Sir Francis Walsingham | Timeline

Sir Francis Walsingham, (c. 1532, Kent, England—died April 6, 1590, London), English statesman and diplomat who was the principal secretary (1573–90) to Queen Elizabeth I and became legendary for creating a highly effective intelligence network. He successfully thwarted England’s foreign enemies and exposed domestic plotters who sought to unseat Elizabeth and return a Roman Catholic monarch to the throne. Anticipating methods that would become routine only centuries later in the world’s intelligence services, Walsingham employed double agents, covert propaganda and disinformation, code breaking, and agents provocateurs to advance English interests. His efforts culminated in the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587. (Intro from Britannica.com)

January(?) 1(?), 1532 - Foots Cray, Kent - Francis Walsingham is born
August 1(?), 1548 - Cambridge - Francis matriculates at King's College, with many other Protestants but as an undergraduate of high social status did not sit for a degree
September 29, 1550 - Cambridge - Walsingham leaves Cambridge without completing his Course
January 28, 1553 - Gray's Inn, London - Enrols at Gray's Inn, one of the qualifying bodies for English Lawyers
July 6, 1553 - Gray's Inn, London - King Edward VI dies, aged 15. His will declared Lady Jane Grey as his heir
August 1, 1553 - Gray's Inn, London - The Catholic Mary I becomes Queen. As a wealthy Protestant, Walsingham decides to flee England
December 1(?), 1555 - Padua, Italy - Walsingham studies Civil Law at the University of Padua, where he is elected "Consolarius" - the official representative of the students comprising the English "nation" in the faculty of Civil Law
April 1(?), 1556 - Basel, Switzerland - Continues his studies in Law at the University of Basel
November 1(?), 1558 - Basel, Switzerland - After Elizabeth I, a Protestant, becomes Queen, Walsingham leaves Basel on his way to England
January 23, 1559 - Westminster, London - Walsingham is elected to Elizabeth's first Parliament as the member for Bossiney, Cornwall =(START)
January 1(?), 1562 - London - Walsingham marries Anne Barne, daughter of the Lord Mayor of London in 1552-53
January(?) 1(?), 1563 - London - Walsingham is re-elected to the Parliament, as a member for Lyme Regis, Dorset and Banbury, Oxfordshire. He chose to sit for Lyme Regis
January(?) 1(?), 1564 - London - Anne Barne dies, leaving her son, Christopher Carleill, in Walsingham's care
January(?) 1(?), 1566 - London - Walsingham marries Ursula St.Barbe, Sit Richard Worsley's widow
January(?) 1(?), 1567 - London - Walsingham's daughter Frances is born. His two stepsons, Ursula's sons, John and George, are killed in a gunpowder accident at Appuldurcombe, Isle of Wight
January(?) 1(?), 1569 - London - Walsingham works with William Cecil to counteract plots against the Queen
January(?) 1(?), 1570 - London - Elizabeth chooses Walsingham to support the Huguenots in their negotiations with Charles IX of France
August(?) 1(?), 1570 - London - Succeeds Sir Henry Norris as English ambassador in Paris
January(?) 1(?), 1571 - London - Walsingham is instrumental in the collapse of the Ridolfi Plot - Guerau de Spes, the spanish ambassador, is expelled
May 25, 1571 - Paris - Ambassador in Paris -  correspondence with Lord Burghley
October 1(?), 1571 - Paris - Elizabeth's ambassador in Paris - negotiations for a marriage with the Duke of Anjou, Charles IX's younger brother
August 23, 1572 - Paris - Walsingham hides Huguenots in is house during the St.Bartholomew Day Massacre. He also provides refuge to many englishmen, one of them, was probably young Walter Raleigh.
January 1(?), 1573 - Paris(?) - After escaping to England with their 4-year old daughter, Ursula gives birth to a second girl, Mary, while Walsingham is still in France
April 1(?), 1573 - London - Walsingham returns to England, having established himself as a competent official whom the Queen and Cecil could trust
December 1(?), 1573 - London - Walsingham is appointed to the Privy Council of England and made joint principal secretary (Secretary of State) with Sir Thomas Smith
January(?) 1(?), 1576 - London - Sir Thomas Smith retires, leaving Walsingham in effective control of the privy seal
November 28, 1577 - Windsor - Meeting with astrologist and occult philosopher John Dee
December 1, 1577 - London - Walsingham is knighted
April 22, 1578 - London - Walsingham is appointed Chancellor of the Order of the Garter
June 1(?), 1578 - Netherlands - Walsingham is sent on a special embassy to the Netherlands, to sound out a potential peace deal and gather military intelligence
October 1(?), 1578 - London - Return to London
July 1(?), 1580 - London(?) - Walsingham's younger daughter Mary dies, aged 7
June 1(?), 1581 - Paris - Walsingham is sent to France to discuss an Anglo-french alliance

March 23, 1582 - London - Raleigh returns to London and delivers his package to Walsingham (and probably to Queen Elizabeth)
May 1(?), 1582 - London - Letters from the spanish ambassador in England, Bernardino de Mendoza, to contacts in Scotland are found on a messenger, and forwarded to Walsingham
January 23, 1583 - Mortlake, London - John Dee's Diary: "The Right Honorable Mr.Secretary Walsingham came to my house, where by good luck he found Mr.Adrian Gilbert, and so we talk was begone of Northwest Straights discovery"
February 11, 1583 - London - John Dee's Diary: "the Quene lying at Richemond went to Mr. Secretary Walsingham to dynner; she coming by my dore gratiously called me to her, and so I went by her horse side as far as where Mr. Hudson dwelt"
February 18, 1583 - Mortlake, London - Walsingham visits astrologist and occultist John Dee
April 1(?), 1583 - London - The catholic priest and philosopher Giordano Bruno, an english spy, begins operating in Ambassador Mauvissière's house under the name Henry Fagot

April 15(?), 1583 - Greenwich - Walsingham discovers that Henry Howard was paying clandestine midnight visits to the house of Mauvissière, the French ambassador, and that Mauvissière was secretly corresponding with and sending money to Mary Stuart, queen of Scots, through the person of a man named Francis Throckmorton

April 20, 1583 - Greenwich - Letter from Walsingham to Burghley (who had withdrawn to Theobalds after her daughter's death) on the Queen's behalf: "Her Majesty hath willed me to signify unto your Lordship that as she hath been pleased for a time to permit you to wrestle with nature … so now she thinketh that if the health of your body may so permit you, you should do better to occupy yourself in dealing in public affairs than by secluding yourself from access to give yourself over a prey to grief."

April 30(?), 1583 - Giordano Bruno arrives in England

May 27, 1583 - Theobalds, Hertfordshire - The Court moves to Burghley's palace at Theobalds, Hertfordshire
August 1(?), 1583 - Edinburgh, Scotland - Walsingham visits the Scottish court

August 18, 1583 - First news of the Throckmorton Plot
September 21, 1583 - Walsingham's elder daughter, Frances, marries Sir Philip Sidney

September 22, 1583 - Greenwich - Letter to the Earl of Leicester: "hear that there is a by-course in hand with Arran and the Colonel wherein Mr Ralegh is used for an instrument. I hope he is too wise to be used in any such indiscreet dealing. Your lordship may do well to give him advice to abstain from such by-courses"

September 30, 1583 - Greenwich - Letter to Bowes: "I learn that the by-course goeth forward, and is well hearkened unto, great assurances are given that the King shall be altogether at her Majesty’s devotion more firmly than ever before. I am sorry that Scotland should be able to abuse us with these vain entertainments." On the same day, he writes to the Earl of Leicester: "I am sorry that the well affected in Scotland shall be left as a prey unto their enemies. The distrust of some such like issue as is now fallen out made them loath to give ear, for that by experience they have found that we do but coldly back our friends. Sorry I am from the bottom of my heart that I have been made an instrument of ambush, which beside the touch of my own poor credit, will make men both there and elsewhere loath to deal with any of her Majesty’s ministers. The well-affected noblemen have no other way to save themselves but to make work unto Colonel Stewart and Arran, and to promise hereafter to forbear to have any other dealing with England, and to reconcile themselves unto the King’s mother. Whether this be good for her Majesty I leave to your Lordship’s consideration"

November 15, 1583 - Henry Fagot, alias Giordano Bruno, sits down at the Bull's Head Without Temple Bar with William Herle, one of Burghley's intelligencers (who had helped break open the Ridolfi Plot) and informs him that there is a well-advanced plot to launch an invasion of England, directed by the Duke of Guise and with support from the Pope. The aim is to assassinate Queen Elizabeth and place Mary Stuart on the throne of England. Bruno also identifies Francis Throckmorton and Henry Howard as being in active communication with Mary

November 19, 1583 - London - After six months of surveillance, Walsingham has Francis Throckmorton arrested, and then tortured to secure a confession - an admission of guilt that clearly implicated Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador

January 9, 1584 - Whitehall, London - Elizabeth expels the spanish Ambassador Mendoza, when he looses his temper and says that as he had "apparently failed to please [Elizabeth] as a minister of peace she would in future force me to try to satisfy her in war"
July 1(?), 1584 - Tyburn, London - Sir Francis Throckmorton is executed

July 2, 1584 - Letter to Stafford (about Elizabeth's last suitor's death): "We cannot yet shake off our sorrow […] There hath no day passed without tears, for these three weeks past"

July 10, 1584 - Prince William of Orange is assassinated in Delft, Netherlands
April 1(?), 1585 - Mary, Queen of Scots, is placed in the strict custody of Sir Amias Paulet, a friend of Walsingham
December 25, 1585 - Chartley - Mary I is moved to a moated manor house at Chartley. Walsingham instructed Paulet to open, read and pass to Mary unsealed any letters that she received, and to block any potential route for clandestine correspondence. In a successful attempt to entrap her, Walsingham arranged a single exception: a covert means for Mary's letters to be smuggled in and out of Chartley in a beer keg. Mary was misled into thinking these secret letters were secure, while in reality they were deciphered and read by Walsingham's agents
January(?) 1(?), 1586 - Dover - From 1586, he oversees the expansion and improvement of the port of Dover
July 1(?), 1586 - Anthony Babington writes to Mary about an impending plot to free her and kill Elizabeth. Mary's reply is clearly encouraging, and sanctions Babington's plans. 
August 11, 1586 - Edinburgh, Scotland - Mary, Queen of Scots is implicated in the Babington Conspiracy and arrested
October 10, 1586 - Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire - Mary is put on trial under the Act for the Surety of the Queen's Person in front of 36 commissioners, including Walsingham and Lord Burghley. Lord Burghley and Walsingham used the letter against Mary who refused to admit that she was guilty. But she was betrayed by her secretaries Nau and Curle who confessed under pressure that the letter was mainly truthful.

February 1, 1587 - Greenwich - Queen Elizabeth signs the warrant for Mary's execution

June 15, 1587 - London(?) - Walsingham becomes Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in addition to principal secretary
December 12, 1589 - London - Sir Francis Walsingham writes his will and testament
April 6, 1590 - London - Sir Francis Walsingham dies from testicular cancer, aged 58 =(END)