Sir Francis Walsingham

by Derek Wilson

  With French, Italian, German, Swiss, Spanish, English and other national contingents all living cheek by jowl in the narrow confines of the medieval city it cannot have been easy to keep the peace but to national rivalries were added religious differences. For the English exiles these were only intensified by news from home. As the Marian persecution grew in intensity Walsingham and all his colleagues had friends and family caught up in the Protestant witch-hunts. Those known to Walsingham included Nicholas Ridley, burned at Oxford, and John Cheke whose capture and forced recantation were a propaganda coup for the new regime. Cheke was kidnapped by government agents near Antwerp, bound and blindfolded and thrown into a ship. Within days he was in the Tower of London, where fear of the stake drove him to recant. Although freed, he went into a rapid decline and died overwhelmed with grief and shame for his betrayal of the truth. Lesser fry also suffered. Walsingham’s contemporary at King’s, John Hullier, was one of the few men to be burned in Cambridge. On a blustery Maundy Thursday he suffered long and terribly as the wind blew the flames away from his body, denying him a quick death. Almost more shocking were the final indignities heaped upon the gentle Martin Bucer whose sermons and lectures had moved Walsingham and his friends. With great ceremony his remains were dug up after almost six years and burned in the market place.

  All the news which reached the exiles was not unwelcome. There were stories of frequent anti-government riots and demonstrations. Public reaction to the burnings was not what Mary and her bishops had hoped. In London, where most of the martyrdoms occurred, citizens resented religious zealots prying into their affairs and the arrest of neighbours. By now many held the queen in ridicule and contempt. The one event that could have saved the situation for Mary was the birth of a male heir. Ironically, it was the queen’s failure to conceive the desired prince which created for her the same dilemma that had faced her father and begun the whole Reformation and Counter-Reformation crisis. In the autumn of 1557 Mary had convinced herself that she was pregnant. Catholic hopes were raised only to be cruelly dashed when after eleven months, the humiliated queen admitted that she had been deceived.

  According to rumours emanating from sources close to the throne the queen was constantly on the alert for assassins and was afraid to show herself in public. Pious Protestants had no doubt that all this was God’s judgement on (in the words of John Knox) ‘the wicked Jezebel, who for our sins, contrary to nature and the manifest word of God, is suffered to reign over us in God’s fury’.9 Many were the debates Walsingham must have participated in with his friends about the unique problems which beset a state when its head was a woman. The political attitudes he developed during his years of exile formed the basis of all his thoughts and actions when he became a principal adviser to a female ruler.

  Chapter 3

  ‘THE MALICE OF THIS PRESENT TIME’

  1558–69

  No one, including the new queen, knew what to expect of the reign which began on 17 November 1558. When the news of Mary’s death arrived in the English evangelical brotherhoods abroad bells were rung, bonfires lit and flags waved. Services of thanksgiving were held in the churches of the exiled communities. Several men, hoping for positions of influence in church and state, packed their bags in readiness for a speedy return. A great deal of wishful thinking went on. Edwin Sandys (soon to be Bishop of Worcester) reported excitedly to Heinrich Bullinger: ‘The queen has changed almost all her councillors and has taken good Christians into her service in the room of papists and there is great hope of her promoting the gospel and advancing the kingdom of Christ to the utmost of her power.’1 Bullinger, who was well versed in the toings and froings of church politics, urged caution and wariness in letters to his English friends. Sir Anthony Cooke (William Cecil’s father-in-law and one-time tutor to Edward VI) acknowledged receipt of such advice and particularly that the advocates of reform should leave their squabbling behind in Geneva, Zurich and Strasbourg. ‘There is great hope,’ Cooke insisted, ‘that the spirits of the papists are entirely cast down and that they will not offer to attack us, unless our own discord should afford them an opportunity.’2 But if Cooke hoped that the returning exiles would agree to sing from the same hymn sheet he was whistling in the wind.

  Elizabeth desired a church that was united and Protestant. United, because, as events over the last quarter of a century had demonstrated, religious division was a political nuisance and potentially expensive. Protestant, because Catholicism meant putting her people (and herself) under the authority of the pope and she was not prepared to surrender the total power achieved by her father. If she was under any illusion at all about how difficult it would be to settle the realm after the changes and chances of the previous three reigns she was very speedily disabused. In London Protestant extremists expressed their new freedom by pulling down altars and abusing priests. Catholics were no less forthright. The Bishop of Winchester, preaching at Mary’s funeral, had demanded that returning Protestant exiles should be hunted down and put to death. On the first Sunday after her accession Elizabeth had her chaplain, Dr William Bill, preach the public sermon at St Paul’s Cross. The following week the Bishop of Chichester mounted the same pulpit and denounced everything Bill had said. ‘Believe not this new doctrine,’ he ranted, ‘it is not the gospel, but a new invention of new men and heretics.’3 For this contumely the queen sent Bishop Christopherson to prison, where, soon afterwards, he died. Elizabeth replaced him with the zealous returned exile, William Barlow. Other problems were not resolved so easily. The vast majority of bishops and senior ecclesiastics were Marian appointees, ready to resist change doggedly. They could not be summarily sacked without cause.

  The same was not true of the royal Council. Elizabeth removed most of her half-sister’s advisers from office and replaced them with men of her own choosing. The criteria on which she based her selection (advised by her right-hand man, William Cecil) were Protestant conviction and ‘steadiness’. By that word I mean men who were not fanatical in the expression of their opinions. Elizabeth had no intention of replacing Mary’s dogmatic Catholic councillors with doctrinaire evangelical ones. Though she admitted two or three returning exiles to her intimate body of advisers, she preferred men who had either made their peace with Mary or lived quietly during her reign.

  One of Elizabeth’s chosen confidants was Francis Russell, Earl of Bedford. After his sojourn in Geneva and Venice he had returned to England in 1557 and was received by Queen Mary, probably at the urging of Philip II, who needed the help of England’s nobility in his war with France. Russell was one of the captains who took part in the siege of St Quentin in that year. In the early days of the new reign it was Russell who became the main hope of the returning exiles. Rudolph Gualter, minister in Zurich, wrote fulsomely to the earl:

  in your journey into Italy last year by way of Zurich you made such diligent inquiry into all things which make for the cause of the church and of religion, that it was easy to be perceived that this cause was far more dear to you than all other things whatever . . . I now rejoice the more both for yourself and for England, as I understand that you are advanced by the queen’s majesty to the highest dignity.4

  Russell had, indeed, been raised to the highest dignity. He was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Dorset, Devon, Cornwall and the city of Exeter and Lord Warden of the Stannaries. This made him the most powerful man in the west of England and he saw it as his responsibility to accept leadership of what rapidly became an evangelical ‘party’. ‘I can truly promise,’ he reported to Gualter in January 1560, ‘that this our religion, wounded and laid low as it were with a whirlwind by the tyranny of the time, and now, by God’s blessing, again beginning in some measure to revive, will strike its roots yet deeper and deeper . . . As far as I can, I am exerting myself in this matter to the utmost of my poor abilities.’5

  Russell instituted several ‘sound’ preachers to vacant benefices. But, in the early months of the reign, the strategic priority was to ensure a strong Protestant r
epresentation in parliament. The establishment of the official national religion was the first task to be undertaken by Elizabeth’s first parliament. It was vital for the reformers to win the debate and they knew they had a fight on their hands. The upper house was dominated by bishops and Catholic peers. Therefore, it was vital to engineer a Protestant majority in the Commons. Russell, aided by Cecil and other friends, ensured that the West Country (still one of the more conservative areas of England) returned some good evangelicals. Thus it was that Francis Walsingham became MP for Bossiney (Tintagel), Cornwall.

  Since the writs for the new parliament went out in December and the assembly convened on 23 January, it is clear that Walsingham lost no time in returning home. Letters must have passed to and fro as soon as the news of Elizabeth’s accession reached the continent. He was offered the Cornish seat and promptly accepted. The mayor and half a dozen or so burgesses (the only people eligible to vote) duly did their duty by his lordship and Walsingham, after what can only have been a brief visit to his home, was on his way to Westminster.

  His first experience of national politics proved to be very trying. William Cecil, now secretary to the Council and Elizabeth’s fixer, prepared draft legislation which he hoped would lay the essential foundation for a religious settlement without provoking concerted opposition. There was an embargo on all preaching until parliament had delivered its verdict. The immediate objective was to reinstate the royal supremacy and the Edwardian Prayer Book of 1552. The upper house, with its Catholic majority, was always going to be a problem but trouble immediately flared up in the Commons. Opposition to the Cranmerian liturgy came not just from Catholic members but also from radical evangelicals. The squabbles that had troubled the foreign communities quickly manifested themselves at home, ‘some declaring for Geneva and some for Frankfort’ as John Jewel reported.6 Day after day there were furious debates in the parliament chamber. Anthony Cook complained: ‘We are now busy in parliament about expelling the tyranny of the pope and restoring the royal authority and reestablishing true religion. But we are moving far too slowly . . . The zeal of the queen is very great, the activity of the nobility and the people is also great; but still the work is hitherto too much at a stand.’7

  Knowing how vital it was to set the tone for the new reign, partisans argued at length and with fervour. Some did not hesitate to call upon powerful friends abroad to intervene in the debate. Thus it was that Rudolph Gualter in Zurich wrote to warn the queen herself against her own more moderate advisers:

  There are not a few persons, who, though they perceive that popery can neither honestly be defended, nor conveniently retained, are endeavouring by and bye to obtrude upon the churches a form of religion which is an unhappy compound of popery and the gospel, and from which there may at length be an easy passage to the ancient superstition.

  Gualter urged Elizabeth not to be swayed by pragmatism (‘reasonings of the flesh’ as he called it):

  Your majesty is aware of that saying of Christ, who declares that the new piece of evangelical doctrine will not suit the old garments of superstitions. And he also solemnly warns us not to put the fermenting and wholesome new wine of the gospel into old leathern bottles, unless we would have not only these to perish, but that to be spilled at the same time. From the experience of not a few instances in our Germany, we assuredly know it to be impossible ever to consult the peace of the churches, or the purity of religion, as long as any relics of superstition are retained.8

  This was not the best way to approach Elizabeth Tudor. It is small wonder that she developed an antipathy towards those who were pejoratively labelled ‘Puritans’.

  Cecil had hoped to have the parliamentary business finished by Easter but when the Commons did eventually cobble together a bill to be sent to the ‘other place’ the Lords rejected it. The session ended in disarray with nothing resolved. Queen and Council, therefore, ordered parliament to reconvene in April. Even then, it was only by some very adroit (not to say shady) manoeuvring that they got through both houses a uniformity bill and a supremacy bill (naming the queen as ‘Supreme Governor’ rather than ‘Supreme Head’ of the English church). The latter made history by being the first piece of religious legislation for which not a single bishop voted. Inevitably, there had been compromises and, inevitably, those compromises pleased very few people. There was much muttering among the members who returned to their homes after 8 May. The religious debate was far from over.

  What part did Francis Walsingham play in all these events? Infuriatingly, we do not know. There are no extant records of the debates in either house. The government campaign was led by Cecil and Francis Knollys, vice chamberlain of the royal household (one of the few former exiles to be on close terms with the queen), but what they said and who supported them remains a total mystery. However, since Walsingham enjoyed the patronage of Bedford, Cecil and Knollys we can infer two things. The first is that he was a firm supporter of government policy. The second is that he was regarded as a safe pair of hands. No firebrand he! The man who had exercised tact and diplomacy when dealing with teachers and taught in Padua could be relied on to approach the tricky and emotive problems of the emerging Elizabethan state with a level head. It was not much later that he gave this advice to an impatient Puritan friend: ‘We have great cause to thank God for that we presently enjoy, having God’s word sincerely preached and the sacraments truly administered. The rest we lack we are to beg by prayer and attend with patience.’9 The twenty-eight-year-old Francis Walsingham had reached a maturity which enabled him to balance ideological commitment and circumspection. He was quite clear and steadfast in his beliefs but he knew there were better ways of achieving his ends than trumpeting his faith defiantly in the ears of friend and foe alike.

  And, in any case, he had personal concerns to attend to. Within months of his return his mother died and Francis took over the running of the family estates in Kent. The time had come to settle down and to give thought to his dynastic responsibilities. Thus, in 1562, he married into the ‘nobility’ of the City. His bride was Anne Carleill, widow of a leading vintner and daughter of a former lord mayor. This union gives us our first glimpse of another of Walsingham’s interests – merchant venturing. Anne’s family was closely involved in the recent founding of the Muscovy Company, set up to exploit trade with Russia and the Baltic. It would not be long before Walsingham invested in the company’s voyages. Anne brought with her a sizeable fortune and a young family. Walsingham now had the means to acquire a more substantial country seat in the county he knew and loved best. He took a lease on the manor of Parkebury in Hertfordshire, close by the Carey and Hunsdon estates where he had been brought up – and where, incidentally, William Cecil was a near neighbour.

  Sometime in 1562 (probably November) Cecil made a memorandum for himself: ‘Mr Walsingham to be of the house’. He was forming his plans for Elizabeth’s second parliament and, in his quest for sound men, Walsingham’s name stood high on the list. When it came to the election Francis was selected by both Banbury, at the instigation of Francis Knollys, and Lyme Regis, which was in Bedford’s pocket. He decided, perhaps out of loyalty to his old patron, to sit for the Dorset constituency. Once again, he appears to have made no mark on the subsequent proceedings. This led P.W. Hasler, the historian of parliament, to deduce, ‘it is clear that the Houses of Commons held little appeal for him’.10 In fact, there is no contradiction between his earlier lack of political activity and his later prominence. The House of Commons was far from being an obvious ladder for the ambitious public figure to climb. For one thing, parliament met irregularly and only when summoned by the sovereign. It was only in session for five per cent of Elizabeth’s entire reign. She and Cecil both hoped to keep the 1563 session short. If it were not for the fact that taxes could only be levied when granted by peers of the realm and the representation of the mercantile and gentry classes, they would not have called it at all. When it did meet it was often at loggerheads with the regime. These were t
he years in which the House of Commons was learning how to flex its muscles, to challenge government policy, to ask awkward questions and to demand answers. There were three areas of policy in particular which concerned MPs: religion, foreign affairs and the succession (i.e. the queen’s marriage). Since Elizabeth regarded all these as prerogative matters, potential conflict was in the air every time the members filed into the old St Stephen’s Chapel. All in all it is not surprising that Walsingham should regard attendance in parliament as a duty to be performed rather than an opportunity to further his career. Add to this the fact that he later showed himself to be a man who preferred the corridors of power to its public platform and his absence from the records in the 1560s is adequately explained.

  He was prospering materially and accumulating property during this decade. Anne Walsingham died after only two years of marriage, leaving a handsome bequest to her husband and, after a decent period of mourning, he paid earnest court to Ursula Worsley, another widow who was mistress of substantial lands. Her late husband, Richard Worsley, had been Captain of the Isle of Wight, lessee of the lands of Carisbrooke Priory and owner of Appuldurcombe and Woolverton manors, as well as estates in Dorset and Wiltshire. Walsingham’s eager pursuit of this prize began within months of Richard’s death for we find him writing, in October 1565, to Sir William More, the Worsley executor, asking him to persuade the lady from ‘her resolution of sole life’.11 That process apparently took some time, for it was another eighteen months before Francis and Ursula were wed. Almost immediately Walsingham gave up his Hertfordshire residence and settled with his enlarged family (Ursula had two sons) in the substantial Worsley house at Appuldurcombe. His application for the lease of Carisbrooke Priory indicated his determination fully to occupy Worsley’s shoes.