedad de Bibliófilos of the Spanish Academy; and there is a life in English by F.H. Lyon (1910).

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