Free Sample Essays > European History
Walsingham' Sir Francis
information about the movements of foreign spies in London. The Spanish ambassador in Paris declared in 1570 that he had been for two years engaged in collecting contributions from English churches for the assistance of the Huguenots in France; and he drew up a memorial depicting the dangers.of Mary Stuart’s presence in England and of the project for her marriage with Norfolk. Ridolfi, the conspirator, was committed to his custody in October 1569, and seems to have deluded Walsingham as to his intentions; but there is inadequate evidence for the statement (Dict. Nat. Biog.) that Walsingham was already organizing the secret police of London. In the summer of 1570 he was, in spite of his protestations, designated to succeed Norris as ambassador at Paris. La Mothe Fénelon, the French ambassador in England, wrote that he was thought a very able man, devoted to the new religion, and very much in Cecil’s secrets. Cecil had in 1569 triumphed over the conservative and aristocratic party in the council; and Walsingham was the ablest of the new men whom he brought to the front to give play to the new forces which were to carve out England’s career.
An essential element in the new policy was the substitution of an alliance with France for the old Burgundian friendship. The affair of San Juan de Ulua and the seizure of the Spanish treasure-ships in 1568 had been omens of the inevitable conflict with Spain; Ridolfi’s plot and Philip II.’s approaches to Mary Stuart indicated the lines upon which the struggle would be fought; and it was Walsingham’s business to reconcile the Huguenots with the French government, and upon this reconciliation to base an Anglo-French alliance which might lead to a grand attack on Spain, to the liberation of the Netherlands, to the destruction of Spain’s monopoly in the New World, and to making Protestantism the dominant force in Europe. Walsingham threw himself heart and soul into the movement. He was the anxious fanatic of Elizabeth’s advisers ; he lacked the patience of Burghley and the cynical coolness of Elizabeth. His devotion to Protestantism made him feverishly alive to the perils which threatened the Reformation; and he took an alarmist view of every situation. Ever dreading a blow, he was always eager to strike the first; and alive to the perils of peace, he was blind to the dangers of war. He supplied the momentum which was necessary to counteract the caution of Burghley and Elizabeth; but it was probably fortunate that his headstrong counsels were generally overruled by the circumspection of his sovereign. He would have plunged England into war with Spain in 1572, when the risks would have been infinitely greater than in 1 588, and when the Huguenot influence over the French government, on which he relied for support, would probably have broken in his hands. His clear-cut, strenuous policy of open hostilities has always had its admirers; but it is difficult to see how England could have secured from it more than [next page]