I was born in Scadbury Park, Chislehurst, Kent in about 1532 to the family of William Walsingham and Joyce Denny. My father died the next year, and later, my mother married Sir John Carey, a relative of the Tudor royal family.
I studied at King's College, Cambridge from 1548 with many Protestants but as an undergraduate of high social status did not sit for a degree. In 1550, I travelled abroad and returned in 1552 to enroll at Gray's Inn. The death of Edward VI and accession of Catholic Queen Mary I saw myself fit flee to continue my studies as a law student at Padua. Between April 1556 and November 1558 I visited Switzerland. I cultivated languages and contacts among the leading Protestant statesmen on the continent.
Serving Elizabeth I
When Elizabeth I acceded to the throne, I returned to England and, through support of Sir William Cecil, was elected to the House of Commons for Banbury in 1559 and then Lyme Regis in 1563. I also married a widow, Ann Carteill, who died two years later leaving me the care of her two children. In 1566, I married Ursula St. Barbe, widow of Sir Richard Worsley, and we had my beloved daughter, Frances.
In the following years, I became active in soliciting support for the Huguenots in France. In 1569, Sir William assigned me to unravel the Ridolfi plot, my first real government role. I also had links to the earl of Leicester, to Nicholas Throckmorton and to the second tier of Protestant officials now serving the queen.
In 1570, the Queen chose me to support the Huguenots in their negotiations with Charles IX. Later that year, I succeeded Sir Henry Norris as ambassador to France, seeking to prosecute a close alliance between England, Charles IX, the Huguenots, and other European Protestant interests in support of the nascent revolt of the Netherlands provinces of the Spanish Crown. When Catholic opposition to this course resulted in the death of Coligny and the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, my house in Paris became a temporary sanctuary of Protestant refugees, including Philip Sidney. I returned disappointed to England in April 1573. But I had established myself as someone the Queen could trust. A century later my dispatches would be published as a portrait of "the Complete Ambassador".
After my return I was appointed joint principal secretary ("of state": the phrase was not used at this time in England) with Sir Thomas Smith, succeeding Sir William Cecil. Smith retired unexpectedly in 1576 leaving me in sole charge.
Elizabeth called me her "Moor", due to my small, dark frame and my preference to always dress in black. She put up with my blunt, sometimes unwelcome advice because she knew that her welfare was one of my priorities (after the Protestant faith).
On December 1, 1577, I received a knighthood. I spent the years between 1574 and 1578 consolidating my control of the routine business of the English state, foreign and domestic. This included the substantial rebuilding of Dover Harbour, and the coordination of support for Martin Frobisher's attempts to discover the north west passage and exploit the mineral resources of Labrador. I was among the major promoters of the career of Sir Francis Drake and was a major shareholder in his 1578–1581 circumnavigation of the world. My participation in this venture was calculated to promote the Protestant interest by provoking the Spanish and demonstrating the vulnerability of their Pacific possessions.
I was sent on special embassies to the Netherlands in 1578, and again in 1581 to the French Court, suggesting both the Queen's high confidence in my abilities, and also that she knew how to exploit my standing as a committed Protestant statesman to threaten the Catholic powers.
Between 1578 and 1581, I was at the forefront of debate on the attempt by a group at court to encourage the Queen to marry the Duke of Anjou, heir to the French throne. I passionately opposed the marriage, perhaps to the point of encouraging public opposition. I believed that it would serve England better to seek a military alliance with France against Spanish interests.
I would have preferred more direct English intervention in the Low Countries, and eventually, after the deaths of both Anjou and William of Orange in 1584, English military intervention was agreed at the treaty of Nonsuch, 1585.
From 1585 to my death, Walsingham was deeply engaged, working closely with Cecil (now Baron Burghley), in preparing England for the war with Spain that could no longer be avoided, and in preparing for the arrival of the Spanish Armada, in particular by victualling the navy, organising a domestic county militia, and fostering the Protestant aggression of the Bond of Association.
I secured in 1584 the overthrow of a dangerously non-aligned government in Scotland after years of reverses since the 1578 overthrow of the pro-English Regent Morton. I visited the Scottish court in 1583. This lurch towards Anglo-Scottish amity was at first tentative, but proved to be stable and to pave the way to the succession of James VI to the throne of England.
These were years of tension in policy towards France, with me sceptical of the unpredictable Henry III, while the flamboyant English ambassador in Paris, Edward Stafford, argued the case for building on Henry's good intentions. There are reasonable grounds for believing that Stafford was compromised by the Catholic powers and in the pay of the Spanish state. This too was a battle I won; Stafford found my grip of the bureaucratic machine, the Queen's confidence in me, and my network of contacts, too formidable.
Espionage
In the realm of counter-espionage, I was behind the discovery of the Throckmorton and Babington plots to overthrow Elizabeth I and return England to Catholicism (and in the case of Throckmorton, place Mary, Queen of Scots on the throne).
In November 1583, after months of surveillance,I had Throckmorton arrested. I extracted, under torture, Throckmorton's confession—an admission that he had plotted against Elizabeth with the Spanish ambassador, Bernardino de Mendoza, and others. The plot, which was apparently endorsed by Mary, called for a two-pronged invasion of England and Scotland along with a domestic uprising. Throckmorton was executed in 1584, and Mendoza was expelled from England.
Mary, Queen of Scots was not prosecuted. I became so concerned about Mary's influence that I became determined to hold her responsible for any further conspiracies. Babington's Plot was the result of that determination. I drew deeply on my contacts and agents among the English Catholic community and abroad on whose divisions I was adept at playing. This led to the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1587, for which I had worked since before my advent to power. I was an active participant in her trial.
Prior to the attack of the Spanish Armada, I received a large number of dispatches from my agents from mercantile communities and foreign courts. My recruitment of Anthony Standen in particular represented an intelligence triumph, and Standen's dispatches were deeply revealing. However the close security enforced by Philip II meant that I remained in the dark about the Spanish strategy and the planned destination of the Armada. This, plus my naturally bold spirit, lay behind my regular encouragement of the more aggressive strategies advocated by Drake in particular. The Cadiz raid in 1587 wreaked havoc on Spanish logistics, and I would have repeated this the following year if more cautious counsels had not prevailed.
In foreign intelligence, the full range of my network of "intelligencers" (of news as well as secrets) will never be known, but it was substantial. While foreign intelligence was part of the principal secretary's duties, I brought to it flair and ambition, and large sums of my own money. I also cast my net more widely than others had done hitherto, exploiting the insight into Spanish policy offered at the Italian courts; cultivating contacts in Constantinople and Aleppo, building complex connections with the Catholic exiles. Recent detective work by John Bossy has suggested that I recruited Giordano Bruno, although this remains controversial. Among my more minor spies may have been the playwright Christopher Marlowe, who may have been one of the stream of false converts with which I annoyed the foreign seminaries. A more central figure was the cryptographer Thomas Phelippes, expert in deciphering letters, creating false handwriting and breaking and repairing seals without detection.
Legacy
I was the first English statesman fully to embrace the challenges of the post-Reformation diplomatic world and the new European threats and alliances it offered. Meanwhile, closely linked to the mercantile community, I actively supported the most ambitious trade promotion schemes, including the Muscovy Company and the Levant Company. I supported Davis' voyages to the north west frontier, and sought to follow Drake's circumnavigation with a military-diplomatic mission to the Far East to be led by his much loved stepson, Christopher Carteill.
In other affairs, I acquired a Surrey county seat in Parliament which I retained until my death, but I was not a major participant. In 1584, I was part of the committee that considered letters patent granted to Sir Walter Raleigh. I nominated some of my servants to prominent positions. I also received the appointments of Chancellor of the Order of the Garter and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
As an advisor on whom Elizabeth depended during the central part of her reign, I received large sums of money from the Queen over the years. But I appear to have had little taste for building or wealth accumulation. I had no male heir. I am remembered as being a major patron of music. I spent my wealth generously in the Queen's service and the Protestant cause. The Queen knew this, complaining that I would not prosper. I obtained land grants, grants for the export of beer and cloth, and leases of customs in the northern and western outposts. My primary residences, apart from the court, were at Seething Lane by the Tower of London, at Barn Elms in Surrey, and farther afield at Odiham in Hampshire. Nothing remains of any of my houses.
I died on April 6, 1590, leaving considerable financial debt, in part arising from my having underwritten the debts of my son-in-law and colleague, Sir Philip Sidney. My daughter Frances received only £300 annuity. However, she married well, to the Earl of Essex, and my widow lived in proper state until her death. It may be that my short-term debts concealed substantial potential wealth, and had I lived a little longer the precise outcome of the Sidney debts would have been clearer. After my death, my friends reflected that poor bookkeeping had left me further in the crown's debt than was fair, and a compromise was eventually agreed with my heirs. My public papers were seized for government use and my private papers, which would have revealed much, not least about my finances, were lost.
I attract controversy still. Catholic apologists, from the Victorian era onwards, have picked apart the various conspiracies to overstate my undoubted use of agents provocateurs. More preposterously, I regularly feature in fringe debates particularly about the authorship of Shakespeare and the death of Marlowe. I attract conspiracy theories. I was beautifully portrayed, albeit gloriously inaccurately, by Geoffrey Rush in the film Elizabeth.
My personality is difficult to capture from a distance. Courteous and polished as a diplomat, I portrayed myself as a plain-speaking and highly professional statesman. I was a devout and principled family man, who showed astonishing flair for the byways of intrigue and intelligence. The state papers testify to my high work rate. But at the time and in retrospect the close effective partnership around Queen Elizabeth of Burghley, Myself, Leicester, and Hatton defined the high Elizabethan age. I tend to be praised most highly by those critical of Elizabeth I's prevarications and changes of course. But it is more likely that it was a fruitful partnership of two very different/center
(All information curtesy of Wikipedia-Copyright 2006)
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