The Queen's Agent: Francis Walsingham at the Court of Elizabeth I

by John Cooper

  There was another matter, critical to both France and England even though it was unstated in Walsingham’s formal instructions: the marriage of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou. Perhaps the match never looked very likely. Elizabeth was thirty-seven, Anjou nineteen. Elizabeth was supreme governor of a church whose theology and bishops were clearly Protestant; Anjou had fought against the Huguenots, and regarded Elizabeth as a bastard and a heretic. Walsingham’s description of ‘Monsieur’ Anjou was guardedly positive at best, ‘his body of very good shape, his leg long and small but reasonably well proportioned’, three fingers taller than Walsingham himself but his complexion and colour worryingly sallow. Walsingham said nothing about it, but Anjou’s sexuality is also open to question. Following his accession as Henry III in 1574, critics remarked on his fondness for cross-dressing and earrings (in both ears), and his troop of male minions in long hair and bonnets.

  And yet the marriage had its attractions to everyone except Anjou himself. Catherine de’ Medici spotted a way to detach her son from the Guise. Charles resented his younger brother’s popularity and wanted him out of France. England would gain a military ally against Spain. The queen herself gave it to be understood that she was determined to take a husband. Much has been made of Elizabeth’s words to her first parliament in 1559: ‘And in the end this shall be for me sufficient: that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin’. Less often quoted is an earlier part of the same speech: ‘whomsoever my chance shall be to light upon, I trust he shall be … as careful for the preservation of the realm and you as myself’. Elizabeth modelled her monarchy on that of her father, and she knew it was her duty to settle the succession.20

  Walsingham can hardly have relished the prospect of another foreign Catholic becoming King of England. The Earl of Leicester, a committed Protestant and a distant cousin of Ursula Walsingham, might have seemed a better candidate. But recent English history rang some warning bells. Edward IV’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had been an accelerant in the Wars of the Roses, showing how destabilising a match between monarch and subject could be. Leicester’s reputation had also been scarred by the rumour that he was involved in the death of his wife Amy Robsart. For Walsingham, a French match was a necessary concession within a much bigger strategic game. As ambassador in France he had a chance to build a defence alliance against the gathering forces of Spain. Extracting Anjou from the clutches of the Guise would strike a blow against the partisans of Mary Stuart. In the longer term, and God willing, there might be an heir. The birth of a child – better still, a male child – would calm the waters which had been rocking the ship of state since the 1540s. This is how Walsingham came to collaborate with Burghley to make a success of the Anjou match. As he explained to the French diplomat Paul de Foix, if he failed it would ‘be for lack of judgement and experience, and not for lack of goodwill’.21

  Discussions began in secret on 12 March 1571 in the garden of the new Tuileries Palace, where Catherine de’ Medici met Elizabeth’s personal envoy Lord Buckhurst. Twelve days later, Walsingham was instructed how to reply to the possibility of a proposal. Elizabeth explained how the ‘solicitation of our loving subjects generally did induce us, for their sakes, to hearken to motions of marriage’. She dropped a hint that she might welcome an approach from Anjou. In everything that counted, however, the queen was uncompromising. Her starting point was that she would accept nothing less than Emperor Charles V had offered in 1554 when the marriage treaty was sealed between Mary and Philip of Spain. This was a fair demand in one sense: English honour would be compromised if Elizabeth was treated any less handsomely than her sister had been. A similar pre-nuptial agreement had been proposed to another of Elizabeth’s suitors, the archduke Charles of Austria, in 1565. But the Spanish marriage had been a remarkably good deal for England. Philip was denied the dignity of a coronation, exercising sovereignty through the person of his wife. His Spanish retinue was debarred from holding English offices. It was an unacceptably emasculated kind of kingship, and Philip forswore the treaty before he signed it. Persuading Anjou to accept the role of royal consort on this model would require some hard bargaining.

  At least Philip and Mary had shared a common Catholic vision. For a prince as pious as Anjou, the religious restrictions which Elizabeth laid down were every bit as objectionable as the limits on his political power.

  Monsieur shall not have authority to exercise the form of religion in England, that is prohibited by the laws of our realm … And as for his allowance of our religion, although we wish he might in conscience like it (and if he did understand the form thereof, truly we do not mistrust, but he would not mislike it) yet we shall only require his presence in our oratories and churches.22

  The Anjou match allows us to glimpse the personal religion of a queen who famously didn’t want to make windows into men’s souls. Elizabeth is often portrayed as a politique, her Church settlement the genesis of a cosy Anglican compromise. Yet the prayers that she composed, and the music which she patronised in the Chapel Royal, reveal a queen whose faith was every bit as intense as that of her brother and sister. Her defence of sacred ritual was sometimes misinterpreted as Catholic in its sympathies, but to Elizabeth there was no contradiction between tradition and reform. The key, for her, was ordered worship. A queen who kept a crucifix in her private chapel could also deny her husband the Catholic sacrament of the altar.

  Elizabeth’s instructions placed Walsingham in a dilemma. He strongly approved of the hard line she was taking, and adopted a similar stance when French counter-proposals required the ‘free exercise’ of religion for Anjou and his servants. Allowing the mass in Anjou’s household, he argued, would alienate the queen from her loyal subjects and encourage the spread of sedition. But Walsingham could also see that Elizabeth’s stipulations, if presented in the manner that she proposed, would scotch a marriage which was the best hope of preserving the stability of the English commonwealth. That is why he decided that ‘somewhat swerving from the precise course of her majesty’s instructions’ – in short, keeping quiet about religion when necessary – was the best course of action. Walsingham was robust with de Foix, pointing out that Anjou had flirted with Protestantism when younger, ‘and therefore that if it please [Anjou] to water those seeds, he should be able easily to discern that the change of his religion should breed unto him no dishonour at all, it being no less fault to continue in error, than commendable to come from error to truth’. But his flexibility also reveals Walsingham’s subtlety as a politician, working closely with Burghley to secure the alliance on which English security depended. If that meant moulding the words of the queen to fit the circumstances, so be it.23

  Talks about talks dragged on through the spring and summer of 1571. Anjou wanted a coronation immediately after the wedding, a full role in government and a mint of money to run his household. The sum of £60,000 was suggested, equivalent to one-fifth of Elizabeth’s annual income, which he expected to keep as a pension if she died childless. For her part, Elizabeth accepted that Anjou would not be forced to take communion as part of the wedding service. But she refused his request to practise his Catholicism ‘in secret place and manner’ on grounds that it would encourage others to flout the law. Nor would she allow him to be crowned. When Catherine complained to Walsingham about the harshness of English demands, Elizabeth offered to salve Anjou’s conscience by sending him a copy of the Book of Common Prayer. This contained, she alleged, ‘no part that hath not been, yea that is not at this day used in the Church of Rome’. If its English language was unpalatable, then Anjou was free to worship from the Latin translation of the Prayer Book in use at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, or the French version prepared for the Channel Islands.24

  This was disingenuous on Elizabeth’s part. Whatever language it was in, holy communion according to the 1559 Prayer Book was very different from the Catholic mass. But nor was it intended to be a wrecking tactic. Elizabeth had a l
ot to gain by marrying, and she continued to signal her willingness to be courted. In conversation with Walsingham, Anjou was prepared to praise Elizabeth for her gifts of mind and body, ‘the rarest creature that was in Europe these five hundred years’. Regarding freedom of religion, however, he was as immovable as the queen herself. He was also quoted as saying that marriage to a heretic was out of the question. Walsingham clutched at straws, hoping that the match could still be salvaged. Anjou’s Catholicism derived from his mother’s influence, he explained to Burghley on 21 June. De Foix had offered assurances that within a year Monsieur ‘would be as forward to advance religion as any one within our realm’. Freed from the conventions of diplomatic language, Walsingham opened up with startling frankness in a private letter to the Earl of Leicester. The marriage was simply too important to let go:

  when I particularly consider her majesty’s state, both at home and abroad, so far as my poor eye-sight can discern; and how she is beset by foreign peril, the execution whereof stayeth only upon the event of this match, I do not see how she can stand, if this matter break off.

  In July the focus of attention shifted from France to Hampton Court. Anjou’s captain of the guard, Grimonville de l’Archant, met the queen to discuss an embassy to conclude the marriage. Again, the religious obstacle proved insuperable. Burghley blamed de l’Archant, but in truth Elizabeth was just as inflexible. Aware that time was running out, Leicester and Burghley suggested that the issue simply be ignored in the marriage treaty. But Elizabeth would have none of it: without ‘plain dealing’, she told Walsingham, there could only be more controversy. By September de Foix, who had replaced de l’Archant at the English court, was moving the deadlocked debate towards new ground. He called for the appointment of a special envoy from Elizabeth to Charles, or failing that, ‘if the marriage shall not take place, to enter into the treaty of some straiter alliance or confederacy’. It was tacit recognition that the Anjou match was finished. In October the duke declared unequivocally that he would never marry Elizabeth. In spite of all his efforts, Walsingham had failed.25

  The months of diplomacy and despatch-writing, the vexatious meetings with Anjou and his mother, all took their toll on Walsingham’s health. In August 1571 Charles IX ordered foreign ambassadors south to the Loire, where he would be meeting the Protestant leader Admiral Coligny at Blois. Walsingham’s departure was delayed ‘by the necessity of taking physic’, and he was soon petitioning Burghley to be allowed back to Paris: ‘my disease groweth so dangerously upon me, as I must most humbly desire her majesty to take some speedy order for someone to supply my place. I hope my life shall stand her in more stead than my death.’ Prompting this letter was a urinary infection which kept Walsingham bedridden between November 1571 and February 1572, and would continue to plague him for the rest of his life. His letter to Leicester also mentions his poor sight, a condition which was worsened by years of close document work by candlelight. In January 1588 he complained of a ‘defluction’ of fluid seeping from his eyes, explaining the marked deterioration in his handwriting as he grew older. Making a diagnosis at this distance is far from easy, but the combination of symptoms – the trouble with his eyes, an inability to pass water, the times when he felt close to death – makes it possible that Walsingham was suffering from diabetes. If this is right, then the quantities of sugar and saturated fat consumed by the typical Tudor gentleman must have cruelly aggravated his condition. Thomas Smith described the food at the French court as ‘pheasants and partridges, red and white legged, and young peacocks and all other such fine meats, covered and seethened with lard’. Walsingham noted in his journal for November 1571 that his doctors had put him on a new diet. Several of his physicians would double as his couriers and agents during the 1580s.26

  Walsingham continued to work in spite of his illness. Late in January 1572 he received some frightening news from Burghley in London. ‘I perceive through God’s good providence’, he wrote in reply, ‘your lordship hath escaped the danger of a most devilish Italian practice’. A pair of plotters had planned to shoot Burghley on his way back from court and rescue the Duke of Norfolk from the Tower using a rope bridge. The identity of one of the conspirators must have shaken Walsingham to the core. Edmund Mather had been secretary to Sir Henry Norris at the Paris embassy, the equivalent of Robert Beale to Walsingham himself. State secrets would have flowed across his desk every day. Mather confessed under interrogation to being a devotee of the Queen of Scots. Once Burghley was dead, Queen Elizabeth would have been his next target.

  Mather had talked about his plans in Italian to a Welsh merchant and sometime pirate named William Herle. What Mather didn’t know was that Herle was Burghley’s agent, drawing out the plot to see who else would be implicated. It was a tactic which Walsingham would copy when he took charge of the queen’s security in the later 1570s. Treason at home, his frustration at the Anjou match and his own gnawing illness came together in an outburst of loathing for the Queen of Scots. ‘So long as that devilish woman liveth,’ he exclaimed, ‘neither her majesty must make account to continue her quiet possession of her crown, nor her faithful servants assure themselves of safety of their lives. God therefore open her majesty’s eyes to see that which may be for her best suertie [protection]’. It was a cri de cœur which Burghley shared. Elizabeth reluctantly consented to Norfolk’s execution under pressure from her privy council, but she blocked a bill in Parliament against the Queen of Scots. Burghley confided to Walsingham that he was ‘overthrown in heart’. Fifteen years would elapse before they saw Mary finally brought to justice, giving others the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of the northern earls and Edmund Mather.27

  The embassy was taken over by Thomas Smith and Henry Killigrew pending Walsingham’s recovery. They found the king and his court at Amboise, dancing to mark the end of the twelve days of Christmas. A brief attempt was made to resurrect the Anjou marriage, Catherine restating her son’s demand to attend mass in his own household. Smith’s retort was bold: ‘Why madame, then he may require also the four orders of friars, monks, canons, pilgrimages, pardons, oil and cream, relics and all such trumperies, which will seem so strange to our countrymen, that in no wise can be agreed.’ Business then turned to the second part of Smith’s commission, a defensive alliance between England and France. Walsingham rejoined the delegation in February, although Smith’s voice continued to dominate their joint reports. Scotland was a potential stumbling-block. The king made a show of loyalty to the auld alliance and the Queen of Scots, ‘my kinswoman, and my sister-in-law, and she was my sovereign’. At this point Killigrew stepped forward, and his reply was as frank as Smith’s had been:

  Fire and water cannot be together, the one is contrary to the other. The league is made for a perpetual and strait amity betwixt you and the queen’s majesty of England, and you would treat for the queen’s most mortal and dangerous enemy. This cannot stand together, you must take her now for dead.28

  On 17 April 1572 Smith was able to inform Burghley that ‘at last Mr Walsingham and I have concluded the league’. Neither party would assist the enemies of the other, and the French agreed not to intervene in Scotland on Mary’s behalf. True, the succession was no nearer to being resolved. But as the queen mother pointed out, there was always the Duke of Alençon, seventeen years old and sporting the beginnings of a beard. The task of formally ratifying the treaty of Blois fell to Edward Fiennes de Clinton, Earl of Lincoln and lord high admiral. Lincoln had fought with Henry VIII in Normandy, and supervised the English withdrawal from Boulogne in 1550. Simultaneous ceremonies were held on both sides of the Channel in June 1572, Smith’s reports bringing out all the colour of the celebrations in Paris. Lincoln travelled to the Louvre in the king’s coach, while Walsingham and Smith followed with the Duke of Anjou. The treaty was sworn on the high altar of the Church of Saint Germain, the English delegation sitting in a side chapel while vespers was sung (to ‘very good musick’, according to Smith). Supper was held in an open banqueting
house in the garden of the Tuileries, where Walsingham and Smith were presented with gifts of gold and silver plate weighing 472 ounces. Days of dining, acrobatics and fireworks culminated in a massive bonfire, into which a bag of live cats was dropped from a crossbar for the benefit of the king, who particularly enjoyed entertainment of this sort.29

  The treaty of Blois signalled a sea change in English foreign policy. It severed a relationship with Spain which had been sealed by Katherine of Aragon’s marriage to Arthur Tudor more than seventy years before. The friendship with Burgundy, as the Spanish Netherlands were sometimes still known, stretched back even further. Renouncing alliances which had served England so well required a major shift in the psychology of government. Fortunately for us, Walsingham addressed this problem by putting down his thoughts on paper. The result, ‘Whether it may stand with good policy for her majesty to join with Spain in the enterprise of Burgundy’, is an awkward document in several ways. The title is confusing to a modern reader. ‘Join with’ means to join in battle with, to oppose. The manuscript exists in several copies of a lost original, its attribution dependent on the similarity of its language to Walsingham’s official letters. This particular text, however, was never intended to be seen by the queen, which is precisely what makes it so valuable. Within an analysis of the pros and cons of war, Walsingham set out his thinking about being ruled by a woman.