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 disrupted a range of plots against Elizabeth and secured the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. Francis Walsingham was born in or about 1532, probably at Foots Cray, near Chislehurst, Kent. His parents were William and Joyce Walsingham. William was a successful, well-connected and wealthy London lawyer who died in 1534 and Joyce was the daughter of courtier Sir Edmund Denny and the sister of Sir Anthony Denny, who was the principal gentleman of King Henry VIII's privy chamber. William Walsingham served as a member of the commission that was appointed to investigate the estates of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in