The Watchers (13 page)

Johnson and Sledd ignored the warnings about the dangers of the direct road to Lyons. They arrived in the city only three days after leaving Chambéry, on Lady Day, Friday, 25 March. But they were still behind the main party. The rector of the Jesuit college in Lyons told them that Allen and his companions had set off only that morning for Rheims. He asked Johnson and Sledd to remain in Lyons for the rest of the day. He wanted them to continue their journey with a fellow countryman, a Jesuit novice of about thirty whose name was Thomas Cottam. Sledd described Cottam as a lean and slender man with red hair, a thin beard and a very freckled face. There was a wart or mole on his right cheek about an inch from his mouth.

Seven days after leaving Lyons the three men – Sledd, Johnson and Cottam – arrived in Troyes. After a hard journey of many hundreds of miles Robert Johnson and Charles Sledd were about to part company. Johnson and Thomas Cottam would go to Rheims. Sledd would travel to Paris. The three men set out in their different directions on Monday, 4 April 1580.

It was in the city of Paris that Sledd began in earnest his career as a spy for Elizabeth's government.

When Sledd arrived in Paris on Wednesday, 6 April 1580 he went straight to see Elizabeth's ambassador at the French court, Sir Henry Cobham. Cobham was a man in his early forties, the younger brother of a baron and by 1580 a diplomat of long experience. He would have been used to Englishmen like Sledd, without either invitation or credentials, turning up on his doorstep, just as he was alert to the activities of English Catholics in Paris. Perhaps Cobham was interested in Sledd's information: perhaps he was not. Probably it was a risk for Sledd to reveal himself to the ambassador: he was a pretty suspicious character. For both men it was bound to be a delicate encounter.

Put simply, Sledd's purpose was to betray the priests of William Allen's mission. He had the names of those who had already gone to England. He told Sir Henry that others would follow, some about to cross the English Channel, some shortly to set out from Rome. Sledd
also possessed the physical descriptions of twenty of William Allen's recruits, ‘their stature, favour and apparel'. He gave Cobham ‘an inkling of their pretences' – a suspicion of their conspiracy.

Sledd came again to Sir Henry the next day, Thursday, 7 April. This time he brought letters of English Catholics, showing how useful he could be in intercepting packets of correspondence, trying to prove to Cobham his loyalty to the queen. Sledd picked up from Englishmen in Paris the news that three of the most important Elizabethan outlaws and exiles in Europe would arrive in the city soon. They were Sir Francis Englefield, Sir Thomas Copley and the northern rebel the Earl of Westmorland.

Sledd visited Sir Henry Cobham probably every day for a week. By now he had gathered up the letters of other Catholics, opening them in front of Sir Henry and reading them out loud. If Sledd hoped to impress Cobham with the news of a great conspiracy he was disappointed: they were simply letters of greeting between friends. But Sledd, after a week of trying to earn Sir Henry's trust, got his reward. Cobham told Sledd he wanted him to travel to England with some of Allen's priests. He gave the busy spy five French crowns and a Spanish pistolet to bear the charges of a journey to Rheims, as well as a private seal that Sledd could show to Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's secretary, as a secret token from the ambassador. Keen to protect himself, Sledd asked for a letter in Cobham's hand, or at least Sir Henry's signature on the papers he had written. He received neither; Sir Henry was wary. Yet Cobham wrote to the queen to inform her that he had been visited by a man lately come from Rome in the company of some priests. He said he would send the man's name by separate letter to Walsingham. And so he did, but Sledd was supremely protective of his own identity. The name he used was that of one of the men he had met in the rooms of an English Catholic in Paris. Cobham wrote to Walsingham: ‘I send herewith the advertisement of Rowland Russell, written with his own hand. He is upon his return to England to render further testimony of his good meaning.'

Sledd went, as Sir Henry had directed him, to Rheims, carrying with him letters for William Allen from Paris. He arrived on Sunday, 17 April 1580. Allen asked him to dine in the seminary. After dinner
he was invited to hear the sermon of an English priest called John Hart. He found Hart a little before three o'clock preparing to speak. All the English scholars gathered to hear a powerful and uncompromising cry in the battle to save English souls.

The theme of Hart's sermon was suffering for the faith and he began with the passions of Christ. To suffer pain, he said, was to merit salvation all the more. The Pope had appointed men to go into England to expel heresy from that kingdom. Hart said he would rather die than tolerate the heresies of Queen Elizabeth and her advisers. The Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth; the Tudor crown really belonged to Mary Queen of Scots, and for this reason, in support of the Catholic cause, the King of Spain would soon invade England. Those English men and women who could show they were Catholics would be safe: those who could not ‘shall be searched and sifted out as the good corn is from the chaff and be put to the fire and sword'. The queen and her councillors would ‘have such reward, as obstinate heretics ought to have, by the laws of God'. Hart ended his sermon by urging the congregation to stand firm in their faith. If they should die they died as martyrs. Every drop of their blood shed in the faith would raise ten Catholics.

That Sunday evening Sledd wrote to Sir Henry Cobham with a full report of what he had seen and heard. He wrote at length of John Hart. He had discovered that Hart was one of the priests closest to William Allen, often in his company and ‘of his counsel', in good credit with the spiritual leader of English Catholics in exile.

By 20 April Sledd felt he ‘could do no good' in Rheims and so he set out on the journey west to Paris. He arrived in the city two days later and that same evening went again to see Cobham. The following day Sledd asked Cobham to sign his papers. Sir Henry refused and Sledd left, knowing that he had outstayed Cobham's welcome, ‘not minding to come to his honour any more after that'.

Sledd's work was done in Paris. He had given Sir Henry Cobham the names and descriptions of William Allen's priests. He had met Allen in Rheims and heard John Hart's sermon on England's rescue from Protestant heresy. Although Cobham refused to sign Sledd's papers – a sensible precaution for the ambassador – Sledd at least had a token he could show to Sir Francis Walsingham at Elizabeth's court.

There was now no place for Sledd the spy to go but to London.

There were two English spies in Paris in April and May 1580, the clever and elusive Charles Sledd, playing the part of a useful and humble courier of letters, and a man whose social pretensions were a good deal grander. His name was William Parry and for a number of years he had travelled in Italy and France. When Sir Henry Cobham dismissed Sledd and directed him to London, Master Parry was also using the queen's ambassador at the French court to send secret intelligence to Lord Burghley in England.

At the beginning Parry was a volunteer, writing in May 1577 to offer his service to Burghley. He was, he said, a traveller ‘somewhat wearied with a long journey', and on those travels he had visited both Rome and Siena. He felt he could be useful to the lord treasurer. His letter to Burghley was an example of fine penmanship, for Parry wished to impress the most powerful man in Elizabeth's government with the elegance of his handwriting. Parry would have been relieved if he had been able to read the words Burghley's secretary used to endorse the packet: ‘Master William Parry to my lord'. William Parry was a gentleman – a master, a man of ‘worship', of land and status – and he strained every fibre of himself to prove it.

But that was not the whole of Parry's story and situation. He was a Welshman, born in Flintshire, but when is not quite certain. His early years are obscure, though he claimed a long gentlemanly lineage. He had problems with money. The modest marriage he made for land, to the widowed daughter of a Welsh knight, was not enough to meet his costs and so Parry sought employment and patronage. He was not too proud to borrow money at interest, nor was he shy about sending letters to Lord Burghley.

Parry sent a report to Burghley a week after Sledd's dismissal by Sir Henry Cobham. It was 1 May 1580. Parry had a confidence about him that day; he felt bold in the usefulness of his service, and he stressed his loyalty in the queen's cause against her Catholic enemies in Paris. ‘My lord,' he wrote,

the name and title of a true subject have been always so dear unto me, that I cannot but hold him and his religion for suspected that practiseth anything against Her Majesty, whose government and fortune have been no less comfortable to all good men at home, than strange and fearful to her enemies abroad.

Parry had opened up two ways of communicating with the lord treasurer from Paris. The first was by the ordinary post, carried by couriers across the English Channel, sending perfectly innocent letters to show anyone who might intercept them that there was nothing suspicious in his writing to Burghley. But he felt the ‘best assured' way was to communicate by a second means. Parry was by now taking his confidential letters to Sir Henry Cobham to go in the ambassador's post, as he had done a week before. He was, he wrote with confidence, in credit with the best men of England and Scotland in Paris and Rome, ‘by the hope conceived of my readiness and ability to serve them'. Exaggerated self-belief was a familiar mark of Parry's mercurial personality, writing of the English Catholics: ‘I doubt not within few months to be well able to discover their deepest practices.' There was, of course, a price, though a reasonable one: a few trifling gifts for his new friends, ‘rather of pleasure than price', to be sent to him from London. Parry, always conscious of his address, used to the Lord Treasurer of England plainer words than courtesy expected, and he knew it: ‘As I said before, so I say again; if I be less ceremonious than I should be in writing unto you, I trust you will pardon me, who had rather serve you in deeds, than please you in words.' He would send the books Burghley requested from Paris – Burghley was a great bibliophile – but only those that should in his opinion ‘be very necessary for divers respects'. He gave his letter a special mark and told Burghley that following letters would bear the same mark also.

And so on the first day of a new month in the spring of 1580
William Parry, confidently in charge, was feeling very happy indeed in the business of his spiery.

Of Sledd's whereabouts on the day William Parry wrote his letter to Lord Burghley it is impossible to say. Certainly he was somewhere in or near Paris. Did Parry know him? It seems somehow doubtful that Parry, dazzled by the brightness of his own talents and his high social contacts, would notice a man as menial as Charles Sledd. But if by some chance he did, then he may have known that Sledd, the trusted courier of the émigré Catholics, was once again off on his travels.

Sledd left Paris for the large provincial city of Rouen on 5 May and stayed there till Ascension Day, Thursday, the 12th. He was at the port of Dieppe on the 13th, where, blessed by the luck of favourable winds, he joined a ship straight away to sail for England. He had been very busy in Paris and Rheims and was even now in Rouen, noting the names and recording the conversations of English exiles and collecting or copying their letters. And so the poor servant of Nicholas Morton in Rome, the trusted courier for William Allen, the companion of Catholic priests, the English ambassador's informant and above all the spy, was at last ready to meet Sir Francis Walsingham.

Sledd's ship took a day to cross the English Channel, arriving in the bustling port of Rye on the evening of 15 May. Resting overnight, he set out for London the next day. He arrived in the city on Tuesday morning. He was now able to direct his energies quite differently: the watcher would become the pursuer. On the afternoon of the 17th he went to Elizabeth's court. He spoke first to one of Sir Francis Walsingham's private secretaries, Francis Mylles, and then he met Walsingham; we have to imagine the exchange of the secret token of Sir Henry Cobham's seal. It was a short meeting but to the point: Sledd wrote that ‘he showed to his honour such business as I then thought meet'. Either at Walsingham's request or on his own initiative, Sledd began to write a long dossier of intelligence from the notes he had brought with him from Rome.

On the Tuesday Sledd had come to London, a priest and three nuns arrived also, helped and guided by a Catholic gentleman. Two days after his first interview with Walsingham, Sledd asked Richard Young, a Middlesex magistrate who became one of the keenest official
pursuers of Catholic priests in London, for his help in arresting them. The law was plain enough. Anyone in England foolish enough to communicate on paper or by speech the belief that Elizabeth Tudor should not be queen, or that anyone else should be King or Queen of England, was, if convicted, guilty of high treason. Exactly the same was true of any of the queen's subjects who called her a heretic, a schismatic, a tyrant, an infidel or a usurper of the crown. If a priest sent by William Allen secretly to England avoided all talk of politics but in his pastoral work absolved anyone from obedience to the queen or reconciled them to what the law called the ‘usurped authority of the See of Rome' by means of a papal bull or document, he was likewise guilty of treason. The obvious loophole in this act – that a priest who reconciled or absolved any of Elizabeth's subjects without using a bull or instrument from Rome might escape the law – was closed by a new statute in 1581. Four years after that it was made high treason for any Catholic priest – in the government's view, a stirrer of rebellion and sedition – to be in England. Yet even when Charles Sledd set to work hunting priests on the streets of London in 1580, his quarry, if captured, were certain to forfeit their liberty by being thrown into one of London's jails; they might be banished from England or they might be hanged. With the information he possessed, and now with official backing, Sledd was a dangerous man to be walking the streets of London and Westminster.