Her Majesty's Spymaster: Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the Birth of Modern Espionage (review)

Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth I's most famous "spymaster," is often regarded as the father-figure of the English secret service, a kind of Elizabethan prototype for MI6's 'C'. Such claims are not entirely accurate, but Walsingham's reputation as a spymaster—both among his contemporaries and in succeeding centuries—makes him a major figure in the history of intelligence. Despite something of a flurry of books on Elizabethan espionage in recent years, the standard biography of Walsingham remains the three-volume study by Conyers Read which was published in 1925. Stephen Budiansky's new book does not seek to change this state of affairs. Instead, he offers a brief and vivid insight into Walsingham's life and work. Starting with a detailed account of the notorious St Bartholomew's Day Massacre of Protestants in Paris in 1572 (which Walsingham survived by virtue of diplomatic immunity), Budiansky quickly sketches the nature of the Elizabethan political world in which Walsingham served as the Queen's Principal Secretary of State, before turning to focus upon the latter's pursuit of the two great intelligence targets of the day—the quest to find sufficient proof to force Elizabeth into trying and executing Mary Queen of Scots as a Catholic conspirator and the struggle to secure reliable information about Spanish naval preparations in the years leading up to the Gran Armada of 1588. Ultimately, Walsingham succeeded in both of these endeavours, as well as in a host of other, more minor intelligence operations. Budiansky writes with verve and shows an eye for aphorism (on occasion, perhaps just a little too much), but he is not a specialist in Elizabethan history and consequently adds little to the picture drawn by Read, upon whose work he relies very heavily for both detail and interpretation. Although there are a few minor factual errors (for example, wrongly claiming the freehold property threshold for parliamentary electors was £40 instead of 40s and repeating the old accusation that Mary Queen of Scots deliberately placed her estranged second husband in the house where he was subsequently assassinated), this is, generally speaking, a fairly sound book, albeit a slightly superficial one. Budiansky repeatedly talks of the Catholic "scoundrels" whom Walsingham employed to report on their co-religionists, but offers little insight into the complexities of their position and how Walsingham was able to manipulate them for his own purposes. More might also have been made of the difference between his employment of men to report "intelligence," which often amounted to little more than news-gathering, and the use of "practice"—the deliberate deception of one's enemies, usually by pretending to serve them as a double agent. The book itself is nicely produced and includes some useful maps and black and white illustrations (the deliberate juxtapositioning of the images of Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots is a nice touch), but readers who wish to pursue specific points will be frustrated by the lack of an index and the "Notes on Sources" which cover whole sections of the book, rather than individual chapters. This is a workman-like publication, but readers seeking more detail on the world of Elizabethan espionage may be better served by the works of John Bossy, Alan Haynes, and Charles Nicholl. For readers who are unfamiliar with spies and spying in the age of Elizabeth I, however, Budiansky's book offers a sound and enjoyable introduction to the world of Sir Francis Walsingham.