Sir Francis Walsingham

by Derek Wilson

  if you shall defer it, either for a parliament or a great session, you will hazard her majesty more than ever, for time to be given is [what] the traitors and enemies to her will desire . . . I do assure myself of a new, more desperate attempt if you shall fall to such temporising solemnities and her majesty cannot but mislike you all for it. For who can [keep] these villains from her if that person live . . . God forbid! And be you all stout and resolute in this speedy execution, or be condemned of all the world forever . . . if you will have her majesty safe, it must be done, for justice doth crave it besides policy.27

  Walsingham finally arrived at Fotheringhay on 13–14 October. One can imagine that, whatever the state of his health, this was an engagement he would not have missed for worlds. Thus it was that the two great enemies met for the first – and last – time. The prosecution was led by the state’s lawyers and Walsingham played no major part in it. However, there was one moment of high drama which did turn the spotlight on him and which raised the kind of questions which must always be raised concerning the ethics of covert activities. His trump card was Mary’s letter to Babington of 17 July. The defendant had no idea that this had fallen into the government’s hands. She assumed that Babington had burned it, as instructed. When it was read out in court she was shattered. But, of course, it was not her dictated letter that was being offered in evidence. It was a copy – doubtless a very proficient one – of the transcript made by Phelippes of the coded original. When Mary had recovered herself she turned and faced Walsingham and denounced the document as a forgery. It was now his turn to assume an air of wounded innocence: ‘I call God as witness that as a private person I have done nothing unbeseeming an honest man, nor, as I bear the place of a public man, have I done anything unworthy of my place. I confess that being very careful for the safety of the Queen and the realm, I have curiously searched out all the practices against the same.’28

  His answer was no answer (though Mary graciously accepted it). It was the politician’s ploy of using a high principle to vault over an accusation of base conduct. ‘Careful for the safety of the Queen and the realm’ was no more than a formula for suggesting that ends justified means. There is no reason to doubt that the documents presented to the court accurately represented what Mary and her correspondents had written but some were only copies and could easily have been doctored. Mary was not allowed to examine them and her secretaries were not brought forward to face cross-examination. Justice was undoubtedly done – but in a very roundabout way.

  The commissioners completed their examination on 15 October and were scheduled to deliver their verdict immediately. All was poised for Mary’s condemnation, which would pave the way for the cutting out of the political cancer that had, for so long, debilitated Elizabeth’s government. Then came one of those heart-stopping messages from the queen to which all her councillors had become accustomed. The trial was to be adjourned for ten days. The commissioners were to reconvene at Westminster.

  It was in these tense days that personal tragedy struck the Walsingham household. In early May Sir Henry Sidney, his daughter’s father-in-law, died at the age of fifty-six. When the news reached Philip Sidney in the Netherlands he immediately applied to Elizabeth for compassionate leave, so that he could return and attend to family affairs. She refused. Sir Henry’s widow (Leicester’s sister) moved in with the Walsinghams. Hers had been a hard life, made worse by the queen’s hostility. Once a great royal favourite, Mary Sidney had in 1562 nursed Elizabeth through smallpox. As a result she had become hideously disfigured, a disaster which had left her as much mentally as physically scarred. In subsequent years she had experienced long periods of loneliness while her husband served in Ireland. Now she was a semi-invalid widow in her mid-fifties and her eldest son, fighting in a foreign land, was denied his wish to come to comfort her. She could, however, derive some consolation from her infant granddaughter, Elizabeth. On 9 August Lady Sidney died. Philip Sidney had lost both parents within the space of a few months. Still he was not permitted to return home.

  In June Francis and Ursula Walsingham had to say goodbye to Frances, who went out to Flushing to be with her husband. Though heavily pregnant with her second child, she soon had to do the work of a nurse, for Sidney took a musket ball in the thigh at the siege of Zutphen on 22 September. For three-and-a-half weeks he suffered the ministrations of field surgeons. News of Sidney’s condition reaching London in these weeks varied. Some reports spoke of improvement. Others were less sanguine. Anxiety about his daughter and son-in-law nagged at Walsingham as he laboured to bring the business of the Scottish queen to a satisfactory conclusion. It was on the very day that the commissioners reconvened (25 October) that, in distant Utrecht, the Earl of Leicester sat down to write to his friend:

  Sir, the grief I have taken for the loss of my dear son and yours would not suffer me to write sooner of those ill news unto you, specially being in good hope, so very little time before, of his good recovery; but he is with the Lord and his will must be done . . . For my own part, I have lost, beside the comfort of my life, a most principal stay and help in my service here and, if I may say it, I think none of all hath a greater loss than the queen’s majesty herself. Your sorrowful daughter and mine is here with me at Utrecht, till she may recover some strength, for she is wonderfully overthrown through her long care since the beginning of her husband’s hurt and I am the more careful that she should be in some strength before she take her journey into England.29

  Shortly after this Frances returned to England with her husband’s body. Within days she was delivered of a stillborn child.

  In addition to the personal agony inflicted on Walsingham by these events he now had to face financial hardship. The deaths in quick succession of Philip Sidney and his parents had left the Sidney affairs in a state of confusion. Walsingham, named as one of the executors of Philip’s will, took it upon himself to sort out the estate. It transpired that the hero of Zutphen had left debts of at least £6,000. Walsingham assumed responsibility for satisfying the creditors. He turned to Leicester for help.

  I have caused Sir Philip Sidney’s will to be considered by certain learned in the laws and I find the same imperfect touching the sale of his land for the satisfying of his poor creditors, which I do assure your Lordship doth greatly afflict me, [that] a gentleman that hath lived so unspotted [in] reputation and had so great care to see all men satisfied, should be so [exposed] to the outcry of his creditors. His goods will not suffice to answer a third part of his debts already known. This hard estate of this noble gentleman maketh me to stay to take order for his burial until your Lordship’s return. I do not see how the same can be performed with that solemnity that appertaineth without the utter undoing of his creditors, which is to be weighed in conscience.30

  But the earl had problems of his own and could not help. Walsingham appealed to the queen. Burghley added his voice to the secretary’s entreaty, pointing out how indebted the Crown was to this faithful servant, not least for his uncovering of the Babington plot. Elizabeth turned a deaf ear to their pleas. In utter despair Walsingham quit the court. He shared his pain, grief and sense of injustice with Burghley on 16 December:

  I humbly beseech your Lordship to pardon me in that I did not take my leave of you before my departure from the court. Her Majesty’s unkind dealing towards me hath so wounded me as I could take no comfort to stay there. And yet if I saw any hope that my continuance there might either breed any good to the church or furtherance to the service of her Majesty or of the realm, the regard of my particular should not cause me to withdraw myself. But seeing the declining state we are running into, and that men of best desert are least esteemed, I hold them happiest in this government that may be rather lookers on than actors.31

  How may we explain the queen’s appalling ingratitude? She certainly found it difficult to sympathize with other people’s domestic trials and tribulations because she had never had a family life of her own. Her tyrannical father had ordered the de
ath of her mother whom she scarcely remembered. For whatever reason she had elected the single life and she resented it when those close to her entered into marriage. Very possibly she had never fully reconciled herself to the union of Philip and Frances, even though she had consented to be godmother to their daughter. But, in the autumn of 1586, there were other reasons for her alienation from Walsingham. Nor was he alone in being out of favour. Elizabeth had never felt herself so isolated as she did at this time. Most of her advisers, including Leicester, who returned at the end of November, were advising her to continue a war which was draining the treasury and wreaking havoc on her careful finances without yielding any military or diplomatic return. The international peace she had worked so hard to preserve was on the point of being shattered: Philip II was known to be mustering his fleet for an invasion of England and in the forthcoming conflict England would have to face the might of Spain unaided.

  But the issue which dominated all the queen’s thoughts and emotions was the fate of Mary Stuart. In September the commissioners had pronounced that the Scottish ex-queen was guilty and should die. Elizabeth had accepted the verdict. She had had to submit to the unwelcome necessity of recalling parliament to ratify the death sentence. Everyone now waited for her to issue the necessary warrant. Diplomats representing Catholic Europe and James of Scotland urged her to draw back from the fatal deed. As she tried to resist the tide of the inevitable, no one stood beside her or sympathized with her predicament. As she wrestled with her doubts, fears and moral dilemmas and possibly came close to a breakdown, Elizabeth had advisers in plenty – preachers reminding her of her duty; parliamentarians urging her to be revenged on her enemies; councillors steeling her arm for battle – but there was no one who understood her or realized that the policy she was being urged to pursue represented for her a deep personal failure. She lingered at Richmond, refusing to come to Westminster, ‘being loath to hear so many foul and grievous matters revealed and ripped up’ by parliament. Eventually parliament came to her. On 24 November she received a delegation at Richmond. Her response was a rambling speech which revealed her own inner turmoil. She spoke of her ‘woman to woman’ concern for Mary, her desire to bring the miscreant to repentance, her lack of personal animosity. Having skirted the problem, she offered the parliamentarians an ‘answer answerless’:

  You have laid a hard and heavy burden upon me in this case, for now all is to be done by the direction of the queen – a course not common in like cases. But for answer unto you, you shall understand the case is rare and of great weight, wherefore I must take such advice as the gravity thereof doth require . . . To your petition I must pause and take respite before I give answer. Princes, you know, stand upon stages so that their actions are viewed and beheld of all men; and I am sure my doings will come to the scanning of many fine wits, not only within the realm, but in foreign countries. And we must look to persons as well abroad as at home. But this be you assured of: I will be most careful to consider and to do that which shall be best for the safety of my people and most for the good of the realm.32

  Perhaps it is not surprising that Elizabeth could spare no sympathy for Walsingham’s financial problems, particularly as he was prominent among those constantly nagging her about Mary. He had even written for her a long memorandum on the dangers of delaying Mary’s execution. Eventually, the queen accepted the inevitable and on 3 December issued a proclamation announcing the death sentence.

  In her speech of 24 November Elizabeth had made reference to a group of conspirators ‘who within fourteen days have undertaken to take away my life’.33 The air was thick with rumours of plots. How many were real and how many imagined we cannot know. It may also be the case that some were contrived in order to stir Elizabeth to action. Re-enter William Stafford and Michael Moody. In the last weeks of 1586 these two men put their heads together to concoct one of the most bizarre assassination plots of the reign. Moody, who was currently being held in Newgate in connection with Sir Edward Stafford’s debts, was to be released, gain access to the court, lay a gunpowder trail to Elizabeth’s bedchamber and blow her to pieces. How he could have hoped to engineer this in the crowded court is not clear and, unsurprisingly, the explosive option was abandoned for an alternative involving poison or the knife. William Stafford drew into the plot the French ambassador, Châteauneuf, and his secretary Leonard des Trappes. He then reported the whole affair to Walsingham. All this sounds suspiciously like a rerun of the Parry plot, an agent provocateur’s attempt to win favour. But was Stafford acting unilaterally or was he set on by Walsingham? Much depends on the timing. If this is the plot Elizabeth referred to in her speech then it was already under investigation before Walsingham’s departure from court and he could have been an instigator. However, no action was taken against the conspirators until January, by which time Walsingham had taken himself off to Barn Elms to be a ‘looker-on rather than an actor’.

  The official story was that Stafford made his confession to Walsingham early in the new year. He and des Trappes were then arrested and confined in the Tower and Châteauneuf was placed under house arrest. Subsequently he was examined by a committee of the Council (not including Walsingham). The ambassador confirmed that Stafford had come to him with a hair-brained scheme and that he had totally rejected it. He could not, however, avoid the charge of having concealed knowledge of a conspiracy. The outcome of all the brouhaha was that Moody went back to jail for another three years, des Trappes and Stafford spent a few months in the Tower before being quietly released, and Châteauneuf was kept under close surveillance for a month and forbidden to communicate with his superiors. By May the whole incident was forgotten and Elizabeth joked with the ambassador that it had all been an unfortunate misunderstanding. On balance, it seems more likely that Walsingham was among those who were duped rather than being the originator of the plot. He was ill most of the winter, as well as being alienated from the court. The fact that Châteauneuf was rendered hors de combat until after Mary’s execution suggests the object of the exercise may have been the closure of diplomatic channels during the tense days leading up to the tragic final scene in the drama of the two queens. Elizabeth or Burghley are more likely to have been the principal actors in this non-conspiracy.

  The story of the last traumatic days leading up to Mary’s death is well known. The details do not greatly concern us because Walsingham, who had striven hard to bring about the Queen of Scots’ ruin, was very little involved. His physical disorders exacerbated by mental stress had brought him very low. The unfortunate official who deputized for him was William Davison, appointed as his assistant in December. On 1 February Elizabeth summoned Davison to her and signed the death warrant. As she did so she made a grim joke. ‘Go and tell Walsingham,’ she said, ‘the grief would grow near to kill him outright.’ It now required the great seal, which was appended by Lord Chancellor Hatton the same day. At the same time Elizabeth instructed Davison to bid Walsingham write a letter to Paulet hinting that he might save everyone a great deal of trouble by despatching his prisoner himself. Mr Secretary, though still unwell, had now moved to Seething Lane in order to be more accessible. He did as instructed, knowing full well that Paulet would reject so dishonourable a suggestion. It was Burghley who took over arrangements for the performance of the deed. He called together the available councillors and they planned to see the warrant executed without the queen’s foreknowledge. The authorizing document was endorsed by all and brought to Walsingham’s sick bed for his signature. On 3 February Robert Beale was despatched to find the Earls of Shrewsbury and Kent, who had been selected to oversee the execution. In later years he would hint angrily that Walsingham had pleaded illness in order to assign this risky task to a deputy. By the 7th the earls were at Fotheringhay. So was the executioner, a man personally recommended by Walsingham for the job. At eight o’clock on the morning of 8 February it was all over. All over, that is, for Mary Stuart. For the others involved in the tragedy the fallout would be catastrophic and t
here would be important work for Walsingham still to do for queen and country.

  Chapter 9

  NO TOMB

  1587–90

  Walsingham must have been relieved not to have been in the direct firing line of the queen’s wrath in the immediate aftermath of Mary’s execution but his absence from court may well have also been welcome to Elizabeth and there is the possibility that it was engineered. As usual the queen had expected to have her cake and eat it. She had wanted Mary out of the way but she had not wanted to shoulder the responsibility for her execution. So when the Queen of Scots was beheaded on her direct order, signed with her hand and endorsed with her great seal, she had to find some way of convincing foreign courts that she had not intended her warrant to be acted on; that one of her minions had exceeded his orders. Had Walsingham been at his post in those crucial February days he would have been the obvious fall guy but Elizabeth would not have wanted to dismiss and utterly disgrace such a valuable servant. So it was highly convenient that William Davison, a comparative nobody, was standing in for the secretary when the death warrant was signed, despatched and acted on.

  This raises the question of whether Walsingham’s merely marginal involvement in the final act of Mary Stuart’s life was all it seemed. Was he really as ill as he claimed? Was he assiduously keeping out of trouble? Or were others implicit in his absence? Did he deliberately allow Davison to take the rap for him? Or was he innocent of his friend’s humiliation? The Davison of whom we are allowed shifting glimpses through the mists of time looks like one of nature’s victims. Despite having rendered valuable service in missions to Scotland and the Netherlands for twenty years, he seems never to have learned pragmatism. He was a zealous Puritan and, perhaps, remained rather naïve. He enjoyed the friendship of Leicester and Walsingham, who shared his opinions but not his forthright expression of them. It was Davison on whom Mr Secretary urged caution in 1578: ‘it were very dangerous that every private man’s zeal should carry sufficient authority of reforming things amiss.’ A careful understanding of political realities, Mr Secretary suggested, would persuade Davison to ‘deal warily in this time when policy carrieth more sway than zeal’.1