Elizabeth's Spymaster (38 page)

The spy master had drawn up his will on 12 December 1589, while of ‘good and perfect memory (praise be to God)’. Much of the very simple and direct document, as befits a committed and devout believer, has a religious content. He bequeathed his soul

when it should please … almighty god, my creator and maker, to separate the same from this my most sinful earthly and mortal body,
to the Holy Trinity, God the Father, my creator, God the Son, my only redeemer, and God the Holy Ghost, the true comforter …

He felt assured that Christ would continue to defend him while still living, ‘especially in this time wherein sin and iniquity so much abound’. He hoped that he would make a ‘good and Christian end’ – a good death – ‘in perfect sense and memory’ – this, perhaps, a telling reference to his very real fears about his diminishing mental capacity, perhaps adversely affected by his drugs. Walsingham asked that his body, ‘in hope of a joyful resurrection’, should be

buried without any such extraordinary ceremonies as usually appertain to a man serving in my place, in respect of the greatness of my debts and the mean state [I] shall leave my wife and heir in.
⁶⁶

The will mentions a
£200
annuity (nearly £28,000 at current prices) to his daughter Lady Sidney, already executed by a deed he had previously signed, and a further £100 to be paid to her every year while Walsingham’s wife Ursula lived. This latter sum was in lieu of the lands in Lincolnshire owned by Frances’ husband that Walsingham had earlier ordered to be sold.

His ‘well-beloved wife’ was to be his sole executor and after payment of his debts, the residue of ‘all my goods, chattels, plate and jewels, I do give to Dame Ursula’. In addition, bequests of plate worth £10 each were to be given to ‘my most loving brethren’ – his brother-in-law Robert Beale, Edward Carle and William Dodington – ‘in token of my good affection towards them’ who were appointed overseers of the will.

There was clearly anxiety in his mind to make suitable arrangements before he met his Maker. On 3 April 1590, Walsingham sold his manors of Axford and Chilton in Wiltshire, with annual rental incomes of £44 and
£13
6s 8d respectively, to William Gerrard, Francis Milles (his old secretary) and John Willard, presumably to help pay off his immediate debts.
⁶⁷

Three days later, in the early hours of 6 April, Walsingham died at his house in Seething Lane.
⁶⁸
His will was discovered there, hidden in a secret cabinet.

The contemporary historian William Camden, who probably knew Walsingham well, noted that he died of ‘a carnosity growing,
intra testium suntcas
[testicular cancer]… or rather through violence of medicines’.
⁶⁹
Pertinently, Camden also claimed that the spy master’s efforts to ‘diligently [search] out the hidden practices against religion, his prince and country’ had left him with ‘so great charges, that he weakened his private estate and [was] surcharged with debt’.

As a result of this indebtedness and in fulfilment of his last wishes, Walsingham was buried privately the following night at ten o’clock. His final resting place was in the north aisle of the choir of Old St Paul’s Cathedral, hard by the grave of his son-in-law Sir Philip Sidney.

It must have been a short, sombre ceremony, the torches lighting the sad faces of the mourners amid the gloom of the huge gothic cathedral. The funeral was totally bereft of the trappings of honour and power that would be expected to have accompanied him to the grave, as a personage of such great importance and magnitude in Elizabethan England. There were no serried columns of professional black-clad mourners, no pomp and circumstance for Walsingham. Neither was a certificate of his funeral entered at the College of Heralds, as was normal practice for someone of his status.
⁷⁰
It cannot now be determined how big a factor his shortage of ready cash was in the decision to have a simple funeral – certainly, holding it at night absolved his estate from having to pick up the bill for draping Old St Paul’s in black mourning, the usual custom for marking the obsequies of such an important figure. His own bleak, self-denying brand of Protestantism may also have figured in the choice of ceremony.

Certainly, afterwards there was no grand, imposing tomb of alabaster columns and gilded heraldry, sculpted by one of the fashionable Dutch refugee sculptors in Southwark, erected over his mortal remains, as commemorated many of his fellow Privy Councillors. Wags maintained that the lack of appropriate monuments for Walsingham and Sidney was because the stupendous tomb of Sir Christopher Hatton, the Lord Chancellor,
⁷¹
towering as high as a two-storied house, left little room for them.
⁷²
A rhyming couplet of the time by a ‘merry poet’ maintained dryly:

Philip and Francis have here no tomb

Since great Sir Christopher has all the room.
⁷³

There was some official debate over the content of his epitaph. One of several surviving documents suggested some suitable words and phrases focusing on his life and works ‘to be considered’. One or two passages were plainly extravagant:

His birth… parents, the father … descended of the house of gentry of the Walsinghams being of greater antiquity than the [Norman] conquest. [In another hand:] His mother of the Dennys …

[He] did foster and help to prevent many dangers, practices [plots] as well as abroad as at home against his Prince and his country in discovery of which he was so largely liberal that he neglected much of his private estate as well as for health and wealth.
⁷⁴

In the event, a Latin inscription, probably merely painted upon a modest wooden board, was later fixed on the wall or a pillar above Walsingham’s unmarked grave. It was destroyed when the Great Fire of London consumed the old cathedral in 1666. Translated, it read:

Sacred to Virtue and Honoured

Sir
FRANCIS WALSINGHAM

Descending from a Family every way splendidly conspicuous

Excell’d and out-shined the splendour of his Family

By the Shining Lustre of his quaint wit,

And the beautiful embellishments of a Noble Mind.

In his Childhood, he was ingeniously educated at home.

In his Youth, he travel’d into many foreign Countries

Whose manners, Laws, Languages and Policies

He accurately studied and critically understood

As he practically improved the knowledge of them

Both to his private advantage,

And indeed public Emolument of the whole Realm.

In his Virile Age, he voluntarily (during the Reign of
Queen Mary)

Forsook his Country for the preservation of his Religion.

In his riper years

He was sent Ambassador by Queen
Elizabeth
into
France,
even in the

most turbulent times: In which Employment, he continued there

many years.

After some interval he was again sent Twice Ambassador to

that Kingdom.

Moreover, once into
Scotland
and once into the
Netherlands.

He was also of the Privy Council to that Queen

And her Principal Secretary of Estate for seventeen years together.

Besides all this he was Three Years Chancellor of the Duchy of
Lancaster.

In all which Offices, he demeaned
⁷⁵
himself

With so much Prudence, Temperance, Generosity,

Moderation, Piety, Industry and Circumspection

That he hereby freed his Country from many apparent Perils,

Preserved the Republic and ratified the peace of the Realm,

And consequently still studied to be beneficial and helpful to all

Especially those who were eminent in the possession of Arts or Arms

And thus evermore regardless of himself,

he was ever ready to help and assist others

Though to the consumption and much impairing of his own purse

and person.

He had a choice and virtuous wife named
Ursula

By whom he had only one daughter named
Frances

First married to Sir
Philip Sidney
Knight,

Secondly to the right honourable then Earl of
Essex

And lastly to the right honourable
Richard,
Earl of
Clanrickarde.

He died the 6th of April in the year of our Lord 1590

And was buried in a manner Privately.
⁷⁶

Some acrostic verses – in which the initial letter of each line vertically spells out his name – were also later attached to the pillar. They were signed ‘E. W.’ – probably Elizabeth Walsingham, his grand-daughter, who is known to have been a poet.

As we have seen, his espionage activities involved ‘much consumption
and much impairing of his own purse’ – how big a factor was the running of Elizabeth’s secret service in the near bankruptcy of Walsingham? Shortly after his death, Burghley calculated a balance sheet for his debts, which included £12,016 owed to the queen and a further £15,308 to other individuals, totalling £27,324, or nearly £4 million in today’s money. Of the private creditors, the vast bulk – more than £12,000 – was owed to Sir Thomas Shirley. This is probably the Shirley who was treasurer-at-war to the English army in the Netherlands but got himself into dire straits over his own debts to the crown,
⁷⁷
or his soldier son, who was knighted in 1589 and ended up in the Tower two years later for marrying secretly, to Elizabeth’s obvious displeasure.

In 1611, nine years after the demise of Dame Ursula, Walsingham’s brother-in-law Robert Beale conducted an inquiry into Walsingham’s estate and drew up another, far more favourable estimate of his finances at the time of his death. It also provides some insight into the very large sums of money that passed through the Secretary’s hands on government business. Beale’s figures suggested that the Secretary had paid out the colossal sum of £38,089 6s 11d ‘for the Queen’s service’, which, added to another £10,438 3s 6d refunded to his ‘servants’ for their spending for the same reason, totalled £48,527 10s 5d, or nearly £7 million at today’s values. Debts to the crown were then calculated, rather precisely, at £43,181 7s 10d. This left a healthy credit in Walsingham’s favour of £5,346 2s 6d, in today’s terms worth £729,000. Of course, his widow and daughter would have seen nothing of this cash, so the claims of near-insolvency may well be justified. The learned judge Sir Julius Caesar decided in 1611 on a just quid pro quo – wiping out the debts owed by both sides,
⁷⁸
thereby at least lifting this burden from the family.

This decision was formalised on 5 August that year, when a release was granted to Frances, as executor to Sir Philip Sidney, and Elizabeth, daughter and heir to Walsingham, of ‘all sums and debts owing to the crown’.
⁷⁹

On 30 June 1590, Burghley wrote to Count Giovanni Figliazzi in Florence – the Tuscan diplomat whose information about the Armada
proved so useful to Walsingham – thanking him for his offer to mediate between Elizabeth and the king of Spain. He also informed him of the spy master’s death:

I cannot otherwise think but you have before this time heard or else I am sure you will hear … of the death of Mr Secretary Walsingham who left this world the 6th of April…

Though he has gained a better state, as I am fully persuaded, for his soul in heaven, yet the queen’s majesty and her realm and I and others, his particular friends, have had a great loss, both for the public use of his good and painful long services and for the private comfort I had by his mutual friendship.
⁸⁰

A change in command is always a disruptive period in any intelligence operation. For Elizabeth’s government, it was imperative to establish from where and from whom the secretive Walsingham received his valuable information. Burghley’s staff must have made a frantic search amongst his papers to discover the identities and locations of his agents. Within a month, they had built up a partial list:

The names of foreign places from whence Mr Secretary Walsingham was accustomed to receive his advertisements of the state of public affairs. [The names of] agents on the Borders and in Scotland, about the Queen of Scots [and] among the foreign ambassadors and Papists.
⁸¹

Burghley’s agents probably also combed through Walsingham’s papers and sequestered a huge number of documents, to protect the powerful and safeguard the reputation of Elizabeth’s government.

Some of his informants were still anxious to ply their sordid trade under a new master. Burghley had received, on 28 June, a note from one of Walsingham’s informants – the London grocer Thomas Millington – who wrote of his obligations to the spy master, ‘who had befriended him in his grievous distress and protected him from the malice of his enemies’. He had supplied secret intelligence from abroad to Walsingham and was clearly interested in continuing these services for Elizabeth’s government.
As an indication of his talents, and an appetiser for future services, he told of the ‘dangerous practices of Catholics, as shown by the example of one Robert Morris who carried away a young kinsman of his to be christened in Spain’.
⁸²
Walsingham’s intelligence network was alive and breathing, albeit with its members’ usual vested interests intact to the last.