Sir Francis Walsingham (21 page)

The infiltration of priests trained in the Low Countries, France and Rome was precisely the kind of activity he had long feared. As soon as reports from Cornwall reached his desk Walsingham set about planning countermeasures with Burghley. While William Allen at Douai was using the story of Mayne’s suffering to inspire other young men to seek death or glory in England, Walsingham was despatching letters to senior bishops summoning them to a conference. The colloquy considered various measures for the apprehending of immigrant priests and denying them succour. These included placing under house arrest prominent members of the Catholic community such as Thomas Watson, the Marian Bishop of Lincoln and John de Feckenham, ex-Abbot of Westminster; rigid scrutiny of school teachers and any who had influence over children; and the imprisonment of stubborn recusants. To proceed efficiently against those who persisted in ‘papistical error’ it was proposed to turn ten secure castles
into detention centres. In these places the inmates would be subjected to a programme of re-education. Those who persisted in their error and refused to swear the oath of supremacy might then be punished with confiscation of property and continued imprisonment.

The ensuing investigation produced an alarming amount of evidence of Catholic resurgence. Leicester reported that in the Midlands ‘papists were never in that jollity they be at this present time’. John Aylmer, Bishop of London, told Walsingham ‘the papists marvellously increase both in numbers and in obstinate withdrawal of themselves from . . . the services of God.’ Similar information came from diocesan bishops and from Walsingham’s own agents throughout the country. Faced with this situation the government did – nothing. No new laws were enacted. Few if any reported recusants were prosecuted under the existing laws. The detention centres did not materialize. Walsingham had collected a large volume of information and painstakingly filed it. It remained unused. Worse than that, in 1579 he was obliged to write the following extraordinary and humiliating letter to several of his contacts in the shires:

[T]hough, in due and necessary policy, it were fit that Papists who will not conform themselves to resort to public prayer should receive punishment due to their contempt according to the laws provided in that behalf, yet the time serveth not now to deal therein, and therefore I cannot but advise you and such others of the best affected gentlemen in that shire to forbear to persecute by way of indictment such as lately were presented, whose names you certified us; for that if you shall proceed therein, you shall not prevail to do that good you desire, but shall rather fail through some commandment from hence, prohibiting you to surcease in proceeding in that behalf, which would breed no less discredit unto you than encouragement to the papists.

Walsingham explained that he was writing personally and confidentially in order to save both his correspondents and himself from public embarrassment.

If I had not prevented the same, there had been written unto you a general letter from my Lords of the Council to inhibit you from prosecuting the matter against the parties presented and by you certified, which things assuredly will follow if you shall not take profit of this secret advertisement I give you, which I shall request you that the same may be so used as my name be concealed, for that otherwise some may take occasion to make some curious construction of this my good and sincere meaning to other end than by me is meant.
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Why was it that ‘the time serveth not’? The answer is not just that the queen had changed her mind. Her advisers were well used to that by now. A kind of policy paralysis afflicted the government because Elizabeth was undergoing the worst emotional and mental turmoil of her life. Over several issues she could not make her own decisions and she would not take advice. She fancied herself betrayed by some of those closest to her and when she did turn to her Council for support she found that body so divided as to be useless. Under the strains of the years 1577–80 there were times when the Burghley, Leicester, Walsingham caucus fell apart. This was the period when the deluge Walsingham had long prophesied finally burst forth. In foreign affairs disaster followed hard on the heels of disaster and Elizabeth’s personal relationships mirrored events abroad.

A series of ominous occurrences within a few weeks in 1578 provided the first act in the tragedy. In January Don John won a spectacular victory over the army of the Estates General. In February the Duke of Anjou opened negotiations with the Dutch rebels. In March the Earl of Morton was dismissed as Scottish regent. Simultaneously, news arrived that Thomas Stukeley had embarked papal troops in Italy for his proposed assault on Ireland.

But it was not fresh complications in English relations with her neighbours that immobilized the queen. That was down to her own intimate relationships with two men. As we have seen, it was in March 1578 that Anjou revived in earnest his marriage offer to Elizabeth. The ambitious prince still entertained visions of himself in an English crown or, at least, a regent’s coronet. Failing that, he hoped that Elizabeth would bolster his position in the Netherlands.
For her part, the queen welcomed his overtures because it gave her a lever with which to manipulate Anjou’s behaviour in the sensitive Dutch situation. Yet there was more than that to her response. In September 1578 she celebrated her forty-fifth birthday. If marriage and, more specifically, motherhood were to be realities for her, it was a case of now or never. She entered into negotiations with enthusiasm, even – or so it seemed to her advisers – with abandon. Walsingham followed Leicester’s lead in opposing the match. As well as his religious objection to Anjou and his suspicion of the prince’s motives, he was concerned about Elizabeth’s safety. Childbirth could only be risky for her and if it should result in her death England would be left at the mercy of Anjou and the French royal house.

However, the real reason for the queen’s obduracy over the marriage was a crisis in her relationship with Robert Dudley. Her love for the widower earl ran deep and had evolved over the years from youthful passion to emotional reliance. This parsimonious woman showered gifts on her favourite. She listened to his advice on matters of state. She tolerated his opposition to her decisions on religion and foreign affairs. She winked at his passing love affairs. The other side of the coin was her utter possessiveness. She could not tolerate the merest suggestion that another woman might replace her in Leicester’s affections. When, therefore, she learned that her ‘Sweet Robin’ had clandestinely married she was completely devastated. For Dudley, his relationship with the queen was a trap. He was dependent on her for everything – estates, political status, social position, luxurious lifestyle – but the price he was expected to pay for all this was remaining single. Elizabeth would not marry him but he could not marry anyone else. Not only was this sexually frustrating; it was dynastically disastrous. He could not sire a legitimate heir; the Dudley line was doomed to extinction. After twenty years of this increasingly intolerable situation Robert Dudley was married in September 1578 to Lettice, daughter of his conciliar colleague, Sir Francis Knollys. She was already pregnant with their first child.

The news was kept secret as long as possible and it is not clear when or under what circumstances Elizabeth heard it. According to one
story she did not discover Leicester’s ‘betrayal’ for over nine months. It is, however, difficult to believe that the information would not have leaked earlier, that the earl’s enemies would not have grasped the opportunity to discredit him, or that Elizabeth would not have pricked up her ears at rumours flying round the court. What is important is that when she did hear the devastating news she was thrown into a rage of self-pity and indignation. What particularly galled her was that while Leicester was opposing her marriage he was himself entering into a clandestine union with one of her own attendants. She reacted by pursuing the Anjou relationship with ostentatious vigour, by refusing to hear any criticism of it and by launching on a vendetta against Leicester’s ‘friends’, the Puritans, especially those who presumed to criticise her actions.

Walsingham had already incurred the queen’s displeasure over negotiations with the Netherlands. In order to obtain a clear picture of what was happening in that troubled country, in the summer of 1578, she decided to send her secretary on a high-level diplomatic mission. In June Walsingham arrived at Antwerp in the company of Henry, Lord Cobham (presumably included in the mission to give it more social prestige). Their instructions were to find out what Anjou was up to, to offer their services as negotiators between Don John and the Estates General and to spy out the military situation. The diplomats spent three and a half arduous months in the Netherlands. In the height of summer, when plague haunted the cities and waterways, they scuttled back and forth between the regent, the Estates General, the Prince of Orange and the Duke of Anjou. It was an exhausting, frustrating and ultimately fruitless business.

Walsingham and his colleague were kept waiting by all the interested parties, each of whom was watching the situation to see how it could be exploited to best advantage. When discussions did take place it proved impossible to find any compromise acceptable to the regent and the rebels. As for Anjou, Walsingham had the annoyance of his advice being rejected. He had concluded that the duke was a factor to be reckoned with. He recommended that Elizabeth should circumvent him by providing financial aid to Orange. So pressing were the Dutch and so convinced was Walsingham
of the lightness of his advice that he raised £5,000 for Orange as an earnest of his government’s good faith. When news of this reached the queen she was distinctly unamused. She had decided that the best way to handle Anjou was to play the marriage card. With the Frenchman fighting her battles for her there was no need to part with a single penny for the rebels’ cause. She berated Walsingham for exceeding his commission and instructed him to recover all monies which had been advanced to the Netherlanders. This was a body blow to the diplomats. They now had to face the wrath of the Estates General and Prince William and to be accused of being the envoys of perfidious Albion. Walsingham reported that Elizabeth’s credit was exhausted and that she would never be trusted again. He did not hesitate to express his feelings to a conciliar colleague:

It is an intolerable grief to me to receive so hard measure at her Majesty’s hands, as if I were some notorious offender. Surely sir, it standeth not with her Majesty’s safety to deal so unkindly with those that serve her faithfully. There is a difference between serving with a cheerful and languishing mind. If there had lacked in us either care, faithfulness, or diligence, then were we worthy of blame . . . When our doings shall come to examination, I hope the greatest fault we may be charged withal is that we have had more regard to her Majesty’s honour and safety than to her treasure, wherein we have dealt no worse with her than with ourselves, having for her services’ sake engaged ourselves £5,000 thick; which doing of ours, being offensively taken, doth make the burden the heavier.
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As if this was not bad enough, Walsingham discovered he was caught up in the murky and sordid events surrounding the death of Don John. The thirty-three-year-old regent died of typhus at Bouges on 1 October. His last weeks had been rendered distressing by military failure and by the suspicion of his half-brother, the king. Relations between them were so bad that John’s secretary, Juan de Escobedo, was assassinated on Philip’s orders. Walsingham became involved because members of the late regent’s suite suspected him of complicity in Don John’s death. Although Walsingham stoutly denied this
aspersion he could not distance himself entirely from the seamy events at the regent’s court. The man who was accused of poisoning Don John and who was executed for it in December was Egremont Radcliffe, half-brother of the Earl of Sussex, a young ruffian who occupied the shadowlands of espionage and intrigue where many of Walsingham’s agents had their abode. A headstrong Catholic who had taken part in the Northern Rebellion, Radcliffe was forced to flee overseas and put his services at the disposal of Philip II. In the Netherlands and at the Spanish court he mixed with other English malcontents, among them the Earl of Westmorland and Thomas Stukeley. In 1575 he returned to England, apparently repentant of his earlier crimes and offering to place his knowledge and contacts at the disposal of the English government. Walsingham did not trust him and Radcliffe soon found himself shut up in the Tower. While there he translated from the French a tractate entitled
Politique Discourses
which advocated unquestioning loyalty to appointed authority. This work, designed to demonstrate his complete change of heart, he dedicated to Walsingham. In May 1578 Radcliffe was secretly set free and sent out of the country, a circumstance which the Spanish ambassador regarded as not a little suspicious. According to a witness who testified some years later, the released prisoner had been seen with the secretary at Hampton Court. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that Radcliffe was sent over to the Netherlands in advance of Walsingham’s mission as a useful gatherer of intelligence.

Two other names appear in the fragmentary records of events taking place in the late summer and early autumn of 1578. Alfonso Ferrabosco was an Italian musician who had been until recently in the household of Philip Sidney (soon to be Walsingham’s son-in-law) and was now on his way home to Bologna. He was carrying messages for the English government and, according to diplomatic sources, Radcliffe intended to join him on his journey. Thomas Harrison was an agent of Walsingham who, years later, claimed that he had acted as a go-between for Radcliffe and Walsingham and was lucky to have avoided sharing the latter’s fate. Since Don John was not murdered the question of Walsingham’s complicity does not arise but his need to be kept informed of everything going on in the Netherlands
inevitably involved him with unsavoury characters and the hatred he aroused in Spanish court circles was enough to ensure that the worst was readily believed of him.