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Walsingham' Sir Francis
was sent with Lord Cobham to the Netherlands, mainly to glean reliable information on the complicated situation. He had interviews with the prince of Orange. with Casimir who was there in the interests of Protestant Germany, with Anjou who came in his own interests or in those of France, and with Don John, who nominally governed the country in Philip’s name; the story that he instigated a plot to kidnap or murder Don John is without foundation. His letters betray discontent with Elizabeth’s reluctance to assist the States; he could not understand her antipathy to rebellious subjects, and he returned in October, having accomplished little.
In August 1581 he was sent on a second and briefer mission to Paris. Its object was to secure a solid Anglo-French alliance against Spain without the condition upon which Henry III. insisted, namely a marriage between Elizabeth and Anjou. The French government would not yield, and Walsingham came back, to be followed by Anjou who sought in personal interviews to overcome Elizabeth’s objections to matrimony. He, too, was unsuccessful; and a few months later he was dismissed with some English money and ostensible assurances of support. But secretly Elizabeth countermined his plans; unlike Walsing
ham, she would sooner have seen Philip remain master of the Netherlands than see them fall into the hands of France. His final embassy was to the court of James VI. ifl 1583, and here his vehement and suspicious Protestantism led him astray and provoked him into counterworking the designs of his own government. He was convinced that James was as hostile to Elizabeth as Mary herself, and failed to perceive that he was as inimical to popery as he was to presbyterianism. Elizabeth and Burghley were inclined to try an alliance with the Scottish king, and the event justified their policy, which Walsingham did his best to frustrate, although deserted on this occasion by his chief regular supporter, Leicester.
For the rest of his life Walsingham was mainly occupied in detecting and frustrating the various plots formed against Elizabeth’s life; and herein be achieved a success denied him in his foreign policy. He raised the English system of secret intelligence to a high degree of efficiency. At one time be is said to have had in his pay fifty-three agents at foreign courts, besides eighteen persons whose functions were even more obscure. Some of them were double spies, sold to both parties, whose real sentiments are still conjectural; but Walsingham was more successful in seducing Catholic spies than his antagonists were in seducing Protestant spies, and most of his information came from Catholics who betrayed one another. In his office in London men were trained in the arts of deciphering correspondence, feigning handwriting, and of breaking and repairing seals in such a way as to avoid detection. His spies were naturally doubtful characters, because the profession does not attract honest men; morality of methods can no more be expected from counterplotters than from plotters; and the prevalence of political or [next page]