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Our Man in Rome: Henry VIII and his Italian Ambassador

Our Man in Rome: Henry VIII and his Italian Ambassador is a trade history book written for a non-specialist audience. While it assumes that readers will have some knowledge of Henry VIII’s ‘divorce’ from Catherine of Aragon, it does not assume that this is particularly extensive, so the book includes more background information than is typical in an academic monograph. Nonetheless, it presents a wide range of new evidence for diplomatic practice in this period, based on rigorous archive research. New arguments about the practice of foreign state servants and the conduct of diplomacy more generally in this period are woven into the fabric of the narrative, rather than presented thematically as would be typical in a publication aimed at a scholarly readership.

In order to present its thorough account of the activities of Henry VIII’s ambassadors in Rome, this book draws on archive research undertaken in four countries (the UK, Italy, France and Austria) and ten cities. The Italian archives are not centralised: by and large if a document was produced for the rulers of Mantua in the 1530s, then it remains in Mantua today. Detailed catalogues are rarely available and little is digitized. In short, the process of identifying and analysing the wealth of documentary sources on which this study is based was complex and time-consuming.