Sir Francis Walsingham

by Derek Wilson

  Walsingham’s decision to move his base to a place far distant from the court and from his own home turf was not made on solely financial grounds. In fact we can detect in this move early evidence for his involvement in that Protestant expansionist circle which revolved around Robert Dudley. The Isle of Wight was a crucial bastion in England’s defence system. It guarded the approaches to Portsmouth and Southampton and from there watch could be kept on traffic passing up and down the Channel. Its coves and inlets were useful places where clandestine visitors from France could be landed. In addition Carisbrooke Castle was a secure prison within whose stout walls men could be ‘persuaded’ to yield up any information they might have concerning potential threats to the realm. It was, therefore, vitally important to the government that the Isle of Wight should be in safe hands.

  At the end of 1565 the captaincy of Carisbrooke Castle was entrusted to the soldier-diplomat, Edward Horsey. Horsey was a bluff, bold, unscrupulous patriot – and a died-in-the-wool Protestant. During Mary’s reign he had not only gone into exile, he had also been a prime mover in the Dudley plot. In the early days of the new reign he attached himself to Robert Dudley and through him gained the somewhat reluctant favour of Elizabeth. Very soon he had ships scouring the Channel for enemy vessels and for easy prey whose cargoes he could appropriate. He was, therefore, one of the first Elizabethan sea dogs, those adventurer-pirates of whom the queen officially disapproved and unofficially found very useful. Before the reign was more than a few years old Horsey served the queen in various military and diplomatic situations. He was a patron of Calvinist clergy and, in 1562, secured the appointment of William Whittingham, erstwhile colleague and supporter of John Knox, as chaplain to an army sent over into France. Horsey was committed to the policy of England’s making a common front with the Huguenots against the Catholic Guise faction which dominated the French court. Someone else who advocated the same policy was Elizabeth’s first ambassador to France, Nicholas Throckmorton, who managed to enjoy Elizabeth’s favour despite his firm and firmly expressed Puritan opinions. These men were well known to Walsingham (Throckmorton had held the Lyme Regis parliamentary seat in the 1559 parliament) and, by 1565, they were already part of a political grouping which would become more confident and vociferous over the years. They were all concerned for the security of the realm and well understood the military and naval importance of the Isle of Wight. Walsingham had influential support in his suit for Ursula Worsley’s hand.

  By no means did he spend all his time in the country. In the spring of 1568 he exchanged the old family house in St Mary Aldermanbury parish for a more commodious town residence beyond the city walls, close to the church of St Giles Cripplegate. Here, a short walk from the open country of Moor Fields and Finsbury Fields, he was away from the foetid airs of the close-packed metropolis yet near enough to the court when his advice was sought or when he was called upon to execute some commission for Cecil. It was only a few months later that he wrote a letter to the secretary which has often been referred to as the beginning of Walsingham’s public career. In fact, the contents make it quite clear that Walsingham was by now a well-established confidant of Cecil, specializing in foreign affairs. He wrote the letter at the behest of Throckmorton, who was too ill to attend to the matter in person. That, in itself, tells us that Francis was a trusted intermediary likely to be listened to seriously by Cecil. A messenger, Robert Stewart, had arrived from the French Huguenot leaders with vital information but Elizabeth had refused to receive him. Stewart was known as a plain, outspoken Calvinist who could not trouble himself to master court etiquette. What he regarded as earnestly pleading God’s cause (ie the Huguenot cause) Elizabeth interpreted as presumptuous preaching. Moreover Stewart’s message was one Elizabeth had not wanted to hear. She was not prepared to intervene in France on the Huguenots’ behalf. Thus it was that Throckmorton pleaded on the messenger’s behalf. Walsingham, passing on his friend’s appeal, apologized for Stewart’s unsophisticated behaviour but insisted that queen and Council could not afford to neglect the information he brought across the Channel.

  In December Walsingham wrote again to Cecil, this time on his own behalf, to pass on intelligence which had come direct to him. He explained that he could not vouch for the accuracy of the information but:

  Weighing [the informant’s] earnest protestation of the credit of the party it came from, the nature of the matter as of the greatest importance, the malice of this present time, the allegiance and particular goodwill I owe to her majesty and the danger that might come to me by the concealing thereof if any such thing (which God defend) thereafter should happen, I saw in duty I could not forbear to write . . . I beseech your honour that I may without offence conclude that in this division that reigneth among us, there is less danger in fearing too much than too little and that there is nothing more dangerous than security.12

  ‘Malice of this present time?’ ‘Division that reigneth among us?’ ‘Nothing more dangerous than security?’ These are alarming – and, perhaps, alarmist – words. What exactly was Francis concerned about and how realistic were his fears? To unravel the answers to those questions we must backtrack to the beginning of the reign. By 1558 the glory days when Henry VIII had contended fiercely for a place at the top table alongside Charles V and Francis I were long past. It was:

  in those years since Henry VIII’s death that the new Queen, and most of the men who for the next three decades were chiefly to counsel her, had come of age or served their political apprenticeships. It was their experience of England’s plight under Edward VI and Mary that shaped their approach and conditioned their thinking about their country’s foreign relations under Elizabeth. That chastening experience had given them a more realistic appreciation, than had been possible in the years of affluence, of England’s small stature alongside the Leviathans of the continent. They now knew that they had neither the men nor the money to compete on land with Habsburg and Valois in the way that Henry VIII and Wolsey had tried to compete. Their means would not stretch to conquer Scotland, let alone to conquer France. The loss of Calais, and their inability even to attempt its recovery, dramatically emphasized the lesson that the days of continental adventure were over. They had learned, too, that they must not look to foreign alliances to make good their own weakness. Henry VIII had discovered how little foreign allies were prepared to do for England’s benefit. Northumberland and Mary had shown how easily the friendly embraces of either of the great continental monarchies could develop into bear-hugs almost as dangerous to England’s independence as their hostile assaults.13

  The lesson Elizabeth drew from this was that her best course was splendid isolation. Her inclination was to keep out of continental squabbles, using such diplomatic influence as she had (principally the bait of a marriage treaty) to encourage foreign princes to seek her support. She was a past mistress at prevarication, keeping her brother monarchs and their envoys dangling.

  Unfortunately for such a cost-saving policy, detachment was hard to achieve and would ultimately become impossible. During her first ten years the queen was overtaken by events which progressively restricted her freedom of manoeuvre. We must now survey those years. The narrative may be told as a tale of three cities – Rome, Paris and Edinburgh.

  We begin with Rome because it was the nerve centre from which impulses spread throughout every nation of Europe, producing political results which became more and more extreme. After more than four decades of ineffectual response to the spread of Protestantism the papacy had finally got its act together. Pope Pius IV summoned the Council of Trent to reconvene in 1562. This council had been on and off since 1547, bedevilled by internal disputes and the limited support of the major Catholic powers. Europe’s rulers were concerned about two things – the power of the papacy and the internal peace of their own dominions. How they chose to deal with the spread of heresy affected both. The failure to eradicate by torture, fire and military might the beliefs of Lutherans, Zwinglians, Calvinists and f
ringe sectaries had led governments to hope that some theological accommodation could be made but successive popes had set their faces against compromise and when the final session of Trent ended in December 1563 every major tenet of Protestant belief had been vehemently rejected. To cheers and applause from the assembled bishops and cardinals (most of them from Italy and Spain) the pope closed the final session with the ringing cry, ‘Anathema to all heretics! Anathema! Anathema!’ There was to be no truce, no peace treaty. Nothing was contemplated but ultimate victory; the restoration of religious unity and uniformity. It was a declaration of total war. In pursuing it, loyal sons and daughters of mother church were urged to set aside all political, diplomatic and even moral considerations.

  The principal focus of Rome’s ire was England. In recent decades Habsburg and Valois monarchs had limited the power of the papacy in their lands and drawn into their own hands many of the ecclesiastical powers wielded within their borders. But the King of England had gone much further. He had expelled the pope, severed all links with Rome, appropriated church property and presumed to proclaim himself head of a breakaway heretic church. The failure of Mary Tudor’s counter-reformation only served to rub salt into the wound. Now this renegade nation was under the rule of Henry Tudor’s bastard daughter. Rudolph Gualter accurately identified the Roman strategy which had become absolutely clear to England’s political leaders and their friends abroad:

  [I]t is sufficiently evident that the Roman antichrist is employing all his power and exertions towards this object, namely, that the carrying into effect the council of Trent may at length produce its intended result. Your neighbours [France and Spain] make no secret of this; and though they are restrained by ancient treaties . . . and the terms of a general peace, in which provision is made that no one shall give any trouble to another on account of diversity of religion, yet they are making many attempts, by which it plainly appears that they are seeking an occasion of disturbance.14

  Had the papacy, after Trent, fallen back into the decadent, worldly, luxury-loving habits of the Borgia and Medici popes, who were more concerned about Italian politics than the purity of the faith, the campaign of the ‘Antichrist’ would not have been pursued so vigorously but, in the person of the new Pontiff, Pius V (1566–1572), the Tridentine church found a champion of an awesome personal piety and chilling reforming zeal. Born Antonio Ghislieri, this puritanical cleric was for many years the Grand Inquisitor and was dedicated to purging the church of impropriety, corruption and error. As pope he enjoyed unlimited authority to intensify his regime of purging the church and extending the war against heresy. It was not only libertines and publishers of unauthorized books who lived in fear of Pius’s informers, agents and enforcers. There was no limit to this zealot’s range of activity. It extended from the expelling of prostitutes from Rome and the forbidding of bull-fighting to anathematizing princes who showed leniency to Protestants and the funding of religion-inspired rebellion. On 23 February 1570, this Roman ayatollah issued the papal bull Regnans in excelsis against Queen Elizabeth:

  We declare the aforesaid Elizabeth to be a heretic and abettor of heretics and we declare her and her supporters to have incurred the sentence of excommunication . . . we declare her to be deprived of her pretended claim to the aforesaid kingdom and of all lordship, dignity and privilege whatsoever. Also, we declare that the lords, subjects and peoples of the said kingdom and all others who have sworn allegiance to her are perpetually absolved from any oath of fidelity and obedience. Consequently, we absolve them and we deprive the same Elizabeth of her pretended claim to the kingdom . . . And we command and forbid her lords, subjects and peoples to obey her . . . we shall bind those who do the contrary with a similar sentence of excommunication.

  In Paris papal directives received mixed responses. It was all very well for the head of the church to order unyielding opposition to Protestants but attempts to take a firm line destabilized the nation and, in fact, plunged it into civil war. Partly as a result of Calvinist missionary activity, the number of Protestants in France had, over the decade 1552–62, grown from almost zero to around two million. In over a thousand locations men and women deserted the mass to engage in vernacular worship and express their belief in the singing of metrical psalms. Moreover, the new faith had attracted adherents from all sections of society, so that little Huguenot congregations enjoyed the protection of city corporations and powerful aristocrats. Supporters of the Reformed faith could be found in the parlement of Paris and, more importantly, among the intimate advisers of the king. Since other prominent courtiers were devoted to the Catholic cause the potential existed for religious rivalry at the highest level of French life. Within months of Elizabeth’s accession France, too, experienced a change of ruler. King Henry II was killed in a tournament accident and was succeeded by his fifteen-year-old son Francis II. Within eighteen months Francis was also dead from an ear infection. The crown now passed to a younger brother who, at the age of eleven, became Charles IX of France. Real power lay in the hands of the boy’s mother, Catherine de Medici. But the rule of a minor inevitably encouraged faction-feuding at court and Catherine found herself having to perform a balancing act between the Catholic Guise party and the house of Bourbon, the champions of the Huguenots.

  Catherine’s recipe for keeping the peace was to allow limited toleration to the Protestant minority. By the Edict of Saint-Germain Huguenots were not allowed to worship in towns but might assemble in the open countryside during the hours of daylight. Catherine’s attitude was extremely liberal by the standards of the time. For example, English Catholics did not enjoy the same freedom. However, such pragmatism could not satisfy religious partisans of either colour. As one Catholic spokesman stated:

  religion is the primary and principal foundation of all order, and the bourgeois and citizens are more bound together and united by it than by their trade in merchandise, the communication of laws, or anything else in a civil society . . . there is never more trouble or a greater tempest in a commonwealth than where there is some schism or dissension concerning the issue of religion.15

  Ironically, it was a sentiment with which Walsingham and his friends would have heartily agreed. It seemed self-evident to sixteenth-century Europeans that political and social cohesion and stability were dependent on religious unity – one king, one law, one faith. It followed that anyone exercising or promoting a religion other than the one sanctioned by the government was guilty of sedition. Toleration implies that internal peace is more important than truth, for if opposing theologies are allowed to co-exist then neither can be the sole repository of truth. Such a view was unacceptable to all Catholic and Protestant activists.

  Confrontation turned into civil war in the spring of 1562. Fighting broke out all over France. The Huguenots, led by the Bourbon Prince de Condé, commanded several towns and proved difficult or impossible to dislodge. More importantly, this confessional slugging match became the focus for the international Reformation struggle. The pope sent 2,500 troops and Philip of Spain provided the Guises with limited financial backing. Four thousand cavalry arrived from Germany to support the Huguenot cause. And, in England, the queen responded reluctantly to appeals for aid.

  In the early years of her reign Elizabeth was uncertain about how to respond to events on the continent. She had inherited a war with France but differences had been settled in April 1559 by the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis. In response to later developments Throckmorton in Paris strenuously urged his royal mistress to set aside the agreement in order to succour Condé’s forces. His despatches pointed out that what was happening in France was only part of a mounting campaign aimed at all Protestant rulers, including Elizabeth herself. If the Huguenots were crushed the Guises would not hesitate to make common cause with their allies in Scotland to strike at England. The apparent attractions of appeasement – peace and avoidance of expense – were illusory. Elizabeth tired of Throckmorton’s importuning. She sent over another diplomat, Sir Thomas Smith, to ac
t as a brake on the activities of her headstrong ambassador. But Throckmorton was now supported by Robert Dudley and by a majority on the Council. Men who had experienced exile and others who were closely associated with them felt a personal as well as an ideological obligation to their co-religionists. They were indebted to their friends abroad who had helped them during Mary’s reign. Now it was their turn to respond charitably to the entreaties of others suffering for the cause of the Gospel.

  Elizabeth saw things from a very different perspective. In her ethical scheme of things loyalty of subjects to their anointed ruler had pride of place. Aiding rebels was something she found difficult to square with her conscience. On the other hand there was Calais. This port, England’s last possession on the European mainland, had been lost in the recent war. At Cateau-Cambrésis she had agreed a face-saving formula by which the French promised to return it after eight years but no one believed that this would actually happen. Calais had strategic importance as a base from which to keep a check on traffic through the Narrows. But its prestige significance was greater. Its loss had been a blow to national pride. Its recovery would be a feather in Elizabeth’s cap. She realized that exploiting the current difficulty of Catherine de Medici would provide valuable diplomatic leverage. She agreed to send Condé 170,000 crowns and an English force under the command of Ambrose Dudley, Robert’s brother, recently created Earl of Warwick, to hold Le Havre (called Newhaven by the English) and Dieppe until such time as Calais was handed over. The Newhaven Venture turned into a fiasco. Warwick set out in high hope with several Calvinist captains (including Edward Horsley) and ministers in his entourage. But the war went badly elsewhere for the Huguenots (Throckmorton actually managed to get himself captured by the enemy) and within months they were obliged to negotiate a peace. The English garrison was left high and dry. Elizabeth refused to send more money to reinforce the defences and when the port, now also suffering an outbreak of plague, was besieged Warwick was obliged to surrender. Elizabeth did not fail to draw the moral about interfering in the internal affairs of other states.