Sir Francis Walsingham by Derek Wilson Read Free Book Online

conferring the one with the other, time with time, and age with age, shall perceive most wonderful causes. For in the text [of Revelation] are they [the causes] only proposed in effect, and promised to follow in their seasons, and so ratified with other scriptures, but in the chronicles they are evidently seen by all ages fulfilled. 5
    Bale, followed by Foxe, asserted that the story of the Christian centuries centred on the struggle between the ‘true’ church, the elect of God, and the agents of Antichrist working both inside and outside the institutions of religion. As far as England was concerned this theme was intertwined with the independence of the state from foreign subversion. Henry VIII had expelled the pope and instituted reform of doctrine and liturgy. Inevitably, the beast of Revelation was fighting back, hence the dreadful persecution currently raging, but his days were numbered and the endtime was near. This was the theological foundation upon which Walsingham and the returning exiles built all their thinking about English politics:
    the effect of the propaganda initiated by the Marian exiles would be felt in all phases of public life in the reign of Elizabeth. Government would more and more have to be carried on to the accompaniment of discussion by men with the confidence in their own opinions bred by such a faith, an increasingly passionate interest in the affairs of the realm, and a familiar apparatus of images and ideas for speculation, expression and communication. Nothing like this on any such scale had ever happened in England before. 6
    However, it was far from true that all the refugees returned home with a uniform politico-religious programme to advance. Factions within the Protestant camp centred around the issue of whether or not the Reformation had gone far enough. Conflict flared up at Frankfurt over the form of worship to be used in the English church there. Richard Cox argued for the use of Cranmer’s 1552 Prayer Book. But John Knox rejected it as a half-papist ‘mingle-mangle’. Soon other exile communities were divided between those who looked for a continuation of the Edwardian tradition and those who wanted to purify doctrine and liturgy – which meant adopting thoroughly Calvinist patterns. The use of the word ‘Puritan’ to designate this party seems to have originated in Basel.
    There can be no doubt that Francis Walsingham’s sympathies lay with this more austere section of the Protestant community. His precise legal mind easily sifted truth from semi-truth and falsehood. He discerned principles clearly and, perhaps too readily, saw complex issues in stark black and white. At the same time he was very aware of political realities. Calvinist polity involved the creation of a godly commonwealth governed by a twofold system of secular rulers and ministers of religion. Those who held the power of the sword under God were to submit to spiritual councillors in all matters of morality and church discipline. This was difficult enough to achieve in a city state such as Geneva. The problems attendant on converting to such a regime the ancient monarchy of England with its long-established governmental and judicial systems were daunting to contemplate. Furthermore, the sermons and writings of Calvin and other Reformed ministers were scarcely flattering in their references to contemporary monarchies.
    The courts of princes . . . were represented by Calvin as nests of ambition, hypocrisy, flattery and servility. He singled out particularly the corruption of judges and the venality of judicial office, as well as the advancement of the unworthy, as being the order of the day there. Advancement, if it is achieved, is no more than ‘fetters of gold’, and the sensible man is content with a private station, for ‘there will be, I say, more liberty in many a poor man’s house, than in those great pits, the courts of princes’. He noted also a ‘theology of the court’, which prostitutes