Elizabeth's Spymaster (37 page)

Aside from these forays into mercantile endeavour and exploration, Walsingham’s burden of paperwork must have been almost unbearable. Despite his frailty and his illnesses, he still managed to handle the voluminous daily correspondence that came with the job. It is none too difficult to picture him, gaunt-faced, lying in bed and wracked with pain,
surrounded by sheaves of paper and parchment: the letters from the great and good at home and overseas; the accusations of recusancy against their neighbours by malicious citizens; and perhaps some vital intelligence from his network of spies.

One of his faithful secretaries must always have been in attendance, sitting in a corner of the room and taking dictation as his master digested the contents of each letter and decided on the appropriate action: prison for some poor Catholic; a painful meeting in the Tower with the torturer Richard Topcliffe for an arrested Jesuit priest; or, more mundanely, whether to grant petitions seeking favour from some anxious suitor greedy for advancement and enrichment.

There were other, more tiresome problems that took up Walsingham’s valuable time and energy. For example, the Earl of Shrewsbury wrote to him on 9 January 1584 seeking ‘favour for the town of Doncaster’ which had been impoverished by the plague. He warned that the queen’s recent grants of forest rights to Nicholas Pudsey in Hextroppe, Hunter Woods and Rossington Park would now force her mills in Doncaster into decay for lack of timber.
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A pretty administrative pickle! In September the same year, his faithful old agent Manucci had ‘information against Filippo Corsini for illegal export of wool’ in London and proposed a conference with the English traders regarding the problems caused by alien, or foreign, merchants in the wool trade.
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Around 1584, Walsingham became involved in a dispute between the inhabitants of Farnham, Surrey, and their vicar Daniel Craft, who, it was reported, could not ‘read plainly and distinctly and is a drunkard’.
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His curates were little better – Thomas Moore and William Owen were also drunkards or, worse still, ‘gamesters’ and Thomas Hogge was ‘unlearned’. The bishop refused to act on the parishoners’ complaints, even though Walsingham supported their case. Then there were the usual little domestic difficulties, such as bailing out his servant Stephen Ellis who had been seized by the night watch at Whitechapel in East London on 10 May 1580.

Finally, his reputation as a sober man of integrity often led to him being called on to arbitrate in delicate family matters, such as the
clandestine marriage in 1582 of Lord Beauchamp to Honora, daughter of Sir Richard Rogers of Bryanston in Dorset. The young bridegroom wrote to Walsingham seeking his assistance to reconcile him both to his father, the Earl of Hertford, and the queen – who frequently took a dim, old maid’s view of such wilful activity amongst her nobility. Walsingham took a hard-headed stance. He wrote to Hertford from Windsor on 3 October, advising him to consult church divines regarding whether his son ‘may free himself of the match’ and if this were not possible, to put up with it. He told Beauchamp the same day to behave ‘in a humble and dutiful sort’ towards his father, ‘considering how deeply you have offended [him] by matching yourself against his will’.
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Walsingham’s reputation also made him an attractive employer: in 1582, a man called Johnson told the Secretary that he desired ‘to have his honour’s cloth for a livery this year, for it is a great comfort to be known to be one of your servants’.
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Walsingham’s onerous duties were made even less bearable by his frequent bouts of ill-health. Although the symptoms vary, his illnesses were long-standing and sometimes removed him from court for lengthy periods. His maladies began early on in his royal service. In 1571, during his first embassy to France, Walsingham wrote to Burghley that his disease ‘grows so dangerously upon me’ that Elizabeth should send a substitute for him. ‘I hope my life shall stand her majesty in more stead than my death and upon these extreme points stand the deferring of my cure.’
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His departure from Paris to attend an important diplomatic meeting at Blois with the Huguenot leader Admiral Gaspard de Coligny and the king of France early that September was delayed by ‘the necessity of taking physic [medicine]’.
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But there were no obvious signs of cure, and Walsingham’s medical condition grew steadily worse, forcing him to repeat his pleas to London to be temporarily relieved of his duties. The queen eventually sent the diplomat Henry Killigrew to France in October to replace him and belatedly but sternly ordered Walsingham to consult his doctors. He was off sick until the end of the following February, writing to Burghley on 2 December: ‘I am diseased by three sundry
carnosities which will require the longer time to cure.’
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A ‘carnosity’ is a morbid fleshy excrescence, sometimes a fungous growth, and may be a symptom suggestive of some form of cancer afflicting Walsingham. After returning to his post, he suffered a slight relapse early in April 1572. In the tumultuous aftermath of the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of Huguenots in Paris in August that year, Walsingham again fell ill, which prevented him from delivering diplomatic correspondence in person to the French king.

After he returned to England and had been in post as Secretary of State for about two years, Fénelon, the then French ambassador in London, reported in January 1575 that Walsingham was absent from Elizabeth’s court for about a month for treatment for
‘son accoustumé difficulté d’urine’
(problems in passing water).
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In fact, he was off sick much longer. In April that year, he wrote from his home in London to James Douglas, Fourth Earl of Morton and Regent of Scotland: As yet, I remain at my own house under the hands of the physicians of whom I hope shortly to be rid, being in very good way of thorough cure.’
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Walsingham was ill again in February 1576 and was in bed, suffering ‘a pain in his head and stomach’ in January 1578.
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Three years later, he wrote a letter to Anthony Bacon,
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the son of Lord Keeper Sir Nicholas Bacon, that reveals his frequent and excessive use of medicine for his illnesses in his younger days:

… a thing which I have, by experience, found hurtful in myself when I was of your years, so you will find in time, many incommodities if you do not in time break it off.

Your years will better wear out any little indisposition by good order of exercise and abstinence with some other little moderation in diet, than abide to be corrected with physic [medicine], the use whereof alters nature much – yes, makes a new nature, if it be without great cause used in younger years.
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By now Walsingham was approaching fifty, a good age for a period that regularly saw far more limited life expectancies,
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even though he had suffered debilitating illnesses for at least the last two decades. Whether
his medical condition, be it a cancer or some disease of the kidneys, had been worsened by what today would be regarded as quack remedies must remain debatable, although it seems likely they were frequently of little assistance. Given the kinds of drugs prescribed by doctors to their hapless patients during the Tudor age – some of them remarkably toxic – perhaps the spy master was lucky still to be alive.
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If he was seeking relief from pain, he may have sought solace from draughts of opium-based potions, which could explain why his ‘taking of physic’ so inconveniently rendered him
hors de combat
The drugs may also have affected his immune system, making him vulnerable to other infections and illnesses such as fevers. Certainly, his dogged determination and total self-belief kept him functioning when lesser mortals would have gratefully and gracefully retired from a taxing, tiring and turbulent public office.

He was taken ill once more in the hot summer of 1583, and on 2 July wrote to Burghley after he had visited him in his sickbed:

The same night your lordship departed from hence, I was taken with an extreme fit of the colic which held me until next day at noon. Since that time till now I have been so greatly troubled with pain in my back and head as I am not able to write, whereof your lordship is to pardon me that I use not my own hand[writing].
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Two days later, a letter to one of Walsingham’s friends, Sir Thomas Heneage, now Vice-Chamberlain, reported that ‘Mr Secretary has not been well at ease since your departure [and] has kept [to] his chamber. I delivered your letters to him and he desired a note whether to send to you in York’.
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Walsingham was still suffering from the pain in August, as he told Hatton:

This last night I was troubled with an extreme pain in my right side which bereaves me of my sleep. It continues with me still and therefore I mean to use both Gifford’s and Hector’s advice.
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I find the pain accompanied with an unaccustomed faintness and a disposition altogether subject to melancholy.

I hope I shall enjoy more ease in another world than I do in this.
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As we have seen, his fury and bitterness over being denied Babington’s forfeited properties by Elizabeth and his despair over her continued indecision regarding the execution of Mary Queen of Scots in January 1587 made him ‘dangerously ill’, and at that time he may have been attended by a Dr Baily.
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Later that year, Walsingham suffered a seizure while on official duties in London and frankly told Leicester that for one moment he feared he would die. He was also afflicted again with his old problem of being unable to pass water and a number of remedies failed to provide any relief from this distressing and painful condition, perhaps caused by a urine infection, which could also trigger high fevers.
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Although he recovered, by September he was again in the hands of his doctors. On 9 September, Burghley wrote from court to Walsingham, who was then staying at the Chief Minister’s opulent home at Theobalds in Hertfordshire, expressing his gladness about ‘the comfort that your physicians and surgeons give you’
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– presumably another liberal dose of opiates. However, a relapse must have occurred, for more than two weeks later, the Lord Treasurer wrote again with fears that his fever ‘comes of some extraordinary pains’.
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Whatever Walsingham was suffering from, it was a debilitating disease, for it ensured that the spy master was frequently away from his desk at the crucial time of the Armada preparations until the early spring of 1588,
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and on 19 June he was again in bed, ‘waiting for a recurrence of his fit’.
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The following year he was laid low once more and ordered by his doctors to stay in bed. His letter of 27 August to Burghley enclosed some of his papers which had been

read to me, being advised by my physicians to keep my bed, waiting whether I shall be visited with another fit of my fever, whereof I am in no doubt for that I have this night taken no good rest.
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By 1590, it was clear to many that Walsingham’s health was irretrievably in decline, and perhaps fearing that he was losing his mental as well as physical faculties, he once again sought Elizabeth’s permission to appoint a replacement. In March, he delivered a batch of state papers held in his custody to Burghley for safekeeping because of his
incapacity.
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On 2 April, Thomas Windebank wrote to Walsingham reporting his conversation with the queen about a fit that the spy master had just suffered, probably while at court:

I told her majesty of your last night’s fit, which I heard [of] by Mr Lake
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and thereupon took occasion to move her for speedy easing of your honour; whereunto, she answered that shortly she would call another to the place, so that I hope when a full presence of councillors shall be here, the effect of her resolving will take place.
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Even in this last service for her loyal minister, Elizabeth was delaying her decision on who would be his successor. Windebank also informed Walsingham that Burghley should ‘speak with the Italian who had lately arrived’ if he was too unfit to do so.

Walsingham was now fully aware that his death could not be far off and had prudently made a number of preparations, both financial and spiritual. In July 1584, he had conveyed a large parcel of lands to create a small income for his wife and daughter Frances. Ever the devout Protestant, he also wanted to leave his mark firmly on the religious life of London. In April 1589, he drew up a plan for ‘catechising’ within the city, with the appointment of ‘two eminent persons from the universities … to be supported by a fixed stipend and by public subscription’ to preach in the (new) Greyfriars in the city’s Farringdon Ward. ‘Some stage may be erected [in the church] theatre-wise, for the receiving of great numbers; a special place to be appointed for all women, apart by themselves’.
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He also wrote three essays on philosophical and moral themes during the last months of his life, the last entitled
Sir Francis Walsingham’s Anatomising of Honesty, Ambition and Fortitude.
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