Christopher Carleill Christopher Carleill Christopher Carleill ( 15511593) was an English military and naval commander. Born about 1551, he was the son of Alexander Carleill, citizen and vintner of London, by his wife Anne, daughter of Sir George Barne. After Alexander's death, Christopher's mother Anne married Francis Walsingham in January 1562; Walsingham was spymaster to Queen Elizabeth I of England. Anne died in 1564 and left her son Christopher in Walsingham's care. Christopher was educated in the University of Cambridge. In 1572 he went to Flushing (Vlissingen), and was present at the Siege of Middelburg. Lodewijk van Boisot, the Dutch admiral, had
Francis Walsingham Day massacre, the "most horrible spectacle" he had ever witnessed, Walsingham raised the spectre of religious riots in England in the event of the marriage proceeding. Elizabeth put up with his blunt, often unwelcome, advice, and acknowledged his strong beliefs in a letter, in which she called him "her Moor [who] cannot change his colour". These were years of tension in policy towards France, with Walsingham sceptical of the unpredictable Henry III and distrustful of the English ambassador in Paris, Edward Stafford. Stafford, who was compromised by his gambling debts, was in the pay of the Spanish and passed vital