Sir Francis Walsingham (12 page)

One of Philip II’s councillors leaked information of his master’s plans to a merchant friend, not realizing that he was in Walsingham’s pay. What this man revealed was that Ridolfi had gone to Spain and had had audiences with the king. Philip had agreed a plan which hinged upon Elizabeth’s assassination during her summer progress. After that Norfolk would mobilize Catholic support at home while Alva assembled an invasion force in Zeeland. This would be transported across the Channel by an Anglo-Spanish fleet. The admiral of the English contingent was to be, of all people, John Hawkins, the notorious privateer and the predator on Spain’s transatlantic trade. At Cecil’s prompting this master mariner had managed to persuade de Spes that he was resentful of his treatment by Elizabeth and ready to turn his coat. The ambassador and his royal master believed what they wanted to believe because they were engaged in a Catholic jihad. Philip told Alva: ‘I hold my charge from God to do this to be so explicit, that I am extremely determined and resolved to proceed . . .
doing on my side everything possible in this world to promote and assist it.’
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Of all the conspirators the only one who kept a cool head was Alva. He was sceptical of Ridolfi’s ambitious plan and unwilling to commit himself until a Catholic rebellion had actually taken place. Perhaps he was also suspicious about the apparent failure of the English government to discover what was going on. Burghley, of course, did know what was going on. The latest intelligence reached him on 5 September. He passed on an embellished version to Elizabeth and was gratified by her angry reaction. Before nightfall he had penned a letter to the Earl of Shrewsbury, Mary’s jailer, warning him of a plot to snatch the ex-queen. Across the outside he splashed his directions to the messenger: ‘haste, post haste, haste, haste, for life, life, life, life.’ Other information had ‘chanced’ to come his way concerning money, secret codes and fresh correspondence between Norfolk and Mary. It was, he concluded, enough.

Intelligence officers now, as then, feasted on ‘abjects, orts and imitations’, ever striving to make scraps into a coherent meal. Their political masters frequently go a step further and put their own spin on intelligence to make it say what they want it to say. Cecil did this. Taken as a whole the written and oral evidence he accumulated did not add up to a substantial threat to the state. But in a war of ideologies anything that can conjure up the fear of
potential
horror is valuable. Mr Secretary had more than enough proof to have de Spes sent packing back to Spain, to return Norfolk to the Tower and to steer a state trial to the proper verdict. The news that Elizabethan justice did not stay its hand from plucking down the nation’s premier peer would, Burghley hoped, be sufficient to discourage any Catholic fanatics who might put faith above country. It would also demonstrate that Elizabeth’s trusted ministers were in control of the situation.

Walsingham meanwhile entered the diplomatic service in Paris very reluctantly. He felt inadequate for the task – and not without reason. He had no experience in the tactful handling of princes and great officers of state. Personal ostentation was quite alien to Walsingham’s nature, and to his faith. Extravagance of dress, keeping up with fashion and learning the latest dances smacked of pride and vanity – and they were sins. Flattery and dissimulation proceeded
from the father of lies and were, therefore, anathema to him. Although taciturn and tight-lipped in his general demeanour, Walsingham tended to be outspoken and even belligerent in matters that affected his faith. More immediately to the point, he did not have a deep purse. Ambassadors were expected to maintain a large staff, entertain lavishly as a means of enhancing their nation’s prestige and to spend whatever was necessary to bribe officials, purchase information and sustain a corps of their own agents. They had to be ready to meet expenses out of their own resources, and rulers were often very sluggish about reimbursing their representatives.

To understand Walsingham’s appointment and what it was the government expected of him we need to look closely into diplomatic relations between the major powers. To describe them as tense would be an understatement. We have already seen how Guerau de Spes interpreted his mission. He used underhand methods in the aggressive pursuit of Spanish and Catholic interests and his style was frequently confrontational. Eventually he was adjudged to have overstepped the mark by involvement in the Ridolfi plot and Elizabeth requested his recall. The ambassador had left in a fury of denunciations of the ‘heretical’ Cecil who, he asserted, was so worried about a resurgence of Catholicism that he had sent the bulk of his fortune to Germany in readiness for a hurried departure.

But the diplomatic waters had been well and truly muddied a couple of years earlier. As her envoy to Spain Elizabeth had nominated John Man, Warden of Merton College, Oxford. It was hardly a sensitive decision. Man was an abrasive religious enthusiast with a talent for rubbing people up the wrong way. During Mary’s reign he had been deprived of his university appointments. His arrival at Merton in 1562 had been the signal for unseemly quarrels among the fellows, some of whom resigned rather than submit to the rule of this ardent Calvinist. Man enjoyed the patronage of Archbishop Parker and dedicated to him his translation of Wolfgang Musculus’
Commonplaces of Christian Religion,
‘a body of sound divinity, purged from the errors of popery’.
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In London Man was associated with the group to which John Foxe and John Field belonged. On the face of it, therefore, he does not seem to have been the most obvious choice as
the only Protestant senior diplomat at the Spanish court. The Earl of Arundel was probably not alone among the councillors as being surprised by the appointment of ‘a man of low position and small merits’. Man was very soon at the centre of a diplomatic row and the only thing that is surprising about his career in Spain is that it lasted a little over two years. An envoy who engaged in theological argument with his Catholic hosts, distributed Protestant pamphlets and referred to the pope as ‘a canting little monk’ was never going to win friends and influence people. However, he certainly had right on his side when he demanded – unsuccessfully – that he and his staff should be allowed freedom of worship within the embassy. And, for all his bigoted troublemaking, he did not engage in plots against the monarch, as de Spes did. However, he did infuriate Philip who told Elizabeth that her representative richly deserved to be burned at the stake and demanded Man’s recall. The disgraced ambassador, broken in health, made his weary way home in the summer of 1568. He was not replaced. Furthermore, whenever Cecil had occasion to take a tough line with Spain he often dragged up the ‘appalling’ treatment of Elizabeth’s representative.

Men such as de Spes, Man and Walsingham were clearly chosen not so much to smoothe over possible causes of discord as to assert firmly – forcibly when necessary – their government’s religious position. But what do we understand the word ‘government’ to mean? In the case of Spain government meant King Philip, a workaholic bureaucratic monarch who tried to keep his hands on every aspect of foreign and domestic policy. Philip was, as we have seen, a devout son of holy church with a divine mission to extirpate heresy wherever it reared its hydra heads. It is hardly surprising, therefore, to find his representatives maintaining a staunchly Catholic stance.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, was no committed partisan. The main plank of her foreign policy was to keep England out of harm’s way by encouraging traditional Franco-Spanish mistrust. It was Cecil and his supporters who wanted her to assume the more positive role of Protestant champion. On the Man incident, the queen claimed ignorance of her envoy’s extreme opinions. The fact that he had not
fled to foreign Calvinist and Zwinglian havens during Mary’s reign persuaded her that her ambassador was a moderate. Her secretary encouraged her in this delusion and Cecil also probably represented Walsingham as a man discreet in matters of religion.

Cecil, now working closely with Leicester, was anxious to replace Sir Henry Norris as ambassador to France. Norris, as well as being a religious moderate, also had a hot line to Elizabeth via his wife, who had been for several years one of the queen’s favourite attendants. By contrast Walsingham was Cecil’s man and one whose Calvinist convictions were clear cut. The ‘forward’ party in the Council had an armoury of techniques for ‘managing’ the queen and steering policy in the required direction. One was forcing the pace in foreign courts through England’s ambassadors.

During the twenty-eight months of his residence at the French court Walsingham was charged with two major responsibilities: to support the political aspirations of the Huguenots and to achieve an Anglo-French treaty as a means of containing Spanish ambitions. There were two ways of formalizing cross-Channel friendly relations. The most secure would be a marriage alliance. Failing that, the next best option was a defensive treaty. Since Elizabeth was the only surviving member of her immediate family any political union based on marriage would involve her taking a husband from among the French princes. There were two available among Catherine de Medici’s remaining sons; Henry, duc d’Anjou (born in 1551) and Francis, duc d’Alençon (born in 1555). Elizabeth was old enough to be their mother but this did not prevent sporadic negotiations from being carried on with varying degrees of seriousness.

Walsingham’s gut feeling was against yoking his queen together with a Catholic consort. In such a situation who would exercise the greater influence? Anjou was not just of the Roman persuasion: he was an ardent Catholic young man under the sway of the Guises. On the other hand, England needed a secure Protestant dynasty in order to survive the international Catholic conspiracy. Elizabeth had to have an heir. This was a real dilemma and Walsingham explained to Burghley how he had struggled with it:

I was very much perplexed what course to take . . . But when I beheld her Majesty first, how she in her own judgement did think it expedient for her to marry; secondarily that if her Majesty did mean to marry abroad this was the only gentleman fit for her to marry; thirdly the discontentment of her subjects for not marrying: fourthly, how presently she is beset with a number of foreign practices, the execution whereof only stayed upon the event of this natal; I then resolved that it was most fit for me to forget myself and to think only of her Majesty and her safety.
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Dutifully, he threw himself into the negotiations which dragged on for over a year. They failed finally upon the religious issue: Elizabeth was not prepared to grant her prospective husband full and unfettered practice of his faith. That, at least, was the official diplomatic sticking point. The deeper reality was that, when it came to the crunch, Elizabeth could not face sacrificing herself on the altar of matrimony.

This left a relieved Walsingham able to concentrate on the more congenial task of bringing into being a union of states to counteract the forces of the Counter-Reformation. Walsingham believed that war with Spain was inevitable. He knew from his various contacts and paid agents that, though the Enterprise of England might be forced down Philip’s agenda by more pressing items such as war in the Mediterranean and the Netherlands, it would never be abandoned. The Ridolfi plot and current events in the Low Countries bore sufficient evidence of the utter ruthlessness of Catholic reactionaries. For fanatics the pope’s blessing sanctified any and every kind of evil – treason, murder, massacre, invasion. The Roman juggernaut was a fearful thing and it would need a stout barrier to halt its progress. Walsingham, therefore, favoured the creation of a defensive Anglo-French treaty which might later be extended to embrace the German Protestant states. In strongly advocating this change of policy he was moving beyond the role of ambassador and becoming more a councillor
in absentia.
His frustration arose from the difficulty of persuading his superiors to share his assessment of the international situation. From his location at the very hub of European diplomacy he had a clear view of the movement of events but often his was a voice
crying in the wilderness. Rather like Winston Churchill in the 1930s, Walsingham prophesied impending disaster unless precautions were taken in advance. But Elizabeth was not convinced about Spanish hostility and the French government was seized by political paralysis.

Catherine and Charles formed no consistent programme because they were at the mercy of Catholic and Huguenot factions. In England Reformation had either advanced or retreated because the Crown had given a clear lead and been ready to crush all dissidents. The country was still bitterly divided but the Elizabethan settlement held because Catholic aristocrats had been neutered by shows of force and outmanoeuvred by government intervention in regional politics. In France things were very different. The aristocratic parties headed by the Guises and Coligny had considerable backing throughout the country and did not hesitate to appeal over the king’s head to potential supporters in foreign courts. Religious rivalry even intruded itself into the royal family. The duc d’Anjou regarded himself as a Catholic champion and this made his brother, the king, look favourably on Coligny and his friends. Catherine had two major concerns: not to be shouldered aside by any of the faction leaders and to prevent a further outbreak of civil war. But she was almost powerless against the scheming of the politicians, the mental weakness of the king and the fervid religious passions of the populace stirred up by priests, preachers and pamphleteers.

The invidious position of the Crown is well illustrated by an event all Paris was talking about in December 1571. Under cover of darkness a group of workmen armed with picks and crowbars made their way to the rue St Denis accompanied by a troop of the royal guard. They arrived at a gap in the street of modest houses, a place where until two years earlier a dwelling had stood. It had been the home of the de Gastines family who had been arrested and two of whom had been hanged for holding Protestant meetings and worship. Spurred on by power-crazed clergy, their neighbours had then torn the house down to purge the district of all taint of heresy, erecting in its place a crucifix to mark the triumph of the ‘true’ faith. It was this memorial of persecution that the king ordered to be removed. A self-confident monarch would have made a show of the event, leaving no
doubt to the Parisians just who was in charge. Instead, the work was carried out in nocturnal secrecy and under armed guard for fear of a Catholic backlash.