Frances Walsingham, Countess of Essex Frances Walsingham, Countess of Essex Frances Walsingham, Dowager Countess of Essex and Countess of Clanricarde (1567 – 17 February 1633) was an English noblewoman. The daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I's Secretary of State, she became the wife of Sir Philip Sidney at age 16. Her second husband was The 2nd Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth's favourite, with whom she had five children. Shortly after his execution in 1601, she married her lover, The 4th Earl of Clanricarde, and went to live in Ireland. She was the only surviving child of Sir Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State for Queen
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,