William Walsingham

“ He died on 7 March 1456, being buried at St. Katherine's by the Tower, and was succeeded by his son, also Thomas (1436–1467) . The latter, who was Sir Edmund's grandfather, was the first of the Walsinghams to be buried in the church of Chislehurst. Sir Edmund's father, James Walsingham, was sheriff of Kent in 1497, increased the family estates, and was buried in the Scadbury chapel of Chislehurst church in 1540. Sir Edmund's younger brother, William, was father of Sir Francis Walsingham [q. v.] , who was thus Sir Edmund's nephew.
Edmund obtained in youth some reputation as a soldier. ”

“ A The above goods were sent by John the son of Walter, master of the vessel called the Godale of Beverley.
37 It is very probable that Edward had evidence in his possession of the commission of regency he had granted to Wallace. The English monarch had too many secret emissaries in Scotland, to remain long ignorant of a matter of such importance. What Baliol might say to the contrary would therefore meet with little credit; and his apparent duplicity, no doubt, prompted the following remark, which, according to Walsingham, Edward made use of, on delivering him to the Nuncio. ”

“ Wallace, Margaret, worried and burnt for witchcraft, i. 527-529. Walsingham, Sir Francis, a councillor of Queen Elizabeth, his mission to James VI., i. 152. Waly, waly! a popular ballad, composed on the Marchioness of Douglas, ii. 340. Wame-ill or land-ill, also called the Pestilence but Mercy, i. 57. Wappinshaw, why so called, i. 542. Watch, a body of men appointed to keep peace in the Highlands, ii. 306. Watson, William, minister of Burntisland, i. 467. Watt, John, shot dead on the Burgh-moor, i. 349. Waugh, Robert, hanged for rebuking the Regent Morton, i. 80. ”

“ Neither was it strictly true; for the Scottish army might have retired with unbroken forces into the forest which lay in the rear. The only satisfactory interpretation of Wallace’s address to his troops, is to be found in W. Westm. p. 451, ‘Ecce adduxi vos ad annulum charolate (chorolate) sive tripudiate vos, sicut melius scitis.’ King, in Walsingham, ought to be ring. The words of Wallace were, ‘I haif brocht you to the ring, hap gif you cun.’ The ring means the dance à la ronde. Douglas translates ‘Exercet Diana choros,’ Æneid ii., thus, ‘Ledand ring-dances,’ p. ”

“ He is getting old. All the world was growing old, and all his contemporaries, in the phrase of the day, were “a little thing sickish.” The intrepid and laborious Walsingham is described as being “troubled with his old diseases: the tympany and carnosity,” and so is absent from Court. Letters still flowed in to the Earl, news of the Netherlands campaign, from the now depressed Lord Leicester, the Governor, news of the Queen’s movements, of Spain, of the legal strife of his contemporaries and friends. ”

“ That of the transepts generally is coarse and very thick, as is the case with all Early Norman stonework. The new masonry, on the other hand, recalls what William of Malmesbury says of the Later Norman masonry at Salisbury, when he speaks of "the courses of stone so correctly laid that the joint deceives the eye, and leads it to imagine that the whole wall is composed of a single block." The juncture of the two works at Winchester can be easily traced. Of the general style of the transepts, Willis says: "The architecture is of the plainest description. ”

“ Such an experience made Walsingham reluctant to undertake other diplomatic missions. The queen's indecision had allowed the king of Scotland to fall under the influence of the catholic party among his councillors; but when Elizabeth realised the danger in which a breach with Scotland would involve her, she bade Walsingham go to Edinburgh and judge at close quarters the position of affairs. James was to be dissuaded at all hazards from negotiating with Spain in behalf of his mother. Walsingham did not complacently face a repetition of the humiliation that he had suffered in France. ”

“ ST CROSS FROM THE SOUTH.
The remains of Hyde Abbey lie considerably to the north of the cathedral, outside the old North Gate of the city, where it was erected during the bishopric of William Giffard by Henry I. The buildings were occupied in 1110 A.D. by the monks who were forced to leave Alfred's "New Minster," pulled down because of its too close neighbourhood to the cathedral. Though the foundations of the abbey still exist, little is left of the upper part except an arched gateway with hood-mouldings and two royal corbel-heads. ”

“ Britton, in 1807, said: "The present building is called the Butter Cross, because the retail dealers in that article usually assemble round it." He complained of the injury done to it by "boys and childish men." S. Laurence was the only figure in his day, and it was then "generally said to be an effigy of S. John the Evangelist." In the County Hall, which includes the remains of the ancient castle of William the Conqueror's days, is "King Arthur's Round Table." ”

“ WALSINGHAM, Sir EDMUND (1490?–1550) , lieutenant of the Tower of London, was elder son of James Walsingham (1462–1540) . The pedigree of the family, which is supposed to have originally come from Walsingham in Norfolk, has been conjecturally carried back to the thirteenth century. ”

“ Walsingham, in his history of the reign, describes with unction the King’s childish behaviour during his fits of ungovernable anger,31 his violent words on more than one occasion to his Parliaments, and his absurd extravagance in dress. With righteous indignation he relates how Richard, on his way to London, borrowed from the monastery a palfrey, which he never returned. ”

“ SS. Peter and Paul. The altar and fittings were presented by Colonel Shaw Hellier; the cross being inscribed with the chronogram;—nVnC gLorIa In eXCeLsIs Deo et In terra paX hoMInIbVS bonae VoLVntatIs" (The Church Times, Aug. 20, 1897) .
3 The charter of William Rufus which gave permission Giles' Fair still exists, and may be found, with a commentary by Dean Kitchin, in the "Winchester Cathedral Records." The Fair was granted for three days (August 31, September 1 and 2) on the "eastern hill," known as S. Giles' Hill. ”

“ He was much employed in political affairs by Sir Francis Walsingham, after whose death he retired into private life. He died on 29 March 1608, and was buried in the chancel of the church at Chertsey, Surrey, where a black marble was erected to his memory with a curious Latin inscription which is printed by Wood. ”

“ On the plains all waited for letters. Walsingham was no exception to the rule. Few came. He was too far away. Younger sons of impoverished noblemen are sent to far-off places purposely to be forgotten. He employed the intervals between such stray notes as he received in studying Cyclona. ”

“ With all this machinery in his hands, Walsingham patiently awaited the progress of the correspondence, till it should have ripened into sufficient flagrancy to become fatal to his dupes. That it might speed the faster, he seems to have applied a strong stimulus through his agent Pooley. About Midsummer he had obtained a letter from Babington to Mary, proposing in plain terms the murder of Elizabeth, and the liberation of herself, on receiving her unequivocal sanction to those two measures. ”

“ If the good man had any cause of dissatisfaction, it was with the Calvinistic tendencies of the Ambassador’s household. Walsingham was always on the Puritanical side of Elizabeth’s court, and such an atmosphere as that of Paris, where the Roman Catholic system was at that time showing more corruption than it has ever done before or since in any other place, naturally threw him into sympathy with the Reformed. ”

“ At an early age he became a Roman catholic, and took up his residence in Paris. Verse by him was meanwhile circulated, apparently in manuscript, among his English friends and gave him a literary reputation. Letters of his addressed to Sir Francis Walsingham from Paris in July 1584 and April 1585 point to his employment for a short time in the spy-service of the English government. In 1595 and the following year he was in communication with Anthony Bacon, Essex's secretary, and his correspondent admitted that his religion was the only thing to his discredit. ”

“ The maintenance of her prestige, he now pointed out, obliged her to intervene in behalf of the prince of Orange in the civil war that he was waging in the Low Countries against Spain. He repeated his belief that the French king was not unwilling to join England in an armed intervention if Elizabeth openly declared her resolve to support the Flemish protestants effectively. But Walsingham's hopes were temporarily frustrated by the massacre of protestants in Paris on St. ”

“ In truth, Elizabeth and James were personally the great support of the high church interest; it had few real friends among their counsellors.
[368] Burnet, ii. 418; Cabala, part ii. 38 (4to edition) . Walsingham grounds the queen's proceedings upon two principles: the one, that "consciences are not to be forced, but to be won and reduced by force of truth, with the aid of time, and use of all good means of instruction and persuasion;" the other, that "cases of conscience, when they exceed their bounds, and grow to be matter of faction, lose their nature ”

“ Fainted! a preposterous thing for a big strong man to do! Fainted, as though he had been a school-girl, or a delicate miss, or a romantic woman troubled with nerves. Mr. Walsingham did not understand it at all. He rang the bell, and told the servant to get some water and some brandy, and something--the right sort of thing; and he picked up Wilmot's head, which was gravitating towards the floor, and he bade him "Hold up, my good fellow!" ”

“ Elizabeth, in a rage, swore that Leicester and the Puritans were dragging her into all sorts of expense and trouble, [457] from which she could not extricate herself without [361] war. Walsingham was soon disgusted with his task, for he could make but little progress in Paris, and the Queen found fault with him constantly. He answered boldly, almost rudely, to all her strictures. He told her that with all this hesitation about the marriage “you lose the benefit of time, which, if years be considered, is not the least thing to be weighed. ”

“ Therefore the country swarmed with spies and informers; and Walsingham, as a man of a detective genius, was kept hard at work to trace, by his secret emissaries, every concealed movement of sedition. Both at home and abroad he had a host of agents under a multitude of disguises. The society of Jesuits never had a more expert and fearless general, nor a more varied army of informers. They presented themselves in the shape of travelling noblemen, of physicians, of students in Popish seminaries. They swarmed in seaports lying betwixt England and the different chief Continental routes. ”

“ Weary suppliants, on the way to, or returning from, the road of Our Lady of Walsingham, far away on the road through and past Norwich, housed here, and misbehaved themselves in their mediæval way. It would, as already hinted, be the gravest [Pg 91] mistake to assume pilgrims to have been, quâ pilgrims, necessarily decorous; and, indeed, modern Bank Holiday folks, compared with them, would shine as true examples of monkish austerity.
HOUSE FORMERLY A PILGRIMS’ HOSTEL, COMPTON.
The shrine at Walsingham, very highly esteemed in East Anglia, drew crowds from every class, from king to beggar. ”

“ His tongue for prating like a moon-struck boy's.
"I am mad," he cried, "I am mad to babble so!"
Then Walsingham drew near him with strange eyes
And muttered slowly, "Write that madness down;
Ay, write it down, that madman's plan of thine;
Sign it, and let me take it to the Queen."
But the weather-wiser seaman warily
Answered him, "If it please Almighty God
To take away our Queen Elizabeth,
Seeing that she is mortal as ourselves,
England might then be leagued with Spain, and I
Should here have sealed my doom. I will not put
My pen to paper." ”

“ But the popular feeling ran so strongly against him that it was felt impossible for him to remain at Waterford, and having obtained letters of recommendation to Walsingham from Lord Grey and Archbishop Loftus, he repaired to England, apparently in September 1581. ”

“ Thomas Watson wrote a Latin eclogue on Walsingham's death which he entitled ‘Melibœus.’ He translated the poem into English under the title ‘An Eglogue upon the death of the Right Honorable Sir Francis Walsingham.’ Both the Latin and the English version were published in 1590, the Latin being dedicated to Walsingham's cousin, Thomas Walsingham, and the English one to Walsingham's daughter Frances, lady Sidney. In the poem Walsingham figures under the pastoral name of Melibœus, his daughter appears as Hyane, and his cousin Thomas Walsingham as Tityrus. ”

“ In her answer to this letter, she does not advert to this hint, but mentions Babington as in correspondence with her. At her trial she denied all communication with him.
[251] It may probably be answered to this, that if the letter signed by Walsingham as well as Davison to Sir Amias Paulet, urging him "to find out some way to shorten the life of the Scots queen," be genuine, which cannot perhaps be justly questioned (though it is so in the Biog. Brit. art. Walsingham, note O) , it will be difficult to give him credit for any scrupulousness with respect to Mary. ”

“ Walsingham also relates that the King proceeded to York, and summoned the whole county of Northumberland to appear before him. The Earl, who had started with a strong body a few days after the battle, either in ignorance of his son's failure, or to meet the King for the purpose of treating with him for peace, had been resisted by the Earl of Westmoreland, and compelled to retire to Warkworth. On receiving the King's summons, leaving the commonalty behind, he approached the royal presence with a small retinue, and, in the humble guise of a suppliant, besought forgiveness. ”