Her Majesty's Spymaster

by Stephen Budiansky

  Nor did he suspect that Berden had been prying into the English Ambassador’s affairs while he was in Paris. “Paget is not acquainted that I come by the Lord Ambassador’s letters,” Berden reported to Mr. Secretary. It was, accordingly, around June 1586 that Berden had delivered to Walsingham’s secretary a full report on what he had learned of the English Ambassador’s doings. The file, endorsed “secret advertisements,” gave Mr. Secretary considerable more reason to believe that his suspicions of Stafford had not been misplaced. The most serious charge was that “the Lord Ambassador, in consideration of six thousand crowns, and in performance of his promise, did show the Duke of Guise his letters and intelligences out of England.” Stafford, Berden said, had also revealed to Catherine de Médicis that one of her court officials was a spy in Walsingham’s pay; the man had been dismissed. Stafford had promised the Catholic exiles in France that he “can send any man into England” for them that they needed. He had tipped off the Catholics that an English captain who had served in the Low Countries and who had been given a packet of letters to carry from the English seminary at Rheims to Paris had come to him to turn the letters over to the English government; Stafford had instructed the man to carry them to England himself, then had arranged for the Catholics to “procure the letters out of his hands.” To cover the ambassador’s dealings with the Catholic exiles, it had been “concluded between the ambassador and the rest that the better to increase his credit in England, they would deliver him from time to time such intelligences, or the first fruits of the new books and libels as should first come forth”; but they would pass nothing of actual importance to their cause.

  And, finally, the ambassador was consumed with a personal hatred of Walsingham: the past Christmas he had told Berden how gleeful he was when he had heard that Mr. Secretary was ill and “in peril of death.”

  Not long after came a warning from Henry of Navarre that the Duke of Guise had learned some things that could have come from no other source but Stafford.

  The evidence of course was all circumstantial—circumstantial or unusable. Even had Mr. Secretary been willing to expose Berden’s cover, it would have been the word of a scoundrel against the word of a still-powerful and well-connected gentleman.

  Mr. Secretary set other spies on Stafford to see if more could be found out, but these lacked the deftness or luck of Berden. The hapless Walter Williams tried his hand; Stafford got him drunk and managed to get him to reveal what he was up to. Phelippes enlisted Gilbert Gifford to the task; this caused embarrassment a year later, and indeed backfired, when letters from Phelippes were found in Gifford’s possession, and gleefully published by the French government, following his arrest in that Paris brothel. The letters also mentioned the names of several other of Mr. Secretary’s spies in France. Stafford enjoyed a small triumph: he lorded it over Walsingham, writing to Mr. Secretary sarcastically, “Mr. Phelippes must pardon me, being such a statesman as he would fain to be, for saying that to hazard to write to such a knave as this is, things that may be scanned as these are, is not the greatest discretion in the world.”

  Walsingham had tried to keep Stafford hemmed in; and watched; and placed on notice that he was hemmed in and watched, but Stafford’s cockiness or desperation or both had proved too much even for Walsingham’s maneuvers. Then Mr. Secretary began to push hard to have him recalled. Burghley balked; Walsingham managed to have his own candidate to replace the increasingly lame-duck but increasingly dangerous ambassador sent over in October 1586; the man was ostensibly there as a special emissary to the French Court, to explain the arrest and proceedings against Mary, but he had hinted heavily to Stafford that he was merely awaiting the next post to arrive to confirm his permanent commission as ambassador.

  Walsingham’s renewed political alliance and personal debt to Burghley at the end of 1586 now put an end even to this maneuver, and the would-be replacement returned to London. By early 1587, Walsingham was writing to Stafford assuring him that the ambassador could henceforth enjoy his “goodwill unfeignedly,” and that Walsingham would put aside “all things and jealousies past.”

  An outward rapprochement: a more subtle problem. Mr. Secretary had failed to contain or deter Stafford; he had failed to remove him; now he would have to use him.

  Though it would only be proved for certain a few centuries later, it was precisely at this juncture that Stafford began to sell his services to the Spanish Ambassador Mendoza as well as to the Duke of Guise. But Mr. Secretary had his suspicions even as he was burying the hatchet. For one thing, there was the curious fact that Stafford began to send dispatch after dispatch seeking to portray France as the root of all evil, warning against entering any common cause with the French, while singing the praises of Philip of Spain as a man of peace, restraint, and moral rectitude.

  In January 1587, the ambassador sent a wholly ludicrous story that a Spaniard passing through Paris had come to the English embassy and revealed that he had made an offer to Philip’s Foreign Secretary to assassinate Elizabeth for four thousand crowns, but had been turned down; Philip’s secretary had solemnly explained that, even if it was true that Philip would not weep were Elizabeth to die a natural death, “his conscience was too good to seek it that way.” It was a ridiculous story, this unnamed Spaniard suddenly feeling the necessity of calling upon Sir Edward and baring his soul to Elizabeth’s representative and testifying to the Christian conscience of the King of Spain: it reeked of amateurish practice.

  In the spring of 1587 the war in the Netherlands was still being prosecuted as irresolutely as ever, still undermined by Elizabeth’s penny-pinching and peace feelers, now exacerbated by her discomfiture with foreign wrath over Mary’s execution and her continuing effort to shift the blame for that. Again Walsingham took up the cause of advocating for the Dutch; again he bore the brunt of her irritation.

  He wrote Leicester:

  It appeareth by late letters out of the Low Countries that the foot bands and horse bands in her Majesty’s pay there are greatly decayed, insomuch as there remain not of the five thousand footmen above three thousand and of the one thousand horse but five hundred. I have acquainted her Majesty herewith and moved her for a supply, but I find her not disposed to resolve therein, and yet is she given to understand in what readiness the enemy is to march. Her Majesty doth wholly bend herself to devise some further means to disgrace her poor Council that subscribed, and in respect thereof she neglecteth all other causes.

  “Subscribed”: to Mary’s death warrant, that is, at the end of 1586.

  Elizabeth berated a commission from the Dutch who arrived: they were ingrates; she had spent £140,000 and had nothing to show for it; she wouldn’t send another penny or have more to do with them. Leicester, who had returned to England in December, was pressing to resume the campaign, but he needed a loan of £10,000; the Queen was balking at the terms.

  And then there was Drake’s latest project: he had been denied a license from the Privy Council to equip a fleet for raid on the Spanish mainland, but Walsingham had privately told him to go ahead and he would see what he could do. Drake already had seven ships of his own making ready and a promise of more from the Dutch. At last, on the 15th of March 1587, the Queen agreed to issue Drake his orders: she would supply several royal ships; the crown would get half of the plunder, private investors the other half.

  On the 2nd of April, Drake set sail from Plymouth aboard the flagship Elizabeth Bonaventure, 550 tons, twenty-eight guns, accompanied by fifteen other, equally well-armed ships and seven small pinnaces. Part harassing raid, part pre-emptive strike against Spain’s naval potential, Drake’s exact mission was but vaguely spelled out in his orders. Only a few knew that one of its possible targets was the harbor of Cádiz, a vulnerable and relatively unguarded merchant port on the southern coast of Spain.

  And now Mr. Secretary began to put his newfound friendship with Sir Edward Stafford, and the credulity of the credulous ambassador, to especially good use. In March, the Secretary se
nt a letter to another English envoy, who was at that moment staying at the embassy in Paris. The letter, sent in the cipher that Stafford himself routinely used, ever so indiscreetly revealed that “the Queen had not yet taken any decisions about sending the fleet because she had been discouraged by the news that the warships promised by the Dutch were not as ready as they thought.” Having thrown that tidbit Stafford’s way, Mr. Secretary ordered all English ports closed for the next two weeks: no more news would be traveling abroad from England while Drake’s final preparations were completed.

  On the 21st of April, Mr. Secretary wrote again to the ambassador, sharing the news like one good colleague to another:

  Sir Francis Drake, as I doubt not but you have heard, is gone forth to the seas with four of her Majesty’s ships and two pinnaces and between twenty and thirty merchant ships. His commission is to impeach the joining together of the King of Spain’s fleet out of their several ports, to keep victuals from them, to follow them in case they should be come forward towards England or Ireland and to cut off as many of them as he could and impeach their landing, as also to set upon such as should either come out of the West or East Indies unto Spain or go out of Spain hither.

  However, a cover note explained that he was sorry he had let this letter sit around for another eight days before actually sending it, but her Majesty specifically asked him to wait while she finished a letter to the French King she wished to send along with it. And of course Mr. Secretary hadn’t said anything about what Drake was really going to do, beyond anything and everything that anyone might guess.

  A good lead time was given to Drake; he did his best with it. For one thing, he had once again managed to outrun the Queen’s change of mind and a hastily dispatched recall order: intelligence had suddenly arrived in London from sources, notably including Stafford himself, that played down the past year’s rumors of Spanish naval preparations. The Queen thought it best once again not to provoke Philip; Drake was “to forbear to enter forcibly into any of the said King’s ports or havens, or to offer any violence to any of his towns or shipping within harboring, or to do any act of hostility upon the land.” He was only to seize Spanish ships he encountered on the high seas.

  But the pinnace sent to catch Drake with his new instructions somehow was unable to find him: bad weather, the crew insisted. And so, late on the afternoon of the 19th of April 1587, the sails of a large fleet flying no flags were seen from harbor of Cádiz, and when two galleys were sent out to investigate they were fired on without warning and driven back. A seven-hundred-ton warship and a thousand-ton Genoese armed merchantman that were in the vicinity were quickly captured, looted, and set ablaze. And then the work on the harbor shipping began in earnest. Many of the merchant ships slipped their cables and made for the inner harbor under the sheltering guns of the fort; the next morning, Drake followed them in. Four large Spanish ships were captured intact with huge stores; some two or three dozen others were burned to the waterline. Drake crammed his ships with captured provisions and wine; thirty hours after arriving, he was at sea again.

  Over the next month, he snapped up dozens more ships and barks; Walsingham followed his progress in a series of dispatches that Drake sent back, addressed to him personally: no mistaking who his chief supporter and patron was. Drake had burned vast quantities of cargoes, “oars for galleys, planks and timber for ships and pinnaces, hoops and pipe-staves for cask, with many other provisions for this great army” of Spain. He had also seen signs that preparations for a Spanish fleet capable of moving against England were not to be discounted; he wrote Walsingham, “I assure your honor the like preparation was never heard of nor known, as the King of Spain hath and daily maketh to invade England.” Ships were coming through Gibraltar to rendezvous with others preparing in Lisbon: “I dare not almost write unto your honor of the great forces we hear the King of Spain hath out in the Straits. Prepare in England strongly, and most by sea. Stop him now, and stop him ever. Look well to the coasts of Sussex.”

  On the 2nd of June, he sent another report to Walsingham, hoping for one more great coup before heading home:

  I assure your honor our sickness is very much, both of our soldiers and mariners. God mitigate it. Attending to his goodwill and pleasure, we are not yet thoroughly resolved what service we shall next take in hand. And for that there is as yet no supplies come out of England. But if God will bless us with some little comfortable dew from heaven, some crowns or some reasonable booty for our soldiers and mariners, all will take good again, although they were half dead.

  It came a week later. A fine ship had been spotted at nightfall as the fleet lay off São Miguel, in the Azores. The next morning, Drake made straight for it; the ship approached, dipping its flag to ask Drake to identify himself; Drake waited until he was within range, broke out the English flag and battle streamers, and opened fire from ships that surrounded the enemy from every direction. Token return fire; then surrender.

  She proved to be the San Felipe, the King of Spain’s own ship, an East Indiaman laden with china, silk, spices, gold, jewels, and slaves. On the 26th of June, Drake sailed into Plymouth with his prize. Drake, former pirate that he was, was never too careful about his books; the San Felipe’s cargo was officially valued at £114,000, of which £40,000 would to the Queen. The Spanish said it was worth more than £250,000.

  If Drake had not struck a direct blow at the Spanish naval might, he at least tied it in knots; in his felicitous phrase—by now Drake had men better with words than he penning letters and proclamations in his name—he had “singed the King of Spain’s beard.” Unaware that Drake had returned to Plymouth, Philip’s naval commander, the Marquis of Santa Cruz, chased across the Atlantic in search of him with his fleet of forty ships until October, when, battered, out of supplies, and running out of good sailing weather before winter, he returned to Lisbon.

  Shortly after Drake’s departure, Mr. Secretary had set out in his own hand a short but detailed memorandum on the problem of accurately ascertaining the King of Spain’s intentions. “A Plat for Intelligence out of Spain,” he wrote at the top; and then listed five precise steps to be taken:1. Sir Ed. Stafford to draw what he can from the Venetian Amb.

  2. To procure some correspondence of the Fr. K. agent in Spain.

  3. To take order with some in Rouen to have frequent advertisements from such as arrive out of Spain at Nantes, Newhaven [i.e. Le Havre], and Dieppe.

  4. To make choice of two especial persons, French, Flemings or Italians, to go along the coast to see what preparations are a making there. To furnish them with letters of credit.

  5. To have two intelligencers in the court of Spain one of Finale another of GenoaTo have intelligence at Brussels, Leyden, Bar.

  Since at least the autumn of 1586, Mr. Secretary had known the general outlines of Spanish hopes for mounting a seaborne assault upon England, for he had in his hands nothing less than a verbatim copy of a letter that Santa Cruz had written to Philip in March 1586 describing his strategic plan, listing every ship and its location, numbers of sailors and soldiers, stores, and wages and expenses.

  There had also been a regular tidal wave of leaks coming through the diplomatic corps in Italy: In July 1586, Philip had decided that Santa Cruz’s plan should be modified to have his ships sail to the Channel and there join a huge flotilla of barges that would carry Parma’s troops across from Dunkirk, and strike at Kent; Philip had told his son-in-law the Duke of Savoy, and one of the Duke’s ambassadors had told his Venetian colleague, and soon everyone in Italy seemed to know about it, and so the news came back to Mr. Secretary. And so, when Philip sought Pope Sixtus’s backing, and his promise of a million crowns in money for the enterprise, and a secret treaty was signed promising Philip that the Pope would recognize any Catholic he chose to bestow the crown of England upon, that, too, was soon known in London—in part because Philip was so fearful that Sixtus would die and his successor would renounce the deal that he had insisted the entire College of Card
inals pledge to uphold the treaty as well, and the College of Cardinals leaked like a sieve. The ten independent Italian states all had ambassadors in Madrid, and the Spanish possessions in Italy always had money and troops and diplomats of the Spanish empire passing through, and everyone talked about everything.

  But there were details for which a pair of human eyes or someone who knew where and how to get his hands on certain documents could not be substituted. The Santa Cruz plan had come by way of a particularly well-placed and prolific correspondent of Mr. Secretary’s in Florence. He signed his name Pompeo Pelligrini and his letters to Walsingham were addressed to Walsingham’s servant Jacobo Manucci in England; written in a style affecting to be that of one zealous Catholic to another, they were full of the most acute observations about the movements of ships out of ports and the number of soldiers being levied: six galleys and fifteen ships were seen in the harbor of Lisbon with 1,000 Spaniards and 3,500 Italians aboard; eighteen galleys arrived in Genoa from Spain with 1,500 Spaniards aboard, new soldiers to put in garrisons there, and 40,000 crowns in money; a regiment of 4,000 Neapolitans embarked upon galleys that, according to the word publicly proclaimed, were heading for Spain, though instead they had gone to Milan, where they were now.

  Pelligrini’s real name was Anthony Standen. An English Catholic gentleman who had worked for Mary’s cause since sometime around 1565, traveling to Spain, Flanders, and Constantinople, he was now in the service of the Duke of Tuscany. He was extremely well connected; he was also quite interested in seeing if he could perform some service that might bring him back into the good favor of his country, now that the cause of Mary had come to an end. And so he had been in touch with Mr. Secretary, and he was soon to receive one of those rare £100-a-year pensions that were reserved only for the best and most efficient of Mr. Secretary’s agents; indeed, he had been quite surprised and gratified to find, upon returning from his own investigative journey into Spain, that waiting for him back in Florence was his entire first year’s pay.