Ten Tudor Statesmen

by Arthur D. Innes

From an Engraving by G. Vertue, after the picture by Holbein, in the British Museum

There are diversities of conscientiousness. Henry VIII. referred most questions to his conscience, after he had made up his mind about the answer; and his conscience always endorsed his judgment. Cromwell ignored conscience altogether; with More, it overruled every other consideration. Burghley’s was tolerably active, but perhaps somewhat obtuse. Walsingham, if we read him aright, was as rigidly conscientious as More himself; but his moral standard requires to be understood before it can be appreciated. It was derived, not from the New Testament, but from the Old. It assumed that the Protestants were in the position of the ancient Hebrews; that they were the Chosen People, and their enemies, the enemies of the Lord of Sabaoth. It justified the spoiling of the Egyptians. It was sufficiently tempered to disapprove the extermination of the Canaanite, but it hardly condemned Ehud and Jael. Broadly speaking it applied different moral codes in dealing with the foes of the Faith and in other relations. Identifying the foes of the Faith with the enemies of the State, it authorised the use, in self-defence, of every weapon and every artifice employed on the other side. It was not with him as with those to whom the law serves for conscience; who will do with a light heart anything that the law permits, and shrink in horror from anything that it condemns. Nor did he act on the principle that the right must give way to the expedient. With him, conscience positively approved in one group of relations the adoption of practices which in other relations it would have sternly denounced. That type of conscience is absolutely genuine and sincere; but it permits actions which are, to say the least, censurable from a more enlightened point of view.

II
WALSINGHAM’S RISE

The records of Walsingham’s early years are somewhat scanty. An uncle was Lieutenant of the Tower during the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII.; of whom it is reported that when Anne Askew was on the rack, he refused to strain the torture to the point desired by Wriothesly. His father was a considerable landed proprietor at Chiselhurst, and filled sundry minor legal offices. He died in 1533, leaving several daughters and one son, Francis, an infant, born not earlier than 1530, and so ten years younger than William Cecil. Young Walsingham was up at King’s College, Cambridge, from 1548 to 1550, and entered Gray’s Inn in 1552.

Being of the advanced Reformation party, young Walsingham quitted the country on Mary’s accession, remained abroad during the five years of her rule, and returned when Elizabeth succeeded, to take his place in the House of Commons. His sojourn abroad emphasised his Protestantism; he utilised it also to acquire a very extensive knowledge of foreign affairs, though he omitted to make himself a master of the Spanish tongue. He does not appear to have taken prominent part in the affairs of Parliament when he came back to England; but he attracted Cecil’s notice, and was employed by the Secretary in procuring secret intelligence, of which the earliest definite record is a report of August 1568, giving a “descriptive list of suspicious persons arriving in Italy during the space of three months,” obtained from “Franchiotto the Italian.” On November 20 of the same year, he writes to Cecil to say that, if the evidence of Mary’s complicity in Darnley’s murder is insufficient, “my friend is able to discover certain that should have been employed in the said murder, who are here to be produced.” Incidentally, it may be remarked that this, of course, means no more than that Walsingham knew where to lay his hand on some one who professed to have information; which Mr. Froude renders by a phrase implying that he actually had information, known to be valuable, ready to be brought forward. What it really shows is, that Walsingham was engaged in looking out for anything which offered a chance of being turned to account.

In the autumn of the following year, just before the rising of the northern earls, when it was practically certain that some kind of Catholic plot was afoot and that the Spanish ambassador, Don Guerau de Espes was mixed up in it, circumstances brought the Florentine banker Ridolfi under suspicion. The position to which Walsingham was now attaining is shown by the Italian being assigned to his surveillance—with the result that Ridolfi’s house and papers were thoroughly searched without his knowledge, but also without the discovery of anything incriminating. Whether honestly or with the object of deceiving him, Ridolfi was thereupon treated as if no vestige of suspicion attached to him. In the modern phrase, it was an integral part of Walsingham’s system in dealing with persons on whom he expected to pounce when his own time came, to give them every inch of rope he could afford: but a year later Walsingham wrote about the man to Cecil in terms which imply that the belief in his honesty was genuine. When the whole of the Ridolfi plot was revealed in 1571, Walsingham was in France. The secret service was Cecil’s creation, not Walsingham’s, though doubtless the latter had a considerable share in organising it, and a little later became mainly responsible for controlling it. Valuable as he was already rendering himself, he only emerges definitely into the front rank on his appointment as a special envoy to the French Court in August 1570; followed immediately thereafter by his selection for the post of Ambassador Resident.

The situation at this time was exceedingly critical. At home, the northern insurrection had just been suppressed, Norfolk and others of the peers were very much subjects of suspicion, and the Papal Bull of deposition had increased the sense of nervousness. The Spanish representative in England was the hot-headed and intriguing Don Guerau de Espes; in the Netherlands, Alva had made the world in general believe—though he knew better himself—that the revolt was crushed. In France the Huguenots, despite defeat in the field, had just shown themselves strong enough to obtain, through the balancing party of the Politiques, terms which placed them fairly on a level with the Guise faction; but a marriage was being planned between Henry of Anjou, the king’s next brother and heir presumptive, and the imprisoned Queen of Scots. In Scotland itself, the assassination of Moray had revived the confusion which the sombre regent had been struggling to allay. Thus, there was danger to Elizabeth’s throne from her own Catholic subjects; danger from France, since Anjou was regarded as of the Guise party; and danger, imagined at least, from Spain, where that surprising charlatan, Stukely, had almost, if not quite, persuaded Philip that at his call—with some armed assistance—all Ireland would rise, fling off the English yoke, and offer itself to Spain. As a matter of fact, Philip was much too heavily hampered to take openly aggressive action against England at the time—but that was known to very few people besides himself and Alva.

These difficulties of Philip’s were the first redeeming feature in the situation. The second was that on which Cecil always relied, that the national interests of France and Spain were too antagonistic to permit of any cordial alliance between them. Mary Stewart on the English throne as Philip’s protégée would not suit France; as Anjou’s wife she would not suit Philip. France might at any time see her own interest in fostering the revolt in the Netherlands and intriguing for their Protectorate. The third point was that in France itself, the Politiques were at one with the Huguenots in wishing to avoid the union of Anjou with Mary, which would be a great victory for the Guises; so that the balance of forces in France would turn definitely in favour of England if she could offer anything in the way of a make-weight.

Such were the conditions under which Walsingham was sent to France as a special envoy in August 1570—to congratulate the French Government on the pacification just concluded; to urge the necessity of maintaining it loyally; and to dissuade the Court from espousing the cause of the Scots Queen. Within a month, he received official intimation that the resident Ambassador, Sir Henry Norris, was about to be recalled, and he was himself to succeed to the post; which arrangement took effect in January.