Barn Elms replaced the earlier one occupied by Sir Francis Walsingham, "Elizabeth's Spymaster". Queen Elizabeth I would visit Barn Elms to see her Spymaster. Barn Elms features in English literary history from the time the royalist poet Abraham Cowley moved to the house belonging to John Cartwright in 1663. In the 1660s Barn Elms became a fashionable destination for boating picnics. Samuel Pepys, who arranged many a Sunday afternoon or moonlit evening boating party to Barn Elms himself, recorded that on 26 May 1667: "I walked the length of the Elmes, and with great pleasure saw some gallant ladies and people come
Thomas Walsingham Thomas Walsingham's literary pursuits. Walsingham was no relation to Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster to Queen Elizabeth I. A modern edition of Walsingham's Chronica Maiora in: David Preest, "The" Chronica Maiora "of Thomas Walsingham 1376-1422", with Introduction and Notes by James G. Clark (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005). Thomas Walsingham Thomas Walsingham (died c. 1422) was an English chronicler, and is the source of much of the knowledge of the reigns of Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V, and the careers of John Wycliff and Wat Tyler. Walsingham was a Benedictine monk who spent most of his life at St. Albans Abbey,