Her Majesty's Spymaster by Stephen Budiansky

Author:Stephen Budiansky
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Non-fiction, History, Biography, Politics
ISBN: 9780452287471
Publisher: Plume
Published: 2005-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

Above all, Mr. Secretary wanted Elizabeth to greatly increase support to the rebels in France and the Low Countries, and so vex both of the Catholic powers at once. If “the fire chance to slack,” as he once put it, all that would be required would be to “now and then cast in some English fuel which may revive the flame.”

Walsingham wanted moral and political clarity; he was an astute enough politician to know what arguments not to try on his own Queen, however. He saved the religious arguments for others. With Elizabeth he concentrated on pragmatism and law. The occasional professions of goodwill that still emanated from Spain, Walsingham warned, were mere ruses to “lull us asleep for a time, until their secret practices be grown to their due and full ripeness.” And the Dutch were not “rebels” against their sovereign, he assured Elizabeth, but were in fact loyal countrymen doing nothing more than asserting their ancient and traditional rights that had been unjustly usurped by foreign Spanish governors.

But Elizabeth preferred the temporizing middle course as always; that placed her with Burghley, and a majority of the Council agreed. Walsingham’s convictions and desperation for action made an explosion inevitable. He had often tried the Queen’s patience with his lectures and his insistent earnestness, but Elizabeth, in recognition of his intelligence and disinterested zeal, tolerated him as she tolerated almost no other councilor who dared speak so plainly. And Walsingham, for all that he confessed he was no expert in handling the Queen the way Burghley was, had known enough to back off prudently at times when he saw he had pressed the Queen too far; when she furiously told him that he cared more about the Puritans than about her own cause, he knew he had to forbear awhile lest he “rather hurt than help” his case.

But now both pressed to the breaking point; and the break came over the ever-volatile matter of the Queen’s marriage. In October 1578, Walsingham returned from a mission to the Low Countries that had ended with the usual inconclusive result, the Queen balking at sending her bond for £100,000, which she had earlier promised the rebels. What was worse, Walsingham immediately discovered, was the reason: she was hoping to achieve the same end at less cost and with less chance of directly antagonizing Spain by entertaining the recently renewed marriage suit of Francis, the former Duke of Alençon, who was proposing to lead his own expedition to the Low Countries. Burghley favored the marriage with Francis (who had since succeeded to the title of Anjou, after Monsieur became King of France in 1574): it was marry the Duke or make peace with Spain, he argued. Walsingham opposed it on every possible ground. And, unlike the last time when the Queen’s marriage negotiations had so tried his patience, he was now so bold as to make known his views on so personal and sensitive a matter to the Queen.

And so did much of the public: to the Queen’s uncontained fury.

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