The Queen's Agent: Francis Walsingham at the Court of Elizabeth I (21 page)

16
Christ and Belial: Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove,
Relations politiques des Pays-Bas et de l’Angleterre sous le reigne de Philippe II
(Brussels, 1882–1900), VII, 402; Geneva Bible, II Corinthians 6:14–15. To lull us asleep: Read,
Walsingham
, I, 310. Slumber as she doth: BL Harley 6991, fol. 110.

17
Not for sovereignty but for safety: TNA SP 70/136, fol. 214–15. The case for Walsingham as author of this unsigned paper is made by Read,
Walsingham
, I, 317. The argument and language are both similar to BL Harley 168, fol. 54–7.

18
Champagney: Read,
Walsingham
, I, 319–21. Slipper in the face: Haigh,
Elizabeth I
, 72.

19
Marvellously exasperate her majesty: BL Egerton 1694, fol. 12. Walsingham’s advice to Orange: TNA SP 70/140, fol. 154–5.

20
Don John and Peruvian treasure: Parker,
Dutch Revolt
, 180–3, 188–9.

21
John Casimir of the Palatinate: ibid., 192–3. 1578 embassy: Lettenhove,
Pays-Bas
, X, 536, 549–54, 567, 591, 594, 596–7, 613–15, 814–15; TNA SP 83/8/27; Read,
Walsingham
, I, chapter 7; Julian Lock, ‘William Brooke, tenth Baron Cobham’ in
Oxford DNB
.

22
Doubly inscrutable: Digges,
Compleat Ambassador
, ‘To the reader’. One way or the other: ibid., 408. Dudley Digges, who was Leicester’s godson, had a diplomatic career in Russia and the United Provinces under James I.
The Compleat Ambassador
was published from his copies of the original manuscripts sixteen years after his death. Horrible spectacle: BL Harley 1582, fol. 49.

23
Advantages of the Alençon match: Smith to Burghley 10 Jan. 1572, TNA SP 70/122, fol. 50r; Dewar,
Sir Thomas Smith
, 134; Susan Doran,
Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I
(London and New York, 1996), 133–4. Although Francis succeeded as Duke of Anjou in 1576, I will continue to refer to him as Alençon (as English observers often did) to distinguish him from his older brother.

24
Frogs: David Bindman, ‘How the French Became Frogs: English Caricature and a National Stereotype’,
Apollo
August 2003. Corrupt courtiers: Digges,
Compleat Ambassador
, 343; Read,
Walsingham
, I, 207. Refuge and succour: Doran,
Monarchy and Matrimony
, 131. Clear their bodies: ibid., 197.

25
Elizabeth to Walsingham 23 and 27 July 1572: Digges,
Compleat Ambassador
, 226–30. Perplexity: Doran,
Monarchy and Matrimony
, 136.

26
Such further matter: Digges,
Compleat Ambassador
, 228.

27
Alençon’s appeal: Leighton to Walsingham 22 May 1574, TNA SP 70/131, fol. 51. Montgomméry: TNA SP 70/130, fol. 136; Stuart Carroll,
Martyrs and Murderers: The Guise Family and the Making of Europe
(Oxford, 2009), 207. Dwarfs: Read,
Walsingham
, I, 288.

28
For the love of God: TNA SP 52/26, fol. 153–4. Casimir’s army: Read,
Walsingham
, I, 289–90.

29
The case will be hard: TNA SP 83/8/13.

30
Mildmay, Burghley and Sussex: Mitchell Leimon, ‘Sir Francis Walsingham and the Anjou Marriage Plan, 1574–1581’ (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1989), chapter 6; Natalie Mears, ‘Counsel, Public Debate, and Queenship: John Stubbs’s
The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf
, 1579’,
HJ
44 (2001), 635–7; Doran,
Monarchy and Matrimony
, 159–60.

31
Diseased state of the realm: BL Harley 1582, fol. 46–52; Leimon, ‘Walsingham and the Anjou Marriage Plan’, 120–2. Some broil in England: TNA SP 12/133/23, fol. 50v.

32
Sermons and pamphlets: Doran,
Monarchy and Matrimony
, 160–4. A frog he would a-wooing go: an earlier frog ballad was published in Scotland in 1548, of which this English version could be a variant.
OED
has ‘roly-poly’ as a synonym for rascal in the early seventeenth century.
The Moste Strange Wedding of the Frog and the Mouse
was licensed by the Stationers’ Company in 1580.

33
To seduce our Eve: John Stubbs,
The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf whereinto England is Like to be Swallowed by Another French Marriage
(1579), STC 23400, sig. A2r, A3v, F3r–4v. Scaffold speech: Mears, ‘Counsel, Public Debate, and Queenship’, 629–30.

34
Walsingham and Stubbs:
CSP Ven.
1558–80, 621; Mears, ‘Counsel, Public Debate, and Queenship’, 631–4, 638; Leimon, ‘Walsingham and the Anjou Marriage Plan’, 123– 5.

35
Walsingham and Sidney: Blair Worden,
The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney’s
Arcadia
and Elizabethan Politics
(New Haven and London, 1996), 48–55, 112–13. Letter to Queen Elizabeth: Katherine Duncan-Jones and Jan van Dorsten (eds),
Miscellaneous Prose of Sir Philip Sidney
(Oxford, 1973), 46–57.

36
Councillors as sieves: Read,
Walsingham
, II, 22. Sieve portraits and their patrons: Strong,
Gloriana
, 94–107; Susan Doran (ed.),
Elizabeth: The Exhibition at the National Maritime Museum
(London, 2003), 80, 82–3; Hearn,
Dynasties
, 85–6; N. G. Jones, ‘Sir Christopher Wray’ in
Oxford DNB
. Strong notes that George Gower’s 1579 sieve portrait of Elizabeth was painted from a template rather than a sitting with the queen.

37
French delegation of 1581: ‘Journal of Sir Francis Walsingham’, 41–2; Nichols,
Progresses and Public Processions
, II, 312–29; Doran,
Monarchy and Matrimony
, 180–3. Walsingham the Moor:
HMC Salisbury
(London, 1883–1976), II, 40.

4 The English Mission

On 30 November 1577 a Cornish town paused from the hurly-burly of market day to watch the death of a traitor. Public executions were a familiar enough sight to the sheep-farmers and hawkers who clustered around the gibbet in Launceston. Felons were regularly hanged in the precincts of the derelict Norman castle. But the condemned man was not a murderer, nor had he levied war against the crown. Cuthbert Mayne was a Catholic priest, one of the first Englishmen to be ordained at a seminary at Douai in the Netherlands. He took a long time to die. The noose was severed while Mayne was still breathing, and he dashed out an eye as he fell against the scaffold. The hangman then set about him with a knife, ripping out his heart at last to offer to the crowd. His corpse was quartered and displayed across Cornwall and his native Devon. It was a calculatedly brutal warning to any local families tempted to shelter missionary Catholic clergy.

Walsingham’s career so far had focused mainly on international affairs, the question of the queen’s marriage and the threat to the Protestant faith in the Netherlands. The discovery of Cuthbert Mayne opened his eyes to the danger of the enemy within. Mayne had been captured at Golden Manor near Truro, home to the gentleman courtier Francis Tregian. The raid on Tregian’s house was led by Sir Richard Grenville, Sheriff of Cornwall and a former captain in Queen Elizabeth’s army in Ireland. Grenville had returned from Munster convinced that Catholicism had to be rooted out of English society. He thought like a soldier, and it was in the same terms that he regarded
Cuthbert Mayne. The priest’s true allegiance was betrayed by the Agnus Dei which he wore around his neck, a wax disc depicting Christ as the Lamb of God which had been blessed by the pope. A search of Mayne’s chamber turned up ‘divers other relics used in popery’, ‘pernicious trumperies’ contrary to the laws of England.

Mayne was placed in chains following his arrest and questioned in Launceston jail. Reflecting his higher status, Tregian was imprisoned in the Marshalsea in London before being summoned before Walsingham and the privy council. Mayne’s final interrogation was recorded by a clerk and survives among the state papers in the National Archives. His neat, sloping signature affirms it to be a fair transcript of his replies. Mayne explained that he had arrived in England two years before, his true mission unsuspected by the government agents who were keeping watch on the ports. He was eager to return to his native West Country, and enlisted the help of the Catholic underground in London to secure him a stewardship in Tregian’s household. His cover left Mayne free to roam his protector’s scattered estates, celebrating mass and offering absolution to the Cornish people.
¹

Had he been a relic of the medieval world, carrying on his ministry as if the Reformation had never happened, Walsingham might have been less concerned. Catholic clergy ordained in Henry VIII’s or Mary’s reigns were a temporary problem, whittled away by the passage of time. But Mayne fell into a much more dangerous category, the fresh convert to Catholicism. Educated at Oxford University in the early 1560s, he served the established Church as a chaplain at St John’s College before his escape to the seminary at Douai in 1573. Mayne had willingly traded a promising career in the Church of England for the hunted existence of a Catholic missionary priest. He had renounced his loyalty to the queen as supreme governor of the
Church. Walsingham knew that there were more young men like him, training in the Low Countries or already at large in England.

Mayne’s position on the Church of England was uncompromising. No true Catholic should attend his parish church, while taking communion under the new Elizabethan rite was out of the question. This was the language of the continental Counter-Reformation, agreed in Italy in 1564 at a meeting of the Council of Trent. Still more alarming, Mayne hinted at a political dimension to the English Catholic mission. If a foreign prince invaded a realm to restore it to the pope (the Cornish clerk wrote ‘Bishop of Rome’), then Catholics were bound to assist ‘to the uttermost of their powers’. Mayne spoke in the abstract, but the implications of his words were chilling. Cornwall and Devon were the front line of defence against any French or Spanish naval armada, sent on a crusade to reclaim England for the Holy See. Mayne had found shelter with Sir John Arundell of Lanherne, a kinsman of Francis Tregian and virtually a magnate in the West Country. A generation earlier, in Edward VI’s reign, an Arundell had led a huge rebellion in Cornwall and Devon against the Protestant Reformation. It was a disturbing reminder of Catholic strength in England’s exposed western peninsula, nearly twenty years since Queen Elizabeth’s accession.
²