Tudor Lives: Success & Failure of an Age (19 page)

Walsingham had a lesser place than Burghley and he was too coldly fanatical for the witty, calculating Elizabeth to like him. But he shared some of Burghley’s virtues and the Queen trusted him for them. He was as efficient and hard-working as the great minister, and he was also as honest. He was not ambitious for more power, and he was devoted to the Queen. Even his excessive Puritan enthusiasm was tempered by the wish to preserve the Tudor authority at all costs. ‘I would have all reformation’, he wrote in a clear statement of Tudor doctrine, ‘done by public authority. It were very dangerous that every private man’s zeal should carry sufficient authority of reforming things amiss.’ He was just the man to supervise the work of the central administration.

The formal structure of Elizabethan government was not complicated. The Queen ruled and had for her assistance and advice the Privy Council, further councils in the North and in the Welsh Marches, and Parliament. The administration of the realm was divided between several departments, the most important of which were the exchequer and the judiciary; this central administration
was in the hands of the principal secretaries. In Walsingham’s time financial affairs were largely attended to by Burghley and justice was naturally in the hands of the lawyers under the Lord Chancellor and the Chief Justices. Beyond these men, Walsingham seemed to be the co-ordinator of all departments. As his functions were never defined, so his operations were multitudinous, varied and often obscure. Foreign affairs were part of his business, so too was the defence of the kingdom from enemies both within and without. He hunted down priests, prepared the case against Mary Stuart, mustered the forces in time of trouble, and organized military expeditions to France, Ireland and the Netherlands. His faith helped him in his many tasks, for he always had at the back of his mind the ultimate victory of the Protestant cause over Catholics, and in particular over Spain. ‘The proud Spaniard’, he wrote at the beginning of his official career, ‘whom God hath long used for the rod of His wrath I see great hope that He will now cast him into the fire.’ This hope, which was never quite realized, influenced all his actions. It made him the chief advocate of war with Spain, and the natural ally of Protestants everywhere; it also made him the great patron of Drake, Hawkins and all English voyagers who opposed the Spanish empire in the New World; and lastly it made him the scourge of Catholics at home and the implacable enemy of Mary, Queen of Scots.

The English sea voyages interested Walsingham on two counts: first, like most Elizabethans from the Queen downwards, he was attracted by the speculative profit which these voyages offered; and secondly, he came to see that England’s expansion must be at the cost of Spain and Portugal; English privateers and adventurers became useful instruments for his attack on Spanish power. His patronage of the voyagers began in 1576 when he contributed £25 to Frobisher’s first expedition. For the second expedition in 1577, in search of the worthless stuff which Frobisher foolishly thought to be gold, Walsingham gave £200 even though he had commissioned the analysis from the London goldsmiths which declared that Frobisher’s ores were pyrites not gold. For the third expedition Walsingham contributed yet again, adventuring in total some £800 on Frobisher’s success, all of which was wasted.

This loss did not blunt his enthusiasm. When Drake came to court with his dream of a plundering circumnavigation, he found in Walsingham his best advocate, for here appeared most clearly
the chance to serve mammon and the Protestant cause. Walsingham took on himself the weary task of winning cautious Elizabeth’s assent. Drake was allowed to sail in 1577 and set off backed by the Queen, Leicester, Hatton and Walsingham among others. When Drake returned three years later his profits were said to have repaid his promoters 4,700 per cent on their investment. The success of Drake swept away all memories of Frobisher’s failure, and for the rest of his life Walsingham was an eager supporter of maritime enterprise. He was interested in all projects, warlike, trading, exploration and colonial. He was for sending Drake to the Azores to harry Spain; Edward Fenton to the East in search of trade; and John Davis to the North-West to find that elusive passage. Most unusual and far-reaching of his plans was the support he gave to Humphrey Gilbert’s colonizing ventures on the understanding that Gilbert would take with him certain prominent English Catholics thus ridding the country of their religious influence. As he guided the voyagers through the labyrinth of court intrigue and persuasively put their case to the Queen, so he contributed his own money to the joint-stock companies which launched the expeditions. When Richard Hakluyt came to dedicate his
Principal Navigations
he could offer it to no fitter person than Sir Francis Walsingham. If, as Hakluyt immodestly claimed, ‘in this most famous and peerless government of her most excellent Majesty, her subjects through the special assistance and blessing of God, in searching the most opposite corners and quarters of the world, and to speak plainly, in compassing the vast globe of the earth more than once, have excelled all the nations and people of the earth’, it was in a large part due to Walsingham.

The encouragement of the English voyages was a great work which Walsingham undertook for the Protestant cause. His ruthless and efficient persecution of English Catholics was the darker side of his Puritan nature. But in this unpleasant task he was only carrying out the wishes of the government; that he used spies, informers and deceit of all kinds, that he countenanced torture and murder of good men, cannot be held against him alone. His methods were the universal methods of his age. He believed in the central Tudor doctrine, that the authority of the State must be preserved at all costs. ‘Our unity’, he wrote, ‘might be a strength to ourselves and an aid to our neighbours, but if we shall like to fall to division among ourselves, we must needs lie open to the
common enemy and by our own fault hasten, or rather call upon ourselves, our own ruin.’ It was his duty and his interest to prevent this happening.

Until the excommunication of Elizabeth by Pius V in 1570, Catholics in England were not treated severely. There were fines for recusants who would not accept the state religion, but the Queen only required lip service to legal forms. After 1570 the complication of international affairs sadly condemned the Catholics to persecution. The reconversion of England was the aim of the papacy. The political attack was undertaken by Philip of Spain, and organized by his wily ambassador Mendoza who helped to ensnare Mary Stuart in a tangle of plots. The spiritual onslaught was directed by the expatriate Englishman, Cardinal Allen, and carried out by missioner priests chiefly from the newly formed Society of Jesus. The English defence against this double threat was in the hands of Walsingham. The simple aim of most Jesuits may have been to speak only of religion, but political events made their task impossible. England, after the way of the Reformation, had made religion part of state policy, and acts of faith now constituted acts of treason. After the Massacre of St Bartholomew in 1572, the English people had a horror of aggressive Catholicism, and the unfortunate connection between Mary Stuart and the bigoted Guise family, the villains of St Bartholomew, made England fearful of Catholic intrigue. Moreover, several priests, influenced by the forthright revolutionary propaganda of Cardinal Allen and Father Parsons, were implicated in the plots of Philip and his agents; the saintly Edmund Campion, the first Jesuit to be caught and executed, in 1581, was innocent of any intrigue, but his companion Parsons, who escaped, was a notorious meddler and plotter.

The plotting of Spain and the advent of the Jesuits caused something of a panic. Parliament met in 1581 and began to draft penal legislation against Catholics. Very large fines were imposed for recusancy and for attendance at Mass; to be converted to Catholicism carried the death penalty; priests of all kinds were to leave the country within forty days under pain of death for high treason. The spying out of Catholics was left to Walsingham and his secret service. By the end of Elizabeth’s reign 187 Catholics had been executed. But the operation of penal laws was only part of the problem. Walsingham was convinced that there could be no security
in England so long as Mary Stuart lived. While she was alive, he wrote to Leicester in 1572, ‘neither her Majesty must make account to continue in quiet possession of her crown, nor her faithful servants assure themselves of safety of their lives’. With his usual efficiency Walsingham set out to find the evidence to convict her, for Elizabeth was very reluctant to execute a fellow sovereign. At last, after the foolish Babington conspiracy of 1586, Walsingham had his evidence. Mary was condemned, the Queen signed the warrant, and Mary was executed on 8th February 1587. Walsingham was careful that his colleague William Davison should hand the death warrant, for he knew the Queen. With the hypocrisy of which she was always capable, Elizabeth wanted a scapegoat for Mary’s execution, and visited her guilt on poor Davison whom she dismissed, fined and imprisoned.

Camden spoke of Walsingham as ‘a most sharp maintainer of the purer religion’, and his record against Catholics, both English and foreign, bears this out. But his relations with his fellow Puritans are less easy to follow. Since the Puritans slowly became as grave a threat to Elizabeth’s religious authority as the Catholics had been, Walsingham must have had some difficulty in reconciling his faith with his royal service. That he put the State first can hardly be doubted, otherwise the Queen would never have tolerated him. Perhaps she even deferred the persecution of Puritans until after her faithful servant’s death in 1590. He may also have been useful in her dealings with Parliament. Throughout Elizabeth’s reign Parliament was Puritan in tone and critical of her use of the royal prerogative, so that she had little time for the Commons. She summoned Parliament as infrequently as possible and in typical Tudor style blatantly packed it with her supporters. Walsingham first entered Parliament as a member for Lyme Regis in 1563; at the start of his official career, in 1573, he became one of the members for Surrey and retained this seat for the rest of his life. He was at the same time a member of the Privy Council, and Elizabeth used her councillors who also sat in Parliament, men such as Walsingham and Sir Christopher Hatton, to guide and influence parliamentary decisions in the way she wanted. Walsingham perhaps had an extra use. His brother-in-law was Peter Wentworth, the most outspoken of the Puritan parliamentarians. Walsingham was thus excellently placed to be the middleman, testing and reporting on the Puritan temper for the Queen’s benefit,
warning his co-religionists of the limits to the Queen’s patience, and if they overstepped that limit perhaps shielding them from her displeasure.

Elizabeth’s contemptuous handling of Parliament was but an example of the personal rule of the Tudors, yet this despotism was a danger to Elizabethan government. Since all the power was at the court, men were desperate to get there, rightly counting their future, their fame and their wealth to be dependent on the Queen’s patronage. She had about 1,200 places to dispose of in the central administration and she husbanded this resource carefully. Henry VIII, in his last years, had scattered political rewards profusely and unwisely, and Elizabeth’s successor, James I, was to do so again. But Elizabeth was economical and wary. Competition for places under Elizabeth was ferocious, and the more so because there were so few of them. Driven by their new-found ambition, and by gross inflation, the gentry besieged the gates of the court, clamouring for admission. And the best way to gain entry was to have the ear of the ministers and faction leaders at court. The edifice of Elizabethan administration was built on the shifting ground of bribery and corruption.

This state of affairs was openly recognized, and was no doubt allowed because the crown was poor and could not afford to pay much in salaries. Officials were expected to make up their income through various fees and gifts. The Lord Keeper officially received £919 a year, the Lord High Admiral £200, and the Principal Secretary only £100. Yet in 1601 John Manningham noted that the Lord Keeper’s office was ‘better worth than £3,000 per annum’, the High Admiral’s worth a little more and the Secretary’s a little less. The same practice operated from highest to lowest. ‘There liveth not so grave nor so severe a judge in England’, wrote Samuel Cox, the slippery secretary of Hatton, ‘but he alloweth his poor clerk under him, even in the expedition of matters of greatest justice, to take any reasonable consideration that should be offered him by any man for his pains and travail.’ The Queen herself was not averse to bribes; when Leicester was in disgrace he was advised by friends at court to send her a valuable gift.

The system had its practical advantages for an impecunious monarchy, but it encouraged that crude strain of avarice and venality which everywhere went hand-in-hand with the expansion
of trade and the accumulation of wealth in the sixteenth century. And the system was very hard to control. Burghley was certainly a reasonably honest man by the lights of his time; as the Queen’s first minister he was the chief disposer of places, and his watchfulness helped to limit the greed at court. Yet he persistently accepted bribes and payments for the places in his gift and died an extremely rich man. An incorruptible official, like Sir Henry Sidney, the father of Philip Sidney, was almost as rare as the unicorn. As Elizabeth grew old and lost some of her vigilance and Burghley declined into the ‘old Saturnus’ of English government, the venal men flourished: clergymen bought bishoprics, judges sold justice, and great men hired underlings for their factions. The Earl of Essex spent and spent; when he was disgraced at court in 1599 his income was cut off and he grew mad with hurt pride, frustrated ambition and debt. His rebellion in 1601 was the last act of desperation.

Speaking of the court in
Mother Hubberd’s Tale
, Spenser wrote:

For nothing there is done without a fee:

The courtier needs must recompensed be.