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
Francis Walsingham Elms in Surrey. A granddaughter born in November 1585 was named Elizabeth after the Queen, who was one of two godparents along with Sidney's uncle, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester. The following year, Sidney was killed fighting the Spanish in the Netherlands and Walsingham was faced with paying off more of Sidney's extensive debts. His widowed daughter gave birth, in a difficult delivery, to a second child shortly afterward, but the baby, a girl, was stillborn. Walsingham was driven by Protestant zeal to counter Catholicism, and sanctioned the use of torture against Catholic priests and suspected conspirators. Edmund Campion