Sir Francis Walsingham (29 page)

To return to
Leicester’s Commonwealth,
whoever concocted it was very knowledgeable about the personalities and intrigues of Elizabeth’s court. That and the pungent style point to Charles Arundel as the author but the anti-Leicester bias may well indicate that some of the information and innuendo came from Stafford. The ambassador is unlikely to have been a deliberate contributor to the libel, because its ‘revelations’ seriously embarrassed his wife, who became quite ill as a result. However it is easy to imagine Arundel voraciously gobbling up every tit-bit of gossip passing across dinner tables and enjoyed in the antechambers of French grandees. Stafford excused his close relationship with Arundel as a means of gathering valuable information. Walsingham suspected that the flow of intelligence was not just in one direction. He was right. By 1586 it was clear to him that Stafford was selling secrets to the duc de Guise and to the Spanish ambassador in Paris – none other than Bernardino de Mendoza. It was very frustrating for the secretary that Stafford was protected by his court connections. Whatever he suspected, Walsingham declined to point the finger at the Arundel-Stafford circle as originators of
Leicester’s Commonwealth.
Instead, he identified Morgan as the author. Perhaps this was a ploy to tie Mary specifically to the libellous propaganda which so much annoyed Elizabeth. Walsingham had to tread warily in his relations with Stafford, who always claimed that he only posed as a traitor in order to worm his way into the counsels of the enemy. Whether or not the secrets he passed Guise and Mendoza were vital to English security, he certainly complicated the business of intelligence-gathering. There were two independent and mutually suspicious agencies operating in France.

It is not surprising that Walsingham’s expenditure on the secret service rocketed in these years. He sustained a large corps of agents – more than he had ever employed before or would employ after 1588. Every invoice presented to the treasury was likely to provoke royal
protest and, in order to do what needed doing without delay, Mr Secretary was often obliged to finance operations out of his own purse. Walsingham’s willingness to buy information was widely known and there was no shortage of recruits among footloose adventurers, impecunious hopefuls, ardent Protestants and idealistic patriots.

Men eager to take Walsingham’s money might claim the purest of motives: ‘I profess myself a spy, but am not one for gain, but to serve my country . . . Whensoever any occasion shall be offered wherein I may adventure some rare and desperate exploit, such as may be for the honour of my country and my own credit, you shall always find me resolute and ready to perform the same.’
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So wrote Thomas Rogers, alias Nicolas Berden, in January 1584. However, spies were invariably in the game for personal gain, either in the form of cash handouts or, through Walsingham’s influence, the chance to take up some lucrative and less hazardous occupation. Berden, for example, became purveyor of poultry to the royal kitchen – a highly profitable enterprise.

It must be said, however, that Berden well deserved his fresh start in life. He worked assiduously to ingratiate himself with the English Catholic community in France and was so successful that he was appointed as their London clearing officer for clandestine correspondence. By early 1586 he could boast to his employer:

By Paget I expect the letters of the lord his brother, Throckmorton, and many others of his party; from Arundel I expect the letters of Sir Francis Englefield, from Brinckley the whole affairs of Allen and Persons, from Foljambe the Scottish Queen’s, from Fitzherbert the devices of the Queen Mother together with all occurrents general. And amongst them all, I doubt not but Don Bernardino [de Mendoza], his master’s and his own letters will also come to your honour’s hands.
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In one respect at least Walsingham’s work became easier. As the nature and extent of the threat to England’s security became increasingly obvious the members of the Council closed ranks. Elizabeth could no longer stop her ears to rumours of plots or dismiss them as
anti-Catholic propaganda put out by troublesome Puritans. There could now be no ignoring of the widespread anxiety about terrorism. Nor was it a case of irrational anxiety conjuring up demons.

In the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
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Walsingham kept everyone furnished with hard evidence. The result was the remarkable Bond of Association, drawn up early in October by Burghley and Walsingham, now successfully working in tandem. (Camden suggested that Leicester was the moving force behind the bond.)
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This, if not exactly Walsingham’s finest hour, certainly witnessed the accomplishment of what he had been striving for throughout the last dozen years – the safeguarding of the Protestant state.

The Bond of Association grasped the nettle of what would happen in the event of an attempt on the queen’s life. It tried to ensure that such a catastrophe would not lead to a Catholic takeover. It was, in effect, a mirror image of the Catholic League operating in France – a reinforcing of the national religion at all costs. Loyal leaders of the political nation at central and regional levels were invited to set their hands to a document pledging their determination to bring to account everyone in any way connected to such a plot. They were ‘to prosecute such person or persons to the death, and to take the uttermost revenge on them for their utter overthrow and extirpation’. Any pretender to the Crown in whose name the plot was devised was to find him/herself along with his/her heirs permanently debarred from inheritance. The Bond was an extraordinary document, conceived in fear and showing little sign of coherent thought. We might think of it as a political thermometer, indicating that the patient was in a state of high fever. It was certainly not, to continue the medical metaphor, a prescription for restoring that patient to full health. It made no provision for the government of the country in the event of the sudden death of the head of state. It was entirely concerned with the nation’s reaction to a terrorist outrage. It warned those who might be contemplating such an act that they would gain nothing from it.

Copies of the Bond were drawn up with the utmost haste and distributed throughout the realm, to meeting points where local dignitaries gathered to sign, in some cases with great and solemn ceremony. When the Council arrived at Hampton Court on 19 October to append their names to the document they were joined by scores of church leaders. During the ensuing days a motley of assemblies took place all over the country – mayors and aldermen, members of trade guilds, groups of clergy, noblemen together with their tenants and estate workers, merchant communities – all came together to pledge their undying support for the politico-religious status quo.

And it was a fraud – or, at least, a stratagem very close to fraud. In its desperation the government needed a ‘spontaneous’ demonstration of national unity. So it set about choreographing such a display. Walsingham inserted the following clause in instructions sent out to conveners of public meetings:

Your lordship shall not need to take knowledge that you received the copy from me but rather from some other friend of yours in these parts; for that her Majesty would have the matter carried in such sort as this course held for her [safety] may seem to [come more] from the particular care of her well-affected subjects than to grow from any public direction.
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Yet, if there was an element of deception in this, ultimate responsibility for it rests with the queen. Underlying the Bond of Association was the old problem – Elizabeth’s refusal to conceive or nominate an heir. Her people were increasingly obsessed by the what-would-happen-if question. Their sovereign, in effect, responded that this was none of their business. Her determination, even in these desperate circumstances, to keep her subjects hands off all prerogative matters became clear when parliament assembled. It was essential to give legislative force to the Bond of Association, so writs went out immediately for the first election in twelve years.

The session, which ran from 23 November 1584 to 29 March 1585 with an unusually long Christmas recess (21 December – 4 February),
had more than its share of drama. Giving the Bond statutory force raised two constitutional issues. The first concerned the debarring of claimants to the throne. The Council obviously had Mary Stuart in mind, since any likely Catholic plot, whether or not carried out with her connivance, would have her accession as its objective. But the wording of the Bond could also be taken as excluding James from the succession. Elizabeth intervened personally to ensure that the ‘Act for provision to be made for the surety of the Queen’s most royal person’ did not blight the Scottish king’s rights unless he had been privy to a plot to remove Elizabeth. The other issue was more fundamental because it concerned the meaning of sovereignty. In the event of the queen being snatched away from them, by what process would her subjects be provided with a replacement? Burghley, doubtless with the support of his colleagues, proposed a bill which would vest power in a ‘Great Council’, augmented by leading judges to a number of thirty-plus members, who would consider the claims of all rivals and, with the aid of parliament, in effect, elect their next sovereign. This proposal ran quite counter to existing practice and constitutional theory according to which it was axiomatic that on the monarch’s death all crown offices became vacant, allowing the new incumbent a completely free hand in filling them. The interregnum solution, a radical, almost republican, proposal, was advocated warmly by most of the Council. Thomas Digges, parliamentarian and one of the scholars of the Dudley-Sidney-Walsingham circle (‘the foremost scientific and mathematical writer of Elizabethan England’)
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advocated quite baldly that parliament should be a permanent feature of national life, a new assembly being automatically elected as soon as its predecessor was dissolved, so that the country would never lack a governing body. This was logical, practical and, of course, to Elizabeth quite unacceptable. It was an affront to the holy cow of prerogative. She quashed the draft bill before ever it reached the parliament house.

The queen’s stubborn opposition is all the more remarkable given the dramatic circumstances of the time. The extraordinary Parry affair actually began its life on the floor of the House of Commons. William Parry, riding high on the wave of conciliar approval, had acquired a seat. On 17 December, parliament was discussing the second major
bill of the session concerned with the expulsion of Jesuits and the punishment of any who succoured them. All members warmly supported harsh measures. Then Parry rose to speak. He not only opposed the bill; he did so in the most extreme language and denounced what he called the base motives of those who supported a measure which would result in nothing but ‘blood, danger, despair and confiscation’. He then mystified the shocked house even further by refusing to give his reasons for the outburst. He would, he said, only explain himself to the queen. From this point Parry’s dealing and double-dealing unravelled and he was abandoned by Walsingham and others who had originally patronized him.

Religion was now uppermost in MPs’ minds, and not only because of the Catholic threat. In July 1583 there occurred an event Elizabeth had long been looking forward to. Archbishop Grindal died. The queen had long since decided on his successor, her leading episcopal yes-man, John Whitgift, Bishop of Worcester. Whitgift was an establishment man, unimaginative, loyal within the narrow confines of his vision and a stickler for rules and regulations. Add to this ambition and an aptitude for impressing the right people and you have the sort of man likely to get to the top of any organization. It followed that the new archbishop was a dedicated enemy of the Puritans. He had spent years locked in intermittent literary warfare with Thomas Cartwright, the acknowledged spokesman of those extreme radicals who campaigned for a root-and-branch reformation of the structures of the church to bring it in line, as they saw it, with the New Testament model. Whitgift’s Panglossian view of the Elizabethan settlement was that everything was for the best in this best of all possible churches. Their ponderous disputation was, of course, a dialogue of the deaf. However, it could not fail to commend to the queen the man who ardently championed her authority in church and state. Whitgift wrote:

I am persuaded that the external government of the church under a Christian magistrate must be according to the kind and form of government used in the commonwealth; else how can you make the prince supreme governor of all states and causes ecclesiastical? Will
you so divide the government of the church from the government of the commonwealth, that, the one being a monarchy, the other must be a democracy, or an aristocracy? This were to divide one realm into two, and to spoil the prince of the one half of her jurisdiction and authority. If you will therefore have the queen of England rule as monarch over all her dominions, then must you also give her leave to use one kind and form of government in all and every part of the same, and so to govern the church in ecclesiastical affairs as she doth the commonwealth in civil.

He deliberately invoked that spectre of republicanism that haunted Elizabeth’s imaginings and accounted for her detestation of Puritans:

[I]n this commonwealth it is necessary that one should be over all, except you will transform as well the state of the kingdom as you would of the church; which is not unlike to be your meaning; for not long after you add that the ‘commonwealth must be framed according to the church’, meaning that the government of the commonwealth ought not to be monarchical, but either democratical, or aristocratical.
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As soon as he was installed Whitgift made it clear that his new broom had exceedingly harsh bristles. He issued instructions, with royal backing, to enforce uniformity of doctrine and practice. All clergy were enjoined, on pain of deprivation, to endorse and abide by the Book of Common Prayer in its entirety. This intentionally confrontational approach constituted an assault on tender Puritan consciences and provoked a storm of protest throughout the province of Canterbury. Around 500 clergy declined to make the required subscription to Whitgift’s articles. The Council was in despair. At the very time that all Englishmen should be sinking their differences in the face of the Catholic threat it seemed that the senior ecclesiastic was deliberately ripping open old wounds which, given time and patience, might heal themselves. In June 1584, Walsingham joined with Burghley in persuading Whitgift to adopt a more softly-softly approach. Clergy were, as a result, permitted to make a partial subscription.