Spies
The secret agents – intelligencers – employed by Sir Francis Walsingham came in all shapes and sizes. Their motives and loyalties were always suspect, but Walsingham was a master of the art of using people to his own advantage. In his great game of espionage, these were his star players…
RICHARD BAINES
Would-be poisoner who heralded Marlowe’s death
A Cambridge graduate, who received his MA in 1576. He spied on Catholic exiles for Walsingham at the English college in Rheims, France, in the early 1580s, even plotting to poison the seminary well. He was unmasked and held in the Rheims gaol for a year. After Walsingham’s death in 1590, Baines is thought to have taken up service within the new intelligence network of the Earl of Essex. In May 1593, Baines wrote a pamphlet accusing the playwright Christopher Marlowe of atheism and heresy, saying that all Christians “ought to endeavour that the mouth of so dangerous a member be stopped.” By the end of the month Marlowe’s mouth was, indeed, stopped. He was dead – stabbed through the eye in a small room in Deptford.
NICHOLAS BERDEN
Catholic turncoat who earned Walsingham’s gratitude
One of Walsingham’s most important spies. Like many agents, he was a Catholic who turned away from the faith – and then acted against his former fellows. He claimed that he did his secret work out of patriotism rather than desire for money – but in truth, he did earn a good living from espionage. An expert in writing secret messages with invisible ink, he worked among English exiles in Paris – and helped Walsingham build his case against the Babington plotters and, ultimately, Mary, Queen of Scots. In 1588, Armada year, he quit spying for the more gentle – and more profitable – position as Royal Purveyor of Poultry, a reward from Walsingham for his years of service.
JOHN CECIL
Man of the world who played all sides against each other
A double agent who seemed to work for both Walsingham and the Catholics. Born in 1558 of a Protestant family in Worcestershire, it was claimed he was related to the Lord Treasurer, William Cecil (Lord Burghley). After graduating from Trinity college, Oxford, John Cecil, a well-mannered man with a good brain, travelled to Italy, gained a doctorate in Theology at Padua and joined the Catholic household of Cardinal William Allen – Walsingham’s most bitter enemy in exile. But John Cecil was also working for the other side - it was he who gave Walsingham his description of the fugitive Jesuit Father Robert Southwell. Cecil led a complicated life, travelling between Italy, Spain, England, Scotland and Prague – used by all sides, including Burghley’s son, Sir Robert Cecil, but never really trusted by any. For many years John Cecil was the dominant agent in the world of secrets on the continent. Strangely, even though Pope Paul V knew of his spying, he recommended his services to the Queen of France as late as 1616.
GILBERT GIFFORD
Beardless whoremonger who betrayed a queen
Born in 1560, Gifford joined the English college in Rome in 1579 and became a Catholic priest. Historians disagree on when he became a Walsingham agent – some believe he was an agent provocateur from early on – but he was certainly working for Walsingham after 1585 when he arrived in England with a secret letter from English exiles to Mary, Queen of Scots. Working with Walsingham’s cypher expert Thomas Phelippes he agreed to smuggle letters to the imprisoned Mary in a beer barrel – an act which led to her downfall and the execution of the Babington conspirators, one of whom was Gifford’s ‘friend’ John Savage. A year later, the beardless Gifford was back in France, using the alias Jacques Collardin, having been awarded the handsome sum of £100 a year for his major role in breaking the Babington plot. But his good fortune did not last – he was caught in a French brothel and was jailed in the Bishop’s prison in Paris, dying there in 1590.
ARTHUR GREGORY
Secret postman who could read invisible ink
Walsingham’s expert in opening letters and re-sealing them – using seals he had forged – so that the ultimate recipient was unaware they had been tampered with. Gregory was a colleague of Phelippes and worked closely with him; Gregory opened the letters, Phelippes deciphered them. Gregory, who hailed from Dorset, played a crucial role in securing the evidence to condemn Mary, Queen of Scots. He was also an expert in revealing messages written in invisible ink and in forging hand-writing. In later years, during the reign of James I, he fell on hard times and petitioned the Principal Secretary Sir Robert Cecil for a royal pension of £20 a year and use of lands seized from recusant Catholics.
FRANCIS MILLS
Interrogator who dispensed Walsingham’s money
Private secretary to Walsingham, his outstanding talent was the capture and interrogation of Catholic priests. He had other, wide-ranging responsibilities, including Irish affairs at a time when Ireland was in rebellion against English rule, and was also one of the team that brought down the Babington conspiracy, staking out the conspirators’ house. On a more mundane level, he helped with admin work, such as making payments to informers and intelligencers. Three days before Walsingham’s death in April 1590, Mills and others bought manors in Wiltshire from his employer, so he had clearly profited from his 25 years of secret service.
MICHAEL MOODY
Gunpowder ‘plotter’ who embarrassed the French
Irish anti-Catholic agent used by Walsingham. He was slung in the Tower in 1587 for his role in the ‘Stafford plot’ in which it was alleged he offered to kill the Queen by putting a gunpowder bomb beneath her bed at the instigation of the French embassy. In truth this was probably a put-up job by Walsingham to embarrass the French Ambassador Chateuneuf into silence during the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. Moody, whose true loyalties were never really certain, was released in 1590 and begged employment from Robert Cecil, who duly gave him work seeking intelligence in the Low Countries. But Cecil was never really convinced of the value of his efforts and Moody died there in 1596.
ANTHONY MUNDAY
Successful writer who hated Catholics and Puritans
Actor, playwright – and informer. Born in london, son of a tradesman, he quit an apprenticeship in the book trade to study at the Catholic English College in Rome, where that other famous spy Gilbert Gifford was also enrolled. Together they sowed dissension and Munday was disciplined. Soon, he returned to England, where he offered his services as an informer, identifying priests sent over from Rome. He also worked as a pursuivant and was admired for his wit by the torturer Richard Topcliffe. Munday wrote anti-Catholic tracts and gave evidence at the trial of the Jesuit martyr Edmund Campion, writing an an eye-witness account of his brutal execution. Finding this new writing career lucrative, he turned his hand to plays and ballads. One play he wrote, about Robin Hood, was such a hit that it may have served as an inspiration for Will Shakespeare to write As You Like It, which had similar themes. Munday’s other interest was hunting down renegade Puritans.
THOMAS PHELIPPES
Pock-marked codebreaker with a talent for mimicry
Son of a London customs official, Phelippes was a codebreaker of major importance to Walsingham. He was fluent in several languages and his work was critical in bringing down the Babington plot and the destruction of Mary, Queen of Scots, for which he was awarded a pension of £66 a year. Mary herself described him as having poor eye-sight, being short of stature, skinny with ‘dark yellow hair on his head’ and a pock-marked face. After Walsingham’s death he worked for the Earl of Essex, having been refused work by the Cecils. Phelippes, a mimic who could take off accents and mannerisms to perfection, funded much of his intelligence-gathering from his own purse – and ended up in such terrible debt that he was jailed.
ROBERT POLEY
Spy who always brought death in his wake
Wherever there was death or misery to be dispensed, the renegade Catholic Robert Poley (also spelt Pooley or Poole) was not far away. At one time a member of the household of Sir Francis Walsingham’s daughter Frances, Poley was an agent provocateur for the spymaster in the 1586 Babington plot – and was so convincing that he, too, was apprehended and sent to the Tower when the plotters were arrested in his London house. It is thought that Poley’s arrest was a ‘bluff’ to keep his cover as a Catholic sympathiser intact. But not everyone was so sure. Walsingham’s assistant Francis Mills called him a ‘notable knave’. Catholics certainly believed he was a Walsingham plant, however. The Jesuit priest Father Robert Southwell even accused Poley of using his time in the Tower to poison an Irish Catholic bishop with a piece of cheese. While the other Babington plotters were executed in the usual grisly manner, Poley was set free in 1588 – and appeared again in a small room in Deptford five years later when the playwright Christopher Marlowe was stabbed to death by a small-time crook named Ingram Frizer. Poley was best summed up by the gate-keeper of the Marshalsea prison who said “he will beguile you either of your wife or your life”.
ANTHONY STANDEN
Dashing womaniser who helped sink the Armada
An elegant, well-bred Catholic whose family had pretensions to be royal courtiers. He had an exciting life, first as royal aide to Mary, Queen of Scots and her second husband, Lord Darnley (Standen claimed to have saved Mary’s life when her secretary David Riccio was murdered by Darnley and other nobles). He then went into exile in Europe, where he soon got into trouble in Flanders by having a passionate affair with Barbara von Blomberg, the mother of Don John of Austria. By the 1580s he was sending information to Walsingham. His work gained in importance as Spain’s invasion plans for England gathered pace. Using various spies of his own – including one inside the household of the Spanish admiral Santa Cruz – Standen sent vital intelligence to London on Spain’s naval power and deployments. In 1588, Elizabeth granted him a £100 pension and he was later knighted, but his adventures – and troubles – were far from over. He spent time in various European capitals, including London, never quite sure which side he was on.
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