Francis Walsingham
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For the English Jesuit priest, see Francis Walsingham (Jesuit).
| Sir Francis Walsingham | |
|---|---|
Portrait c. 1585, attributed to John de Critz
|
|
| Born | c. 1532[a] probably Chislehurst, Kent, England |
| Died | 6 April 1590 Seething Lane, London, England |
| Occupation | Secretary of State Spymaster |
| Religion | Protestantism |
| Spouse(s) | Anne Barne Ursula St. Barbe |
| Children | Frances Devereux, Countess of Essex Mary Walsingham (died as a child) |
| Parent(s) | William Walsingham Joyce Denny |
Born to a well-connected family of gentry, Walsingham attended Cambridge University and travelled in continental Europe before embarking on a career in law at the age of twenty. A committed Protestant, during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary I of England he joined other expatriates in exile in Switzerland and northern Italy until Mary's death and the accession of her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth.
Walsingham rose from relative obscurity to become one of the small coterie who directed the Elizabethan state, overseeing foreign, domestic and religious policy. He served as English ambassador to France in the early 1570s and witnessed the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. As principal secretary, he supported exploration, colonization, the use of England's maritime strength and the plantation of Ireland. He worked to bring Scotland and England together. Overall, his foreign policy demonstrated a new understanding of the role of England as a maritime, Protestant power in an increasingly global economy. He oversaw operations that penetrated Spanish military preparation, gathered intelligence from across Europe, disrupted a range of plots against Elizabeth and secured the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Contents
Early years
Ruins of the Manor House at Scadbury: the Walsingham family seat
Francis Walsingham matriculated at King's College, Cambridge, in 1548 with many other Protestants but as an undergraduate of high social status did not sit for a degree.[4][8] From 1550 or 1551, he travelled in continental Europe, returning to England by 1552 to enrol at Gray's Inn, one of the qualifying bodies for English lawyers.[9]
Upon the death in 1553 of Henry VIII's successor, Edward VI, Edward's Catholic half-sister Mary I became queen. Many wealthy Protestants, such as John Foxe and John Cheke, fled England, and Walsingham was among them. He continued his studies in law at the universities of Basel and Padua,[10] where he was elected to the governing body by his fellow students in 1555.[11]
Rise to power
Mary I died in 1558 and was succeeded by her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth I. Walsingham returned to England and through the support of one of his fellow former exiles, Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford, he was elected to Elizabeth's first parliament as the member for Bossiney, Cornwall, in 1559.[12] At the subsequent election in 1563, he was returned for both Lyme Regis, Dorset, another constituency under Bedford's influence,[13] and Banbury, Oxfordshire. He chose to sit for Lyme Regis.[14] In January 1562 he married Anne, daughter of Sir George Barne, Lord Mayor of London in 1552–3, and widow of wine merchant Alexander Carleill.[15] Anne died two years later leaving her son Christopher Carleill in Walsingham's care.[16] In 1566, Walsingham married Ursula St. Barbe, widow of Sir Richard Worsley, and Walsingham acquired her estates of Appuldurcombe and Carisbrooke Priory on the Isle of Wight.[17] The following year, she bore him a daughter, Frances. Walsingham's other two stepsons, Ursula's sons John and George, were killed in a gunpowder accident at Appuldurcombe in 1567.[18]In the following years, Walsingham became active in soliciting support for the Huguenots in France and developed a friendly and close working relationship with Nicholas Throckmorton, his predecessor as MP for Lyme Regis and a former ambassador to France.[19] By 1569, Walsingham was working with William Cecil to counteract plots against Elizabeth. He was instrumental in the collapse of the Ridolfi plot, which hoped to replace Elizabeth with the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots.[20] He is credited with writing propaganda decrying a conspiratorial marriage between Mary and Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk,[b] and Roberto di Ridolfi, after whom the plot was named, was interrogated at Walsingham's house.[23]
In 1570, the Queen chose Walsingham to support the Huguenots in their negotiations with Charles IX of France. Later that year, he succeeded Sir Henry Norris as English ambassador in Paris.[24] One of his duties was to continue negotiations for a marriage between Elizabeth and Charles IX's younger brother Henry, Duke of Anjou. The marriage plan was eventually dropped on the grounds of Henry's Catholicism.[25] A substitute match with the next youngest brother, Francis, Duke of Alençon, was proposed but Walsingham considered him ugly and "void of a good humour".[26] Elizabeth was 20 years older than Alençon, and was concerned that the age difference would be seen as absurd.[27] Walsingham believed that it would serve England better to seek a military alliance with France against Spanish interests.[28] The defensive Treaty of Blois was concluded between France and England in 1572, but the treaty made no provision for a royal marriage and left the question of Elizabeth's successor open.[29]
The Huguenots and other European Protestant interests supported the nascent revolt in the Spanish Netherlands, which were provinces of Habsburg Spain. When Catholic opposition to this course in France resulted in the death of Huguenot leader Gaspard de Coligny and the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, Walsingham's house in Paris became a temporary sanctuary for Protestant refugees, including Philip Sidney.[30] Ursula, who was pregnant, escaped to England with their four-year-old daughter. She gave birth to a second girl, Mary, in January 1573 while Walsingham was still in France.[31] He returned to England in April 1573,[32] having established himself as a competent official whom the Queen and Cecil could trust.[33] He cultivated contacts throughout Europe, and a century later his dispatches would be published as The Complete Ambassador.[34]
In the December following his return, Walsingham was appointed to the Privy Council of England and was made joint principal secretary (the position which later became "Secretary of State") with Sir Thomas Smith. Smith retired in 1576, leaving Walsingham in effective control of the privy seal, though he was not formally invested as Lord Privy Seal.[35] Walsingham acquired a Surrey county seat in Parliament from 1572 that he retained until his death, but he was not a major parliamentarian.[36] He was knighted on 1 December 1577,[37] and held the sinecure posts of Recorder of Colchester, custos rotulorum of Hampshire, and High Steward of Salisbury, Ipswich and Winchester.[38] He was appointed Chancellor of the Order of the Garter from 22 April 1578 until succeeded by Sir Amias Paulet in June 1587, when he became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in addition to principal secretary.[39]
Secretary of State
Seventeenth-century engraving of Queen Elizabeth with William Cecil (left) and Francis Walsingham (right)
Closely linked to the mercantile community, he actively supported trade promotion schemes and invested in the Muscovy Company and the Levant Company.[42] He supported the attempts of John Davis and Martin Frobisher to discover the Northwest Passage and exploit the mineral resources of Labrador, and encouraged Humphrey Gilbert's exploration of Newfoundland.[43] Gilbert's voyage was largely financed by recusant Catholics and Walsingham favoured the scheme as a potential means of removing Catholics from England by encouraging emigration to the New World.[44] Walsingham was among the promoters of Francis Drake's profitable 1578–1581 circumnavigation of the world, correctly judging that Spanish possessions in the Pacific were vulnerable to attack. The venture was calculated to promote the Protestant interest by embarrassing and weakening the Spanish, as well as to seize Spanish treasure.[45] The first edition of Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigation, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation was dedicated to Walsingham.[46]
Walsingham advocated direct intervention in the Netherlands in support of the Protestant revolt against Spain, on the grounds that although wars of conquest were unjust, wars in defence of religious liberty and freedom were not.[47] Cecil was more circumspect and advised a policy of mediation, a policy that Elizabeth endorsed.[48] Walsingham was sent on a special embassy to the Netherlands in 1578, to sound out a potential peace deal and gather military intelligence.[49]
Charles IX died in 1574 and Henry, Duke of Anjou, inherited the French throne as Henry III.[50] Between 1578 and 1581 the Queen resurrected attempts to negotiate a marriage with the Duke of Alençon, who had put himself forward as a protector of the Huguenots and a potential leader of the Dutch.[51] Walsingham was sent to France in mid-1581 to discuss an Anglo-French alliance, but the French wanted the marriage agreed first and Walsingham was under instruction to obtain a treaty before committing to the marriage. He returned to England without an agreement.[52] Personally, Walsingham opposed the marriage, perhaps to the point of encouraging public opposition.[53] Alençon was a Catholic and as his elder brother, Henry III, was childless, he was heir to the French throne. Elizabeth was past the age of childbearing and had no clear successor. If she died while married to the French heir, her realms could fall under French control.[54] By comparing the match of Elizabeth and Alençon with the match of the Protestant Henry of Navarre and the Catholic Margaret of Valois, which occurred in the week before the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, the "most horrible spectacle" he had ever witnessed, Walsingham raised the spectre of religious riots in England in the event of the marriage proceeding.[55] Elizabeth put up with his blunt, often unwelcome, advice,[56] and acknowledged his strong beliefs in a letter,[57] in which she called him "her Moor [who] cannot change his colour".[58][c]
These were years of tension in policy towards France, with Walsingham sceptical of the unpredictable Henry III and distrustful of the English ambassador in Paris, Edward Stafford.[34] Stafford, who was compromised by his gambling debts, was in the pay of the Spanish and passed vital information to Spain.[61] Walsingham may have been aware of Stafford's duplicity, as he fed the ambassador false information, presumably in the hope of fooling or confusing the Spanish.[62]
The pro-English Regent of Scotland James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, whom Walsingham had supported, was overthrown in 1578.[63] After the collapse of the Raid of Ruthven, another initiative to secure a pro-English government in Scotland,[64] Walsingham reluctantly visited the Scottish court in August 1583, knowing that his diplomatic mission was unlikely to succeed.[65] James VI dismissed Walsingham's advice on domestic policy saying he was an "absolute King" in Scotland. Walsingham replied with a discourse on the topic that "young princes were many times carried into great errors upon an opinion of the absoluteness of their royal authority and do not consider, that when they transgress the bounds and limits of the law, they leave to be kings and become tyrants."[66] A mutual defence pact was eventually agreed in the Treaty of Berwick of 1586.[67]
Walsingham's cousin Edward Denny fought in Ireland during the rebellion of the Earl of Desmond and was one of the English settlers granted land in Munster confiscated from Desmond.[68] Walsingham's stepson Christopher Carleill commanded the garrisons at Coleraine and Carrickfergus.[69] Walsingham thought Irish farmland was underdeveloped and hoped that plantation would improve the productivity of estates.[70] Tensions between the native Irish and the English settlers had lasting effects on the history of Ireland.[71]
Walsingham's younger daughter Mary died aged seven in July 1580;[72] his elder daughter, Frances, married Sir Philip Sidney on 21 September 1583, despite the Queen's initial objections to the match (for unknown reasons) earlier in the year.[73] As part of the marriage agreement, Walsingham agreed to pay £1,500 of Sidney's debts and gave his daughter and son-in-law the use of his manor at Barn Elms in Surrey. A granddaughter born in November 1585 was named Elizabeth after the Queen, who was one of two godparents along with Sidney's uncle, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester.[74] The following year, Sidney was killed fighting the Spanish in the Netherlands and Walsingham was faced with paying off more of Sidney's extensive debts.[75] His widowed daughter gave birth, in a difficult delivery, to a second child shortly afterward, but the baby, a girl, was stillborn.[76]
Espionage
Walsingham was driven by Protestant zeal to counter Catholicism,[77] and sanctioned the use of torture against Catholic priests and suspected conspirators.[78] Edmund Campion was among those tortured and found guilty on the basis of extracted evidence; he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn in 1581.[79] Walsingham could never forget the atrocities against Protestants he had witnessed in France during the Bartholomew's Day massacre and believed a similar slaughter would occur in England in the event of a Catholic resurgence.[80] Walsingham's brother-in-law Robert Beale, who was in Paris with Walsingham at the time of the massacre, encapsulated Walsingham's view: "I think it time and more than time for us to awake out of our dead sleep, and take heed lest like mischief as has already overwhelmed the brethren and neighbours in France and Flanders embrace us which be left in such sort as we shall not be able to escape."[81] Walsingham tracked down Catholic priests in England and supposed conspirators by employing informers,[82] and intercepting correspondence.[83] Walsingham's staff in England included the cryptographer Thomas Phelippes, who was an expert in deciphering letters and forgery, and Arthur Gregory, who was skilled at breaking and repairing seals without detection.[84]In May 1582, letters from the Spanish ambassador in England, Bernardino de Mendoza, to contacts in Scotland were found on a messenger by Sir John Forster, who forwarded them to Walsingham. The letters indicated a conspiracy among the Catholic powers to invade England and displace Elizabeth with Mary, Queen of Scots.[85] By April 1583, Walsingham had a spy, identified as Giordano Bruno by author John Bossy,[d] deployed in the French embassy in London. Walsingham's contact reported that Francis Throckmorton, a nephew of Walsingham's old friend Nicholas Throckmorton, had visited the ambassador, Michel de Castelnau.[88] In November 1583, after six months of surveillance, Walsingham had Throckmorton arrested and then tortured to secure a confession[89]—an admission of guilt that clearly implicated Mendoza.[90] The Throckmorton plot called for an invasion of England along with a domestic uprising to liberate Mary, Queen of Scots, and depose Elizabeth.[91] Throckmorton was executed in 1584 and Mendoza was expelled from England.[92]
Entrapment of Mary, Queen of Scots
After the assassination in mid-1584 of William the Silent, the leader of the Dutch revolt against Spain, English military intervention in the Low Countries was agreed in the Treaties of Nonsuch of 1585.[93] The murder of William the Silent also reinforced fears for Queen Elizabeth's safety.[94] Walsingham helped create the Bond of Association, the signatories of which promised to hunt down and kill anyone who conspired against Elizabeth. The Act for the Surety of the Queen's Person,
passed by Parliament in March 1585, set up a legal process for trying
any claimant to the throne implicated in plots against the Queen.[95] The following month Mary, Queen of Scots, was placed in the strict custody of Sir Amias Paulet, a friend of Walsingham.[96] At Christmas, she was moved to a moated manor house at Chartley.[97]
Walsingham instructed Paulet to open, read and pass to Mary unsealed
any letters that she received, and to block any potential route for
clandestine correspondence.[98]
In a successful attempt to entrap her, Walsingham arranged a single
exception: a covert means for Mary's letters to be smuggled in and out
of Chartley in a beer keg. Mary was misled into thinking these secret
letters were secure, while in reality they were deciphered and read by
Walsingham's agents.[99] In July 1586, Anthony Babington wrote to Mary about an impending plot to free her and kill Elizabeth.[100] Mary's reply was clearly encouraging and sanctioned Babington's plans.[101] Walsingham had Babington and his associates rounded up; fourteen were executed in September 1586.[102]
In October, Mary was put on trial under the Act for the Surety of the
Queen's Person in front of 36 commissioners, including Walsingham.[103]
During the presentation of evidence against her, Mary broke down and pointed accusingly at Walsingham saying, "all of this is the work of Monsieur de Walsingham f
During the presentation of evidence against her, Mary broke down and pointed accusingly at Walsingham saying, "all of this is the work of Monsieur de Walsingham f
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