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How Francis Walsingham Saved England

In 1588, England almost lost its independence. The very real threat of invasion was thwarted narrowly, and history as we know it was allowed to progress. Had events played out otherwise it is impossible to predict the path that history would have followed, but what is certain is that we would not recognize such a world. Many credit the defeat of the Spanish Armada to the superior tactics and seamanship of the English navy, and no doubt much credit is deserved by those who fought gallantly and courageously to defend England’s shores against the Spanish invaders. What it little mentioned, however, when discussing the defeat of the Armada, is the role played by the Elizabethan masters of espionage in thwarting not only the Spanish invasion of 1588, but numerous other plots by the French, Spanish and Papal forces to overthrow Queen Elizabeth and replace her with a Catholic monarch. In the end, it was a combination of good seamanship and espionage that saved England.

The Elizabethan espionage masters ran the gamut from staunch Puritans such as Francis Walsingham to masters of secret societies and occultists such as Francis Bacon and John Dee respectively. For all their differences, what all these men shared was a passion for England to remain free from Catholic control. In the case of Walsingham, his reason was so that a church purified from papism could exist. In the case of Dee and Bacon, it was so that the greater freedom in such a society could further the advance of their organization and thus further the eventual establishment of a new world order, patterned after Plato’s Republic. Whatever their reasons, however, the end result of their efforts was that England remained free.

To understand the subject matter, one must first understand the political and economic situation in Europe of the time. England was not yet the political and economic powerhouse it was later to become. Indeed, Ireland and Scotland were outside England’s control. Scotland was an ever-present thorn in the side of the English monarchs, and there was the continual threat that it would fall under the control of a major continental power and would become a base for the invasion of England itself. Most of the English military power consisted of the local untrained militias, which the queen could summon, should she have the economic wherewithal to do so, not to mention the approval of Parliament. These militias were also largely untrained, and would have been little help even if they were summoned to duty. England’s standing army consisted of only two hundred royal guards, and a few hundred men manning the coastal forts along the English Channel. [1] Compared to this, the French could field an expeditionary force of ten thousand and the Spanish could send twenty thousand. Those two major powers also had large navies that dwarfed that of England. While England was becoming somewhat wealthy during the early years of Elizabeth’s reign, mostly through trade with Holland and Flanders, it lacked the military power to compete effectively with France and Spain.

Spain at this time was at the zenith of its power. It controlled a vast overseas empire in the new world, had swallowed up the Portuguese, controlled much of Germany and the Netherlands, and were a power to be reckoned with in the Italian peninsula where they fought the enemies of the pope. A major victory over the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto secured Spain as one of two major naval powers in the Mediterranean. If the average American today is proud because of America’s position on the world stage, the Spanish citizen of the sixteenth century was prouder still. A monarch of the time crossed Spain at his peril.

France was not yet the major power it was to become in the next century, but since it had triumphed over the English during the Hundred Years War in the previous century the French kings had solidified their hold on power throughout the realm and France was well on the road to becoming the major power they would become in the eighteenth century. One major factor that divided the French was the religious factor. While they had not thrown off Catholicism as England had, France had a large Protestant minority. This faction was known as the Huguenots, and France suffered through a series of civil wars and domestic disturbances as a result of the Catholic quest to rid France of this Protestant element. England would use the Huguenot element time and again to thwart the plans of the French Catholic monarchs.

The central character in the thwarting of Catholic designs upon the nation of England was Francis Walsingham. Admiral Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake, who were instrumental in the actual battle against the Armada, relied on Walsingham and others for their intelligence on the movement of the French and Spanish fleets. In early 1587, Hawkins told Walsingham in a letter:

In open and lawful wars, God will help us, for we defend the chief cause, our religion, God’s own cause; for if we would leave our profession and turn to serve Baal (as God forbid, and rather to die a thousand deaths), we might have peace, but not with God.” [2]

England’s tense relationship with Spain went back to the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign. The Spanish king, Philip II, had married Elizabeth’s half-sister Mary, who had tried to bring England back to the Catholic faith after the changes made during the reign of her father and half-brother Henry VIII and Edward VI respectively. Mary had executed over three hundred Protestants during her reign, burning them on the stake at Smithfield, but many English by this time preferred Protestantism rather than Catholicism. When Mary died in 1558, Elizabeth became queen and the Protestant faith was restored. Philip had been a co-ruler of England for a short time during Mary’s reign, and he never forgot. Furthermore, Philip seems to have seen it as his mission in life to bring all Christendom back under the rule of Rome.

Walsingham had left England during the reign of Mary Tudor, as had many Protestants, and it was during this time that he had learned some of the language skills that would later serve him well as Elizabeth’s master spy. Upon his return, he was noticed by William Cecil and became his protégé.

The religious situation in England was strange, to say the least. While many of her ministers and the members of her privy council were in favor of seeking out and destroying the English Catholics where they existed, Elizabeth seems to have been content for the most part with outward subservience. All Englishmen and their families were required to attend the Church of England. Jeffrey L. Singman says of this that, “In particular, every child was expected to memorize the Ten Commandments, the Articles of Belief (also called the Creed- the basic statement of Christian belief), and the Lord’s Prayer…and children who could not recite the catechism might be required to do penance.” [3]

While Elizabeth required attendance at the services of the Church of England for political reasons (she wanted to be seen as the head of the church, not the pope), she saw doctrine as more a matter of private opinion. Elizabeth once said, “In the sacrament at the altar, some thinks one thing, some other; whose judgment is best God knows.” Because of this, she had no problem with Catholics or other dissenters practicing their religion on their own, so long as they continued to publicly attend the services of the Church of England. Elizabeth was even reproved once by a Puritan for swearing using references to the mass and other elements of the Catholic faith. [4] This shows that in her own life Elizabeth was not totally free of the Roman Catholic influences that had been prevalent in England for centuries before her father began to cast them off.

Though Francis Walsingham was nominally one of the English Puritans, he was more reserved in how he expressed his views to the queen. It is tempting to speculate even that he might have been involved with the secret hermetic societies, though there is no direct evidence to show this to be the case. He was definitely a secretive man, which would have ideally suited him to the life of an adept in the Rosicrucian society or one of various others. He was familiar with the works of Rabelais, who was most definitely a student of the hermetic philosophies, and was associated with various members of the English secret societies, such as Francis Bacon, John Dee, Christopher Marlowe, and his own son-in-law Phillip Sydney. It was once said of Walsingham that he was “a most subtle searcher out of hidden secrets.” [5] Of course, his being a spymaster would explain that quote quite handily, but it is at least curious that he was a regular visitor to John Dee’s house, and not all of his visits were in an official capacity as a member of the queen’s privy council. In 1578, Dee recorded in his diary that he met with Walsingham and Leicester regarding a voyage he was taking for the queen, and just after this he crossed the channel. He does not say in his diary just what he was doing for Walsingham and the queen, but it is possible that he was doing espionage work for them. [6] Whether Walsingham was involved in the secret societies or not, however, it seems likely that he at the very least made use of them.

Walsingham became Elizabeth’s spymaster while holding the position of Principal Secretary, a post within the Privy Council that had formerly been held by William Cecil, who was to become Lord Burghley. This posting came about just after his return from France, where he had served as Elizabeth’s ambassador and had witnessed the Saint Bartholemew’s Day Massacre in August of 1572. Budiansky says that the city was, “…noticeably altered from the city he had left just two and a half years earlier…It had since become a great city, the third largest in Europe…” The city was crowded, despite an outbreak of plague a few years before that had killed a quarter of the population, it stank, and the streets were so narrow and dirty that the preferred method of travel was on the canals and the Thames River. [7] Walsingham’s mentor, William Cecil Lord Burghley, had recognized the need for good intelligence as vital to the safety of both Elizabeth and her realm, but it was Walsingham who would really build the English spy network into a force to be reckoned with, eventually numbering somewhere in the vicinity of five hundred agents who operated, according to Neil Hanson, even as far away as Constantinople. [8]

Before Walsingham’s time, most espionage was piecemeal. Most intelligence was gained by listening to merchants who had traveled in the region of interest. Occasionally the courtier of a rival king could be bribed for information, but it was not organized on anything approaching the scale of modern espionage agencies. Walsingham, though not approaching anything near the modern level of sophistication was to presage various modern practices in his own network, such as interception of communications, developing long-term sleeper agents, and using known double agents to feed disinformation to his opponents. Another tactic Walsingham used was to plant one of his agents in a prison in order to establish a cover for that agent so they could infiltrate the ranks of the various Catholic conspirers against Elizabeth.

Walsingham’s mission was one not only of espionage, but of counter-espionage as well. Robert Hutchinson said of Walsingham:

Walsingham’s clandestine activities combined the roles fulfilled in modern British society by the Secret Intelligence Service (better known as MI6), the Security Service (or MI5) and the Special Branch of the Police. [9]

Walsingham’s spy network is generally believed to have been built entirely by himself, but there is also a strong likelihood that he used networks and organizations controlled by others. The fact that he associated with John Dee has already been discussed. There has also been speculation that Dee and Bacon used the Rosicrucian Order on Walsingham’s behalf to conduct intelligence operations. Dee is also said to have conducted intelligence operations for the queen herself, and to have used the code 007 in his secret correspondence with her. Ian Fleming is said to have originally envisaged his character of James Bond as a sort of modern-day Dr. John Dee.

Walsingham was instrumental in thwarting numerous plots against Elizabeth, many of which were either orchestrated or at least approved of by Mary Stuart, the Queen of Scotland, who was incidentally married into the French royal family. The earliest months of Elizabeth’s reign had been fraught with danger for the new queen, for there were numerous plots to declare her illegitimate and to place Mary Stuart on the throne. Ironically, it was the Spanish who had saved England from invasion at that time, for the French and the Spanish Hapsburgs were negotiating a peace settlement for a war they had been fighting and the French king feared that an invasion of England at that time would open up renewed hostilities with the Hapsburgs. Alison Plowden said of this situation:

If England and Ireland were to follow Scotland into the French sphere of influence, the balance of power would tilt decisively in France’s favour and Philip would be faced with a solid block of hostile territory lying across the narrow seas and capable at any time of cutting his maritime lifeline to the Netherlands. [10]

If one takes notice of the political situation of the day, one can see that Elizabeth’s hold on power in England depended largely on playing the major powers of the day, namely France and Spain, off against one another. Elizabeth could not afford to allow either France or Spain to gain the upper hand. If France became too powerful, they needed to be afraid of Spanish intervention if they tried to move against England. On the flip side of the coin, the Spanish needed to be afraid of the French if they were to try an invasion of their own. It was balance of power politics in its most pure state, and Walsingham was a master.

While England was safe in the short term from a direct French invasion, there were numerous plots from within that threatened to topple Elizabeth and place Mary or another Catholic monarch on the throne. In 1569, there was an uprising of English Catholic Earls, which was crushed. While it was likely that Mary was involved, Elizabeth chose not to pursue a conflict with Mary at the time, perhaps due to a fear of bringing the French into open conflict. She did, however, order the execution of hundreds of rebels, and had one of the leaders, Sir Thomas Percy, beheaded, and his head mounted on a stake. [11]

Catholic response to the defeat of the insurrection was swift. The pope, Pius V, issued a papal bull in February of 1570 (1569 by the old calendar) that excommunicated Elizabeth and called on Catholics everywhere to overthrow her and replace her with a Catholic monarch, all with the blessings of Rome. He said:

We declare her deprived of the pretended right to that kingdom, and of all domain, dignity and privilege. We declare the subjects, the nobility and people of that kingdom, free from their oaths, and from all debt of subjection, of fidelity, and of respect; and by the authority of these presents, we deprive the said Elizabeth of the right to her pretended kingdom. By this prescription we further forbid all nobles, people, subjects, and others, to venture to obey the orders, advice, or laws of the said Elizabeth. As to those who shall act otherwise than as we have here authorize and order, we include them in the same sentence of anathema. [12]

By issuing this bull, the pope turned the politics of England into a religious issue and threw down the gauntlet to the English Catholics. Loyalty to Elizabeth was now disloyalty to Rome. Plots against Elizabeth became more numerous after this, and some of these plots now came from Spain as well as France. One of these plots, the Ridolfi plot, intended to place Mary Stuart on the English throne with help from Spain rather than France, and involved the use of troops by the Duke of Alva. The Spanish brought the English Privateer John Hawkins into the plot, but he played the part of a double agent and passed on all the information he received to Francis Walsingham. His information was so thorough that Walsingham (who was still working under William Cecil at the time) was able to arrest all the chief conspirators. Mary was implicated in this plot, but Elizabeth refused to have her executed with the rest of the conspirators. [13]

After Walsingham returned from his posting to France as the English Ambassador and received his subsequent position as “Mr. Secretary,” he began to find himself on the opposite side of the political fence from his old mentor William Cecil, who was now Lord Burghley. Burghley wanted to preserve the peace with Spain at all costs and use the Spanish to fend off the French. Walsingham realized that since the issuance of Regnans In Excelsis there was no hope of trusting the Spanish to hold up their end of any peace agreement as long as England continued to be ruled by Elizabeth. He felt that supporting the Dutch in their struggle against the Spanish would keep Spain so busy on the continent that they would not be able to mount an expedition against England. He also wanted to concurrently support the French Huguenots in their struggle with the French crown.

In essence, Francis Walsingham saw that since the struggle was at its root religious in nature it made no sense to try to tame the opponents of England. Doing so would be akin to someone petting a lion and hoping that by doing so he might keep the lion happy enough and distracted from its hunger enough to keep from becoming its next meal. Walsingham finally prevailed over Burghley in his arguments, and war was declared on Spain in 1585, with troops being sent to the Netherlands shortly thereafter. [14]

Among the troops being sent to the Netherlands was Walsingham’s new son-in-law Sir Philip Sydney, who had married his daughter Frances. While engaged in fighting with the Spanish near the fortress of Zutphen in September of 1586, Sidney was hit in the left leg with a musket ball. It did not seem a serious wound at first, and his wife Frances, Francis Walsingham’s daughter, went to the Netherlands to be with him as he recovered. He did not recover, however. His leg became infected and by the 17th of October he was dead. To add to the grief, Frances miscarried the child she had been carrying. [15]

Meanwhile, while Walsingham had been planning for war and promoting the same, he had kept busy with the secret war at home. The Catholic plots had only intensified since Walsingham had become “Mr. Secretary,” and he foiled them one at a time. Most of the plots against Elizabeth had been minor ones with not a lot of thought put into them, such as the Throckmorton plot. As such they were easily foiled. At the time of the Throckmorton plot, Walsingham had a source inside the French embassy that was passing information to him. This source referred to himself as “Mr. Fagot,” but it is believed by some that “Mr. Fagot” was none other than Giordano Bruno, who was ideally placed in the French embassy at the time and also had the motivation to help Walsingham. “Fagot” informed Walsingham that Francis Throckmorton had been going to the ambassador’s house at night, along with Lord Henry Howard. Walsingham had known for a while that there was a “Sieur de la Tour” who was plotting against Elizabeth, and the information he was given regarding Throckmorton led him to believe that he was their plotter. He sent men to search Throckmorton’s home and arrest him, and Throckmorton was caught in the act of enciphering a letter to Mary. He at first denied being involved in any plots, but eventually confessed and even implicated the Spanish ambassador Mendoza in the plot. The ambassador was then sent packing. [16]

The second major plot against Elizabeth was the Babington plot. This plot was foiled shortly after the outbreak of war with Spain. It received its name from Anthony Babington, who was the leader of the plotters, and who was corresponding with Mary Stuart regarding the details. Budiansky says of this plot that, “The plotters were a slightly dreamy, slightly unbalanced bunch, thirteen eventually, who met at Babington’s lodgings in Hern’s Rents, or at the Plough Inn, or around Saint Paul’s, or in Saint Giles fields, near the city, night after night.” [17]

In December of 1585, Walsingham arrested a man named Gilbert Gifford, who had been trained as a priest and was in league with the plotters. Gifford agreed to act as a double agent against the plotters and to relay their correspondence to Walsingham. They devised a method of smuggling letters into Mary using beer barrels, but Gifford gave the letters to Thomas Phelippes first. [18] Phelippes was Walsingham’s chief code-breaker, and would eventually have four secretaries under him to assist in the deciphering of messages from all over Europe. He was known for being ruthless, and some saw him as being a bit greedy. He may also have taken bribes from Catholics to secure their freedom. [19] He eventually came to a bad end, however, due to an inability to manage money. He was imprisoned for his debt in 1622. [20]

At about the time of the Babington plot, the playwright Christopher Marlowe may have begun working for Walsingham, though in what capacity or whether it involved the Babington plotters it is difficult to say. Charles Nicholl said of this:

…there is no doubt that Walsingham was the spymaster par excellence, and it is likely that when Marlowe entered government employment in 1585, he was entering at least the outer fringes of the Walsingham secret service…Marlowe’s name does not appear in the Chamber accounts, either. Whatever reward he received for his work, he received it unofficially… [21]

Babington, a young English Catholic, believed Elizabeth to be a tyrant, and wrote to Mary Stuart telling her he and a group of friends were prepared to assassinate her. Before taking any action, however, Babington wanted to get written approval from Mary herself. Apparently, his conscience was bothering him. He was concerned that killing Elizabeth would be outright murder, despite his efforts to convince himself that it would be the just removal of a tyrant. [22] Walsingham’s men who had infiltrated the plot encouraged the other plotters to continue their efforts, while at the same time learning all they could about the details and passing the information on to Walsingham. Eventually Mary Stuart responded to Babington with a letter, which said she approved of his plans, but cautioned him not to try to rescue her from her prison until Elizabeth had already been taken care of. Thomas Phelippes, after deciphering the letter, joyously forwarded it to Walsingham and sketched a cartoon of a gallows on the packet, an action for which Walsingham scolded him. [23] Babington still wavered, and even met with Walsingham on at least three occasions to confess, but stopped short of doing so. He finally cracked and offered to tell Walsingham everything, but it was too late. Walsingham had already sent his men to arrest the conspirators. Babington fled, but was captured and executed at Tyburn on September 20, 1586. [24] Mary’s involvement in the plot was revealed to Elizabeth, and she was finally persuaded to sign Mary’s death warrant. In the end, Elizabeth tried to countermand the warrant, but she was too late. Mary was executed on February 8, 1587.

Meanwhile, Walsingham and Burghley had been using their spies to keep track of the movements of the Spanish fleet. It was known that they were preparing their Armada, though the Spanish tried to deny this to be the case and to feed misinformation to the English through agents loyal to them. Walsingham was wise to the tactic, however, and the English were prepared to stop the Armada.

Francis Drake had received orders to attack the Spanish Armada at its anchorage in Cadiz harbor. The queen had a change of heart and issued a new set of orders to Drake, forbidding him from entering any Spanish harbors or attacking any of the King of Spain’s holdings. These orders, however, were deliberately not sent by her privy council until after Drake had departed. His attack on Cadiz caused a great deal of damage and ensured the Spanish would not be able to attack that year. [25] By May of 1588, however, the Spanish were ready to attack England. The English were ready, however. Elizabeth had only 34 galleons in her fleet, plus the ships that could be temporarily added from the merchant marine. While the merchant ships were very small, they were also much more maneuverable than the ships of the Spanish fleet. Furthermore, John Hawkins, who had now risen to the rank of vice-admiral in Elizabeth’s Royal Navy, had totally re-designed several of the ships in Elizabeth’s fleet. [26]

Despite these improvements in the English fleet, Elizabeth’s fleet was still small compared to the Spanish Armada. They did, however, have intelligence that the Spanish were coming, due to Walsingham’s spy network. On the 19th of July, the Spanish fleet was spotted off the coast of England. The English fleet was almost trapped in the harbor, but the wind changed and they were able to sail out to challenge the Spanish Armada. By the 21st the English had the weather on their side. [27] While they fought the forces of the Spanish Admiral Medina-Sidonia, their Dutch allies kept the Duke of Parma’s forces bottled up in the harbor of Dunkirk with the help of a small English task force. [28] Despite numerous attempts to destroy the Spanish fleet with their superior maneuverability and firepower, as well as sending fire ships through the Spanish fleet, the English Navy was still doing very little physical damage, though they were severely damaging the Spanish morale. Also, in order to avoid the fire ships many of the Spanish vessels had cut their anchor cables and their formation had become very disorganized. At this point a storm struck the English Channel, and many of the Spanish captains decided to flee. [29] Since the English had blocked the Channel, they fled through the North Sea, around Scotland and Ireland, and thence back to Spain. Many of these ships were shipwrecked on the coast of Ireland, and the Irish killed many of the crewmembers that survived.

The defeat of the Spanish Armada was the beginning of the end for the Spanish Empire. Its defeat was not final, but it entered into a state of decline that would end with the loss of most of its overseas possessions, the last of which they would lose in 1898 when the United States Navy sailed into Manila Bay under Admiral Dewey. England entered an age of growing power, which would culminate in the Victorian Age of the late nineteenth century. English colonies established in North America would eventually break free to form the United States of America, and later the nation of Canada. All of this would not have occurred, however, without the superior intelligence networks of the Elizabethan spymasters.

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[1] Stephen Budiansky, Her Majesty’s Spymaster: Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the Birth of Modern Espionage (New York: Viking Penguin, 2005), 50.

[2] Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, The Spanish Armada: The Experience of War in 1588 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 43.

[3] Jeffrey L. Singman, Daily Life in Elizabethan England (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995), 22.

[4] Budiansky, 38.

[5] Geoffrey Parker, Success is Never Final: Empire, War, and Faith in Early Modern Europe (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 73.

[6] John Dee, The Private Diary Of Dr. John Dee, And The Catalogue Of His Library Of Manuscripts In The Ashmolean Museum At Oxford, And Trinity College Library, Cambridge. (London: Printed For The Camden Society, By John Bowyer Nichols And Son, Parliament Street, 1842), 5.

[7] Budiansky, 85-87.

[8] Neil Hanson, The Confident Hope of a Miracle- The True Story of the Spanish Armada (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 7.

[9] Robert Hutchinson, Elizabeth’s Spy Master- Francis Walsingham And The Secret War That Saved England (London: Orion Books, Ltd., 2006), 16-17.

[10] Alison Plowden, Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stewart- Two Queens In One Isle (Totowa: Barnes & Noble Books, 1984), 40.

[11] Hutchinson, 22-23.

[12] http://www.catholicresearch.org/Decrees/RegnanasinExcelsis.html

[13] Hanson, 7.

[14] Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning- The Murder of Christopher Marlowe (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 104.

[15] Budiansky, 185-187.

[16] Ibid., 128-131.

[17] Budiansky, 158.

[18] Stephen Pincock, Codebreaker- The History of Codes and Ciphers, From the Ancient Pharaohs to Quantum Cryptography (New York: Walker & Company, 2006), 34.

[19] Nicholl, 110.

[20] Hutchinson, 267-268.

[21] Nicholl, 102,110.

[22] Budiansky, 158-159.

[23] Nicholl, 107.

[24] Hutchinson, 351.

[25] Hanson, 73-79.

[26] Ibid., 176-177.

[27] Budiansky, 208.

[28] Hanson, 298-299.

[29] Ibid., 308-311.