Father Francis Walsingham, SJ

From the Worcester Cathedral Library and Archive blog: the other Francis Walsingham--not the spymaster Secretary of Elizabeth I--convert, controversialist, and Jesuit:

Francis Walsingham is best known as Elizabeth I’s secretary and spymaster. As Elizabeth’s trusted ally and a master of political and military intelligence, Walsingham was also a staunch supporter of the Protestant cause. He was one of the instigators of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (the rival Catholic claimant to Elizabeth’s throne), and directed English espionage on their Spanish enemies. You can well imagine my surprise then to find a 17th Century Jesuit tract authored by a Francis Walsingham, outlining the causes of his conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism. What had caused a man so committed to Protestantism to suddenly renounce his faith?

The answer is that there are in fact two different Francis Walsinghams, distantly related to one another and born 35 years apart. The younger Walsingham could not be more different in his religious outlook than his elder relative. Yet the younger Walsingham was still an apostate – he had been a Deacon in the Church of England, before traveling to Rome and entering a seminary to train as a Catholic Priest. In 1609 he published his A Search Made into Matters of Religion – the copy held at Worcester Cathedral Library is a second edition of 1615. It was deemed so effective as Jesuit propaganda that it was used until well into the 18th Century as the standard recruitment textbook to be shown to Protestants inclining towards Catholicism.

Naturally, such a work would not be without controversy. In 17th Century England, the lot of Roman Catholics did tend to fluctuate with the time, but it can’t be said to have ever been a happy one. There were notable outbreaks of persecution following the Gunpowder plot of 1605 and Titus Oates fabricated ‘Popish Plot’ of 1678-81, with attacks on Catholic individuals, property and books. While I have been unable to find any evidence that Walsingham’s book was ever officially proscribed, many similar works did suffer that fate at one point or another. What we can state for certain is that the circulation and ownership of this book would have been limited and largely taboo.

By "taboo" the author means that possessing this book would have been considered evidence that the owner was a Catholic, perhaps himself a convert, perhaps hoping to convert another, perhaps assisting priests, knowing where a priest would be saying Mass, perhaps attending Mass--and therefore violating several English laws. Someone found with Father Walsingham's book, or any other Catholic book, would be arrested, detained, questioned, and depending on the dedication of the pursuivant, tortured for information (in spite of the fact that was illegal). The term "apostate" earlier in the post is also rather startling--after all, England had been thoroughly Catholic before Henry VIII's breakaway. 

From the Dictionary of National Biography: 

WALSINGHAM, FRANCIS (1577–1647), jesuit, who assumed the name John Fennell, the son of Edward Walsingham of Exhall, near Alcester, Warwickshire, was born at Hawick, Northumberland, early in 1577. His father died before his birth, and his mother, who was a Roman catholic, brought him to London. His uncle, Humphrey Walsingham, who was kindred of Sir Francis, placed him at St. Paul's school. As the result of his instruction there he read the protestant divines Foxe, Jewell, Calvin, and Beza, and in 1603 was ordained deacon by Martin Heton, bishop of Ely. Doubts were raised as to the validity of his orders and of his belief by reading the ‘Manual’ of Robert Parsons (1546–1610) [q. v.], and in October 1606 Walsingham entered the English College at Rome. He was ordained priest on 12 April 1608, and early next year, having entered the Society of Jesus, he visited England, and there published his ‘Search made into Matters of Religion, by F. W., before his change to the Catholike’ (s. l. 1609, 4to; 2nd edit. St. Omer, 1615). The work was dedicated to James I, to whom the author states he had formerly submitted his religious difficulties. Down to the time of Alban Butler it has been frequently commended to those showing an inclination to Roman catholicism, and has been often reprinted and abridged. In the controversial parts, and especially in the attack upon the ‘falsities’ of Matthew Sutcliffe [q. v.], it is probable that the author was aided by Father Parsons. In 1618 Walsingham published his ‘Reasons for embracing the Catholic Faith’ (London, 16mo). Two years previously he had been formally attached to the ‘English mission,’ and served in Leicestershire. In 1633 he removed to the college of the Immaculate Conception, Derbyshire, and there he died on 1 July 1647. He left in manuscript at the convent at Newhall, Essex, a little prayer manual, ‘The Evangelique Pearle,’ dedicated to the abbess of the English nunnery at Pontoise.

Robert Devereux, Third Earl of Essex, RIP (With Notes about his Mother!)

After failing as a general for Parliament in the English Civil War, Robert Devereux, the son of the Earl of Essex referenced in the title Elizabeth and Essex, died on September 14, 1646. His first wife was Frances Howard, who left him for Robert Carr, one of James I's favorites. When Robert and Frances were charged and convicted in the Overbury Murder, Devereux urged the king to have Frances Howard executed, but James spared her for the sake of his favorite. Devereux second marriage was also a failure and he died without an heir. As this site describes his fall from leadership in Parliament's Army:

Essex opposed the formation of the Committee for Both Kingdoms in February 1644 because he realised that it threatened his authority. His political influence was further undermined by the failure of his military campaigning that year when, after arguing with Waller, he disobeyed orders from Parliament, split his forces and marched into the West. Although he relieved the siege of Lyme, his subsequent invasion of Cornwall resulted in a crushing defeat at Lostwithiel in September 1644 after which Essex left his troops to their fate and made an ignominious escape in a fishing boat.

Although he was not officialy censured by Parliament, the disaster of Lostwithiel ended Essex's military career. Returning to the House of Lords, he supported the Earl of Manchester against Oliver Cromwell's criticisms of Manchester's leadership of the Eastern Association, and in December 1644 he joined an unsuccessful attempt to have Cromwell impeached for sedition. Essex led the opposition in the House of Lords to the measures proposed in the Commons for the re-organisation of Parliament's army, but he was finally obliged to resign his commission, which he did with a dignified speech on 2 April 1645, the day before the Self-Denying Ordinance was passed.

Thereafter, Essex lived in semi-retirement, a revered and respected figure once he had laid down his military commissions. He suffered a stroke after stag hunting at Windsor and died on 14 September 1646. He was buried in Westminster Abbey with great pomp and ceremony, and an effigy was erected to his memory. A month after the funeral, however, his grave was vandalised and his effigy beheaded by a former Royalist soldier. The effigy was refurbished but was finally destroyed on the orders of Charles II after the Restoration, though Essex's body was left undisturbed.

His mother was Frances Walsingham, daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, widow of the great poet and courtier, Philip Sidney. She married for the third time in 1603, to an Irish Catholic, Richard de Burgh, and became a Catholic herself. Their son and Richard's heir, Ulick Burke, fought for Charles I in Ireland during the same civil war. So she had two sons fighting in the war between King and Parliament--on opposite sides.

Her daughter Honora de Burgh married a Catholic, John Paulet, 5th Marquess of Winchester, who also fought for Charles I (in England) and they were held in the Tower of London after Cromwell broke through the besieged Basing House in 1645--he finally recovered his land and title after the Restoration and married a third time: Isabel Howard, the daughter of Blessed William Howard (the grandson of St. Philip Howard).

Frances Walsingham Spenser Devereux de Burgh died in 1633. According to this author's work, she is another fascinating figure of the Elizabethan/Jacobean era:

Much has been written on Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth the First's Secretary of State and Spymaster, but very little on his daughter, Frances, who is comparatively unknown but closely connected with the greatest of that era.

As a child, she survived the massacre of St.Bartholomew's Eve, together with Sir Philip Sidney, in Walsingham's embassy in Paris. At thirteen, she contracted herself in marriage to one of her Father's employees and, when this was forbidden, she was married to Sidney. She followed him on campaign in the Netherlands and was with him when he died of wounds following the battle of Zutphen. She then married the Queen's favourite, the Earl of Essex. Sidney had died with chivalric perfection, Essex, after a treasonable uprising, died with his head on a block eleven years later.

Within two years, Frances married the Irish Earl of Clanricarde, who had been brought up in the Essex household, and had accompanied Essex on several campaigns. She converted to Catholicism and together they built and left to posterity two outstanding houses. The book covers the last half of the reign, including the defeat of the Armada, Dutch, Spanish and Irish campaigns.

Frances was a survivor, but must have had, besides intelligence, rare charm or beauty to have married, in succession, three of the most charismatic men of the age. Seven of her twelve children survived.

Review Essay on Spying in Elizabeth I's Reign

 

Paul Dean, Head of English at Summer Fields School, Oxford, reviews two books for The New Criterion about the spy network operating in England during the reign of Elizabeth I. One is a new biography of Sir Francis Walsingham, which must be the third biography in the past five to ten years, The Queen's Agent by John Cooper; the other is a book I've mentioned before: The Watchers by Stephen Alford. A couple of excerpts:

A “loyal Catholic” was a contradiction in terms. Since the queen had been excommunicated by Pope Pius V’s bull Regnans in excelsis in 1570—which, incidentally, prompts the surprising reflection that England remained technically a Catholic country for the first twelve years of her reign—her Catholic subjects had been released from obedience to her or her laws. (John Cooper, however, remarks that the bull was not widely publicized in England and suggests that “most English Catholics never saw a copy.”) Many priests and laity worked actively to overthrow and replace her, first by Mary Queen of Scots, then, after the latter’s execution for treason in 1587—an act which was forced upon a reluctant Elizabeth by her ministers, who had effectively rigged the case against her royal cousin—by King Philip of Spain. Alford’s book tells the stories of many plotters on both sides: some, like John Somerville, minor figures, others among the great of the land. Intriguing though these stories are, they give the work an episodic feel; it lacks the narrative drive of Cooper’s biography of Walsingham (which Alford seems not to know). Where they cover the same ground, Cooper is usually clearer and more perceptive.

and

Cooper sensibly warns us of the danger of reading history written by the victors: “The myth that Catholicism is somehow alien to Englishness has had a long and corrosive effect on the national memory of the British Isles.” The first generation of Catholic missionary priests did not seek Elizabeth’s overthrow—indeed, Pope Pius IV offered to leave the Church of England undisturbed if only Catholics were granted freedom to worship. Cardinal Allen’s seminary at Douai, founded in 1568, initially encouraged its graduates to go to England to give pastoral support to Catholic families, not to make converts. (Allen himself, however, advocated the invasion of England by the powers of France and Spain.) Several priests prayed for the queen on the scaffold. Walsingham was uneasy about so many executions—not from humane motives, but because he felt that to create martyrs was to play into the enemy’s hands. It became increasingly difficult, and finally impossible, for many Catholics to take the oath of loyalty which was imposed on every citizen, requiring them “to withstand, pursue, and suppress” anyone designing to hurt the queen. Meanwhile, parliamentary legislation of the 1570s and 1580s, steered through by Walsingham, greatly extended the legal definition of treason.

Commenting on Cooper's explanation of Walsingham's involvement in the downfall of Mary, Queen of Scots, Dean notes:

Walsingham alone, the spider in the center of the web, saw the whole picture. Propelled by his extreme Protestant zeal, he was not above bypassing the law in order to gain his ends. He even recruited a Catholic priest, Gilbert Gifford, by whose means he was able to intercept correspondence between Mary, Queen of Scots and her contacts in Paris, and thereby unmask the Babington plot. (Among the plotters, by the way, was Chidiock Tichborne, whose poem written on the eve of his execution, “My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,” is a small masterpiece.) Gifford was trained by Thomas Phelippes, Walsingham’s chief cipher specialist, about whom Alford writes interestingly. Phelippes and Walsingham went so far as to add a coded postscript to one of Mary’s letters to Babington, using wording which would support a charge of treason against her. Also working on this case was Robert Poley, who was implicated in the death of Marlowe and was probably acting on government orders. (Alford’s downplaying of the evidence for Marlowe’s espionage activity as “sketchy and circumstantial” is questionable.) Babington realized too late that Poley might not be reliable, and wrote him a heartrending note: “I am the same I always pretended. I pray God you be so.” Babington’s inevitable execution in 1586 was made exceptionally brutal; on the personal orders of Elizabeth, “for more terror,” he was rent limb from limb. Mary, being royal, was beheaded, although Elizabeth would have preferred her quietly murdered in private, and even tried to persuade her jailer to do the deed himself.

Read the rest here. Remember, though, that the public reaction to Babington's horrible execution led Elizabeth to withdraw that order: the other conspirators were hung until dead, then cut up and their body parts displayed as the usual warning to plotters.

Tudor Portrait Recycling with a Twist

From Elena Maria Vidal's Tea at Trianon blog comes this story from The Guardian about a special exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London:

He was the eyes and ears of Elizabeth I, the loyal spymaster and ruthless counterterror chief: Sir Francis Walsingham was the man who knew everything. Or not quite everything, it seems. Certainly not that his portrait was secretly painted over an overtly Roman Catholic image of the holy Virgin and Child.


“He would not have been delighted,” speculated Dr Tarnya Cooper, standing in front of the remarkable new discovery going on show at the National Portrait Gallery. “You do wonder if the artist might be enjoying a private joke."

The gallery on Thursday opened a display showing x-rays of devotional paintings it has discovered underneath its portraits of two key Tudor statesmen. As well as a Virgin and Child under Walsingham, researchers found A Flagellation of Christ under the Queen’s lord treasurer Thomas Sackville.

The Walsingham portrait dates from the 1580s when Protestant England was isolated and supporting the war in the Netherlands against the Spanish.

“The Catholics are the absolute enemy at this period so the idea that you’ve got this wonderful devotional image underneath your portrait would probably be rather horrifying to him,” Cooper, the NPG’s chief curator, said. 


It was a surprise finding. “There is not very much that Walsingham does not know about of what’s going on in courts across Europe, he has a huge network of informers, is an incredibly wily man and is someone with a public reputation. For somebody who is not wonderfully keen on Walsingham this would be a clever way of getting at him."

The NPG believes it cannot be accidental that after x-raying more than 120 Tudor portraits and mostly finding nothing, it found an image so emblematic of Roman Catholicism under Walsingham. “It is intriguing that it is under the spymaster-general,” said Cooper.

You can see the portrait in question and the x-ray results here, although I find it hard to see the image behind the portrait on-line:

Recent technical analysis undertaken as part of the Making Art in Tudor Britain project has revealed that some of the Gallery’s sixteenth-century portraits were painted over pre-existing paintings. This could have occurred for a variety of reasons and provides fascinating insight into artistic production during the period.

This display highlights two rare examples in which paintings with religious iconography have been discovered beneath portraits. Images generated by analytical techniques such as x-radiography and infrared reflectography are used to reveal the hidden paintings, and the portraits are also paired with loans from other collections to give an impression of the underlying compositions. The display also includes an interesting portrait with a fragment from a decorative scheme on the reverse, which suggests that it was originally intended to be viewed from both sides.

More on Francis Walsingham here.

Spying in Elizabethan England

Appropriately enough after yesterday's post on the Babington Plot and Sir Francis Walsingham's spy network against Mary, Queen of Scots, here is a review from the U.K. Guardian newspaper of a book about spying in Elizabethan England:

The age of Elizabeth I, so often celebrated as a period of glorious national achievement, was one of intense insecurity. Beset by enemies at home and abroad, the Queen knew that her hold on the crown was always precarious. The Catholic powers of Europe regarded her as a heretic and a bastard. Pope Pius V tried to depose her. Philip II of Spain attempted armed invasion. The loyalty of English Catholics, unreconciled to her Protestant church settlement, was always in doubt.

Elizabeth created further anxiety by persistently refusing to nominate her successor. The stability of the regime thus depended entirely on her own personal survival. As one MP put it in 1567: "If God should take her Majestie, the succession being not established, I know not what shall become of myself, my wife, my children, lands, goods, friends or country."

Feelings of anxiety and distrust were intensified by an unending series of conspiracies and assassination plots. The Rising of the Northern Earls in 1569, the Ridolfi Plot of 1569-71, the Throckmorton Plot of 1583 and the Babington Plot of 1585-6 were only the best publicised of repeated attempts to dethrone the Queen by insurrection, foreign invasion or simple assassination. There were three such plots in 1596 alone. Many of these conspiracies sought to replace Elizabeth with the Catholic Mary Stuart, the ex-Queen of the Scots who had taken refuge in England after her forced abdication in 1568, and whose strong hereditary claim to the succession was terminated only by her execution in 1587. . . .

Confronted by these threats, the Elizabethan government embarked on a draconian policy of counter-terrorism. The laws of treason were extended to catch not just those who questioned Elizabeth's right to rule, but all missionary priests and those who sheltered them. Torture was not permitted by the common law, but special powers were invoked to justify its regular use to extract information from Catholic suspects. The procedure in treason trials gave the accused no chance of offering an adequate defence, and unsafe convictions were common. The standard penalty for traitors was to be hanged, cut down when still alive, castrated, disembowelled and dismembered. Over 100 Catholic priests suffered this fate. This was not enough for Elizabeth, who wanted her Privy Councillors to devise an even more terrible death for the Babington conspirators, who had planned to murder her.

In my book collection I have this interesting title, Tudor Underground, by Denis Meadows. Kirkus Reviews wasn't that thrilled in 1950, but perhaps I'll read it again some day:

Personalities, hangings and quarterings, spies and Elizabethan religious turmoil provide a tempestuous background for a relatively pallid story of religious conversion. Hugh Rampling, young Catholic heir of an aquiline-nosed (and therefore, of course, loyal) English family attempts to align his hereditary Catholicism with a neutralized religious position which his career with the Protestant Principal Secretary, of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Francis Walsingham, demands. Aiding in the Secretary's spy ring formed to root out Catholic infiltration into England, Hugh, in successful adventures with a female demon aiding the purge, pursuers in Rome and in other narrow squeaks, is on the way up. However, in the midst of this uneasy neutrality, Hugh meets one of the most coveted prizes of the State -- Father Persons, a Jesuit priest. Not only does the priest induce Hugh to allow him and other followers to escape, but brings Hugh back into the fold, and positive action for the Catholic mission. Some elements of a good story here, but Hugh as the hero is the usual blank cartridge bright boy not peculiarly adaptive to heavenly meditation. A sprawling, uneven historical.