Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/240

 office of secretary of state jointly with Sir Thomas Smith. He was sworn in on the following day, and retained the post till his death. Shortly after his appointment as secretary he resumed his place in the House of Commons, being elected M.P. for Surrey, in succession to Charles Howard, who was called to the upper house as Lord Howard of Effingham. Walsingham retained that seat for life, being re-elected in 1584, 1586, and 1588.

As the queen's principal secretary, Walsingham shared with Lord-treasurer Burghley most of the administrative responsibilities of government. But he mainly divided with Burghley the conduct of foreign affairs—a department of government which was finally controlled in all large issues by the queen herself. His work was mainly that of a secretary of state for foreign affairs in the cabinet of an active despot. His advice was constantly invited, but was rarely acted on. The diplomatic representatives of the country abroad received most of their instructions from him, and he strenuously endeavoured to organise a secret service on so thorough a basis that knowledge of the most furtive designs of the enemies of England—and especially of England's chief enemy, Spain—might be freely at the command of his sovereign and his fellow-ministers. He practised most of the arts that human ingenuity has devised in order to gain political information. ‘Knowledge is never too dear,’ was his favourite maxim, and he devoted his private fortune to maintaining his system of espionage in fullest efficiency. At one time he had in his pay fifty-three private agents in foreign courts, besides eighteen spies who performed functions that could not be officially defined. From all parts of England intelligence reached him almost daily. A list of ‘the names of sundrie forren places, from whence Mr. Secretary Walsingham was wont to receive his advertisements,’ enumerated thirteen towns in France, seven in the Low Countries, five each in Italy and in Spain, nine in Germany, three in the United Provinces, and three in Turkey (, Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham, i. 95 n.) His system of espionage was worked with a Macchiavellian precision at home and abroad. ‘He would cherish a plot some years together, admitting the conspirators to his own and the queen's presence familiarly, but dogging them out watchfully: his spies waited on some men every hour for three years: and lest they could not keep council, he dispatched them to forraign parts, taking in new servants’. One of his most confidential associates was Thomas Phelippes, an expert in deciphering, at whose house he was a frequent visitor. He was commonly represented to outshoot the jesuits with their own bow, and to carry the art of equivocation beyond the limits that were familiar to the envoys of the Vatican. ‘Tell a lie and find a truth’ was a Spanish proverb that was held by his contemporaries truthfully to describe his conversation with his fellow-diplomatists and all suspected persons. His methods, which were those of all the politicians of contemporary Europe, and cannot claim the distinction of genuine originality, relieved Elizabeth and the country of an extraordinary series of imminent perils, with which they were menaced by catholic zealots. It is inevitable that catholic writers should suggest that much of the evidence which he amassed against suspected catholics was suborned and fraudulent. Many of his agents were men of abandoned character, but Walsingham was keenly alive to their defects, and never depended solely on their uncorroborated testimony. In no instance that has been adduced is there conclusive proof that he strained law or justice against those whom his agents brought under his observation. He patiently and very narrowly watched the development of events before recommending decisive action.

Elizabeth, although she treated Walsingham's political advice with scant respect, showed him in the early days of his secretariate many personal attentions. On 1 Dec. 1577 she knighted him at Windsor Castle. At the new year following she accepted from him a gown of blue satin, and sent him in return sixty and a half ounces of gilt plate. On 22 April 1578 he was constituted chancellor of the order of the Garter.

Walsingham's general views of foreign policy underwent no change on his promotion to the office of secretary. Elizabeth must be spurred into open resistance of Spain in the Low Countries and throughout the world. France might possibly prove an ally in the pursuit of England's arch-enemy; but whether France joined her or no, England's duty and interest, as far as her attitude to Spain went, were the same. At home Spanish catholic intrigues, of which Queen Mary Stuart was the centre, must be exposed and defeated, even at the cost, if need be, of Queen Mary's life. No effort was to be spared to bring Scotland, under James VI, into friendly relations with England. But Walsingham had little influence with Elizabeth, and Lord Burghley was inclined to temporise on most of the great foreign questions in regard to which