Elizabeth's Spymaster (51 page)

8
Stewart, p.250.

9
BL Add. MS 15, 891, fol.101. At the time of writing the letter, Walsingham was suffering from ‘an indisposition’ of his body and was expected to be absent from court ‘until the end of the week’.

10
Stewart, p.349.

11
HMC, ‘Rutland’, p.149.

12
He conveyed lands including the manor of Bradford, buildings and lands in the villages of Atworth, Troile, Stoke, Leigh, Wraxall, Holt and Windesley in Wiltshire and property in Barnes, Putney and Mortlake to William Brunkhard and Thomas Fleming for their use, and after their decease to Sir Philip Sidney and Frances his wife. See Webb, Miller and Beckwith, pp.361–2.

13
Stewart, p.251.

14
Leicester paid
£6
for the services of a midwife and nurse.

15
NA PRO SP 84/8/131.

16
It was said at the time that Sir William Pelham lacked his thigh armour and Sidney discarded his own armour as a gesture of solidarity, if not bravado.

17
Bruce, pp.414–15.

18
John Aubrey, in the next century, pruriently claimed that his death followed the overexertion of making love to his young wife on his sickbed.

19
Leicester to Walsingham, see Bruce, p.446.

20
SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581-go,
p.366.

21
Bruce, pp.456–7.

22
Lant (1555–1601) was successively
Portcullis Pursuivant
and
Windsor Herald
at the College of Arms. A copy of the book is in the Aldrich Collection in the library of Christ Church College, Oxford.

23
James Howell (ed.),
Cottoni Posthuma,
London, 1675, p.338.

24
Bodleian Library, Ashmolean MS 1, 157, no.87.

25
See Webb, Miller and Beckwith, p.129. The painting, measuring 51 × 71 in. (1295 × 1803 mm), was bought from the Walsingham family seat of Scadbury
in Kent by James West. Later owners included Sir Joshua Reynolds and Horace Walpole. It was displayed in an exhibition in London in 1890 and is now at Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire.

26
Strong, pp.79–80 and illustrated in plate 82. It was previously attributed to Hans Eworth
(fl.
1540–73) and there is also evidence it may be by Lucas de Heere (1534–84).

27
BL Harleian MS 306, fol.142.

28
Conditions for a grant of customs of Plymouth and Fowey, Cornwall, to Walsingham for six years from Michaelmas, 17 August 1585. NA PRO SP 46/17, fol.228.

29
BL Harleian MS 167, fol.39. Walsingham to Burghley, 23 April 1589.

30
NA PRO SP 46/34, fols.65–66B.

31
Read,
Mr Secretary Walsingham,
Vol. III, pp.388–9.

32
SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90,
p.156.

33
See, for example, the licences granted to Walsingham and others for 1575–80 in NA PRO SP 46/16, fols.223–224.

34
Gilbert (?1537–1583) was half-brother to Sir Walter Raleigh.

35
NA PRO SP 46/17, fol.166.

36
NA PRO SP 46/125, fols.143–143B. In June that year, Manucci, ‘too ill to come to court’, reported that Corsini was willing to lend Walsingham £400 – see fol.137.

37
Surrey History Centre, Loseley MS LM/1, 042/14. The inhabitants’ petition was addressed to Sir William More, amongst others. More was one of the overseers of the will of Sir Richard Worsley, first husband of Walsingham’s wife Ursula.

38
Longleat House, Seymour Papers SE/Vol. V, fols.152–155. On 16 November, Beauchamp wrote to Hertford, his father, acknowledging his obedience to him but ‘joining [it] with the duty of a husband as to his wife’ (fol.156).

39
Liza Picard,
Elizabeths London,
London, 2003, p.244 and SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90, P-59-

40
Digges, p.136.

41
Cited by Read,
Mr Secretary Walsingham,
Vol. I, p.156.

42
Digges, p.145. Burghley wrote his instructions on 8 October 1571 and Killigrew departed for Paris on 20 October, carrying a letter from Elizabeth for Walsingham pointing out, rather obviously perhaps, that he should seek an immediate cure ‘for… by your good service hitherto, we do plainly perceive that our election of you [as ambassador] has been well answered, and the continuance
of you in that service is to be much desired by the recovery of your health’. It was one of the rare occasions when Elizabeth showed some appreciation of Walsingham’s efforts. Adverse winds in the English Channel and other difficulties delayed Killigrew’s arrival in Paris to replace Walsingham until 31 October.

43
Fénelon, Vol. VI, p.358.

44
BL Add. MS 33, 531, fol.151.

45
Elizabeth sent to Burghley, desiring his attendance at court, because of Walsingham’s absence. See SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90,
p.578.

46
Bacon (1558–1610) was to become the Earl of Essex’s private ‘undersecretary for foreign affairs’ in 1593. He would have been aged twenty-three when he received Walsingham’s letter.

47
Birch, Vol. I, p.14 and cited by Read,
Mr Secretary Walsingham,
Vol. III, p.447.

48
The average male life expectancy in this period was around forty-five.

49
For a description of some of the more horrific Tudor medical techniques, see Hutchinson, pp.130–3.

50
BL Harleian MS 6, 993, fol.50.

51
HMC, ‘Finch’, pp.24–5.

52
Presumably his doctors.

53
BL Add. MS 15, 891, fol.110 and Nicholas,
Memoirs of…
Hatton,
p.340.

54
Was this the same Dr Baily who lived next door to the French ambassador’s house in Salisbury Court, off Fleet Street on the western edge of the City of London? See Bossy,
Giordino Bruno,
p.49. If so, one is tempted to speculate whether the physician was one of Walsingham’s informants, providing details of the comings and goings at the residence.

55
BL Cotton MS Galba D i, fol.248, 14 August 1587. Walsingham talks of suffering a ‘stoppage of water’.

56
SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90,
p.424.

57
Ibid., p.427.

58
The Earl of Derby wrote to Walsingham on 27 December 1587 with fervent hopes that he would ‘recover his former health’. SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90,
p.446.

59
Ibid., p.491.

60
BL Harleian MS 6, 994, fol.189.

61
SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90,
p.657.

62
Thomas Lake, just appointed Clerk of the Signet and regarded as Walsingham’s man. He was afterwards knighted and became Secretary of State. See Birch, Vol. I, p.57.

63
SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90,
p.657. The letter also covers other matters of government business, such as the queen’s decision to send one of her military commanders, Sir John Norreys, to Ireland.

64
Ibid., p.594.

65
All three were included in James Howell’s
Divers[e] choice Pieces of that Renowned Antiquary Sir Robert Cotton,
first published in 1651. See Read,
Mr Secretary Walsingham,
p.441 fn. and p.442.

66
NA PRO PROB 11/75 PCC 33
DRURY
^_
will of Sir Francis Walsingham, 12 December 1589. Also printed in Webb, Miller and Beckwith, p.384.

67
Inquisition Post-Mortem (hereafter ‘IPM’) on the death of Sir Francis Walsingham, conducted at Salisbury, Wiltshire, 27 September 1592, before John Hall esquire and others. Printed in Webb, Miller and Beckwith, p.361.

68
The note in the parish registers at Bexley, Kent, that he died ‘about March 25’ is clearly wrong. The date of death was reported officially at his IPM.

69
Camden, p.394.

70
Nichols, p.28.

71
He died in 1591.

72
Illustrated in Dugdale, p.82. The inscription on this megalomaniacal tomb even enjoined the passer-by to ‘Stay [stop] and behold the mirror of a dead man’s house’. It remained visible in the ‘dismal ruins’ of the cathedral after the ravages of the Great Fire of London, which destroyed Old St Paul’s in 1666.

73
Fisher, p.8.

74
BL Cotton Vespasian C xiv, fol.215. Another suggestion in Latin on fol.185 more closely resembles his known epitaph.

75
Conducted.

76
Fisher, pp.8–11. The inscription, in Latin, is also transcribed by Dugdale, p.101 and Nichols, pp.28–9.

77
In 1588, the Sheriff of Sussex seized goods from Wiston (his home in that county) in payment of debts, including seventy-two feather beds and thirty-six Turkish carpets. As treasurer-at-war from 1586, he shamelessly embezzled large sums of cash raised to pay the English soldiers fighting in the Netherlands war – spending £8,000 before he even left the shores of England. One of the army’s captains revealed how he loaned out much of the funds at interest, with £1.5 million passing through his hands in a decade. It was alleged that he made £20,000 a year through various scams. In the 1590s he unsuccessfully tried to bribe Burghley to procure for him the appointment of Comptroller of the Household and was declared bankrupt in disgrace in 1597,
when he owed the queen £35,175 in misappropriated funds. Perhaps Walsingham was trying to bail out his debts? See ‘DNB2’, Vol. 50, p.316 (article on Shirley by Janet Pennington).

78
BL Lansdowne MS 167, fol.294.

79
SPD,
James 1, 1611–1618,
p.66.

80
BL Lansdowne MS 103, fol.68.

81
SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90,
p.664.

82
Ibid., p.674.

83
‘Cal. Spanish’, Vol. IV, p.578. Another Spanish report was written (in Italian) on June 9, adding that Walsingham was ‘buried the next day in St Paul’s church near the body of Philip Sidney, his son-in-law. He died greatly in debt.’ See SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90,
p.670.

Chapter Nine

1
Naunton, p.21.

2
Camden, p.394.

3
Naunton, p.21.

4
Watson (?1557–1592) produced some sonnets that were closely studied by Shakespeare, and he was the ‘Amyntas’ of Spenser’s
Colin Clout’s Come Home Again
in 1595.

5
Webb, Miller and Beckwith, pp.130–1.

6
NA PROB
II/100
PCC 55
MONTAGUE.

7
Letter to Sir Christopher Hatton, 7 November 1582. See Nicholas,
Memoirs of… Hatton, p.279.

8
Revd Daniel Lysons,
Environs of London,
Vol. I – ‘Surrey’, London, 1810, p.9.

9
Nairn, Pevsner and Cherry, p.105.

10
Webb, Miller and Beckwith, p.132.

11
A portrait of a lady ‘in Persian dress’, clearly pregnant, at Hampton Court, painted by Gheeraerts the Younger, has been identified by Sir Roy Strong as being of Frances Devereaux, painted in 1600 when she was carrying her second daughter Dorothy.

12
Graves, p.100.

13
Somerset, p.639.

14
See his humble request to the queen about his debts in NA PRO SP
46/39, fol.293 and the stay of legal process against him on 5 October 1596 in SP 46/40, fol.110.

15
NA PRO SP 4/19/38.

16
SPD,
James, 1603–1610,
p.13.

17
Ibid., p.72.

18
Ibid., pp.25, 29 and 314. Phelippes’ brother Stephen was also questioned about Thomas’ foreign correspondence.

19
Ibid., p.504.

20
BL Cotton MS Julius C iii, fol.297 and ‘Paulet’, p.375.

21
Birch, Vol. I, pp.66–8.

22
Ibid., pp.502–5.

23
Pollen, pp.ccvii-ccviii.

24
Edward Gage wrote to Burghley sometime in the 1590s asking that Topcliffe’s ‘manner of making iron with peat be investigated’. See BL Lansdowne MS 59, Item 74.

25
Birch, Vol. I, p.160.

26
See, for example, the confession of Richard Floyd, alias Lloyd, ‘an imprisoned seminary priest taken [arrested] by Mr Topcliffe and [Justice of the Peace] Mr Young’, 31 August 1590, in BL Lansdowne MS 64, Item 6.

27
James Heath,
Torture and the English Law: An Administrative and Legal History from the Plantagenets to the Stuarts,
Westport, Connecticut, and London, 1982, p.143.

28
Southwell was executed on 21 February 1595. Canonised in 1970.

29
Henry Walpole, born at Docking, Norfolk, in 1558; executed at York, 7 April 1595. Canonised in 1970.

30
BL Harleian MS 9, 889.

31
‘DNB2’, p.29, article on Topcliffe by William Richardson.

32
BL Lansdowne MS 72, Item 49.

33
John Fitzherbert and his wife were reported as recusants at Badley Hall, ‘with Mr Tanner, priest’ by Walsingham’s agent Barnard in the early 1580s.

34
Mary’s physician, apothecary and surgeon, respectively.

35
The vault was opposite the tomb of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first and much wronged wife. The burial registers record: ‘Anno domini 1587 et Regni Regine Elizabeth Anno XXIX. Item: The Queen of Scots was most sumptuously buried in the Cathedral church of Peterborough the first day of August who was for her deserts, beheaded at Fotheringay about Saint Paul’s day before.’
Immediately after this entry comes another connected with Mary: ‘Anthony More, one of the children of the queen’s majesty’s kitchen which followed at the funeral aforesaid of the Queen of Scots, was buried the third day [of August].’

36
‘A Remembrance of the Order and Manner of the Burial of Mary Queen of Scots’,
Archaeologia,
I, 3rd edn. (1804), p.383. The ‘annoyance’ is a euphemistic reference to the smell of the cadaver. The coffin was said to have weighed 9 cwt. (457kg).