Thomas Walsingham (literary patron) Thomas Walsingham (literary patron) Sir Thomas Walsingham (c. 1561 – 11 August 1630) was a courtier to Queen Elizabeth I and literary patron to such poets as Thomas Watson, Thomas Nashe, George Chapman and Christopher Marlowe. He was related to Elizabeth's spymaster Francis Walsingham and the employer of Marlowe's murderer Ingram Frizer. This connection is one of the reasons offered for suggesting that Marlowe's death may have been linked with intelligence work, and not a dispute over a bill for food and accommodation, as in the coroner's verdict. Walsingham was the third son of Sir Thomas Walsingham (1526–1584), an important
Walsingham (music) Walsingham (music) Walsingham was a popular Elizabethan ballad tune. There are various versions of the lyrics, which relate to a pilgrimage site, suppressed during the English Reformation. The tune provided inspiration for Elizabethan composers, notably William Byrd. Byrd wrote a set of keyboard variations called Have with Yow to Walsingame ("Be off to Walsingham"). In some sources it is called "As I went to Walsingham", the first line of the following quatrain. <poem style="margin-left:2em;">As I went to Walsingham, To the shrine with speed, Met I with a jolly palmer In a pilgrim's weed.</poem> Walsingham is a pilgrimage site in Norfolk,