Elizabethan Espionage *

Brief Historical Sketch
by Peter Dawkins, MA

In 1580 the Queen commissioned Francis Bacon, via Sir Thomas Bodley, to make report and compile notes of observations respecting the ‘laws, religion, military strength and whatsoever concerneth pleasure or profit’ in the countries of Europe. This was a specially-prepared 12-month tour of Italy, Spain, Germany and Denmark, to observe life and gather information, both for the Queen and for his own purposes. For the planning of the journey Francis was aided by his brother Anthony, who was able to advise, arrange contacts and prepare a route. Anthony returned briefly from France to England in November-December 1580 for this purpose, and then was sent back again to the continent, remaining abroad for the next eleven years (except for one visit to England in 1588) gathering political intelligence.

Francis left England sometime in the spring 1581 and was back home at Gray’s Inn by the beginning of April 1582. On his return to England he wrote up a report of his travels and findings for Lord Burghley and the Queen. This report, including additional information from his brother Anthony and Nicholas Faunt, was presented to the Queen as a State Paper entitled Notes on the Present State of Christendom. The countries covered included not just France, Italy and Spain, but also Austria, Germany, Portugal, Poland, Denmark and Sweden. Florence, Venice, Mantua, Genoa and Savoy are dealt with in most detail. Some of this information was used in the Shakespeare plays. (These Notes were not made available to the public until 1734.)

Cryptography was one of Francis’ interests, and he assisted Burghley and Walsingham with decoding various correspondence. He also invented some new ciphers, one of his earliest creations being the Biliteral cipher which he invented in his youth whilst at Paris, which later became the basis of the Morse code and the binary code of all computer technology today.

In 1581 Francis began his thirty-six years of Parliamentary service as a Member of Parliament. Other than this he seems to have led the life partly of a courtier and partly of a recluse, and we hear little of him until 1587, except that in March 1584 he visited Scotland, and on 10 February 1586 he became a Bencher of Gray’s Inn.

Nearly two years later, on 23 November 1587 Francis was appointed a Reader of Gray’s Inn. As a Reader he was allowed his own private chambers. In fact, just two days previous to this, confirming a grant made nine years earlier, several buildings were leased to Anthony and Francis Bacon for a term of fifty years, with leave to add additional rooms (which Francis eventually did). These buildings contained the original chambers of Sir Nicholas Bacon, which had been kept for Edward and Anthony Bacon’s use. By then Edward, Francis’ and Anthony’s half-brother, had ceased studying law and had acquired the lease of Twickenham Park from the Queen, as well as having estates elsewhere. Since Anthony was still abroad, this meant that Francis had the unimpeded use of all the chambers, both to live in and to pursue his great project. Conveniently, the Great Library of Gray’s Inn was adjacent to and on the same level as Francis' chambers.

From that time onwards we learn that Francis was regularly associated with other gentlemen of Gray’s Inn in devising and presenting masques and entertainments at Gray’s Inn and the royal Court at Greenwich, and writing speeches and devices to be used in the Queen’s Accession Day Tilts.

Francis’ movements tended to oscillate between Gray’s Inn, the royal Court when he was in attendance on the Queen, and Twickenham Lodge. The latter was situated in Twickenham Park, the Crown property leased by Edward Bacon, with land leading down to the River Thames immediately opposite the Queen’s palace of Richmond. The lodge with its park was a tranquil and beautiful place where Francis could write in peace, together with his friends and ‘good pens’.

It was almost certainly here and at Gray’s Inn that Bacon began writing, in 1588, the extraordinary series of plays that were later (from 1598 onwards) published under the pseudonymous mask of ‘William Shakespeare’.

Edward seems to have allowed Francis the use of Twickenham Lodge whenever he wanted, and in November 1595 Francis took over the lease himself. Gorhambury, the fine country house and estate at St Albans, although owned by Anthony Bacon, was, under the terms of Sir Nicholas Bacon’s will, Lady Anne Bacon’s home and residence until she should die. It was, in any case, rather far from London, whereas Twickenham Park was close to the city and linked to it by river. All the main royal palaces and noblemen’s houses in or just outside London, from Greenwich to Hampton Court Palace, fronted onto this one great Thames thoroughfare. Twickenham Lodge was thus an ideal place. Francis had the use of it and part of its park until 1607, when the lease was surrendered to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, the new owner.

1588 saw the Spanish Armada approach the coast of England in July and suffer defeat, and the Earl of Leicester’s fever and death in September. Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, took on the mantle of his step-father, becoming Elizabeth’s principal favourite, and Leicester House became Essex House.

In 1591 Francis appears to have almost given up his fruitless suit with Burghley and the Queen, threatening that if his Lordship would not carry him on he would sell the small inheritance he had in order to purchase some means of quick revenue, and thereby give up all care of service (i.e. to Burghley and the Queen) in order to become some ‘sorry bookmaker or a true pioneer in that mine of truth which (Anaxagoras) said lay so deep’. Suspecting Burghley’s motives, Francis tried to make it absolutely clear to his uncle that just as he had vast contemplative ends so he had moderate civil ends, and that he did not ‘seek or affect any place whereunto any that is nearer unto your Lordship shall be concurrent’. In this Francis was particularly referring to his hunchback cousin, Robert Cecil, Burghley’s son by his second wife, Mildred, the sister of Lady Ann Bacon. Besides being Lord Treasurer and Master of the Court of Wards, the most lucrative office in the land, Burghley was doing his best to advance Robert as high and as quickly as possible to a similar status, although unlike Francis (and Burghley himself) Robert had no official legal training. Not without cause it was the astute but wily Robert Cecil who, seen from the point of view of Francis Bacon, provided the character study for the hunchback King Richard in the Shakespeare play of Richard III.

Richard III was written in 1591 and first performed in 1592. One of Francis’ main endeavours in his work was not only to study human nature and raise the level of people’s consciousness, but to improve people’s moral behaviour and purge corruption from wherever it might lurk—including corruption in high places. His ideal was to discover truth and practice philanthropy; and, like the Ancients, to teach wisdom through entertainment.

One of the main points about the Shakespeare plays is that they hold a mirror up to human nature, so that both good and bad might be seen for what they are and what they do. Each character in the plays embodies qualities and characteristics drawn from real life, and sometimes the analogies go close to the bone. Increasingly, from 1591 onwards, the Shakespeare plays subtly attacked or satirised the abuses and weaknesses of the Cecil combo and others, even the Queen, as well as of society in general.

However, Francis did carry on serving the Queen with his legal and political advice, and with the use of his pen, and about this time (perhaps in response to his letter to Burghley threatening to retire) she made him Queen’s Counsel Extraordinary—an honorary, unpaid position with duties that were not clearly defined, except that examining prisoners suspected of treason or other grave offences, protecting the Queen’s interests and drawing up official reports were some of the services Francis was called upon to perform. Moreover, it was about this time that the Queen asked Francis to assist Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, as an advisor.

Francis had in fact already struck up a good friendship with Essex. The Earl at that time was the foremost favourite of the Queen and, with his sparkling charisma and gallantry, popular with the people. Francis set out to assist Essex in every way possible, believing him to be ‘the fittest instrument to do good to the state’. Essex in turn promised to help Francis, such as with his suit to the Queen and in obtaining other patronage. Ultimately this turned out to be a perilous mistake for Francis. Essex’s temperament was so hot-headed and imperious that rather than helping Francis he repeatedly made matters worse, with the Queen and he clashing like gladiators.

Burghley and Robert Cecil came to loathe him, resulting in their admitted policy of doing their utmost to block the advancement of any of his friends, including the Bacon brothers. It was Essex’s character that was used as the model for the fiery, gallant Hotspur in Henry IV, about which Essex complained to the Queen, saying that Francis and Anthony Bacon ‘print me and make me speak to the world, and shortly they will play me in what form they list upon the stage’. However, most importantly, it was with the group of writers that were associated with or were to become associated with Essex and his friends that Francis had already launched his literary endeavours.

The Essex group, which had been linked with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir Philip Sydney until their deaths in the 1580’s, and with the Areopagitae of English poets that used to meet at Leicester House (later Essex House), included the Earl of Oxford, the Earl of Southampton, Lord Mountjoy, Lady Frances Essex, Penelope Rich, Elizabeth Vernon and Mary Sydney, the Countess of Pembroke, all of whom periodically resided at Essex House.

Associated with them were the circle of poets, writers and dramatists patronised by Essex, Southampton and the Pembrokes, who included Samuel Daniel, Ben Jonson, John Florio, George Wither, Edmund Spenser, Thomas Nashe and John Lyly. The other ‘University Wits’—Thomas Lodge, George Peele, Robert Greene and Christopher Marlowe were also connected with this group—the wits who acknowledged Shakespeare (but not the actor Shakspere) as their head.

Southampton—a scholar, poet, gentleman and soldier, and a patron of poets, scholars and playwrights, and of libraries and places of learning—considered himself to be, like Essex, the successor to Philip Sydney. To Southampton was dedicated, in 1593, the ‘first heir’ of Shakespeare’s ‘invention’—the erotic narrative poem Venus and Adonis. His wife, Elizabeth Vernon, was Essex’s cousin. Essex’s wife, Frances, was the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham and widow of Sir Philip Sydney. Penelope Rich was Essex’s golden haired, black-eyed, beautiful sister, who had previously been considered as a bride for Sir Philip Sydney; but sadly her father died before the match could be arranged and her guardian (Huntingdon) married her in 1581 to ‘the rich Lord Rich’. Sydney remained passionately in love with Penelope all his life and addressed her as ‘Stella’ in his sonnets. After his death in 1586 Penelope became the mistress of Sir Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy.

Mary Sydney, Countess of Pembroke, was Sir Philip Sydney’s sister and the mother of ‘the Two Noble Brethren’ to whom the Shakespeare First Folio was dedicated. Her husband, Henry Herbert, the 2nd Earl of Pembroke, whose country estate at Wilton bordered on the Wiltshire River Avon, was the patron of his own professional acting company, the Lord Pembroke’s Men, who owned and performed the early Shakespeare plays. Mary was a devoted patroness of the arts and learning, and of poets, who saw to it that her brother’s epic poem Arcadia was completed and published after his death. The poet Samuel Daniel was a tutor to Mary’s eldest son, William Herbert.

John Florio, a poet and scholar, was a friend of Giordano Bruno who came to England in 1585. Florio, who was previously in the service of the Earl of Leicester, entered Southampton’s household in the early 1590’s. He tutored Essex in Italian whilst working on his own Italian-English dictionary and the English translation of the essays of Anthony Bacon’s friend, Michel de Montaigne. Influences from these essays are to be found in The Tempest, Hamlet and King Lear, whilst Florio himself is thought to be caricatured as Holofernes in Love’s Labour’s Lost. Florio’s wife was a sister of the poet Samuel Daniel.

Oxford, the hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain who was brought up as a ward of Burghley, was, as we have already seen (Chapter 8), noted as a poet and writer of comedies as well as being a patron of poets and dramatists, and of his own acting companies, Oxford’s Boys and Oxford’s Men. His harsh treatment of his wife, Anne Cecil, Burghley’s daughter, became a matter of great concern to the group of family and friends, as well as to the Queen, who between them contrived an eventual reunion of the couple. Much of All’s Well That Ends Well, written in 1598, ten years after Anne’s death in 1588 and seven years after Oxford’s second marriage to Elizabeth Trentham in 1591, is largely based upon Oxford’s marriage to Anne. The play’s title was first recorded in Francis Bacon’s private notebook in 1594.

The novelist and dramatist John Lyly, who had been at Cambridge University at the same time as the Bacon brothers, entered the service of the Earl of Oxford as Oxford’s secretary from 1580 onwards, writing plays for Oxford’s Boys from 1583 to 1590. The style of Love’s Labour’s Lost was derived from Lyly’s romance, Eupheus, the Anatomy of Wit, published in 1578. Lyly eventually became one of Anthony Bacon’s ‘good pens’ at Essex House. Later, however, he was suspected of being a spy at Essex House, acting for Burghley.

In February 1592 Anthony Bacon returned home from the continent. Anthony, whom Francis called his ‘dearest brother’ and ‘comfort’, shared Francis’ aspirations. His main love was literary and, like his brother, he was a secret poet, known only as such to his friends, as revealed in their letters to him. But his wit and his talents as a multi-linguist were much in demand, and he put them at the service of the Queen and Burghley, who sent him on his twelve-year mission. All the time he was abroad he kept in constant correspondence with his brother Francis as well as with his uncle and Sir Francis Walsingham.

Anthony Bacon’s foreign contacts were wide-spread and he enjoyed friendship in many high places, ‘being a gentleman whose ability the world taketh knowledge of for matters of state, specially foreign’. His contacts and friendship with Henri of Navarre, later Henri IV of France, were later incorporated into the Shakespeare play, Love’s Labour’s Lost, as also was the result of his association with the King of Spain’s Secretary of State, Antonio Perez, who defected to England and upon whom the character of Don Adriana de Armado is based.
When Anthony returned to England he joined his brother at Gray’s Inn, and started to pour all his energy and financial resources into his brother’s project whilst at the same time continuing his intelligence work. Together the brothers formed a scrivenery of secretaries and writers to assist them, dealing with political intelligence, cryptography, translations of correspondence and books in foreign languages and the classics, invention of new words, and literature generally. The Shakespeare plays took off in earnest.

With Anthony back in England with his brother, it soon became clear to them that their uncle Burghley, far from helping them as much as he had repeatedly promised, in return for their services, had in fact been holding back on his help, blocking Francis’ advancement and taking most of the credit for Anthony’s intelligence work to himself. He was full of promises and pleasant words to the brothers, but time proved that he did not exert himself much on their behalf or give much in return, and in fact was suspicious and at times antagonistic towards them. He and the Queen took all but gave little. He was the Queen’s chief counsellor and friend, and in charge of the Queen’s treasury and the lucrative Court of Wards. She held Francis in special regard and affection, and used him ‘in her greatest causes’. Francis’ official and financial situation could and should have been different, as also Anthony’s: they had both served the Queen and Burghley faithfully and unceasingly. As it was, it was hard, with Lady Fortune (the ‘Dark Lady’ of the Shakespeare Sonnets) acting many times cruelly.

In 1593, just as ‘Shakespeare’ as a name was launched onto the public scene for the first time with the scholarly poem Venus and Adonis, Francis (as an MP representing Middlesex)) dared to stand up in Parliament against an attempt by the Queen and Burghley to take away Parliament’s vitally important prerogative of raising taxes. Thanks to Francis’ oratory and arguments, the proposals of the Queen’s Government were rejected on this constitutional issue. Elizabeth was furious and Francis was made to feel her displeasure, being denied access to her presence, which hitherto he had enjoyed with an unusual freedom. She told him ‘that he must nevermore look to her for favour or promotion’.

Such a royal excommunication precipitated a major crisis for Francis, who supported himself and his literary work mainly by loans and credit; and, although helped by his mother and Anthony, who sold two estates to assist Francis (and eventually beggared himself on his brother’s behalf), Francis was driven by necessity to practice law seriously. So it was that on 25 January 1594 Francis pleaded his first case in the King’s Bench, with others to follow. His first pleading was so successful that Burghley, content with Francis as a lawyer and pressured by his own family who had taken pity on Francis’ predicament, undertook to make a report ‘where it might do him the most good’.

The Queen played a game of punishment or reward with Francis, trying to make him her creature in all ways, including the Parliamentary one. In 1594 the position of Attorney-General fell vacant and was kept vacant for a whole year, and several times it was intimated to Francis that the Queen might appoint him to this position and that it was only his conduct in Parliament that stood in the way. Essex, eager to help Francis, urged the Queen to appoint him to this position. But Francis would not recant, and there were other factors afoot. Robert Cecil suggested to Essex that if Sir Edward Coke, the Solicitor-General, were to be appointed as Attorney-General, which he felt the Queen would prefer, then perhaps Francis might be content with the lesser position of Solicitor-General instead. But Essex would not have it. Only the higher office would do for the friend of Essex! As Essex saw it, his own reputation was at stake. The result was that the Attorney-Generalship went instead to Coke, and Francis was also by-passed for the office of Solicitor-General.

Essex was mortified by this result, feeling it as a matter of pride, and bestowed on Francis a gift of land in Twickenham in recompense for what he felt was his failure to help his friend. Francis was able to raise money on the land to ease his situation (later he sold it).

But, despite the fact that (or perhaps because) Francis thought of retiring to Cambridge with a couple of men to spend his life in studies and contemplation, matters between him and the Queen did improve that year. In the summer the Queen appointed him one of her Counsel learned in the Law and conferred on him some woodland in Somerset at a nominal rent. Then for her Accession Day celebration on 17 November 1594 he wrote The Device of the Indian Prince, filled with flattering and adulatory references to the Queen, which helped to reconcile her to Essex (who had, thanks to a book published abroad, been under a shadow of suspicion concerning his influence with the Queen upon the matter of succession). The Device was sponsored by Essex and took place at York House. It was so successful that her Majesty was extremely pleased. She was reconciled to Francis and on that very day the reversion of the lease of certain lands in Twickenham Park was made over to him—a concession on the basis of which he could raise some more money to satisfy his creditors for awhile.

Creditors were a continual problem, as Francis’s project was costly and he never ever had enough money. His brother Anthony was the main source of his help on this matter. The friendship between the two brothers, and the difficulties they endured through being forced year after year to raise loans from usurers, and the eventual bankruptcy of Anthony on his brother’s behalf, was strongly reflected in the Shakespeare play, The Merchant of Venice. In the play Antonio is a good caricature of Anthony, who did trade abroad (but in intelligence rather than merchandise) and who hazarded all for his brother’s sake; and Bassanio of Francis, whose ‘Portia’ he sought after was, in a philosophical sense, Wisdom on her Mountain of Beauty (‘Belmont’), and in a personal sense, his rich cousin, Lady Hatton (see below). Many times either one or the other brother had to attend court and pay the forfeits demanded for late repayment of the loans. Being a lawyer and ‘learned in the law’, Francis often pleaded his own case. He was even arrested for debt at one time (September 1598), unjustly as it happened, because of the maliciousness of a particular debtor, and had to be rescued from the awful possibility of incarceration in the Fleet.

In 1595 Francis ‘knit’ Anthony’s service to the Earl of Essex. As a result, in August 1595 Anthony moved into Essex House to act as the Earl’s ‘Secretary of State’, partly in the hope of counter-balancing the increased power base of the Cecil faction. 1595 was the year in which the Lord Treasurer Burghley completed his personal coup d’état by seeing his son Robert, who was knighted in 1591 and made a member of the Privy Council, and who had been unofficially filling the vacant office of Secretary of State for several years, achieve the politically powerful position of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. This climb to power culminated the following year when Robert was officially made the Principal Secretary of State, cementing the father-son combo which together held the reins of power in the Queen’s Government. (When Burghley died in 1598, Robert continued as Secretary of State, maintaining his position of power.)

Only two years later, in 1597, a hazardous situation arose, in which the Shakespeare play of Richard II was involved. Again, this had to do with the royal succession, but this time it was a question of the deposing and ‘voluntary’ abdication of a king. Clearly, when first performed the historical deposition scene was included; but the Queen was both horrified and incensed by it, seeing herself regarded by certain of her courtiers as ‘Richard’ and Essex as ‘Bolingbroke’. Subsequently the play was performed with the offending deposition scene omitted, and both it and other plays which followed were published with the name of ‘William Shakespeare’ appearing on their title pages for the first time.

The actor Will Shakspere suddenly acquired a lot of money, reportedly from the Earl of Southampton, and set himself up in Stratford-upon-Avon with a fine house and trading business, and Essex continued in the Queen’s high favour. It was also in that year that Francis had a book published under his own name of ‘Francis Bacon’ for the first time, this being the first version of his Essays, which he dedicated with affection to his ‘Loving and beloved Brother’, Anthony, referring to Anthony as ‘you that are next myself’.

Anthony was not the only person Francis loved deeply, howbeit as a brother, friend and partner in his grand scheme. Francis was also enamoured of his cousin, Elizabeth Cecil, one of Burghley’s grand-daughters, with whom he had flirted when younger. He continued his friendship with Elizabeth after she was married to Sir William Hatton in 1594, which deepened over the years. When Elizabeth was widowed in 1597 Francis courted her seriously, requesting her hand in marriage. But another disappointment was in store, and once again Sir Edward Coke, now Attorney-General and wealthy, won the day.

In 1599 trouble between the Queen and Essex flared up dangerously, Essex consistently acting against the advice of both Francis and Anthony, who urged Essex not to seek a military position and not to go to Ireland at the head of the English army—both of which he did. Just before Essex set out for Ireland in March 1599, a potentially volatile situation arose for both Francis and Essex in which the Shakespeare play of Richard II was again involved. This time a book based on the play had been published by a young doctor of civil law, John Hayward, a friend of both Essex and Bacon, which in its preface likened Essex to Bolingbroke and seemed to exhort Essex to rise up against the Queen and usurp the throne. Hayward was arrested and Francis was immediately called before the Queen to explain and sort matters out, the Queen seemingly knowing of Francis’ authorship of the Shakespeare play. Fifteen months later Francis was again involved on the same subject, when Essex was arraigned before the Queen’s Council on a charge of disobeying Her Majesty’s orders in Ireland. Francis, as one of the Queen’s Counsel, was given the specific role of charging Essex concerning the use of Hayward’s book, a role to which he objected, remarking that ‘it would be said that I gave in evidence mine own tales’.

When all this culminated in February 1601 with Essex’s abortive attempt to raise an armed insurrection against the Queen and her government, which led to his trial for treason and subsequent execution (25 February 1601), the Bacon brothers were devastated. Both of them had been misled for several years by Essex, who had been secretly plotting and preparing his insurrection, and they only learnt the full truth during and after the trial. Both brothers had worked hard to try to prove the supposed innocence of Essex, and Francis did all he could to mediate with the Queen on Essex’s behalf, right up to the end, at the expense of his own relationship with her. Francis was ordered by the Queen to take part in the trial as her Counsel Learned, to assist the State Prosecutor. As if these tragic events were not enough, a few months after Essex’s execution Anthony, who had not been well, was reported to have died (27 May 1601).

Queen Elizabeth was to go to her grave just two years later (24 March 1603), and in July 1603 King James IV of Scotland was crowned King James I of England. Anthony Bacon had over the years done some good service for the Scottish king, and Francis, who pleaded his case as a ‘concealed poet’ who was for the most part one with his brother in ‘endeavour and duties’, was helped by King James as a result.

In Queen Elizabeth’s reign Francis had been continually by-passed in terms of being given a position where he could command both a sufficient income and influence for the needs of his great project, and his service under the Tudor queen had gone largely unpaid, except for the promise of the reversion of the position of Clerk to the Star Chamber when it became vacant, the granting under favourable terms of the lease of Twickenham Park, which became Francis’ favourite retreat and home for his scrivenery, the lease of the Rectory of Cheltenham, and the payment of a fee of £1200 for his services at Essex’s trial. With James, after a cautious start, it was to be different.

The Stuart king soon came to rely on Francis’ exceptional talents and to recognise them officially; but, as with Elizabeth, it was primarily in the highways and byways of law that he drew Francis’ services to him, although Francis eventually became the principal adviser to the King on all matters. (Not that James always took notice of the advice: if he had done so more often, many unfortunate situations might have been avoided, including the mismanagement and rape of Ireland.) http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/walsingham.html