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 church of St. Mary Aldermanbury, in which parish he doubtless resided. His wife Joyce, his brother Sir Edmund, and Henry White, one of the under-sheriffs of London, were his executors. To his son Francis, who was at the time in his infancy, he left his manor of Foot's Cray. Walsingham's wife, Joyce, daughter of Sir Edmund Denny of Cheshunt, was twenty-seven years of age at the date of his death. By her Walsingham had, with his only son Francis, five daughters, all of whom married; the youngest daughter, Mary, was wife of Sir Walter Mildmay [q. v.], chancellor of the exchequer to Queen Elizabeth, and founder of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Walsingham's widow subsequently married Sir John Carey of Plashy, who was knighted by Edward VI in 1547; her second husband died in 1552.

Francis was born about 1530, either in London, in the parish of St. Mary Aldermanbury, or in Kent, at Chislehurst or Foot's Cray. He matriculated as a fellow-commoner of King's College, Cambridge, in November 1548, and seems to have regularly resided in the university till Michaelmas 1550 (information from the provost of King's College). He apparently took no degree. In 1552 he was admitted a student of Gray's Inn. Brought up as a zealous protestant, he left the country on the accession of Queen Mary, and remained abroad until she ceased to reign. He put to advantage his five years' sojourn in foreign countries. He studied with intelligent zeal the laws, languages, and polities of the chief states of Europe, and thus acquired the best possible training for a political and diplomatic career. At the same time he developed a staunch protestant zeal, which influenced his political views through life.

The accession of Queen Elizabeth recalled him to England, and he at once entered the political arena. He sat for Banbury in the parliament which assembled on 23 Jan. 1558–9, and was re-elected by the same constituency to the parliament which met on 1 Jan. 1562–3, but he preferred to sit for Lyme Regis, for which town he was returned at the same time. He represented Lyme Regis until 1567. He took no prominent part in the proceedings of the House of Commons, but his knowledge of foreign affairs recommended him to the notice of the lord treasurer, Cecil, and he was soon confidentially employed in obtaining secret intelligence from foreign correspondents. He had numerous acquaintances in France and Italy, and showed from the first exceptional dexterity in extracting information from them. On 20 Aug. 1568 he was able to communicate to Lord Burghley a list of all persons arriving in Italy during the preceding three months who might be justly suspected of hostility to Elizabeth or her government (Cal. Hatfield MSS. i. 361). Next year, although he held no official appointment, he acted as chief organiser of the English government's secret service in London, and to his sagacity was partly due the unravelling of the plot of which the Italian merchant Roberto di Ridolfi [q. v.] was the leading spirit. In October and November 1569 Ridolfi was detained as a prisoner in Walsingham's house in London. For a time the Italian's astuteness baffled Walsingham's skill in cross-examination, and he was set at liberty to carry his nefarious designs many steps further before they were finally exposed and thwarted.

In the autumn of 1570 Walsingham was for the first time formally entrusted with public duties commensurate in dignity with his talents and experience. He was sent to Paris to second the efforts of Sir Henry Norris, the resident ambassador at the French court, in pressing on the French government the necessity of extending an unqualified toleration to the Huguenots (11 Aug. 1570;, Compleat Ambassador). The task was thoroughly congenial to Walsingham; for he held the conviction that it was England's mission to nurture protestantism on the continent—especially in France and the Low Countries—and to free it from persecution. The French government gave satisfactory assurances, and Walsingham returned to London. But by the end of the year delicate negotiations on the subject of the queen's marriage with Henri, duc d'Anjou, the brother of the French king, Charles IX, were opened with the French government, and Cecil saw the need of supplanting the English ambassador Norris by an envoy of greater astuteness. In December 1570 Walsingham revisited Paris to take Norris's place. He believed in the wisdom of maintaining friendly relations with France in view of the irrevocable hostility of Spain, but he regarded it as essential to English interests for England to seek definite and substantial guarantees that the English queen's marriage with a catholic should not weaken the position of protestantism either in England or in France. He was sanguine that the Huguenots would ultimately sway the councils of France, and that, if the marriage scheme were prudently negotiated, France might be induced to aid the protestants in the Low Countries in their efforts to release themselves from the Spanish yoke. Facts hardly justified such prognostications; but, though Walsingham's strong personal