In 1595, after his Oxford studies and continental travels, Henry Wotton entered the service of the earl of Essex. Amongst the earliest tasks he undertook was an English synopsis and intellectual analysis of a Spanish work ‘the which was lately Imprinted and Written (as it is supposed) by Antonio Peres [Perez], sometimes Secretary to the King of Spain, and now residing in London’, the Pedacos de Historia (or Relaciones, as the work became known in its later editions). This ‘scholarly service’ rendered to Wotton's new master appropriately exploited his considerable intellectual talents – his fluent Spanish, his knowledge of European affairs, his training in methodical analysis. Together with his The State of Christendom, it established Wotton as the kind of scholar who could provide Essex with knowledge profitable to the enterprise of government. Pearsall Smith argues that The State of Christendom was written in 1594, and that, in the terms of the present paper, it was designed to draw Wotton to the attention of Essex, as a scholar with the kind of ‘intelligence’ which would be valuable in the service of a prominent political figure. This kind of activity, crossing as it clearly does both disciplinary and professional boundaries, and hovering between the private and the public realm, we call a ‘knowledge transaction’; the working relationship established between noble employer and his professional reader is what we call in our title, ‘scholarly service’.