Sir Francis Walsingham (16 page)

Be not dismayed with the controlments and amendments of such things which you shall have done, for you shall have to do with a princess of great wisdom, learning and experience . . . Princes themselves know best their own meaning and there must be time and experience to [become acquainted with] their humours before a man can do any acceptable service.

Walsingham may have paid lip service to that principle but he never really believed it. He frequently grumbled at Elizabeth’s indecisiveness, spoke about resigning and absented himself from court with pleas of ill-health. He suffered from a variety of ailments, foremost among which was a longstanding urinary disorder, but there were times when it was only weariness of spirit that kept him from court. So far from accepting that the queen always knew best, Walsingham did not flinch from protesting to her in person. In September 1581, driven to distraction by Elizabeth’s dithering over marriage with Anjou and her declining, for financial reasons, to enter a Protestant league, Walsingham delivered himself of a long more-in-sorrow-than-anger homily:

I cannot deny but I have been infinitely grieved to see the desire I have had to do your Majesty some acceptable service . . . so greatly crossed . . . I will leave to touch my particular [circumstances] though I have as great cause as any man that ever served in the place I now unworthily supply, being at home subject to sundry strange jealousies and in foreign service to displeasure . . . If either ambition or riches were the end of my strife my grief would be the less. But now to the public [matters] wherein if any thing shall escape my pen that may breed offence, I most heartily beseech your Majesty to ascribe it to love, which can never bring forth evil effects, though sometimes it may be subject to sharp censures. And first, for your Majesty’s marriage. If your
Majesty mean it, remember that by the delay your Highness useth therein, you lose the benefit of time . . . If you mean it not, then assure yourself it is one of the worst remedies you can use. And as for the league we were in hand withal . . . Common experience teacheth that it is as hard in a politic body to prevent any mischief without [expense] as in a natural body diseased, to cure the same without pain. Remember, I humbly beseech your Majesty, the respect of [expense] hath lost Scotland and I would to God I had no cause to think that it might put your Highness in peril of the loss of England . . . It is strange, considering in what state your Majesty standeth, that in all the directions that we have now received, we have special [instruction] not to yield to anything that may be accompanied with [expense] . . . Heretofore your Majesty’s predecessors, in matters of peril, did never look into the [expenses], when their treasure was neither so great as your Majesty’s is, nor subjects so wealthy nor so willing to contribute . . . If this sparing and unprovident course be held still, the mischiefs approaching being so apparent as they are, I conclude therefore, having spoken in heart of duty, without offence to your Majesty, that no one that serveth in place of a Councillor, that either weigheth his own credit, or carrieth that sound affection to your Majesty as he ought to do, that would not wish himself in the farthest part of Ethiopia rather than enjoy the fairest palace in England.
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Elizabeth found it hard to stomach outspoken criticism, especially when it came from the likes of Walsingham, Archbishop Grindal or Paul Wentworth, Puritans who claimed that their high allegiance to God justified their ‘froward’ attitude towards their sovereign. When the queen was in a bad mood Walsingham was often the first to feel the rough edge of her tongue. Beale’s advice in such circumstances was: ‘Bear reproofs, false reports and such like crosses, if they be private and touch you not deeply, with silence or a modest answer. But if it be in company or touch your allegiance, honour or honesty mine advice is that you answer more roundly lest your silence cause standers-by to think ill of you.’

Walsingham also had to be conscious of his relationships with other Council members. He was their social inferior and, therefore, vulnerable.
Beale pointed out the danger of the secretary becoming embroiled in personal and group rivalries. ‘Take heed you do not addict yourself to any faction that you may find among the councillors. You shall find they will only use you for their own turns and, that done, set little by you afterwards.’

Walsingham was fortunate in that the majority of leading councillors were united on most issues. He naturally gravitated towards Dudley, the leader of the Puritans and the champion of a more aggressive foreign policy. Burghley’s voice was more often heard urging caution but the differences between the two noblemen were differences of degree rather than kind. However, in the claustrophobic atmosphere of court and Council chamber, it was impossible that personal rivalries and clashes over policy would not occur.

Between Leicester and Sussex there was a long-established and deep-seated animosity. They quarrelled over most major policy issues – religion, Ireland, the Anjou marriage, relations with Spain and the Netherlands. Early in the reign the two nobles had openly headed court factions and their supporters had worn coloured favours. By the 1580s they confined themselves to heated exchanges across the Council table but even these could turn nasty. In July 1581 Elizabeth had to order them to their rooms like squabbling adolescents and six months later Burghley had to separate them when they came to blows. It should be the secretary’s concern, Beale suggested, to smoothe over disagreements rather than take sides.

Unity in the face of political crisis and a termagant queen was vital. Walsingham made sure that he never found himself stranded between Elizabeth and her Council. His caution was endorsed by Beale. ‘When there shall be any unpleasant matters to be imparted to her Majesty from the Council . . . let not the burden be laid on you alone but let the rest join with you.’

It is in his reference to Walsingham’s intelligence-gathering responsibilities that Beale reveals to us his brother-in-law’s fundamental dilemma. His restless diligence and ingrained sense of duty, combined with his conviction that England stood with its back to the wall, facing packs of baying Catholic hounds, drove him to extend his energies and his purse beyond their limits. He lost no opportunity to
acquire sources of information. These included ‘honest gentlemen in all the shires cities and principal towns’; diplomats; merchants, mariners and others whose work took them abroad; Huguenots and other Protestant friends; foreign courtiers who could be bribed to be Walsingham’s eyes and ears; as well as a handful of trained agents placed strategically in over forty centres throughout Europe. Maintaining this network, as well as paying self-appointed informants who thronged Walsingham’s office hoping to profit from items of gossip they had for sale, was enormously expensive. As well as the agents, Walsingham had to pay a large staff of clerks and scribes, some of whom were linguists or codifiers. Accurate figures for espionage work are notoriously difficult to come by. Privy Seal warrants suggest a steady increase in payments from £750 in 1582 to more than £2,000 in 1588. But Beale intimates that Walsingham received other payments from the Privy Seal of which he kept no adequate record. An estimate of 1610 makes the figures leap from £5,753 to £13,260 over the same period which suggests that Walsingham received royal funds via other channels. In addition he did not shrink from making payments from his own pocket. Beale commented that the queen was far from pleased with the scale of secret service expenditure and he added his own observation that Walsingham employed too many office staff. He seems to suggest that an unnecessary number of clerks were privy to confidential information and there can be little doubt that foreign spymasters were as adept as he at planting moles. It would be safe to say that, during Walsingham’s tenure of office, expenditure on the intelligence services trebled or quadrupled. Beale writes approvingly:

In the time of the ambassages of M. La Mott and Mr Mauvesieur [Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon and Michel de Castelnau, Seigneur de la Mauvissiere, French ambassadors 1568–75 and 1575–85 respectively] he had some of [their] secretaries that betrayed the secrets both of the French and Scottish dealings. In Scotland he was well beloved of many of the nobility, ministers and others, whom he relieved when they were banished into England. With money he corrupted priests, Jesuits and traitors to betray the practices against this realm.

Walsingham’s labours in this aspect of his job demanded Herculean fortitude combined with Minerval wisdom. The torrent of information pouring on to his desk had to be sifted and assessed, as did the trustworthiness of those who supplied it. ‘Be not credulous, lest you be deceived,’ Beale advised. ‘Hear all reports but trust not all. Weight them with time and deliberation and be not liberal of trifles. Observe them that deal on both hands [ie double agents] lest you be deceived.’ And when the intelligence had been assimilated and the necessary letters written to forward it elsewhere, messengers had to be despatched, for which purpose Walsingham kept a stable of sixty horses.

Beale’s final advice was couched in pious terms:

Beware that before God and the whole world you can give a good account of your councils and actions to be void of impiety, covetousness, envy, maliciousness, injustice and fraud.

Wherefore you must be circumspect and pray to God, from whom every good gift proceedeth, to direct you by his holy Spirit. Do nothing against his word, which ought to be your lantern, way and direction. First, briefly examine all your Councils and actions according to the rule of the Ten Commandments, doing nothing that is prohibited in any of them, for (as the Apostle sayeth), ‘no evil action can produce a good result’.

And the Prophet cryeth out a woe unto them that take council without him and [do] grievous things, who shall not escape in the day of the visitation of the Lord.

Grieve not your own conscience and keep yourself as near as you may to the maintenance of the laws and liberties of the land. Decline from evil and do good. Beware of too much worldly policy and human wit.

Walsingham certainly kept his inner eye focused on such sound evangelical advice but in the hard world of devious sixteenth-century politics it was not always easy to live by it.

Viewed from the point of national religion there is a common misconception that Elizabeth’s reign presents us with a mirror-image of Mary’s: there was an official national church and those who
opposed it were persecuted. Mary burned Protestants. Elizabeth had Catholics hanged, drawn and quartered. Under both regimes men and women of conscience took themselves into exile. Succoured by their co-religionists, many engaged in propaganda attacks on the land of their birth and a few indulged in political action. Such a simplistic analysis may appeal to the British instinct of sympathy for the underdog and that variety of toleration which appeals to an agnostic age – a toleration born of expediency out of indifference. In the sixteenth century few, if any commentators believed (or were bold enough to state openly) that all faiths are equally valid or invalid and may, therefore, coexist peacefully within the state. When Walsingham complained to Catherine de Medici about the 1572 massacres, she responded that King Charles was determined to have only one church in France – just as, she cannily pointed out, Elizabeth would only tolerate one English church. In the closing years of Elizabeth’s reign Richard Hooker asserted in his
Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
what his royal mistress certainly took as axiomatic, that an Englishman and a Christian were the same animal viewed from different perspectives. Political loyalty and religious devotion were intertwined and demonstrated in conformity of worship.

What does not follow from this is that Catholic and Protestant regimes dealt in the same way with dissidents or adopted the same strategies for world mission. Rome’s religion was power based. Its procedures for dealing with heretics had been honed over centuries. The Inquisition ferreted them out. The Index identified books possession of which was proof of enmity towards the truth. Ecclesiastical courts tried and condemned suspects. Pressure was brought to bear on princes and aristocrats to see sentences carried out. By such well tried processes almost 300 Protestants went to the stake in Mary Tudor’s reign. During the forty-four years that Elizabeth was on the throne, 183 Catholics were executed. And, of course, the figure pales into insignificance compared with the severe campaigns of repression carried out by Catholic regimes in Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and some of the small central European states.

Catholic and Protestant mindsets concerning the eradication of heresy were very different. Their attitudes had both political and
theological aspects. All sixteenth-century rulers of church and state removed dissidents in order to preserve unity and uniformity. For centuries this had been the motive, whether openly acknowledged or not, for disposing of stubborn heretics. But there had to be justification for imposing a capital sentence. The Catholic mantra which vindicated the decision to hand over a condemned heretic to the secular arm for execution was: ‘We destroy the body to save the soul.’ The errant member was removed from the world of men so that he could lead no more of them astray and despatched to purgatory where he could atone for his sins and, perhaps, ultimately attain blessedness. Protestants did not believe in purgatory. The individual had to make his peace with God in this world, for beyond it there awaited only the final judgement. Therefore, to put someone to death was to remove from him the possibility of salvation once and for all. The church had no ‘licence to kill’. No one could be cut off from the living on the grounds of faith. Vengeance belonged only to God. Elizabeth and even her more radical councillors were not prepared to do his job for him. They prided themselves that they did not descend to the barbarity of the auto da fé and the government-sponsored lynch mob.

But it
was
their duty to preserve the integrity of the state. The Act of Uniformity had required clergy to use the Book of Common Prayer on pain of forfeiting a year’s salary and the laity were instructed to attend divine service or pay a fine of one shilling. For the first ten years of the reign this legislation was enforced sporadically and without the vigour that a centrally directed campaign would have provided. Then had come Pius V’s declaration of war in the bull
Regnans in Excelsis
and the Ridolfi plot. Following these scares, parliament tightened the recusancy laws in 1571. Yet, as far as English Catholics were concerned, life went on much as before. Occasionally an order went out from the Council to magistrates and bishops to draw up lists of people who absented themselves from their parish churches but any ‘persecution’ was for the most part half-hearted. It took the terrorist and invasion scares of the 1580s for the government to tighten the screws on English Catholics.