Sir Francis Walsingham Biography

Dromo's Den

WALSINGHAM, Sir Francis (c. 1530–90). An English statesman, born either in London or in Kent. He studied at King’s College, Cambridge, but appears not to have graduated. He was a zealous Protestant and lived abroad during the five years of Mary’s reign, acquiring a knowledge of foreign languages and politics which was of the utmost value to him in his conduct of England’s foreign affairs under Elizabeth. Burleigh sent him on a difficult mission to France in August, 1570. He remained in Paris until April, 1573, and acquitted himself so well that he was made one of the principal secretaries of state, a member of the Privy Council, and knighted. He labored incessantly for intervention in the Netherlands and the suppression of Catholic plots which Spain encouraged in England. In 1578 Walsingham was sent to the Netherlands with the unwelcome task of trying to pacify the country by diplomacy; in 1581 he was sent to France and in 1583 to Scotland. In 1585 he brought Elizabeth to a momentary support of the Dutch, but the results did not meet his expectations. In 1586 he unearthed the Babington plot, the object of which was the murder of Queen Elizabeth, and Walsingham produced letters in Mary’s cipher, which, if genuine, proved beyond a doubt Mary’s complicity in the conspiracy. (See Babington, Antony.) Walsingham was one of the commissioners by whom Mary was tried and condemned, and he was one of the most active in bringing Elizabeth to the point of signing the death warrant. In 1587 and 1588 Walsingham’s secret service kept him completely informed of the plans and progress of the great Armada (q.v.). During Walsingham’s last years he was greatly embarrassed by debt, due in part to expenditures in the service of the state, but Elizabeth gave him no relief. He died April 6, 1590, and was buried privately at night in St. Paul’s Church.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XXIII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 302.