by Derek Wilson
This was a daring and risky operation for the backers to be involved in. The shared costs were not inconsiderable and the navigation of the Straits of Magellan, vital to the plan, was hazardous in the extreme. Few ships had accomplished it since Magellan’s pioneering transit half a century earlier. Walsingham and his co-conspirators could not know that the 1577–80 voyage was going to be one of the most famous of all time, nor can they have dreamed of the financial rewards it would yield. It was nothing more nor less than a breathtaking act of piracy. How was Elizabeth persuaded to give it her blessing? She was certainly impressed by Drake – his macho bravado and his formidable record in transatlantic ventures. She saw the opportunity of staging an important diplomatic coup. Although she studiously avoided provoking Spanish hostility, she was annoyed at Iberian dominance of long-distance trade routes. If it could be shown that English ships could reach the Pacific and return home round the northern passages of the Americas this would show Spain and Portugal that they no longer enjoyed a monopoly. Moreover, if things turned out badly she could always disown Drake and claim that his was a private venture.
But the clincher, as Walsingham knew it would be, was the prospect of golden rewards. The trail of precious metal from New World mines ran from the Peruvian coast across the Panama peninsula to the Caribbean ports, where the annual treasure fleets loaded the cargoes for the transatlantic crossing. Spanish settlements on the Atlantic seaboard were well garrisoned but their counterparts on the other side of the continent were poorly protected because they were not under threat. Elizabeth was never averse to laying her hands on Spanish gold as she had shown by the seizure of Philip’s ships in 1568. If the confident mariner could, as he claimed, return with a good haul of precious metal this would go a long way to reimbursing the treasury for such expenditure as the suppression of Irish revolt. Walsingham could also have pointed out that the shock of English interlopers in the New World would affect Philip’s opportunity to make mischief in the Netherlands. Spain was bankrupt and her troops in the Low Countries had mutinied over pay arrears. Walsingham welcomed anything that would further embarrass Philip and aid the Dutch rebels.
The circumnavigation voyage and its unexpectedly massive financial success was one of Walsingham’s great coups. It illustrates well the main thrust of his foreign policy and its divergence from that of Burghley and the queen. He never doubted that Spain was the great enemy and that an eventual showdown was inevitable. On 4 April 1581 Elizabeth cocked a diplomatic snook at King Philip. Amidst jubilant celebrations at Deptford, where the Golden Hind had been berthed, she not only conferred a knighthood on Drake, she asked the French ambassador to perform the dubbing ceremony. There could have been no more graphic demonstration of Anglo-French amity and the solidarity of both countries against Spain.
Of course, the marriage was still at the heart of relations between the two countries. After their recent disagreement Elizabeth had refrained from involving Walsingham in the protracted negotiations. But now she determined to send him on a top-level mission to Henry III. Bearing in mind his last ambassadorial adventure, Walsingham was far from enthusiastic. ‘Her majesty,’ he informed a colleague, ‘hath some intention to send me over the seas, notwithstanding I will labour by all the means I may to break the journey off. Yourself can tell how hardly I was used in my last voyage and, as this is a matter of more danger than that, so have I cause to fear to be served with harder measure than I was.’22
But once again duty outweighed personal inclination.
Chapter 7
‘SHE SEEMETH TO BE VERY EARNESTLY BENT TO PROCEED’
1581–4
‘I content myself, Monsieur, that you assure yourself of me as of the most faithful friend that ever prince had. And if you trust to such a rock, all the tempest of the sea will be far from shaking it, nor will any storm on the earth turn it aside from honouring and loving you.’1 So Elizabeth assured Anjou in March 1581. He cannot possibly have been taken in by the image of the queen as an example of granite immutability. He and his brother, Henry III, knew that the protestation of unshakable amity was a smokescreen behind which Francis Walsingham would bargain, bluff and bluster to obtain for England maximum diplomatic advantage at minimum cost. The ambassador’s instructions were to bring about an Anglo-French defensive treaty while making no final commitment to marriage. Elizabeth had come round to the point of view that Walsingham had always advocated; the creation of a league with France which would hold Spanish ambition in check. Her hot-and-cold response to Anjou’s wooing continued to keep everyone guessing but it seems that, by now, Elizabeth had resigned herself to the fact that marriage to the French prince was impracticable.
Perhaps the realization dawned that she had, all along, been in love with the idea of marriage, rather than the reality. In times of sober reflection she could not but acknowledge the practical difficulties pointed out to her by Walsingham and others – the differences of religion and age and the potential danger to her own health. She had no need to read the radical Puritan propaganda that poured from the presses to realize the widespread resentment marriage to Anjou would cause. In London there was much sympathy for men like John Stubbe. When the executioner, with three blows, cut off the pamphleteer’s right hand, the large crowd in the Westminster market-place watched the event in sullen silence. When parliament was convened in 1580 the mood of opposition was plain. Yet Elizabeth remained the consummate actress, able to switch roles at a moment’s notice. When it suited her she continued to revert to that of the lovesick bride-to-be. Not for the first or last time Walsingham found himself having to guess not only the intentions of foreign princes but also of his own mistress.
He was perhaps encouraged to receive, via Leicester, one of those heart-warming messages at which Elizabeth excelled. Dudley reported that the queen had spoken very warmly of her secretary. She acknowledged that Walsingham was a man of unshakable principles and opinions. She knew that her ‘Moor’ could not ‘change his colour’ but assured him that she valued his faithful service and that he would always enjoy her favour. It may have been a throwaway comment but it does go to the heart of the unique relationship the queen maintained with her closest advisers. Through all the frustrations, differences of opinion and downright confrontations, Elizabeth’s charisma and loyalty to her closest servants held them willingly in thrall.
Walsingham set off for France on 22 July and was there for two months. As he had feared, he found himself in an impossible situation. Henry III, Catherine and Anjou were at odds among themselves but on one principle they were united: marriage must come before treaty. But Elizabeth’s emissary was instructed not to commit her to marriage before treaty terms were agreed. The French feared – quite reasonably – that, if she were not matrimonially linked to Anjou, she might ‘slip the collar’ and leave him ‘in the briars’. As with most diplomacy it was all a question of which side would crack first. For hour after hour in various meetings Walsingham argued the English case and, considering his own difficult position, he did it remarkably well. Every time he reported back on the problems he was encountering he received fresh instructions either to advance or withdraw the marriage proposal. ‘I would to God,’ he complained to Burghley, ‘her highness would resolve one way or the other touching the matter of her marriage . . . when her majesty is pressed to marry, she seemeth to affect a league, and when a league is proposed, then she liketh better of marriage.’2
Anjou was determined that, if he could not access Elizabeth’s person, he might at least access her purse. He desperately needed money for his campaign against Parma. Meanwhile Henry and Catherine, not wishing to provoke Spain, were trying to deflect Anjou from his Netherlands enterprise. Elizabeth, of course, wanted to encourage her Frog’s adventures for much the same reason – she wanted to avoid direct confrontation with Philip II.
The same motivation lay behind another aspect of the negotiations. There was a pretender to the Portuguese throne in the shape of Dom Antonio of Avis, an illegitimat
e son of the former king. He travelled to Paris and London during the first half of 1581 attempting to hire ships and men for an assault on the Azores. He was well received by Walsingham and Leicester, who put him up in Bayard’s Castle and argued his case in Council. Philip, meanwhile, informed the queen via Mendoza that assistance given to his rival would be construed as an act of war. Elizabeth, like Catherine, was in a quandary. Both queens were not averse to tweaking the lion’s tail but both were wary of the lion’s claws. Walsingham enthusiastically advocated Dom Antonio’s cause but was inhibited by Elizabeth’s insistence that any English aid must be given in secret. He did, however, work out a way of squaring the circle. This was yet another occasion on which Walsingham, the conviction politician, went ahead on his own initiative. If the word ‘Puritan’ suggests to us people with a drab, negative attitude to life then Walsingham fails to fit the stereotype. He was a venture capitalist who relished risk-taking and thrilled to the exploits of bold mariners and merchants. He had proved this in his sponsorship of Drake’s 1577–80 voyage. He now took another gamble, laying his career on the line and re-investing a substantial chunk of the profits of the circumnavigation expedition. He backed the hero of the hour in a yet more audacious and provocative raid on Spanish interests.
Drake was to take a small fleet to Terceira in the Azores (currently loyal to Dom Antonio) and use it as a base to attack the silver fleet. He would be sailing under the pretender’s flag in order to preserve the fiction of Elizabeth’s non-involvement. In reality she and Walsingham would be major backers of the venture and hoped for a pecuniary return similar to that of the previous expedition. Walsingham knew his mistress well enough to be sure that she would be dazzled by gold. He, himself, was not averse to making money but his major concern was to nudge the queen ever closer to open confrontation with Spain. Much as she liked the idea of the Azores expedition, Elizabeth was not prepared to go it alone. She made her consent conditional on French involvement. Thus the Portuguese venture became firmly entwined with the marriage and treaty negotiations. It was put on hold until, as Drake pointed out, it was too late in the season to be feasible, because the treasure fleet had safely reached Spain. He paid off his men and sold his provisions.
The end results of weeks of hard bargaining were muddle and compromise. Elizabeth supplied Anjou with £10,000 for the Netherlands and agreed to receive a further visit from him. Ultimately, Dom Antonio was able to assemble a fleet of sixty Dutch and English ships which set out the following year. Elizabeth’s contribution was a few supply vessels. Philip’s navy confronted it off the island of São Miguel and inflicted a heavy defeat. In 1583 the last vestiges of resistance in the Azores were crushed. Walsingham, who once again had backed a daring enterprise with his own money, once again found himself seriously out of pocket. Anjou departed for the Netherlands in mid-August and conducted a two-month campaign. But after an early success in the capture of Cambrai, his expedition faltered for lack of funds. By the end of October he was back in Paris busily preparing for his second visit to England.
Anjou now desperately needed Elizabeth’s support if his Low Countries adventure was not to collapse ignominiously. At the end of October he arrived once again in London to pursue his courtship with renewed vigour. He understood well that Walsingham was a key player in the formation of policy and he deliberately courted the secretary. He expressed a warm regard for Walsingham’s honesty and his political acumen. He even asked if he might be a guest in Walsingham’s house for a few days before moving on to the court. (Walsingham wriggled out of this expensive honour by pointing out that the plague was rampant in his quarter of the capital.) It is difficult to know with what size pinch of salt to take Anjou’s protestations of friendship and regard but what is evident is that he earnestly desired Walsingham’s support. He knew that Mr Secretary did not, in his heart of hearts, favour the marriage but that he might be brought to advocate it on pragmatic grounds.
Walsingham was certainly committed to giving maximum support to the French prince in the Netherlands. It was vital, in his view, to take advantage of Parma’s currently weak position. About Elizabeth’s attitude to the marriage Walsingham was probably as much in the dark as anyone. He certainly shared the shock which reverberated round the court as the result of an event which took place on 22 November. According to Mendoza:
At eleven in the morning, the Queen and [Anjou] were walking together in a gallery, Leicester and Walsingham being present, when the French ambassador entered and said that he wished to write to his master, from whom he had received orders to hear from the Queen’s own lips her intention with regard to marrying his brother. She replied, ‘You may write this to the King: that the Duke of [Anjou] shall be my husband’, and at the same moment she turned to [Anjou] and kissed him on the mouth, drawing a ring from her own hand and giving it to him as a pledge. [Anjou] gave her a ring of his in return, and shortly afterwards the Queen summoned the ladies and gentlemen from the presence chamber in the gallery, repeating to them in a loud voice in [Anjou’s] presence what she had previously said.3
Breathtaking as this development was, Walsingham had other pressing concerns in those autumn days. His campaign against the infiltrated priests was bearing fruits and his secretariat was heavily employed in sifting the reports of informers and organizing searches. To set the scene for the dramatic events of November and December 1581 we must go back to the beginning of the year. Parliament had last met in 1576 and, in subsequent years, it had been prorogued twenty-six times. Elizabeth was more than happy to do without it while the Anjou courtship was on her agenda. She did not want her freedom of movement compromised by forceful expression of public (or, at least, parliamentary) opinion. But trouble in Ireland, with its concomitant costs, and the mounting activity of the Jesuit fifth column made it necessary for the state to fortify itself with financial and statutory backing. Walsingham was to the fore in urging the summoning of parliament which met, in January, against a background of nationwide anxiety about a major Catholic threat.
Now it was the radical Protestants who were in tune with the popular mood. On the first day of business Walsingham’s brother-in-law, Paul Wentworth, proposed a national fast, accompanied by the preaching of sermons, to unite the queen and her subjects and stiffen their resolve against the papistical onslaught. ‘Prayer and fasting’ was a biblical principle eagerly espoused by the Puritans. Elizabeth squashed the proposal firmly. She saw it – probably correctly – as an attempt by the radicals to grab the initiative. Such important religious matters, she reminded members, were for the queen and her bishops to decide, not a secular body. And she did not let the opportunity pass without singling out the Wentworth brothers for her especial disapprobation.
It was another of Walsingham’s brothers-in-law, Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who set out the business designated by the Crown for the session. His indignant rhetoric about the Catholic threat could not conceal his, and the government’s, anxiety:
The obstinate and stiff-necked Papist is so far from being reformed as he hath gotten stomach to go backwards and to show his disobedience, not only in arrogant words but also in contemptuous deeds. To confirm them herein, and to increase their numbers, you see how the Pope hath and doth comfort their hollow hearts with absolutions, dispensations, reconciliations, and such other things of Rome. You see how lately he hath sent hither a sort of hypocrites, naming themselves Jesuits, a rabble of vagrant friars newly sprung up and coming through the world to trouble the Church of God; whose principal errand is, by creeping into the houses and familiarities of men of behaviour and reputation, not only to corrupt the realm with false doctrine, but also, under that pretence, to stir sedition. In consequence, not only former recusants, but many, very many who previously conformed, now utterly refuse to be of our Church.4
The escalation of Jesuit infiltration, the second Desmond Rebellion and the alarming rumours of Spanish invasion preparations had provoked another reversal of government policy. The sof
tly, softly approach was laid aside – for the time being, at least.
Mildmay called for tougher anti-recusancy laws and the taxation necessary to put the nation’s defences in good order to meet any foreign threat. His rousing peroration urged members to do their duty:
The love and duty that we owe to our most gracious Queen, by whose ministry God hath done so great things for us – even such as be wonderful in the eyes of the world – to make us more careful for her preservation and security than for our own: a princess known by long experience to be a principal patron of the Gospel, virtuous, wise, faithful, just; unspotted in word or deed, merciful, temperate, a maintainer of peace and justice amongst her people without respect of persons; a Queen besides of this realm, our native country, renowned through the world, which our enemies gape to overrun, if by force or sleight they could do it. For such a Queen and such a country, and for the defence of the honour and surety of them both, nothing ought to be so dear unto us that with most willing hearts we should not spend and adventure freely.5
The man who stood to second Mildmay’s speech was Thomas Norton, veteran parliamentarian and pamphleteer whom we have already met. The co-author of Gorboduc and the translator of Calvin’s Institution had consistently busied himself in religious and constitutional issues. He was no fiery-eyed extremist, demanding the abolition of offensive items of clerical dress or the merciless harrowing of all suspected Catholics, but he held very clear opinions that were close to those of his friend and patron Francis Walsingham. Without wanting to see a change of church government he was critical of episcopacy – or, at least, the halfway-house stance of most of Elizabeth’s bishops. He disapproved of the Anjou marriage on religious grounds. He was committed to the rooting out of recusancy and the apprehension of immigrant priests. In 1578–9 he had been one of the secretary’s intelligence agents in Rome and he was one of the most skilled interrogators of Catholic prisoners, a task which earned him the nickname of ‘Rackmaster’ among his enemies.
