Sir Francis Walsingham (11 page)

This was the kind of Christian ministry under which the Walsinghams sat Sunday by Sunday and with which we may assume they were, at least broadly, in sympathy. The extremists were much encouraged by the support of top people. Crowley boasted that he had ‘friends enough to have set the whole realm together by the ears’.
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It was largely as a result of supporters in high places that
Crowley was later restored to St Giles Cripplegate – though it is significant that he had by then somewhat modified his views. By the mid-seventies the Dudley brothers – Robert, Earl of Leicester and Ambrose, Earl of Warwick – had clearly emerged as the political leaders of a Puritan party. Francis Walsingham was, by then, identified as one of their party. He formed a link between the worlds of headstrong religious extremism and the court and Council. But this does not mean that he was, himself, an ultra-radical.

When we turn to the
Discourse
what strikes us is that it does
not
exude fanaticism. Despite the assertion of the author of the
Answer,
there is no hint in the
Discourse
of violent Puritan polemic or religious radicalism. The author accepts the ecclesiastical status quo and commends the queen’s leniency in not pursuing the enemies and critics of her church. ‘God be thanked,’ he comments, ‘that hath so provided for the continuance of religion as he hath given us a prince that favoureth religion.’ The writer does allow himself the observation that lack of sound preaching has encouraged popery on the one hand and atheism on the other but there is no suggestion that he is anything other than a loyal member of the English church. He sticks carefully to his chosen subject and if he is dissatisfied with the Elizabethan religious settlement he keeps quiet about it. He pens a reasoned case that Mr Secretary himself could happily have identified with.

What does emerge from the pamphlet is that its author was informed about foreign and domestic affairs. He seems well acquainted with the Guise family – ‘a race that is both enemy to God and the common quiet of Europe’. He knows that Murray, the Scottish regent, is so well disposed to Elizabeth that ‘during his government she may assure herself of most perfect union’. His honest analysis of the religious sympathies of the English people is that two-thirds of them are inclined towards Catholicism. Here is an author with his finger on the pulse of current affairs.

So far, the attribution of the
Discourse
to Walsingham seems to hold up. However, in the concluding paragraphs an argument is advanced which it is difficult to imagine Walsingham assenting to. The author recommends marrying off Mary to a Spanish or French prince on the
grounds that this would sow discord between the two leading Catholic powers. Although Walsingham was among the few political figures in England who embraced a conspiracy theory based on a Rome-Paris-Madrid axis, he would not have advocated such a risky policy of placing in the hands of Valois or Habsburg aspirants a valid claim to the Crown of England. In fact the
Discourse
was the work not of Walsingham but of his close contemporary and fellow lawyer, Thomas Norton.

Norton was one of the up-and-coming politicians of the day and a vigorous, if moderate, Puritan reformer. He married the daughter of Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury who had been burned by Mary. Norton threw himself zealously into everything he undertook. As well as pursuing his legal profession, he wrote political pamphlets and poetry. With Thomas Sackville he created the early English tragedy
Gorboduc,
a play heavy with contemporary political comment. He entered the Commons in the first parliament of Elizabeth’s reign and became one of its most active members, particularly interesting himself in the cause of church reform. He worked in committee with John Foxe and the Puritan publisher, John Day, to produce a modified version of the Prayer Book which, they hoped, would create a consensus on such vexed questions as vestments. Alas, nothing ever came of the this eirenical initiative. It has long been known that, in later years, Walsingham was Norton’s patron and that he found the pamphleteer a useful mouthpiece for his own policies. We can now see that the connection between the two men was so close from the earliest days of Elizabeth’s reign that Walsingham could be identified by some contemporaries as the author of the
Discourse.

In the real world of politics the situation rapidly developed beyond the point of academic debate about the Howard-Stuart marriage. In mid-September Elizabeth confronted Norfolk and his nerve broke. He took himself off to his estate at Kenninghall without royal permission. The queen angrily summoned him to return but when he did set out for Windsor (Elizabeth had been sufficiently alarmed to take up residence in her most secure palace) he got no farther than the Chilterns. He was met on the road by armed guards who conveyed
him to Burnham, Buckinghamshire, and the house of Paul Wentworth, Walsingham’s brother-in-law. Here the duke was detained in strict isolation until a military escort arrived on 4 October to convey him to the Tower. Howard’s allies were thrown into confusion. Most followed their political instinct and hastened to distance themselves from the unfortunate earl. But in the north, Westmorland and Northumberland panicked. Ordered to present themselves to the Council to be examined for their part in the conspiracy, they raised the standard of revolt. With about 5,500 men they overwhelmed Durham and marched on southwards, intent on reaching Tetbury Castle in the Derbyshire Peaks, where Mary Stuart was lodged. For many of the little army who marched behind banners displaying the five wounds of Christ this was a Catholic crusade reminiscent of the Pilgrimage of Grace a generation earlier. An appalled merchant reported the news that soon reached London:

While the aforesaid persons were in arms prosecuting their impious attempt, they not only threw down the communion tables, tore in pieces the holy bible and godly books, and trod under foot the printed homilies, but also again set up the blasphemous mass as a sacrifice for the living and the dead. And as a farther cloak to their pretended piety, they caused some crosses and some banners of certain saints, whom they either believed to be their patrons and defenders, or pretended they would be, to be carried in procession among their arms.
⁴

Ordinary countrymen welcomed the earls’ initiative and a mass in Durham Cathedral was attended by a crowd of worshippers. Their betters were more circumspect. No men of substance joined the march. Mary was moved to a fresh place of confinement (her sixth change of address in a single year) but even had she not been her rescuers would have found Tetbury a bridge too far. North of York the rebels faltered and were soon in retreat. By the end of the year the Northern Rebellion was all over and Elizabeth’s generals were attending to the grisly business of hanging scores of traitors (though not the 700 victims Elizabeth had demanded). Two years later Northumberland was handed over by the Scots and executed at
York, where his head was raised on a pole above Micklegate Bar. His co-conspirator eked out a long and dreary life as a pensioner of Spain in the Netherlands.

Meanwhile Cecil’s intelligence machine had been hard at work exploring the international ramifications of the plot. Preliminary examination of Howard and his servants at Burnham had thrown up the name of Roberto Ridolfi. Ridolfi, a Florentine banker, was already known to the secretary, because he had volunteered his services as intermediary between Elizabeth and the Duke of Alva with a view to ending the trade war. This was no more than a ploy to worm his way into Cecil’s confidence. This shadowy figure has been called a double agent but the term with its overtones of modern spy stories, both fact and fiction, may be too specific. Ridolfi seems to have been one of those people who desire to be among the world’s movers and shakers, employ a vivid imagination to conceive grandiose schemes and are plausible enough to take in even experienced statesmen. Like a sinuous snake Ridolfi slithered through Europe’s tangled ideological and political jungle, wholly indifferent to the consequences of his intrigues. He was already using his financial activities as a cover to smuggle money from the pope to Mary and her English sympathizers. He was in the Norfolk marriage plot at an early stage and, by the spring of 1569, was working with the arch intriguer Guerau de Spes on a much more far-reaching scheme. With typical panache Ridolfi called it the ‘Enterprise of England’. The details of this grand design were changed over ensuing months because they were never more than ill-conceived opportunist ideas tailored to fit the objectives of whomever Ridolfi was negotiating with at the time. The more extreme plans involved the assassination of Elizabeth and her replacement with Mary, married either to Norfolk or Don John of Austria (Philip’s half-brother). Constant themes were a popular Catholic rising in England, aided by Spanish gold and troops from the Netherlands. The government urgently needed to make some sense out of the swirling rumours. Clearly Ridolfi had to be interrogated. The man entrusted with the task was Francis Walsingham. On 7 October he received a message from Cecil co-signed by Leicester, who had now thrown his weight behind the Secretary: ‘The Queen’s
Majesty hath commanded us to write to the Lord Mayor of London for the apprehension of Roberto Ridolfi, whom her Majesty would have remain in your house without conference until he may be examined of certain matters which touch her Majesty very nearly.’
⁵

The question that springs immediately to mind is why the softly-softly approach? If it was solely a matter of extracting information, the quickest and most effective treatment for Ridolfi would have been to march him straight to the Tower and give him a sight of the rack. There are various possible answers. It may be that the government, ever short of money, did not want to be heavy-handed with a member of the international banking community. Possibly Elizabeth ordered any inquiries about the sensitive marriage issue to be conducted discreetly. But there could be a deeper motivation: Cecil might have entertained hope of ‘turning’ Ridolfi and having a mole in the conspirators’ councils. Or Ridolfi may have exuded such an air of innocence that the Council hesitated to proceed too vigorously. Our basic problem with the Ridolfi plot is that we do not know for certain who was fooling whom.

If Walsingham was instructed to conduct a thorough, probing investigation, it must be admitted that he made a pretty poor fist of it. Ridolfi remained in his house for six weeks, during which time he was examined at least twice and had his lodgings searched. All he admitted was that he had known about the Mary and Norfolk marriage plan (which, anyway, was the subject of common gossip) and that he had conveyed money to the prisoner-queen. When, on 11 November, Leicester and Cecil wrote to order Ridolfi’s release on recognisances there was more than a hint in their letter of dissatisfaction with Walsingham’s handling of the situation. The queen, they said, was aware that the Florentine had revealed what he knew ‘in part’ and that ‘if she were disposed to be severe [she] might force him to confess more’.
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By January 1570 Ridolfi’s bond had been returned to him and, despite the Northern Rebellion and the issuing of
Regnans in excelsis,
he enjoyed complete freedom of movement in England. He employed his time and energies in distributing the papal bull and refining a Catholic plot through communication with Rome, de Spes and
Mary’s representative, the Bishop of Ross. Ridolfi was not alone in furthering schemes for a Catholic comeback. The air was alive with plots and Cecil was on the alert to sniff them out. The Spanish ambassador was up to his ears in intrigue. He discussed plans with some Lancashire gentlemen to spirit Mary away to the Isle of Man and confidently reported to his master that, when the trumpet sounded 10,000 good Catholics would spring to arms. In December 1570 he and his associates were examined by the Council – and merely dismissed with a severe reprimand. By this time Norfolk had been restored to liberty and Ridolfi had resumed his secret communication with the duke. The leniency with which the Council handled all these potential traitors and subversives would have been sheer criminal incompetence if there were no reason for it. It is probably correct, therefore, to conclude that the plotters were being deliberately kept in circulation – and under surveillance. Does this provide us with a clue for understanding a tantalizing reference which Walsingham entered into his journal on 24 December: ‘I went to the court and had conference with my Lord of Leicester and Mr Secretary about a matter of great importance?’
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Cecil never wavered in his conviction that Mary Stuart was a very limb of Satan and that the realm could not be safe until she was disposed of. In this he was completely at odds with Elizabeth and many of his conciliar colleagues. But he was not the sort of man to abandon his principles or prejudices simply because he was in a minority. Few politicians were more subtle or unscrupulous than William Cecil. He meant to prove his point and one way to do it was to allow the conspirators sufficient rope to hang themselves. Through 1570 he watched the comings and goings between the Spanish and French embassies and Mary’s household. For some months Walsingham continued to be his go-between with Ridolfi. But Walsingham was not fully in his master’s confidence as far as the Florentine was concerned. In October 1570 he could commend Ridolfi to Cecil as a man ‘who standeth on terms of honesty and reputation’.
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Walsingham was not yet the crafty spymaster of legend. Nor, it seems, was Cecil grooming him as an intelligence officer, for in February 1570 he ordered him away from the national centre of intrigue to go on a
diplomatic mission to France. In August and September Walsingham attended the French court as special ambassador. Then, at the end of the year, he took up residence as permanent ambassador.

We will return shortly to his relations with the French court but first we must pursue the Ridolfi business through to its conclusion. In March 1571 the banker crossed the Channel and went straight to Alva to refine the Enterprise of England. It was only a few weeks later that, by ‘happy chance’, his messenger, Charles Bailly, was apprehended at Dover carrying incriminating letters for the Bishop of Ross. Under torture Bailly revealed all he knew about Spanish plans and the machinations of certain English noblemen abroad. Cecil was still having to cope with the aristocratic faction in the Council who resented the influence of a mere commoner. In February Elizabeth had strengthened his hand and confirmed her confidence by raising him to the peerage as Baron Burghley but friends of Howard were agitating for the duke’s fall restitution to favour and hinting what would happen to Cecil when the ‘proper’ balance of government forces had been restored. Then, lo and behold, other ‘accidental’ discoveries were made which gave the international conspiracy almost the appearance of a farce.