Barn Elms replaced the earlier one occupied by Sir Francis Walsingham, "Elizabeth's Spymaster". Queen Elizabeth I would visit Barn Elms to see her Spymaster. Barn Elms features in English literary history from the time the royalist poet Abraham Cowley moved to the house belonging to John Cartwright in 1663. In the 1660s Barn Elms became a fashionable destination for boating picnics. Samuel Pepys, who arranged many a Sunday afternoon or moonlit evening boating party to Barn Elms himself, recorded that on 26 May 1667: "I walked the length of the Elmes, and with great pleasure saw some gallant ladies and people come
Francis Walsingham in continental Europe, returning to England by 1552 to enrol at Gray's Inn, one of the qualifying bodies for English lawyers. Upon the death in 1553 of Henry VIII's successor, Edward VI, Edward's Catholic half-sister Mary I became queen. Many wealthy Protestants, such as John Foxe and John Cheke, fled England, and Walsingham was among them. He continued his studies in law at the universities of Basel and Padua, where he was elected to the governing body by his fellow students in 1555. Mary I died in 1558 and was succeeded by her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth I. Walsingham returned to