Alessandro Antelminelli
Alessandro Antelminelli, better known by his pseudonym, Amerigo Salvetti (19 Novembrer 1572 – 10 July 1657), was an Italian diplomat, adventurer and conspirator.
Biography
Alessandro Antelminelli was born in 1572 into a House of Antelminelli and noble family of Lucca.[1] The family of Antelminelli (or Interminelli as Wotton and others spelt the name) were collaterally descended from Castruccio Castracani degli Antelminelli, who was tyrant of Lucca in Dante Alighieri.[2] In 1596, whilst he was engaged in business in Antwerp, his father and his three brothers were first tortured and then executed on charge of Treason against the Republic of Lucca. Alessandro was at the same time summoned home by the Magistrates of Lucca to stand his trial for his alleged participation in the conspiracy of his relatives, but before his arrival he was condemned to death. A price was also set upon his head and assassins were hired to kill him. He learnt these facts whilst on his way to Lucca, to answer the charges brought against him, and then turned aside to Florence. For fifty years Alessandro was hunted by the spies and assassins of the Republic. After a brief stay at Florence he fled to London, which, however, he soon left, finding his life in danger from the emissaries of Lucca. In 1599 he took the name of Amerigo Salvetti, giving himself out to be a Florentine, and he travelled on the continent for a few years; but wherever he went he was pursued by agents of the government of Lucca seeking to kill him. For some time he travelled with Sir Henry Wotton and a son of Sir Edward Wotton, 1st Baron Wotton,[3] but this intimacy, as the Archives of Lucca prove, did not prevent Sir Henry Wotton plotting in 1607 to give him up to the Magistrates of Lucca in exchange for a Captain Robert Elliot whom King James VI and I was anxious to get into his power. Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany frustrated Wotton's plot, and sent Elliot out of danger under a strong escort. Salvetti then came to London, where he resided for the rest of his life. In 1618 he was appointed, by Cosimo II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Tuscan Resident at the Court of Whitehall.[1] His dispatches, of which there are transcripts in the British Museum, are a source of information, well known to historians about the times of Charles I of England and the Commonwealth of England.[2]
The attempts of the government of Lucca to procure the assassination of Salvetti were repeatedly renewed for many years, and lasted at least until 1627, as is shown by letters preserved in the Archives of Lucca. In 1620 Michele Balbani, a Lucchese spy in London who had undertaken to procure the assassination of Salvetti, writes to Lucca that he had found willing agents for that purpose but that, one after another, they all excused themselves from making the attempt in London "where every citizen was policeman."
The story of Salvetti's life is set out in detail in a privately printed pamphlet by Salvatore Bongi, Keeper of the Archives of Lucca. Salvetti continued to act as the Tuscan representative at the English Court until his death in London, at the age of 85, on July 2, 1657. He is buried in St Bartholomew-the-Great. His son, Giovanni Salvetti Antelminelli, was appointed to succeed him, as Tascan Resident at the Court of Whitehall, and held that post until the commencement of the year 1679.
Antelminelli's letters are preserved in the National Library at Florence. Copies of the original have been made for the British Museum. A translation of Antelminelli's diplomatic letters by Charles Heath Wilson has been published in London in 1887.
Works
- H. B. Tomkins (ed.), The Manuscripts of Henry Duncan Skrine, Esq: Salvetti Correspondence (Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, 11th report, appendix, part I, 1887. online)
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Miani 1961.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Logan Pearsall Smith, ed. (1907). The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. p. 35.
- ↑ On December 13, 1600, Marcantonio Franciotti, a Lucchese spy in London, wrote that Salvetti had left England about fifteen days previously in the company of the two Wottons.
External links
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