Giovanni Francesco Biondi


Sir Giovanni Francesco Biondi was an Italian diplomat, romance writer and historian of Croatian descent, knighted by James I of England.

Life

Biondi was born on Lesina in the Adriatic Sea. Entering the service of the Venetian Republic, he was appointed secretary to Pietro Piruli, the Venetian ambassador in Paris, where he stayed from 1606 to 1608. He became a Protestant convert; and then returned to Venice.
At the suggestion of Sir Henry Wotton, the English ambassador, Biondi went to England to seek his fortune. Arriving in 1609, with an introduction to James I, he was at first employed in negotiations with Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy over marriages between his children, and Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales and Princess Elizabeth. It all came to nothing, but the king granted him a pension.
In 1615 Biondi went to the Calvinist assembly in Grenoble as James I's representative, assuring them of the English king's protection and favour. From about this period he acted as a double agent, reporting also to the Venetians. On 6 September 1622 he was knighted by James I at Windsor. Soon afterwards he became a gentleman of the king's privy chamber. He had the patronage of William Cavendish, 2nd Earl of Devonshire, who died in 1628.
Biondi left England in 1640 for the house of his brother-in-law Mayerne, at Aubonne, near Lausanne, Switzerland. He died there in 1644. He was a member of the Venetian Accademia de' Signori Incogniti.

Works

Biondi was the author of a trilogy of chivalric romances, which tell a continuous story, and of a work on English history. They were all written in Italian, but became popular in English translation. They are:
Biondi married around 1622 Mary Mayerne, a former lady-in-waiting to Anne of Denmark and the sister of Sir Theodore Mayerne, the king's physician.