Before discussing more particularly the embassy on which Sir Anthony Standen was sent by James I in 1603, it has been thought well in the present article to narrate the story of this Elizabethan adventurer previous to that event.

In 1630 there was published at the College press at St. Omers an anonymous book entitled Charity mistaken, with the want whereof, Catholickes are vniustly charged: for affirming, as they do with grief, that Protestancy vnrepented destroies saluation. It was answered three years later by Christopher Potter, Provost of Queen’s College, Oxford, and there ensued a controversy lasting several years between Potter and Chillingworth, on the Protestant side, and the Jesuits, Matthew Wilson (alias Edward Knott) and John Floyd, on the Catholic side.