Sir Francis Walsingham (20 page)

The first round in the conflict of royal and secretarial diplomatic styles went to the queen. Huguenot morale was raised by the leadership of Anjou and Navarre and also by the appearance on
France’s eastern border of 20,000 German Protestant mercenaries. Henry III and Catherine could not risk England being drawn into a Protestant league and made a great show of friendship towards Elizabeth. Philip II, fearing an Anglo-French alliance, also courted her by sending one of his senior diplomats, Bernardino de Mendoza, to repair the damage done by de Spes. He came as a special envoy in 1574 and as resident ambassador in 1578. The queen warmly entertained him and also the French ambassador, Fénelon, and continued her old policy of playing off France and Spain against each other.

In relationships with the Low Countries it was confusion which aided Elizabeth’s parsimonious policies. Walsingham saw the struggle of the freedom-fighters in crisp black and white. He sometimes referred to it as a contest between Christ and Belial. In fact, the situation consisted of numerous overlapping shades of grey. William of Orange, the Estates General, Philip II, his governor and various splinter groups of Dutch nobles all had their own agendas. One indication of the Dutch desperate but vain search for cohesion can be seen in their quest for a leader. Within the space of three years they offered their sovereignty to Elizabeth, the Duke of Anjou and the Archduke Matthias (the emperor’s brother). Walsingham begged the queen to support Orange financially but he begged once too often. Elizabeth gave him such a public dressing down that he felt obliged to complain to Leicester about his treatment. But it was not only the queen with whom the secretary fell out. Burghley, too, was opposed to a partisan approach to the Dutch problem, as were other members of the Council. In fact, no single issue caused such a division in their ranks. Even Sussex found himself on the same side as Leicester and arguing against Burghley and his allies.

The danger in a policy of non-intervention was that it might allow either Spain or France to take undisputed control of the Netherlands. All the councillors could see this but they were so bemused by the twists and turns of events in the Low Countries that they could not agree on what to do. In effect, England had no policy with regard to the fate of a country which had for centuries been one of its main trading partners. Even when Orange’s intelligence officers intercepted
a letter of Don John asking Philip to endorse an invasion of England this did not lead to a major shift in royal policy. Walsingham was so worried and angry at the situation that he took a grave personal risk and one that could, at the very least, have put an end to his political career. He went behind the queen’s back. He communicated directly and privately with William the Silent. In one letter, sent in the autumn of 1576, he urged the prince to write to those councillors closest to Elizabeth, begging them to intercede with her on his behalf and to explain, in simple terms, the difficult situation in which he found himself. The bottom line of his appeal should be, Walsingham suggested, that, without significant aid from England ‘he must either be enforced to abandon the cause by retiring into Germany, or to reconcile himself with Spain upon any conditions, or to yield those countries absolutely to the French king’s hands.’
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In the whispering gallery of the court where every man needed to watch his own back such impropriety could not go unnoticed. There were in Walsingham’s large staff those who, for a price or to curry favour with some great lord, were not above leaking documents or telling tales. The secretary’s enemies used information gleaned in this way to try to undermine him. Fortunately for Walsingham Elizabeth chose not to hear or to act upon such tittle-tattle. She never tired of making clear to those around her that she formed her own opinions of men’s worth and it may have been to demonstrate this point that, on 1 December 1577 she conferred a knighthood on her secretary. The following April he was granted the prestigious post of chancellor of the Order of the Garter.

One of Elizabeth Tudor’s more impressive characteristics was that she was an excellent judge of character. She surrounded herself with men of talent and, unlike her father, she did not falter in her loyalty towards those who served her. She found Walsingham irritating and would have no truck with his religious opinions, because, as she rightly divined, extreme evangelicalism was ultimately inimical to episcopal (and, by implication, to monarchical) good order. But she recognized her secretary’s talents and his invaluable network of contacts. By the spring of 1578 Mendoza could mournfully report to his master: ‘Some of the councillors are well disposed towards your
majesty, but Leicester, whose spirit is Walsingham, is so highly favoured by the Queen . . . that he centres in his hands and those of his friends most of the business of the country.’ This common perception missed the subtleties of the relationships at the centre of England’s power politics. Leicester had, by now, become more a consort than a favourite. The queen trusted him and his ‘spirit’ and allowed them considerable political latitude but she always stayed in control and if her reason – or, more commonly, her intuition – told her that they were wrong she simply rejected their advice.

This is well borne out by the Grindal affair, which came to a head at the same time as Elizabeth and her advisers were dealing with the bewildering complexities of the Netherlands. The archbishop’s sequestration took place in the spring of 1577 and Walsingham may well have felt some relief that he was away from court at the time. A recurrence of his urinary complaint (possibly a kidney stone) kept him out of his office for two or three months. He, therefore, did not have to confront Elizabeth face to face with the news that her instructions to set Grindal’s deprivation in motion were of dubious legality. As he lay in his chamber, slowly recovering his health, Walsingham may have hoped that his mistress, by temperament so changeable, would come round to a more reasonable frame of mind. He knew from personal experience that she could be thunderous storms one day and smiling sunshine the next. But in this instance she was utterly implacable. The archbishop’s reproach had stung her to the quick because it exposed the very limited nature of her own Protestantism. This is clear from the speech Sir Nicholas Bacon (Lord Keeper of the Great Seal) was deputed to give at a special hearing before the Council (which did not, in fact, take place due to Grindal’s illness). If the queen had not intervened, Bacon’s written address stated, ‘it was like that religion, which of his own nature should be uniform, would against his nature have proved milliform, yea, in continuance nulliform, specially in rites and ceremonies and sometimes also in matters of doctrine.’
⁹
Unhindered exposition of the word of God was not at the top of the queen’s religious agenda. The importance of the church for Elizabeth was its adhesive quality. It was the cement which held society together. Weaken it, and the structure, including the Crown, would tumble.

For Walsingham and his friends this attitude was incomprehensible because in their view the real danger to state and monarchy came not from Puritan preachers, who proclaimed their message openly, but from Catholic priests who worked insidiously in secret to destroy the religious settlement. To them this was so obvious that it was a matter of real astonishment that Elizabeth could not see it. The wake-up call came in June 1577 at about the time that Walsingham returned to court.

In April of that year a young man called Cuthbert Mayne took up the post of steward to Francis Tregian of Wolvedon, Cornwall. In fact, Mayne was a priest come hotfoot from Douai to spearhead the English mission. His activities soon aroused suspicion. He was arrested and tried before Sir Roger Manwood at the next Michaelmas assize. Manwood seems to have been something of an expert at dealing with religious dissidents. He was a commissioner for examining immigrants – not in search of Catholics but of Anabaptists, two of whom he sentenced to death by burning. He was also a scourge of Puritans. Mayne presented something of a problem for him since it was difficult to discern any capital crime with which to charge the man. However, he had been found in possession of a papal bull. Since this implied introducing foreign jurisdiction into England it counted as a treason and the priest was condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered. The judgement had to be submitted to the Council for approval. It was not until the end of November that the sentence was carried out. Even then Mayne might have had an eleventh-hour reprieve. He was offered his life if he would acknowledge Elizabeth as supreme governor of the Church of England. He not only refused but asserted what was official Vatican policy: that, one way or another, England should be returned to papal obedience and that loyal English Catholics should be ready to enlist under the banner of any foreign prince who would lead a crusade against the heretical island.

The threatened revival of Catholicism presented a quandary to the government. Reports coming in to Walsingham and his colleagues from their various networks indicated a growth of recusancy and the Council was aware that, despite diligent watch being kept at the ports, young zealots from Douai were slipping into the country disguised as
merchants, tradesmen, artisans and students. Their numbers were, so far, small (some thirty to forty since 1574) but their influence, through the gentry and noble patrons who supported them, was out of all proportion to their numerical strength. ‘The heretics are as much troubled at the name of the Anglo-Douai priests – which is now famous throughout England – as all the Catholics are consoled thereby.’
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So one of William Allen’s young men reported in 1576. It was the kind of excited bravado that might be expected from front-line troops engaged in an ideological war but it did highlight the fact that a new stage had been reached in the struggle for the soul of England.

We might expect that committed Protestant radicals such as Walsingham would have demanded a thorough offensive against underground sedition and subversion. Images of Catholic persecution against Protestants were seared into Walsingham’s memory. It would have been understandable if he had believed that payback time had come. In fact, he did not urge severe repression and the reaction of the government was mild by any contemporary standards.

If any religious group in England was hounded in the early to mid-seventies it was the Puritans or, at least, those of them who were presbyterially inclined. The contrast of Elizabeth’s attitude towards Puritans was demonstrated in a cause célèbre which excited nationwide attention some two years after the Mayne affair. John Stubbe was a young zealot who was appalled at the prospect of Elizabeth’s marriage to a Catholic prince. In August 1579 he expressed his pungent views in a pamphlet whose title left no doubt about his position:
The Discovery of a gaping gulf whereinto England is likely to be swallowed by another French marriage if the Lord forbid not the banes [banns] by letting her majesty see the sin and punishment thereof.
Stubbe made much of the queen’s age and the unlikelihood of her bearing children. As for Anjou, Stubbe could scarcely have been more scathing. He likened the Frenchman to ‘the old serpent . . . in the form of a man, come a second time to seduce the English Eve and ruin the English paradise’.
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That being the case, marriage to Anjou would increase Catholic influence with no counterbalancing advantage. Elizabeth was incensed and her
response was swift. She issued a proclamation forbidding circulation of the
Discovery
and ordered the arrest of Stubbe, his printer and publisher. She was all for having the offenders summarily hanged but eventually agreed to their being tried for sedition. They were sentenced to having their right hands cut off. (It took three blows with a butcher’s knife to sever Stubbe’s wrist.) Their condemnation was a travesty of justice because the Marian statute invoked was a temporary measure designed to protect Philip II, the queen’s husband from libellous attack. When Robert Monson, a prominent judge of Common Pleas, pointed this out he was packed off to the Fleet and dismissed from his post. Elizabeth remained deaf to all pleas on Stubbe’s behalf. She was determined to leave no one in any doubt that she would not be lectured to in matters of religion by anyone, be he archbishop or vulgar scribbler. She can scarcely have been unaware that Stubbe’s reservations were shared by many prominent men, including her principal secretary

Meanwhile, bishops had the queen’s wholehearted support in suppressing the prophesyings. Elizabeth took the view that most of her people were, like her, not extremists and that, if she and the episcopal shepherds of the flock protected it from the influence of Rome and Geneva, the
via media
would triumph in the long term. Complacency ruled.

The purity of the Christian religion is flourishing and prosperous among us, and can neither be overturned nor defiled by any devices of Satan. For although we are unable to banish from the church . . . those
new
men whom we call Puritans, who tread all authority underfoot, or the
veteran
papists, who celebrate their divine service in their secret corners, or the profane disputants who deride the true worship of God, such, however, is the number and influence of the truly faithful, that both in numbers and appearance it very far takes the lead of all the separatists.
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So the Archbishop of York reported to a friend in Zurich.

It was not an attitude Walsingham could share. Writing to John Sturmius in Strasbourg he grumbled:

One evil attending prosperity, which, if not the only one, is certainly a very grievous one, [is] that it makes us forget or at least be very indifferent . . . to those events and calamities by which others are oppressed. If in these circumstances you would arouse us who are in deep sleep and heedlessly secure, and by your more frequent letters would warn us of impending danger, you would show most honourable zeal and do us a most useful service.
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Walsingham shared the queen’s disinclination to religious persecution
per se
because he had witnessed at first hand what happened when people were whipped into action by unholy zeal. He was well aware that the making of martyrs was no way to kill a religious movement. He was convinced of the importance of winning hearts and minds and this is why he was so depressed at the suppression of Puritan preachers. He well understood that the majority of his fellow countrymen were ignorant of or indifferent to the fundamentals of the Christian faith. He regarded an educational programme as vital to the creation of a truly godly commonwealth. Most importantly of all, he had a pan-European perspective. No one in English government circles had stronger personal connections with the movers and shakers on the continent or was better informed of events there.