Elizabeth's Spymaster (16 page)

The Prince of Orange was murdered by a Burgonian … [Balthazar Serack, who] pretending, as the Prince was going out of his dining room, that he had a letter and some further matter to deliver to him, shot him through with a pistol under the breast, whereof he presently fell down dead, without uttering any speech at all. How nearly this touches us, I leave you to judge.
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The murder reinforced the reality of the ever-present threat to the queen’s person and stiffened the English government’s resolve to stamp out subversion. Those associated with the Throgmorton plot suffered accordingly. Throgmorton was executed as a traitor at Tyburn on 10 July 1584. Lord Henry Howard found himself in prison again
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and a further casualty was Henry Percy, Eighth Earl of Northumberland and brother of the leader of the 1569 Northern Rebellion, who committed suicide in the Tower on 20 June 1585 after being arrested for complicity in the plot. He shot himself in the chest with a pistol loaded with three lead bullets.
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Another of Walsingham’s most effective agents was Nicholas Berden, alias Thomas Rogers. He was the servant of a prominent Catholic layman, George Gilbert, and travelled with him to Rome. His first contact as a spy was a note to Walsingham concerning ‘the proceedings there, touching the Queen of Scotland’ in 1583. But he was quickly suspected of treachery by the Catholic exiles and was imprisoned in the papal castle of St Angelo, high above the River Tiber, for a time. On swearing an oath of loyalty to Catholicism, Berden was freed and he returned to England. His oath and fidelity all swiftly forgotten, he was soon spying again for Walsingham. He wrote to Thomas Phelippes on 1 January 1584 in terms fully redolent of a patriotic Victorian high melodrama:

I profess myself a spy, but I am not one for gain, but to serve my country … When any occasion shall be offered, wherein I may
adventure some rare and desperate exploit, such as may be for the honour of my country and my own credit. You shall always find me resolute and ready to perform the same.
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In March 1585 he was operating in London, tasked with watching the activities of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, who was coming under suspicion of conspiracy. With his knowledge of the recusants, Berden was quickly assimilated into the Catholic community and soon had a cosy dinner with a priest, William Weston, alias Edmonds. As far as the spy was concerned, it was a productive meal. Afterwards he supplied Walsingham with the addresses of four or five houses the Jesuit had hidden in and, in addition, the names of eleven Catholic gentlemen and the same number of priests they were harbouring. He added:

Also, the Papists expect forty or fifty priests from Rome and Rheims to arrive here in London … Thus, according to my duty, I have advertised your honour of the premises and for my further service and duty to be done, I rest both night and day at your honourable commandment.
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Early in April, Berden investigated the secret communications between Catholic prisoners in the Tower of London. He informed Walsingham:

I had conference with Gervais Pierrepoint
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late prisoner in the Tower concerning [Father William] Creighton, the Scottish Jesuit there, [on] whether he had any means to confer with his friends. He answered me that when Creighton was first committed, he was lodged in the Martin Tower, right over the lodging [cell] of Nicholas Roscarrock,
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[and] Nicholas did often times by some device, open two doors which were between their lodgings and so they conferred at pleasure … Also, such letters as Creighton did write were by Nicholas conveyed out of his chamber window, which was near the ground, to a little maiden, which was sent often to him by [Father Henry] Orton
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and so by him further conveyed out of the Tower …
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A week later, Berden reported to Walsingham regarding supplies of
Catholic books smuggled into England and of his conversation with Richard, the servant to Dr (later Cardinal) William Allen. Allen was to leave London the following night for France

with a pair of oars to Tilbury Fort
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where … Nicholas de Hew, a Frenchman of Calais will attend him and … convey him to Dieppe or some such place near to it.

By way of a bonus, Berden tipped off Walsingham that two academics, Barker of Oxford and Moore of Cambridge (both Masters of Arts), would be on the same ship, intending to be ordained priests at the college in Rheims. The spy asked Allen’s servant about how the missionary priests currently entered England.

Dr Allen … deliver[s] to every priest for his journey … £6 or £8 in money and a new suit of apparel to wear … The priests most commonly do come over to England in French boats that come to Newcastle for coal … They make choice of that place [because] Robert Highcliffe, her majesty’s officer at Newcastle, is a papist at heart and made acquainted with their coming and that his wife is and has been a papist these three or four years and that by her directions the priests with their books do pass in security …

Walsingham had clearly briefed Berden on the questions he should ask and the spy master was particularly interested in three seditious books then in circulation – Allen’s
True, Sincere and Modest Defence of Catholics,
printed in 1585;
Leicester’s Commonwealth,
which appeared anonymously in Paris or Rouen in September 1584 and contained a number of libels about the queen’s favourite; and finally John Leslie, Bishop of Ross’s
A Treatise touching the Right, Title and Interest of the most Excellent Princess Mary, Queen of Scotland,
published the same year. Berden discovered that William Bray and one Rogers, alias Bruerton, servants to his late master George Gilbert ‘brought over the greatest part of them’. There remained at Rouen ‘in the custody of one Flynton 1,000 of Allen’s book; 1,000 of Leicester’s book and 500 of the Bishop of Ross’s book, which the same Richard should have brought over but he dared not’.

In the margin of his letter, Berden scribbled:

This Rogers was lately taken [arrested] by the Sheriff of Hampshire at Winchester and sent up to Bishop Cooper and by him committed to the Clink [jail] where he did break prison and remains at a widow’s house, a farm between Portsmouth and Petersfield [Hampshire], where he [awaits] William Bray coming to him for … they are to pass in one ship from some creek near to Arundel.
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In a postscript, Berden describes a chance meeting with Bray at the Bell public house in London’s Aldersgate Street. Bray was ‘ready to ride onward of his voyage to Rouen … for he referred me to Tremayne, his brother for [Catholic]
New Testaments
if I need, in whose custody there remains ninety unsold’.

Later Berden went to France to spy on the English Catholic community there. In March 1586 he wrote to Walsingham offering his services to spy on the exiles in France and Italy. He was, in effect, a double agent, as he was being used to receive and deliver letters for them and also to circulate intelligence gathered in England amongst them. He proposed ‘to keep an entire correspondence with all the parties for the avowed purpose of communicating it to Walsingham’. Thomas Phelippes endorsed the letter: ‘From Berden to Mr Secretary Walsingham, the account of his employment put upon him by them beyond the sea.’ Berden repeats his unctuous, self-deprecating views about his profession in a letter to Phelippes, probably written in July 1586:

Though I am a spy (which is a profession odious though necessary) I prosecute the same not for gain but for the safety of my native country …

It grieves me much to have to draw on his honour’s treasure, and if he would yield to some suits now and then at my request, I might be served out of the store of those traitors …
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His first request was not long in coming. On 11 June, now back in London, he asked Phelippes to

procure me the liberty of Ralph Bickley, seminary priest in the Gatehouse [Prison, Westminster] at his honour’s hands, it will be worth £20 to me; and the liberty also of Richard Sherwood, alias Carleton, prisoner in the Counter in Wood Street [City of London] will be worth £30. The money will do me great pleasure being now in extreme need thereof, neither do I know how to shift [manage] any longer without it.
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Eventually, in 1588, Berden decided to quit the exciting world of spying and adopt a ‘more public course of life’. He wrote to Walsingham seeking the post of Royal Purveyor of Poultry that he had performed for three years in ‘my father’s lifetime’. It was granted to him within a month, upon the Secretary’s recommendation. It was a remarkable metamorphosis: one moment he was a spy, the next he was respectably selling dead chickens.

Walsingham employed double agents and knew that some of his own spies would be easily diverted by offers of money from the Spanish. One such was Antony Poyntz, the brother-in-law of Sir Thomas Heneage, Treasurer of the Privy Chamber and an old friend. Poyntz was a law student at the Inner Temple but had been in and out of trouble for some years. He was sent to Paris in December 1586 to spy on Mendoza, but he immediately revealed his true role to the ambassador, apparently flourishing a royal letter of credit as proof of his story.
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Later he was sent by Walsingham to Spain to gather information about the threat posed by the Spanish Armada, but how effective he was there remains unknown.

Amongst this crew of grubby, venal and dissolute agents, one name stands out today. The most famous spy in Walsingham’s network was the dramatist Christopher Marlowe, who worked for him as a student in Paris and Rheims in 1586. As a result of this activity, the award of his Master of Arts degree was placed in jeopardy, but the Privy Council came swiftly to his aid with the Cambridge authorities, stating in June 1587 that ‘he had done her majesty good service and deserved to be rewarded for his faithful dealing’. He almost certainly continued as an agent working against Catholic intrigues in London in return for escaping state
prosecution for the blasphemy contained in his drama
Tamhurlaine,
first produced in 1587.
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A vivid picture of the instructions provided to one of Walsingham’s spies before his mission is portrayed in a letter signed by Phelippes, addressed to ‘a person going to Scotland’ in February 1587, immediately after the death of Mary Queen of Scots. The unknown spy is told

That he shall presently repair to Scotland, addressing himself to such persons as are known or suspected to be enemies to this state.

That he shall principally observe what alteration the death of the king’s mother works either in the said king or in any person of quality in that realm.

To learn how the boroughs stand affected which heretofore have been noted to be enemies to the said queen [Mary].

To seek very carefully what English Catholics resort into that realm, by whom and for whom they are sent and to whom they repair and what is the end of their employment

To learn how the king stands affected to the [Protestant] religion and whether he be disposed to [listen] either to Spain or to France.

To seek out who be the harbourers of such instruments [agents] as are employed by the Catholics between the two realms of Scotland and England.

To advertise [report] weekly what he can learn.

That he address [send] his servant to Mr Anderson, [the] sheriff of Northumberland, to whom he shall have letters of credit, with order to send up his letters hither in post.

That he shall in no sort discover [reveal] himself to Mr Anderson.

To procure letters of credit from the Catholics here.

Beware of David Inglebye.
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In the fevered atmosphere of distrust and suspicion in London in 1584-5, the slightly insane figure of Dr William Parry emerges to become another central, if not bizarre, character in this continuing drama of intrigue and conspiracy. Parry, described by the chronicler Camden as ‘passing proud, neat and spruce’, came from a Northrop, Flintshire,
family
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and had managed to spend his way through the fortunes of the two rich widows
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he had married, one after the other.

During the 1570s, Parry spied on the English Catholics resident in Rome, Paris and Siena for Burghley. In 1580, he escaped the death sentence for assaulting and badly wounding one of his creditors, Hugh Hare (whom he owed £600), after breaking into his room in the Temple in London. Parry spent more than a year inside the Poultry Prison before being bound over to keep the peace on a surety of £1,000.
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In return for his freedom, he was instructed to spy on English Catholics abroad once again for Burghley and Walsingham, firstly in Paris, then in Venice and finally in Milan and Lyons. He boastfully told Burghley on 10 May 1583: ‘If I am not deceived, I have shaken the foundation of the English seminary at Rheims and utterly overthrown the credit of the English pensioners at Rome.’

The following January, Parry returned to London and told the queen frankly that he had been involved in dealings with Pope Gregory XIII and Thomas Morgan, Mary Queen of Scots’ agent in Paris, in planning an attempt on her life. His involvement, he maintained, was merely to unmask the plans of ‘malicious persons’ at home and overseas, and to prove his story’s veracity he produced a letter written to him by Ptolomy Galli, Cardinal of Como, which contained a papal blessing upon him and absolution for his sins. Elizabeth was initially unimpressed by his tale: ‘She took it doubtfully [and] I departed with fear,’ Parry commented. She later changed her mind about his loyalty and in May 1584 he wrote to Burghley seeking the Mastership of St Katherine’s Hospital in London;
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thwarted in this, in September he sought a ‘deanery, provostship or mastership of requests’ which ‘is all I crave’. He ended up with the Queen-borough Seat in the Commons in the Parliament of 1584.