Elizabeth's Spymaster (46 page)

46
SPD,
Edward VI, Mary & Elizabeth, 1547–80,
p.32.

47
BL Harleian MS 360, fol.65. Undated document with amendments by Burghley.

48
The castle was built by William the Conqueror. It later became the palace of the Bishops of Ely and was sometimes used as a prison. In 1315, Richard Lambert of [King’s] Lynn was illegally confined here and was ‘so inhumanely gnawed by toads and other vermin, that his life was despaired of – see VCH, Vol. 4, p.252. The castle was largely rebuilt in brick in 1478–83 and was surrounded by a moat. It was later pulled down and a house built on or near the site in 1816.

49
Watson was born in 1513 and died at Wisbech in September 1584. His see was left vacant for twenty years, with the temporalities remaining in the possession of the crown.

50
He was the last abbot. He was born c.1510 and also died at Wisbech in 1584.

51
VCH, Vol. 4, p.252.

52
Cited by Covington, p.70. For more on Wisbech, see Pritchard, pp.78–101.

53
VCH, op. cit. Quarrels broke out afterwards between the Jesuit and seminary priests held at Wisbech. William Weston, the leader of the Jesuit faction, arrived at the castle in 1587 and fell out with Christopher Bagshaw, a priest who had only been converted to Catholicism in 1582, over the living conditions at Wisbech. Weston and his supporters favoured a stricter
discipline as more fitting to their sanctity and accused the others of loose living and immorality. Relations were not helped by the Jesuits receiving the lion’s share of the alms sent by the faithful outside the walls of their jail. Matters came to a head with the appearance of a hobby horse amongst the priests during the Christmas celebrations of 1594 (a hobby horse was a figure of fun used in popular entertainments – the forerunner, perhaps, of today’s pantomime horses or cows). See Watson,
Historical Account of the Town of Wisbech,
p.127 and Collier, Vol. I, book vii, p.643.

54
NA PRO SP 12/141/29.

55
‘Cal. Spanish’, Vol. III, p.38.

56
Horsey was a Privy Councillor and a confidant of Leicester, and had commanded the royalist cavalry against the northern rebels in 1569. He died of the plague in the Isle of Wight in 1583.

57
SPD,
Edward VI, Mary &
Elizabeth, 1547–80,
p.690.

58
23 Elizabeth I cap. 1.

59
27 Elizabeth I cap. 2.

60
Cottam, or Cotham, was recorded as a prisoner in the Tower in 1581 – see CRS, Vol.11,
Miscellanea,
p.221. He was ordained priest at Soissons in May 1580 and arrested at Dover but escaped. He surrendered himself to the authorities in London and was tortured in the Tower. Executed on 30 May 1582, his body parts being consigned to vats of boiling water, to prevent them from being used as sacred relics. Cottam was beatified in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII.

61
Kirby was subsequently executed in 1582 with Cottam and another priest, William Filby. His name appears in CRS, Vol. XXXVII,
Liber Ruber,
p.9, with the word ‘martyr’ written alongside in the margin.

62
In northern France. William Allen founded an English college there in 1568 to train priests.

63
Pound, ‘a very obstinate recusant and a maintainer of that sect’, is recorded by Walsingham as being in the White Lion Jail in Southwark in November 1586 and was listed as being ‘fit’ for transfer to Wisbech Castle in a document probably dating from the end of 1587. See CRS, Vol. II,
Miscellanea,
pp.262, 265, 278.

64
CRS, Vol. II,
Miscellanea,
p.200.

65
In 1587, Yates’s home was again raided, this time by Edward Unton, who reported to Walsingham that ‘many popish relics’ were found within. Two of his servants, one suspiciously named John Doe and the other called Richard Buckley, were arrested. Both subsequently confessed to hearing Mass and
having been reconciled to Rome when Campion was sheltering in the house. See SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90,
pp.384–5.

66
Parading a prisoner was a deliberate policy to emphasise the power of the state. However, some priests saw the humiliating spectacle as more akin to Christ’s sufferings before His crucifixion. See Covington, p.62.

67
R. Simpson,
Life of Edmund Campion,
London, 1866, p.338. Walsingham’s departure that day is recorded in his ‘Journal’, p.43.

68
BL Harleian MS 6, 991, no.57.

69
Both Cottam and Kirby were tortured with this instrument, the latter enduring it for more than an hour on 9 December 1580.

70
She was laid on her back with her arms tied to wooden posts, and a heavy weight lowered down upon her. See Morris, Vol. I, pp.397 and 432.

71
BL Lansdowne MS 97, Items 9 and 10.

72
See BL Add. MS 48, 023, fols.26–58B; 26B-27; 33B; 42–43B; 48B. In 1572, Norton tried to organise a petition to the queen urging the execution of the Duke of Norfolk – ibid., fols.163–164B.

73
SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90,
p.48. On 3 May the previous year, the Privy Council had ordered Norton to examine ‘a Jesuit naming himself Briant and if he refuses to confess the truth, then to put him to torture and by the pain and terror of the same, to wring from him the knowledge of such things as shall appertain’.

74
Ibid., p.22. Briant, from Somerset, was executed at Tyburn in 1581 and was one of those martyrs canonised in 1970.

75
Ibid., p.130.

76
Ibid., p.130. Walsingham to Thomas Wilkes, 18 November 1583.

77
BL Add. MS 48, 029, fols.58–72B. This was not the first time Norton engaged in public polemics: in 1571 he wrote a tract against Mary Queen of Scots, a copy of which forms the vellum-bound BL Add. MS 48, 098, with corrections and some of the text in his own handwriting. It has seventy-one pages in contemporary pagination.

78
BL Lansdowne MS 155, fols.84–106B.

79
SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90,
p.260. The fight was over a misunderstanding: the soldiers believed Bassano to be a Spaniard. Norton and Valentine Wood, said the musician, uttered ‘opprobrious words’ against the soldiers, and in the ensuring affray he was ‘in danger of being slain’. He was one of three of the queen’s musicians who came from Venice and acquired the Bell Inn in Mark Lane in 1572. Bassano’s wife Margaret, who died in 1623, has a monumental brass inscription in All Hallows’ Church, next to the Tower of London.

80
APC, Vol. XVII, p.205. Tankard was taken to Oxford Assizes the following month to stand trial. Ibid., p.329.

81
‘DNB2’, Vol. 55, p.28. Article by William Richardson.

82
Nichols, Vol. 2, p.217.

83
Caraman, p.69. Gerard escaped from the Tower in 1597 by clambering along a rope thrown across the fortress’s moat from the wharf

84
APC, Vol. XVI, p.235. Another sailor was George Ellis, who had been captured in later naval operations. He wrote to Burghley in 1595 complaining about Topcliffe and noting down the ‘discoveries he could make on behalf of the realm’. See BL Lansdowne MS 79, Item 93. For other interrogations of Englishmen captured during the Armada campaign, see BL Add. MS 48, 029, fols.85–91.

85
Alias Portmon, alias Whitgift. He was ordained at the English College in Rome in August 1587 and was executed on 20 February 1592. See CRS, Vol. XXXVII,
Liber Ruber,
p.27.

86
CRS, Vol. V,
Unpublished Documents,
pp.210–11. Pormont’s notes were handed over to William Waad, clerk to the Privy Council, and shown to that august body in November 1592. Their reaction is not recorded but an apparently charmed Topcliffe continued a direct correspondence with the queen.

87
BL Lansdown MS 72, Item 39. Other documents include a report written by Topcliffe in 1592 to the Privy Council about ‘discovering the haunts of several dangerous seminary priests’ and a discourse on the ‘best methods’ of dealing with priests.

88
Southwell, born in Norfolk c.1561, was executed at Tyburn in 1595. He was canonised in 1970.

89
Covington, p.88.

90
Foley, Vol. I, p.350. She also disclosed the secret hiding places for priests built in the family home at Uxenden Hall, near Harrow on the Hill, Middlesex.

91
SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90,
p.207.

92
William Cobbett
et al., State Trials,
33 vols., London, 1809–28, Vol. II, p.184. Cited by Covington, pp.160–1.

93
He was canonised by Pope Paul VI on 25 October 1970.

94
The Lord’s Prayer.

95
CRS, Vol. V,
Unpublished Documents,
p.204.

96
Middleton was ordained priest on 30 May 1586 at Rheims and entered England later the same year. He was captured in Clerkenwell.

97
Jones was ordained priest in 1588 at the English College, Rome.

98
BL Add. MS 48, 029, fols.121–141B. The text is reprinted in CRS, Vol. LIII,
Yelverton MS Miscellanea,
pp.193–245.

99
CRS, Vol. LIII,
Yelverton MS Miscellanea,
p. 227.

Chapter Three

1
SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90,
p.615.

2
Lloyd, Vol. II, p.514.

3
SPD,
Edward VI, Mary el Elizabeth, 1547–80, p.477.

4
BL Cotton MS Caligula C iii, fol.217. Walsingham had also written two days before about the interview between a man he had sent ‘under colour of a Catholic’ and Thomas Darbyshire about Mary Queen of Scots. See HMC, ‘Finch’, p.19. Darbyshire is described as ‘a very popular old Jesuit father generally living in Paris’. See CRS, Vol. XXI,
Wen. Philip Howard,
p.272 fn.

5
The Florentine Tomaso di Vicenzo Sassetti. He later moved to London and became a bodyguard to the Earl of Leicester at £50 a year. See Richings, p.137.

6
BL Harleian MS 6, 991, no.39, 20 August 1573.

7
SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581-go,
p.373.

8
Ibid., p.140.

9
Ibid., p.633, 11 December 1589.

10
Kersey is a coarse ribbed cloth, woven from long strands of wool.

11
CSPF,
August 1584-August 1585,
p.40.

12
Ibid., p.358.

13
CSPF,
January-June 1583 and Addenda,
p.335.

14
Ibid., p.52.

15
SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581-go,
p.32.

16
BL Harleian MS 6, 991, no.58.

17
Cockyn wrote to Burghley on 20 February with fresh intelligence about Mary Queen of Scots’ friends in England and begging him to secure a pardon for him from Elizabeth. See BL Cotton MS Caligula C iv, fol.249. His debriefing took some time: on 18 March, he told Walsingham about a Spanish plot to kidnap the young James VI of Scotland. The examination of those he named and the draft charges against them are in BL Cotton MS Caligula C v, fols. 6–20. Alexander Hamilton’s confession, dated 21 May, is on fol.15.

18
Cited by Read,
Mr Secretary Walsingham,
Vol. II, p.354, Walsingham to Leicester, 9 March 1575.

19
Tomson, a former lecturer in Hebrew at Geneva, edited a revision of the New Testament that was published in London in 1576. It was derived from the 1560 Geneva Bible, translated from the Greek by Theodore Beza. Tomson was elected Member of Parliament for Melcombe Regis in Dorset in 1584.

20
SPD,
Edward VI, Mary & Elizabeth, 1547–80,
p.486. Jones was referring to the fines imposed on obstinate recusants.

21
SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581-go,
p.36.

22
Ibid., p.51.

23
Henry Henshawe, former Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford. He was one of the ‘old’ Marian priests, recorded as being in the Fleet Prison in 1560. He died around 1598. See CRS, Vol. II,
Miscellanea,
p.3 fn.

24
William Holt, an Oxford man, was betrayed by another of Walsingham’s agents, Roger Almond, in March 1583. See SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90,
p.207.

25
Jaspar Haywood, who was arrested at sea and committed by Walsingham on 9 December 1582. His name appears on a list of priests held in the Clink Jail in Southwark the following March, and he was indicted at the Court of King’s Bench on 9 February 1584 and banished. He died in Naples in 1595. See CRS, Vol. II,
Miscellanea,
pp.177, 190 and 232.

26
SPD,
Elizabeth, 1581–90,
p.17.

27
Possibly the William Carter, bookbinder and citizen of London, recorded as a recusant prisoner in the Tower on 23 March 1583. See CRS, Vol. II,
Miscellanea,
p.228.

28
CRS, Vol. V,
Unpublished Documents,
pp.30–1.

29
According to a letter by John Hart, dated 15 November 1582 – see CRS, Vol. IV,
Miscellanea,
p.74.

30
Nonsuch was built by Henry VIII at a cost of £24,000 over nine years from 1538, but the house was later sold by Mary I to the Earl of Arundel, father-in-law of Lumley. In 1592, Elizabeth took it back into royal ownership in exchange for Lumley’s debts to the crown. In 1670, Charles II gave it to his mistress Barbara Castlemaine, who began to demolish the huge structure in 1682. The site was excavated by the distinguished archaeologist Martin Biddle in 1959–60.

31
Robinson, p.77. Byrd (?1538–1623), a pupil of Thomas Tallis, was joint organist of the Chapel Royal in 1569 and recorded as a Catholic in Harlington, Middlesex, in 1578–88. He composed
Liber primus sacrarum cantionum
in 1589 and
Liber secundus
in 1591.

32
She was suspicious of him.