Francis Walsingham Francis Walsingham Sir Francis Walsingham ( 1532 – 6 April 1590) was principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I of England from 20 December 1573 until his death and is popularly remembered as her "spymaster". Born to a well-connected family of gentry, Walsingham attended Cambridge University and travelled in continental Europe before embarking on a career in law at the age of twenty. A committed Protestant, during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary I of England he joined other expatriates in exile in Switzerland and northern Italy until Mary's death and the accession of her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth. Walsingham rose
Edmund Walsingham Edmund Walsingham Sir Edmund Walsingham (c. 1480 – 10 February 1550) was a soldier, Member of Parliament, and Lieutenant of the Tower of London during the reign of King Henry VIII. Although the Walsingham pedigree is said to date to the thirteenth century, the family is first recorded in Kent in 1424, when Thomas Walsingham (died 7 March 1456) and his wife, Margaret, purchased the manor of Scadbury in Chislehurst, to which additional land was added in 1433. Their son, Thomas Walsingham (1436–1467), married Constance Dryland (died 14 November 1476), the daughter of James Dryland, of Davington, by whom he