Simon Fernandes time and piracy was an offence punishable by hanging, but in practice Fernandes was engaged in exactly the sort of behaviour to which Queen Elizabeth I of England was inclined to turn a blind eye. However, the Portuguese ambassador Francisco Giraldi vigorously protested Fernandes's activities to the Queen's ministers, after the alleged murder of seven Portuguese sailors, and in 1577 the 39-year-old Fernandes was arrested in Cardiff and taken to London to face trial. However, far from being hanged for his crimes, Fernandes was released, apparently with the connivance of Queen Elizabeth's spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham, who appears to have
Francis Walsingham 1530, and his elder brother, Sir Edmund Walsingham, was Lieutenant of the Tower of London. After William's death, Joyce married the courtier Sir John Carey in 1538. Carey's brother William was the husband of Mary Boleyn, Anne Boleyn's elder sister. Of Francis Walsingham's five sisters, Mary married Sir Walter Mildmay, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer for over 20 years, and Elizabeth married the parliamentarian Peter Wentworth. Francis Walsingham matriculated at King's College, Cambridge, in 1548 with many other Protestants but as an undergraduate of high social status did not sit for a degree. From 1550 or 1551, he travelled