The Queen's Agent: Francis Walsingham at the Court of Elizabeth I by John Cooper

Prologue
     
     

     
    On the feast day of St Bartholomew 1572, a marked man picked his way through the streets of Paris towards the residence of the English ambassador. The Sieur de Briquemault had just seen his sons murdered in front of him, two victims among the thousands of Protestants who were being cut down by their Catholic neighbours. His own survival now depended on reaching Francis Walsingham without being recognised. The road to the suburb of Saint Marceau was well known to Briquemault, who had visited the English embassy several times since Walsingham’s arrival in January 1571. But informants were on the lookout for Protestant Huguenots fleeing the mob justice which had taken hold of the city. Carrying a side of mutton on each shoulder, the aristocratic Briquemault tried to lose himself among the porters and carters who worked the medieval streets of Paris. When he stumbled and fell at the city gate, friendly hands helped him up and hoisted the meat onto his back. The French guards watching for any trouble outside the embassy had no interest in a delivery man, and Briquemault made it inside.
    Walsingham could have refused to help the Sieur de Briquemault. As English subjects and Protestant heretics, the ambassador and his staff were already under threat from the Catholic crowd rampaging through the city. Briquemault had been close to the Huguenot leader Admiral Coligny, whose murder on the king’s orders had unleashed the torrent of violence pouring through Paris and provincial France. Giving asylum to such a prominent fugitive could threaten the lives ofothers, English nationals and their Protestant allies, who had taken refuge in Walsingham’s house. Then there was the safety of his own family to consider, his pregnant wife and his young daughter. The decision was one of the toughest which Walsingham would ever face: to trust in God’s providence and give sanctuary to Briquemault, or to play the politician and turn him in. When the Frenchman refused the offer of money and horses and pleaded on his knees, Walsingham chose to follow his conscience. Briquemault was disguised as a groom and hidden in the embassy stables. His discovery after several days was blamed on one of his own servants, who was spotted in the city and made to reveal the whereabouts of his master. The king demanded that Briquemault be handed over, adding that he would force his way into the embassy if necessary. Even now Walsingham did not give up on his friend, accompanying him to court in a closed coach to petition for his life. It did no good: Briquemault was tried and executed on a charge of plotting with his fellow Huguenots to overthrow the Valois monarchy. 1
    The incident passes unnoticed in the traditional version of Walsingham’s career, yet it says a lot about the courage of the man who served Queen Elizabeth as ambassador, principal secretary and chief of security. His efforts to save a fellow Protestant from being slaughtered were recorded by Walsingham’s agent Tomasso Sassetti, in one of the comparatively few coherent accounts of the St Bartholomew’s Day massacres. A reader of Machiavelli and a friend of the historian Lodovico Guicciardini, Captain Sassetti had volunteered for Elizabeth’s army in Ireland before Walsingham recruited him for his embryonic secret service. He took his place in a network of news and intelligence which would ultimately stretch from Constantinople to the new-found lands of Canada and Virginia. Francis Walsingham is justly famous as a spymaster, a pioneer in cryptography and an expert in turning his enemies into doubleagents paid by the state. Catholic plots against Elizabeth were allowed to run just long enough to expose the full extent of their support. Less familiar is Walsingham’s role in Elizabethan foreign policy, his long struggle with the issue of the queen’s marriage and his promotion of English plantations in Ireland and America. His life in royal service saw him fighting other