Elizabeth's Spymaster (56 page)

fols.209–237 – Proceedings against Mr William Davison in the Star Chamber, 28 March 1587.

fol.238 – The queen’s secret instructions to Sir Richard Wigmore on his mission to Scotland after the execution of Mary Queen of Scots.

Harleian MS 291, fol.146 – Account of the Scottish hiring of ‘Kate’, a witch and common scold, to revile Walsingham and the English diplomatic mission at Perth, September 1583.

Harleian MS 296:

fol.46 – Letter in the same hand as ‘Pompeo Pellegrini’ and signed ‘B.
C.’, endorsed ‘from Mr Standen’ on the reverse, Florence, 28 August 1587. Partly in cipher.

fol.48 – Letter from Stephen Paule to Walsingham, Venice, 7 November 1587.

Harleian MS 360, fol.65 – plan to intern English Catholics in various castles, in Walsingham’s handwriting, undated but probably late 1577.

Harleian MS 807, fol.4 – Pedigree of the Walsingham family by Robert Glover,
Somerset Herald,
undated.

Harleian MS 1, 174, fol.53 – Another pedigree of the Walsingham family, undated.

Harleian MS 6, 991:

no.9 – Letter from Secretary of State Sir Thomas Smith to Burghley, mentioning the pregnancy of Ursula Walsingham, 7 January 1573.

no.39 – Letter from Walsingham to Burghley, offering the use of two Italian agents for intelligence work, 20 August 1573

no.57 – Letter from Walsingham to Burghley about the use of torture to extract information from the London stationer Henry Cockyn, 2 February 1575.

no.58 – Letter from Walsingham to Burghley about his failure to extractinformation from the stationer Henry Cockyn, 5 February 1575.

Harleian MS 6, 993:

fol.50 – Letter from Walsingham to Burghley, with details of his illness, 2 July 1583.

fol.125 – Letter from Walsingham in which he dismisses reports of Spanish preparations for invasion as ‘Spanish brag’, March 1586.

Harleian MS 6, 994:

fol.76 – Letter from Walsingham to Burghley, urging the return of Drake to harry the Spanish treasure fleets off the Azores, 16 July 1587.

fol.189 – Letter from Walsingham to Burghley concerning his fever, 27 August 1589.

Harleian MS 9, 889 – Letter from Richard Topcliffe to Elizabeth complaining of ‘his disgrace’ in being imprisoned in the Marshalsea Prison, 1595.

King’s MS 119:

fol.50 – French account of the alleged ‘Stafford’ plot to assassinate Elizabeth, January 1587.

fol.80 – Conference between Walsingham and Châteauneuf, the French ambassador in London, about the ‘Stafford’ plot, 13 April 1587.

Lansdowne MS 31:

Article 23 – Letter from Thomas Phelippes to Burghley concerning the ‘false and base informations’ supplied by Lawrence Smith, 1580.

Article 35 – Letter from Jacomo Manucci to Burghley, seeking reward for his services, 26 January 1580.

Lansdowne MS 39, fol.21 – Letter from Dr William Parry to Burghley about the ‘overthrow’ of the English seminary at Rheims, 10 May 1583.

Lansdowne MS 43:

Item 35 – English translation of an Italian letter from Cardinal Como to William Parry with the Pope’s blessing, 30 January 1584.

Item 47 – Parry’s confession to Elizabeth in his own handwriting, 14 February 1584.

Item 50 – Parry’s indictment for assaulting and wounding his creditor, Hugh Hare, in his room in the Temple, London, 2 November 1580.

Item 51 – Evidence against Parry on his arraignment for wounding Hugh Hare, 1580.

Item 52 – Copy of the warrant for the execution of Parry, March 1585.

Lansdowne MS 49, no.25 – Babington’s letter to his associate, Robert Pooley, before his arrest, 4 August 1586.

Lansdowne MS 50, Items 19–21 – Letters between the Earl of Sussex and Lord Burghley about a planned insurrection near Portsmouth, 4 June to 13 June 1586.

Lansdowne MS 51:

Item 42 – Letter from the Mayor and Aldermen of Exeter to Lord Burghley seeking information on how to act in a hue and cry to retake the Queen of Scots, said to have made her escape, 3 February 1586.

Item 43 – Letter from the Mayor and Aldermen of Exeter to the Privy Council seeking the truth of reports that London was on fire and that Mary Queen of Scots had escaped, 4 February 1586.

Item 46 – Robert Wise’s account of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, communicated to Lord Burghley and endorsed by him, 8 February 1586.

Item 66 – Copy of a long letter to the queen from Anthony Tyrrell, who had denied his Papist beliefs to become a Protestant but was now a Papist again, 1586.

Lansdowne MS 59, Item 74 – Letter from Edward Gage to Burghley asking that Richard Topcliffe’s ‘manner of making iron with peat may be investigated’, written sometime in the 1590s.

Lansdowne MS 64, Item 6 – Confession of Richard Floyd, alias Lloyd, ‘an imprisoned seminary priest, taken by Mr Topcliffe and Mr Young’, 31 August 1590.

Lansdowne MS 72, Items 39, 40, 49 – Topcliffe papers (letters and reports).

Lansdowne MS 79, Item 93 – George Ellis’s letter to Burghley complaining of his treatment by Topcliffe and of his wrongful imprisonment by the Lord Admiral, 1595.

Lansdowne MS 97:

Items 5 and 6 – Anti-Jesuit documents, describing their ‘artful designs and practices’, undated.

Item 9 – Articles of inquiry in the examination of Papists, drawn up by Sir Francis Knollys, undated.

Item 10 – Prevarications and pleas of Papists when questioned at the examination, undated.

Lansdowne MS 103, fol.68 – Letter from Lord Burghley to the Tuscan diplomat Count Giovanni Figliazzi in Florence, informing him of Walsingham’s death, 2 June 1590.

Lansdowne MS 153, fol.86 – Letter from William Vavasour imprisoned in Newgate to Henry Spiller about his conviction for praemunire and offering a £700 composition to James 1, 19 June 1612.

Lansdowne MS 155, fols.84–106B – Thomas Norton’s
Book of Devices
‘for keeping Jesuits and Seminarians from infecting the realm’, written before 1585.

Lansdowne MS 167:

fols.287, 289 – Sir Francis Walsingham’s accounts, undated.

fol.294 – Acquittal of debts owed by Walsingham’s estate and to him by the crown by the judge Sir Julius Caesar, 1611.

Lansdowne MS 982 – Vol. XLVIII of Bishop Kennett’s collection of biographical memoranda, 1581–1600, fols.162 and 182 – Sir Francis Walsingham.

Lansdowne MS 1, 198 – Life of Thomas Sutton, founder of Sutton’s Hospital at the Charterhouse, London, undated but written in the seventeenth century.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES (at the Former Public Record Office, Kew, Surrey)

‘AO’ series –
Account rolls of the Auditors of the Imprest and Commissioners of Audit.

‘E’ series –
Documents of the exchequer and related bodies.

‘KB’
series –
Records of the Court of King’s Bench.

‘PROB/PCC’ series –
Probate records, Prerogative Court of Canterbury.

‘SP’ series
– State Papers.

AO 1/2, 119/2 – Final accounts of Sir Amyas Paulet, custodian, for charges of keeping Mary Queen of Scots at Tutbury and Fotheringay, 1 March 1585 to 4 August 1587.

E 23/4/1 – Henry VIII’s will, dated 30 December 1546.

E 101/676/48 – Accounts of Gilbert Dethicke, Garter King at Arms, for the funeral of Mary Queen of Scots, submitted after August 1587.

E 210/10, 059 – Assignment of a debt due to Walsingham in payment of a debt due to the queen, 1583.

E 211/163 – Subsidy of poundage. Indenture between the queen and Walsingham, August 1585.

KB 8/42 – Roll and file of Court of Lord High Steward. Charges against Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, for high treason, January 1572.

PROB 11/47 PCC 32
STEVENSON –
Will of Anne Walsingham, 28 July 1564. Proved: 28 November 1564.

PROB 11/48 PCC 35
CRYMES
and
MORRISON –
Will of Sir Richard Worsley, of Appuldurcombe, Isle of Wight (first husband of Ursula Walsingham), 9 March 1566.

PROB 11/75 pcc 33
DRURY
_ Will of Sir Francis Walsingham, 12 December 1589. Proved: 7 December 1590.

PROB 11
/100
PCC 55
MONTAGUE –
Will of Lady Ursula Walsingham, widow of Sir Francis Walsingham, of Barn Elms, Surrey, 30 January 1602. Proved: 5 July 1602.

SP 12/48/61 – Letter from Walsingham to Cecil, 20 December 1568.

SP 12/141/29 – Account of attempts to convert Catholics in York Cathedral, August 1580.

SP 12/175/110 – ‘Secret advertisements touching Mass priests’ in the North of England from Walsingham’s agent Robert Barnard, December 1584.

SP 12/176/22 – Burghley’s proposals for a ‘Grand Council’ to govern England in the event of the queen’s assassination, 1584–5.

SP 12/193/54 – Copy of the forged postscript of Mary Queen of Scots’ letter to Anthony Babington, 17 July 1586.

SP 12/198/64 – Instructions to Justices of the Peace on the maintenance and operation of warning beacons, 1587.

SP 46/16, fols.223–224 – Licences granted to Walsingham and others for the export of cloth, 1575–80.

SP 46/17:

fol.18 – Goldsmith’s accounts showing sums owing to Lady Walsingham, August to November 1581.

fol.166 – Earl of Shrewsbury to Walsingham, seeking favour for the town of Doncaster impoverished by the plague and warning that if the queen’s grant of Hextroppe, Hunster Woods and Rossington Park to Nicholas Pudsey takes effect, the queen’s mills, etc. in Doncaster will decay for lack of timber, Sheffield Castle, 9 January 1584.

fol.228 – Conditions for a grant of customs of Plymouth and Fowey, Cornwall, to Walsingham for six years from Michaelmas, 17 August 1585.

SP 46/19/38 – Thomas Phelippes’ request to pay his debt to the crown by instalments and to have the aid of the exchequer in recovering his own debts, as his estate is impaired by his imprisonment and loss of office P[?1598].

SP 46/34, fols.65–66B – Supplementary Treasury documents, 1586–88: Letter from Walsingham to Mildmay asking that the £829 due from Sir Walter Raleigh and others be accepted as part of his rent for the farm of the customs, 28 May 1586.

SP 46/39, fol.293 – Humble request of Thomas Phelippes concerning his debts to the queen, 1595.

SP 46/40,
fol.no
– Stay of process against Thomas Phelippes and his sureties, 5 October 1596.

SP 46/125:

fol.137 – Jacomo Manucci to Walsingham. He is too ill to come to court but begs that the queen remember Fryman’s bill and states that Filippo Corsini will lend Walsingham £400 ‘if the alderman will be bound’, London, 9 June 1584.

fols.143–143B – Jacomo Manucci to Walsingham. Has information against Filippo Corsini for illegal export of wool. Discusses the difficulties of alien merchants in the wool trade and proposes a conference with the Company of the Staple, London, 10 September 1584.

SP 53/22 and 53/23 – Two books of ciphers and decodes relating to the correspondence of Mary Queen of Scots; blue half-leather volumes both titled
Ciphers – Scotland.

SP 78/21 – Account of receipts and disbursements during employment of M. de Chateaumartin by Walsingham, July 1590.

SP 84/8/131 – Letter from Sir Philip Sidney to Walsingham, Flushing, 28 June 1586.

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND, EDINBURGH

Adv. MS 54.1.1. – Last letter of Mary Queen of Scots, to King Henry III of France, Fotheringay, 8 February 1587.

BODLEIAN LIBRARY, OXFORD

Ashmolean MS 1, 157, no.87 – Letter from an anonymous correspondent regarding Walsingham’s administration of the Duchy of Lancaster, 16 May 1595.

Tanner MS 79, fols.127ff. – Letter (in cipher) from Walsingham to William Harborne, English ambassador to the Turks, Constantinople, 24 June 1587.

GUILDHALL LIBRARY, CITY OF LONDON

Hustings Rolls of the City of London – 13; 131, no.62; 133, nos.24 and 71; 137, no.24; 144, no.16; 192, no.14; 255, no.49.

HATFIELD HOUSE, HERTFORDSHIRE

Manuscripts of Marquis of Salisbury

‘CP’
prefix denotes Cecil Papers.

CP 13/77 – Mary Queen of Scots’ bond ‘to be an enemy to all those that attempt anything against Queen Elizabeth’s life’, 5 January 1585.

CP 13/86V-88 – Thomas Morgan to Mary Queen of Scots, 5 January 1585.

CP 15/56 – Warrant for the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, December 1586.

CP 15/79 – ‘Note of things to be considered’.

CP 16/17 – Circumstances of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, bearing Burghley’s holograph, 17 February 1587.

CP 90/150 – Letter from Sir Walter Raleigh to Sir Robert Cecil, ?1600.

CP 164/9 – Memo by Sir Francis Walsingham on the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, 2 February 1587.

CP 164/10 – Rough draft of a letter from the Privy Council to Elizabeth on the circumstances surrounding the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, 12 February 1587.

CP 164/15 – Rough draft of a second letter from the Privy Council, ‘A writing in the name of all the counsellors that sent Mr Beale to the Earl of Shrewsbury’, 12 February 1587.

CP 164/17 – The case of the Queen of Scots’ death, bearing Burghley’s holograph, 17 February 1587.

CP 164/105 – Letter from the Master of Gray to Archibald Douglas, Scottish ambassador to London, 10 September 1586.

CP 164/109 – Letter from the Provost of Lincluden to Archibald Douglas, Scottish ambassador to London, 26 September 1586.

CP 164/114 – Letter from Burghley to Sir Edward Stafford, ambassador to France, 2 October 1586.

CP 164/140 – Note from Roger Aston, James VI’s confidential agent, to Archibald Douglas, the Scottish ambassador to London, 24 October 1586.