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
The Unfortunate Traveller corrected and augmented" edition of the text appeared later in the same year by the same publisher. No new editions appeared through the handpress era. In "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", Sir Jack Wilton (standing in for real-life Elizabethan spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham) was the "M" of the late 16th century. He led a group of special operatives called Prospero's Men shortly after the reign of "Good Queen Gloriana" of England. The Unfortunate Traveller The Unfortunate Traveller: or, the Life of Jack Wilton (published "The Unfortunate Traueller: or, The Life of Jacke Wilton") is a picaresque novel by Thomas Nashe