Elizabeth's Spymaster (49 page)

Chapter Six

1
‘Paulet’, p.353.

2
Hatfield House, CP 15/56 and Neale,
Elizabeth I,
pp.133–4.

3
Paulet was censured by Elizabeth for tearing down the cloth of estate. He told William Davison, the Junior Secretary of State, that he understood ‘from some friend at court of her majesty’s mislike that this lady did enjoy her cloth of estate’. On 27 November, he and Drury saw Mary in her dining chamber. She had hung ‘eight or ten pictures in paper of the Passion of Christ and of other like stuff fastened upon the hangings over the chimney’. She told him: ‘Although I had taken down her cloth of estate, she trusted that I would not take those things from her that she had set up in [its] place.’ ‘Paulet’, pp.317–18.

4
Labanoff-Rostovsky, Vol. VI, p.461 and Pollen, p.cxcviii. Mendoza did not receive the letter until 15 October 1587.

5
Hatfield House, CP 165/10.

6
Labanoff-Rostovsky, Vol VI, pp.475–8 and ‘Paulet’, p.338. In January, Paulet was concerned that the ‘still long delay of justice has stirred her [Mary] to hope of further mercy’. After hearing there had been no reply to her letter, she was willing to ‘write again, and when her letter was ready would send it to me to see the enclosing and sealing of it. I answered that I would say nothing to that motion, forbearing flatly to deny her to promise to convey her letters. To be plain … being so well acquainted with her cunning, I would not wish that she might be permitted to write again to her majesty.’ ‘Paulet’, p.346–7.

7
Hatfield House, CP 164/140.

8
Read,
Mr Secretary Walsingham,
Vol. HI, pp.58–9.

9
9
Elizabeth claimed only a clock from the attainted estates. See BL Add. MS 6, 997, fol.444.

10
Walsingham wrote to Leicester on Christmas Day, 1586: ‘I thank my God for … I am now in good hope of the recovery of both my daughter and her child.’ Sadly, the baby died shortly afterwards. See BL Cotton MS Titus B vii, fol.24.

11
‘Paulet’, pp.341–2.

12
BL Cotton MS Titus B vii, fol.14.

13
‘Paulet’, pp.342–3.

14
‘Cal. Spanish’, Vol. IV, p.7.

15
BL Egerton MS 2, 124, fol-55 and ‘Bardon Papers’, pp.93–4.

16
SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90,
p.380. A trail of gunpowder was to be laid to explosives in a bag hidden under or near her bed. Moody was described as ‘a mischievous resolute person’ by Burghley. See Hatfield House, CP 16/17.

17
Murdin, Vol. II, p.581.

18
He was arrested en route to the Channel port of Dover.

19
Murdin, Vol. II, p.579. Moody was formerly a servant to Sir Edward Stafford in Paris.

20
Stafford wrote to Elizabeth on 7 January urging that for her own safety Moody ‘should be kept [a] close prisoner and no man suffered to speak with him but myself. See HMC, ‘Salisbury’, Vol.III, p.216. What was he trying to hide?

21
Read,
Mr Secretary Walsingham,
Vol. III, p.60.

22
Haynes, p.82.

23
An abstract of Stafford’s confessions is in BL Add. MS 48, 027, fols.352–352B. A French account of the transactions between Stafford and the French diplomats is in BL King’s MS 119, fol.50. The misunderstanding is acknowledged in the account of a conference between Walsingham and Châteauneuf on 13 April – see BL King’s MS 119, fol.80. Stafford was recorded as still being in the Tower in August 1588.

24
Camden, p.485.

25
SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90,
p.383. Pembroke had been instructed to raise 2, 000 men in Pembrokeshire ‘to serve against [a] foreign attempt’ and Lord Chandos commissioned to command 3, 000 in Gloucestershire. See Murdin, p.785.

26
BL Lansdowne MS 51, Item 42. One enclosed a hue and cry signed by Justice of the Peace William Bowerman at Sampfield, Devon, ordering the local gentry to ‘make your armour and artillery in readiness and that with all speed, upon pain of death’. Another commanded men to don their armour
‘with all speed … for London is on fire. Let this go to Exeter upon horseback. Haste! Haste! Haste!’

27
SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90,
p.385.

28
Davison (?1541–1608) was a protege of Walsingham and from 1574 one of his confidential men of business. He was fluent in French and Latin and had served on embassies to Scotland and the Netherlands. He was appointed Secretary of State and a Privy Councillor on 30 September 1586, having served as commander of Flushing in the Low Countries the previous year, although the Letters Patent confirming his appointment did not pass the Great Seal until 12 December.

29
‘Paulet’, p.356.

30
‘Cal. Scot.’, Vol. IX, p.263 and BL Harleian MS 290, fol.213.

31
BL Harleian MS 290, fol.104.

32
As another Stuart monarch, King Charles I, discovered to his cost when he was tried and beheaded by Parliament sixty-two years later in January 1649.

33
‘Cal. Scot.’, Vol. IX, pp.288, 297.

34
Ibid., p.289.

35
Walsingham must have written the letter by himself at his house. Davison recounts how he told his fellow Secretary of State of the queen’s desires, departed and later returned to Seething Lane, when he found the letter ‘ready to be sent away’.

36
‘Paulet’, pp-359–60.

37
Ibid., pp.361–2.

38
Possibly the Robert Wingfield who wrote an account of the execution of Mary for Burghley, who was a member of Paulet’s team.

39
Leicester had written to the queen from the Low Countries, urging that Mary should be secretly removed by poison. See Camden, p.444.

40
Read, ‘The Proposal to Assassinate Mary’, p.235, quoting Calthorpe MS XXXI, fol.149. Several years later, there were reports in France that it ‘had been better done to have poisoned her or to have choked her with a pillow, but not to have put her to so open a death’.

41
Hatfield House, CP 164/9.

42
Nicholas,
Life of William Davison,
p.264.

43
As well as Burghley, the Earls of Derby and Leicester, the Lords Howard, Hunsdon and Cobham, Sir Francis Knollys, Sir Christopher Hatton and Davison were present. Nicholas,
Memoirs of…
Hatton,
p.460.

44
‘Cal. Scot’, Vol. IX, pp.291 and 294.

45
Ibid., pp.262–3.

46
Ibid., p.264.

47
‘Paulet’, p.361.

48
Ibid., p.363.

49
‘Cal Scot.’, Vol. IX, p.291.

50
Ibid., pp.291–2.

51
Nicholas,
Life of William Davison,
pp.245–6.

52
Cited by Scot, p.177. The fifteenth-century building, formerly the inn, is now a farmhouse. Alongside is a public footpath to the site of the castle.

53
He was probably starved to death on Henry IV’s orders while a prisoner in the castle’s Gascoigne Tower.

54
Steuart, p.78 and Guy, p.499.

55
Hatfield House, CP 165/20–21 does not mention her chaplain being denied her, presumably so as not to offend Elizabeth’s sensibilities.

56
Her original will, in the hand of her secretary Claude Nau with corrections in her own hand, was written while she was at Sheffield in February 1577, and is in BL Cotton MS Vespasian C xvi, fol.145. An extract, with notes by Robert Beale, clerk to the Privy Council, is in BL Add. MS 48, 027, fol.530. It is reproduced, rather inaccurately, in Labanoff-Rostovsky, Vol. V, pp.352–62.

57
Dominique Bourgoing.

58
Prescott-Jones, pp. xii-xiii and Guy, p.501. It was addressed to: ‘The most Christian king, my brother and old ally’. The original letter is in the National Library of Scotland, Adv. MS 54.1.1. It was purchased in 1918 by a group of subscribers and presented to the Scottish nation.

59
Dack, p.3, from the contemporary account of the execution by Robert Wingfield. See Steuart, p.80. She also told Melville: As you have been an honest servant to me, so I pray you to continue to my son and commend me to him. I have not impugned his religion nor the religion of others but wish him well and as I forgive all that have offended me in Scotland, so I would that he should also do and beseech God that he would send him his holy spirit and illuminate him.’ See Hatfield House, CP 165/20–21.

60
Probably the Frenchman Baltazar, one of Mary’s tailors, described by Paulet as ‘old and impotent’, or one Dedier, an old man who worked in her pantry. See ‘Paulet’, p.298.

61
Dack, p.5.

62
A contemporary pen and ink sketch of the execution is in BL Add. MS 48, 027, fol.650; mounted separately. Eye-witness accounts are in fols.636–650B.

63
Dack, p.6.

64
He was one of Elizabeth’s chaplains and the father of John Fletcher, the dramatist who worked with Shakespeare on the play
Henry VIII.
His account of the execution is in BL Add. MS 48, 027, fols.654–658B.

65
Dack, p.13.

66
‘Cal. Scot.’, Vol. IX, p.317.

67
Dack, p.14.

68
Ibid., p.16.

69
Another report claimed he cried out: ‘There is the head of Mary Stuart!’ See ‘Cal. Scot.’, Vol IX, p.441.

70
Dack, p.16.

71
Ibid.

72
‘Paulet’, p.314.

73
One of her rings was found on the castle site and put on display at Peterborough in 1887.

74
‘Paulet’, pp.366–7.

75
‘Cal. Scot.’, Vol. IX, p.293.

76
Ibid., p.441.

77
Ibid., p.293.

78
Hatfield House, CP 164/10.

79
Smith, p.27.

80
Hatfield House, CP 164/15.

81
BL Add. MS 48, 027, fols.636–650B.

82
SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90,
p.387.

83
Strype, Vol. III, book ii, p.407.

84
BL Cotton MS Caligula C ix, fol.212.

85
BL Harleian MS 290, fol.238.

86
‘Cal. Spanish’, Vol. IV, pp.26–7.

87
Neale,
Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments,
pp.141–2.

88
A wrong action or omission, from the French
‘mesprison’,
an error.

89
BL Harleian MS 290, fol.224. A summary of Davison’s communications with Elizabeth about the case of Mary Queen of Scots, written while he was a
prisoner in the Tower and dated 20 February 1587, is in BL Cotton MS Titus C vii, fol.48. See also BL Add. MS 48, 027, fols.666–690B for an account of the Star Chamber proceedings against Davison.

90
Documents on the downfall and trial of William Davison, Secretary of State, including the letter dated 23 October 1588 ordering that Davison be moved, are in BL Add MS 48, 027, fols.398–403.

91
Strype, Vol. III, book ii, p.410.

92
Hatfield House, CP 165/57.

Chapter Seven

1
Langton, Vol. I, p.46.

2
Drake’s daring punitive mission to the West Indies in September 1585 to July 1586 sacked a number of Spanish towns and cities, amongst them Santo Domingo on the island of Hispaniola (today’s Dominican Republic) and Cartagena, on Columbia’s Caribbean shoreline, ransoming both under threat of further destruction. Audaciously, he also captured the fort of San Augustin on the Florida coast. The fleet returned to Portsmouth carrying loot valued at an estimated £8,300, 000 at today’s prices. Leicester was sent to the Netherlands to free its Protestant citizens from the Spanish army of occupation and to ‘restore their ancient liberties and government by some Christian peace’, but this mission was less than successful, and he failed to prevent the capture of several Dutch towns. The cost of the English expeditionary force also infuriated Elizabeth. See Somers, Vol. I, p.417.

3
He was dispatched primarily to promote English trading interests in Turkey, having negotiated a treaty to establish the London-based Turkey Company in 1579. Harborne served as ambassador to Constantinople until 1588. He died in 1617.

4
Read,
Mr Secretary Walsingham,
pp.226–8.

5
Walsingham repeated his instructions in cipher to Harborne in June 1587, when the danger from Spain loomed yet larger. He urged the ambassador to persuade the Sultan ‘how necessary it is for him to attempt somewhat presently for the impeachment of the said Spaniard’s greatness, much more in truth to be doubted than of Persia, against whom his forces seem to be altogether bent and may be performed by setting such princes as are in Barbary [the North African coast] at his devotion upon the King of Spain, furnishing them for the purpose with some number of galleys, which with small cost shall give him great annoyance’. See Bodleian Library, Tanner MS 79, fols.127ff

6
BL Harleian MS 6, 993, fol.125.

7
Langton, Vol. I, pp.xxv-vi. The original plans called for 150 warships, totalling 77, 250 tons; forty store ships displacing 8, 000 tons; 320 smaller vessels, amounting to 25, 000 tons; six galleasses; and forty galleys.

8
Welwood, pp.8–9 and Read,
Mr Secretary Walsingham,
Vol. III, p.285. It has been suggested that this intelligence was gathered by the double agent Francesco Pucci, in Krakow. See Deacon, p.30.

9
‘These in Guipuscoa: In Santander – sixteen new ships between 100 and 140 [tons]. In the Passage: fourteen of the like burden. In Laredo – eight
pataches
[fleet tenders or small communications vessels]. In San Sebastian – six ships of 300 [tons] and four of 200. In Bilbao –
six pataches.
In Figuera – four ships of 100 [tons]. Some built in the river of Fuenterrabia. In the river of Seville – eight ships of 300 and 200 apiece and four
pataches.
In Saint Mary Port – two galleys made short and broad and four
pataches.’
See Langton, Vol. I, p.56.