Sir Francis Walsingham

by Derek Wilson

  Dudley and Cecil knew their man. They knew what place they would ‘have him unto’. The French embassy had been a testing ground and Walsingham had come through with flying colours. He had married firmness and tact. He had shrewdly judged the subtly changing international situation. He had kept himself and his superiors well supplied with valuable intelligence. The basis for his evaluation of men and events was his evangelical commitment and, if he sometimes was over-eager about airing his religious principles, he was learning that there was ‘a time to speak and a time to be silent’. Elizabeth was still cautious in her appraisal of Walsingham but she could not deny being satisfied with his performance in France. His mentors were hopeful of seeing him advanced to higher office.

  Chapter 5

  ‘TO GOVERN THAT NOBLE SHIP’, ENGLAND

  1574–80

  Historical perspective inevitably involves foreshortening. Time becomes concertinaed. Major happenings dominate the narrative. The ‘uneventful’ periods between them attract only brief notice. As a result we miss the tension and drama which were very real to contemporaries. We are also in danger of underestimating the significance of events which have not hit the historical headlines. That is certainly true of the years we are about to explore. In the apparent trough between the shock of the St Bartholomew’s Massacre and the failure of the Spanish Armada England enjoyed a time of technical peace. But any suggestion of tranquillity and sharp contrast with its war-torn neighbour states is an illusion. This was a period of intense sturm una drang. As Walsingham established his place in the government he and his colleagues were beset by mounting anxieties. Events on the continent, to which they had to adjust, were tumultuous and bewilderingly complex. Meanwhile at home the problem of Mary Stuart had not gone away and England became the target of a massive Counter-Reformation offensive which embraced infiltration by specially trained priests and murderous plots against the queen and her ministers. Yet, in the midst of all these problems the one which preoccupied councillors on a daily basis was their conflict with a politically inept sovereign.

  The popular imagination has been dazzled with the Gloriana myth and the accomplishments of Drake, Raleigh and the late-Renaissance dramatists. Under Elizabeth’s rule England enjoyed almost thirty years of peace and when it did take on the might of Philip II’s Spain it emerged victorious. The basis of maritime and mercantile expansion was well and truly laid in this half-century. Constitutional discord rumbled underground but never broke the surface. Small wonder that, long before the Stuart regime had run its course, men were already looking back wistfully to the golden age of ‘Good Queen Bess’. In fact, the Gloriana myth was a construct of the post-1588 era and the more durable results of late-sixteenth-century English history emerged either from politico-economic forces which would have existed whoever was on the throne or the appearance of remarkably talented individuals – or both. If England’s garden blossomed in these years it was because it was tended by a group of green-fingered political gardeners who interpreted the wishes of their imperious employer, occasionally ignored them and always brought their own ideas and inspiration to bear. It was the queen’s ministers who had personal experiences of life beyond the borders of the realm and who were closer to the realities of life in the English shires. Elizabeth, throughout her entire life, never ventured abroad. In fact she never travelled more than a hundred miles from her own capital. One fact which irritated the queen’s ministers when their advice was ignored or overruled was that they really did understand the workings of national and international politics better than she did. In their correspondence among themselves Walsingham and his colleagues grumbled that the queen’s decisions, ‘groweth out of her majesty’s own disposition, whom I do find daily more and more unapt to embrace any matter of weight’.1 But all they could do was face out the queen’s tantrums, endure with patience her procrastination and double-mindedness, shoulder the blame when things went wrong, watch the queen take all the credit for success and, generally, make the best of a bad job.

  They certainly did not do what some later commentators have done – confuse style and substance. Elizabeth was a past-mistress at PR. She was a consummate actress. Sometimes Walsingham had to play a supporting role in her amateur theatricals. In March 1576 he was present at an audience the queen gave to the Sieur de Champagny, an envoy from the Governor of the Spanish Netherlands. She wanted to impress the diplomat with her friendly intentions towards Spain and insinuate that any impression to the contrary had been given by her ministers. Walsingham was scripted as the fall guy. According to Champagny’s report, ‘The Queen spoke very bitterly to Walsingham, and was so provoked that she struck one or two of her women.’2 She was, of course, famous for her gracious public speeches, all written and practised for maximum effect, but one gets the impression that even her ‘spontaneous’ outbursts to her councillors were well rehearsed. Elizabeth’s most famous role was that of the Virgin Queen, wedded to her people, but it was just that, a role.

  Elizabeth Tudor’s primary motivation (one might suspect that it was, at times, her only motivation) was self-preservation. Given the dangers, humiliations and discomforts of her early years it is not surprising that this should be so. Once in power she wrapped herself in a specifically feminine version of monarchical mystique which was reinforced at court by a constant round of plays, masques, pageants, poems and songs, apostrophizing her semi-divine attributes. The queen lived in a stage set of flattering allegory only emerging from it to parade before her people sprinkled with magic dust. Elizabeth had star quality and it was this which impressed diplomats, courtiers, the elite of the shires and those of her humbler subjects privileged to get a glimpse of her. But just as her world was light years away from theirs, so was her heart. She did not love her people.

  Had she done so she would have sacrificed herself on the altar of matrimony or, at least, have nominated a successor. For whatever psychological and policy reasons, she rejected the married state for herself and could be very bitter when members of her entourage chose connubiality. (She even had an aversion to married clergy.) Like her father, she feared potential challenge from those who stood in the line of succession. Henry VIII had exterminated all the Yorkist claimants on whom he could lay hands. Elizabeth used other methods to neutralize possible rivals. She tried to prevent Mary Stuart’s marriage to Darnley and made the somewhat desperate suggestion that she be united with the Earl of Leicester. The only other close contender was the unfortunate Catherine Grey. She married without the queen’s consent and then had the additional effrontery to fall pregnant. Elizabeth was incandescent with rage and sent Catherine to the Tower. The miscreant was released after two years but only to be placed under house arrest with a succession of minders. She was still in her twenties when she died in 1568. Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon, who could trace his descent in the female line from Edward IV’s brother, George Duke of Clarence, was long denied office and complained that he and his wife suffered the queen’s displeasure through no fault of their own.

  ‘I do not think anything is more enjoyable to this queen than treating of marriage . . . She is vain and would like all the world to be running after her, but it will probably end in her remaining as she is.’3 The new Spanish ambassador, Guzman de Suva, could express himself frankly in his reports and his assessment of Elizabeth’s character accurately depicts one side of her personality. She was vain – and jealous and possessive and vindictive and petulant. Her principal courtiers, no less than genuine suitors, had to play elaborate love games and she relished the power that this gave her over them. She flirted outrageously with the leading men in her life and if they happened to be married she banned their wives from court because she could not tolerate rivalry for their affections.

  To this luxuriant demi-monde of extravagant make-believe Francis Walsingham was a complete stranger. Though the role of secretary involved almost daily attendance on the queen and residence in the court wherever it happened to be, he was in this world but not of it
. He could never have brought himself to play the beribboned fop or the macho champion of the tennis court or the tiltyard. Elizabeth was never comfortable with his dour and earnest evangelicalism. But she was wise enough to know that she needed his detailed knowledge of the political scene and his down-to-earth advice. For his part, Walsingham saw it as his duty to open for the queen windows on to the real world, so that she might understand where her best interests lay and, therefore, the policies which she should pursue. Theirs was an uneasy relationship based, not on affection, but on mutual respect – he for her position; she for his abilities.

  This only thing is wanting in you, that you write more at length and more fully respecting the state of the times and the dispositions of men; and this the rather, in proportion as the times in which we live are abounding in dangers, and the dispositions of the men with whom we have to contend, are not without their infinite recesses and deep concealments.4

  So Walsingham wrote in 1577 to his old friend, the Strasbourg scholar, John Sturmius, and this typical snippet from one of his thousands of letters helps to explain the reasons for his promotion to a place among the nation’s political leaders. He lost no opportunity to keep himself abreast of current affairs. In December 1573 Francis Walsingham was sworn a member of the Council and joint principal secretary. Burghley had resigned five months earlier on his appointment as Lord Treasurer (though he remained active in all areas of policy) and had been replaced by Walsingham’s erstwhile colleague, Sir Thomas Smith. Smith was regarded as one of the most upright diplomats of the day but he could not match Cecil for mental agility and sheer stamina. He was sixty years of age, experienced indifferent health and found attendance on the procrastinating queen (especially on progress) a severe trial. ‘I can neither get the other letters signed nor the letters already signed sent away,’ he once complained. Elizabeth was always putting him off with ‘anon’ and ‘soon’ and ‘tomorrow’. We will soon need a horse or an ass to carry the mounting volume of unfinished business, he grumbled. ‘I would some other man occupied my room who had more credit to get things resolved in time.’ At last Walsingham was appointed to help him.

  The letter to Sturmius reveals a man with extensive contacts throughout Europe; a man gifted in intelligence-gathering; a perceptive intellectual who saw the bigger picture in a world ‘abounding in dangers’, a diplomat experienced in dealing with duplicitous and devious foreigners, and, above all, an evangelical who viewed time through the magnifying lens of eternity. All these qualities appealed to the moderate Puritan majority on the Council who were anxious to have Walsingham among their number.

  Elizabeth’s delay in ratifying the appointment may suggest that she did not share their enthusiasm. She and most of her advisers came at the problems of international and internal affairs from very different angles. Cecil, Dudley, Bedford, Walter Mildmay and Warwick all shared a basically ‘theological’ interpretation of politics. They were defenders of biblical truth against the demonic forces emanating from Rome. They recognized in Walsingham a fellow spirit who was more forthright than any of them in his Puritan zeal. And he had witnessed the perfidy and cruelty of Catholic leaders at first hand. Could anyone be a more effective advocate than the ambassador who had been through the refining fire of St Bartholomew’s? Walsingham’s straightforward, black-and-white understanding of the responsibilities of a Protestant monarch were easily stated:

  What juster cause can a prince that maketh provision of the Gospel have to enter into wars than when he seeth confederacies made for the rooting out of the Gospel and the religion he professeth. All creatures are created to advance God’s glory. Therefore, when his glory is called in question, no league nor policy can excuse if by all means he seek not the defence of the same, yea with the loss of life.5

  Elizabeth was no less a conviction politician but her convictions were different. Fundamental to her philosophy was the principle of divine right. Monarchs were ordained by God and drew their authority from him. Rebellion, even in the name of religion, was anathema. It could not but throw the whole created order into confusion. This was why she hesitated to aid Protestant dissidents in France and the Low Countries. It was why she refused to hand Mary Stuart over to her own people for trial. She declined to incur the expense of foreign war because wars cost money and money meant raising taxes and taxes necessitated the calling of parliament and parliament was sure to raise issues which were none of their business – marriage, succession and the fate of the Scottish ex-queen. Behind such impertinences, as Elizabeth well knew, lay the Calvinist doctrine that sovereignty is vested in the people; that rulers may be held to account by their subjects; that, in the last analysis, those adjudged tyrants can be removed from office.

  These conflicting humours in the body politic which would, in the next century, bring the patient to death’s door, were held in balance by the quite remarkable relationship Elizabeth created with the other elements in the political nation. She never attended Council meetings and thereby avoided arguing out tricky subjects with her advisers. By distancing herself from her councillors she obliged them to pay court to her, presenting the results of their deliberations for her approval. By making them wait for answers she put them in their place. Delaying difficult decisions was sometimes disastrous but it kept her ministers on their toes and occasionally the problems went away of their own accord. The fact that she was a woman had the advantage that she could get away with things no king would have dared attempt. Her speeches to parliament were well-rehearsed masterpieces of mild chastisement mingled with heart-melting protestations of love. Closing the session of 1567, for example, Elizabeth rounded on the House of Commons for meddling with the succession and claiming to do so by the right of free speech:

  I have in this assembly found so much dissimulation, having always professed plainness, that I marvel thereat – yea two faces under one hood, and the body rotten, being covered with two visors: succession and liberty . . . they thought to work that mischief which never foreign enemy could bring to pass, which is [my] hatred of my Commons.

  Having delivered her rebuke, Elizabeth changed the mood of her oratory. She would not send MPs home muttering, with their tails between their legs.

  [D]o you think that either I am unmindful of your surety by succession, wherein is all my care, considering I know myself to be mortal? No, I warrant you. Or that I went about to break your liberties? No, it was never my meaning, but to stay you before you fall into the ditch. For all things hath his time. For although perhaps you may have after me one better learned or wiser, yet I assure you, none more careful over you.6

  Specifically, Elizabeth was determined to retain the Crown’s control of all matters religious which had been won by her father. Henry VIII had freed the English church from papal shackles. She would not permit it to be fettered by manacles manufactured in either Rome or Geneva. Given these fundamental differences, the relationship between sovereign and principal secretary was never going to be easy.

  One problem facing the holder of the secretary’s office was that it was undefined. It was whatever its holder chose to make of it. Since 1530 there had been thirteen principal secretaries, some serving jointly. Of these, the majority had been little more than senior bureaucrats, preparing Council agendas, recording decisions, obtaining royal signatures or seals to documents, despatching messengers, receiving reports and, in fact, oiling the machinery of government. The two great exceptions had been Thomas Cromwell and William Cecil. They had used their unique position of intermediaries between sovereign and royal Council to become framers of policy.

  It was not in Walsingham’s character to be any less influential. Strong convictions coupled with integrity and a tireless capacity for hard work meant that he would, if he remained in office, play a leading role in the Council. The next five years witnessed the steady development of his influence, assisted by the strong bond he enjoyed with the Earl of Leicester. It was a formidable alliance, forged for both ideological and pragmatic reasons. No one
was a better conduit to the queen than her old and closest friend, Robert Dudley. When bad news or unwelcome advice had to be conveyed from the Council the earl was usually the appointed messenger and his persuasive powers were formidable. As the 1570s progressed Leicester committed himself increasingly to the Puritan interest. He used his patronage, particularly in the Midlands, to insinuate radical ministers and lecturers into churches. In view of the fact that Protestant zealotry was the one subject on which Dudley and Elizabeth fundamentally disagreed, the extent to which he was prepared to go in support of his radical protégés is remarkable. During the years Walsingham had spent in France battle royal had raged between Leicester and the Bishop of Peterborough, Edmund Scambler, over the behaviour of Percival Wiburn. This ardent preacher had already been deprived of his benefice in London for refusing to wear ‘popish rags’ when Leicester appointed him to a living in Northampton. Within months Wiburn had set up a Presbyterian style of church order in which clergy and magistrates worked together to uphold a regime of enforced moral standards and attendance at sermons. As soon as the bishop intervened Wiburn turned to his patron for aid. Poor Scambler was in an invidious position. ‘Although your lordship doth like the substance of his doctrine – or the most part thereof, even so do I,’ he patiently explained to the earl, ‘yet know you not . . . as I do, the contentions and [discord] that is in Northampton . . . about matters, ceremonies and things indifferent, about which he showeth as much vehemency as about the principal grounds of religion.’7