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 was thrown into the Fleet prison. ‘Surely,’ wrote Leicester, ‘there was never a falser creature, a more seditious wretch, than Wilkes. He is a villain, a devil, without faith or religion’, (, ii. 160–5, 185–7, 235–7, 252, 277–9).

Wilkes did not remain in prison long, but the queen's displeasure forbade his resuming his duties as clerk of the council. In January 1587–8, and again on 13 July, he petitioned for restoration to favour (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1581–90, pp. 457, 502). In August he was sent on a mission to Alexander of Parma (Acts P. C. 1588, p. 213), and on 29 Oct. he was returned to parliament for Southampton. The death of Leicester removed his bitterest foe, and on 4 Aug. 1589 he resumed his place as clerk of the council (ib. 1589–90, p. 11). In May 1590 he was again sent to the Netherlands to renew and amend the treaties with England (instructions in Cotton. MS. Galba D, vii. 131, 143). He remained there four months, making various proposals to the states and receiving their answers in October (Harl. MS. 287, ff. 166, 173, 176, 179, 183;, Letters and Memorials, i. 301–16). On 1 Jan. 1590–1 it was reported that he was to be sworn secretary of state (Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. app. p. 335). From March to July 1592 he was employed in an embassy to France to obtain some towns in guarantee for the help sent to Henry of Navarre by Elizabeth; during this mission Henry, remembering Wilkes's early services, knighted him. On 19 Feb. 1592–3 he was returned to parliament for Southampton, and in July he was once more sent to the French king ‘to dissuade him from revolt in religion, and, in case his conversion should be performed, to deal with him for a continuance of his conjunction with her majesty against Spain, and for matters concerning her troops in Brittany, in which negotiation he obtained an alliance with her majesty, offensive and defensive, against the king of Spain’ (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1591–4, pp. 399–400; instructions in Cotton. MS. Cal. E, ix. 35–41). In September 1594 he was selected for an important embassy to the archduke at Brussels ‘relating to the Spanish power in the Netherlands;’ he was also to complain of the treasons of Dr. Lopez and others, and to demand the extradition of Sir William Stanley, Charles Paget, Holt, Gifford, and Dr. Worthington. On 14 Oct. the archduke granted him a passport, couched in such terms that on the 30th the English council declined to proceed with the negotiation. This seems to have been a pretext, the real reason being the hostility of the Dutch and French to Elizabeth's proposals (see Cotton. MS. Vespasian C, viii. 234–40; Hatfield MSS. v. 11–12, 19).

For the next three years Wilkes was occupied with his duties as clerk to the council and matters of domestic policy, but in February 1597–8 he was despatched on another embassy with Sir Robert Cecil to the French king (instructions in Cotton. MS. Julius F, vi. 94). They landed at Dieppe and proceeded to Rouen, where Wilkes, who had been ill for some time, died on 2 March 1597–8 (, Letters and Memorials, ii. 94), leaving a widow, Margaret, daughter of Ambrose Smith of London, by his wife Joan, daughter of John Coe of Coggeshall, Essex (Visit. Leicestershire, 1619, p. 66). In addition to Wilkes's voluminous despatches in the record office, Cottonian and other manuscripts in the British Museum, he wrote ‘A Briefe and Summary Tractate shewing what apperteineth to the Place, Dignity, and Office of a councellour of estate in a Monarchy or other Commonwealth,’ dedicated to Sir Robert Cecil, and extant in British Museum Stowe MS. 287.

[Brit. Mus. Cotton., Harl., Lansdowne, and Addit. MSS. passim; Cal. State Papers, Dom., For., and Spanish Series; Acts of the Privy Council, ed. Dasent; Hatfield MSS. vols. ii–vii.; Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. app. passim; Leycester Corresp. and Camden Miscellany, vol. iv. (Camden Soc.); Collins's Letters and Memorials, i. 273, 325–7, 329, 350; Digges's Compleat Ambassador; Corresp. of Sir Henry Unton (Roxburghe Club); Official Ret. Memb. of Parl.; D'Ewes's Journals; Camden's Annales; Wood's Fasti, i. 188; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Meteren's Hist. van der Nederlanderen, 10 vols. Breda, 1748–63; Wagenaar's Vaterlandsche Hist. 21 vols. Amsterdam, 1749–59; Kervyn de Lettenhove's Relations politiques des Pays-Bas et de l'Angleterre, 10 vols. 1882–91; Motley's United Netherlands, vol. ii.; Froude's Hist. of England.] 

WILKIE, DAVID (1785–1841), painter, was born at Cults, on the banks of Eden Water, in the county of Fife, on 18 Nov. 1785. He came of an old Midlothian stock, being the third son of David Wilkie, minister of Cults. His mother, a third wife, was Isabella, daughter of James Lister, farmer, of Pitlessie Mill, about a mile from Cults. Wilkie's artistic bias was manifest almost from his infancy. He ‘could draw,’ he says of himself, ‘before he could read, and paint before he could spell;’ and he began early to adorn the walls of his nursery with rude cartoons, and to scrawl upon the floor primitive portraits in chalk of the visitors to the manse or the adjoining kirk. Soon he went on to