Audrey Walsingham Audrey Walsingham Lady Audrey Walsingham, née "Shelton" (1568-1624), was an English court office holder. She served as Lady of the Bedchamber to queen Elizabeth I of England, and then as Mistress of the Robes to Anne of Denmark from 1603 until 1619. She was born to Sir Ralph Shelton and married Sir Thomas Walsingham, cousin of Sir Francis Walsingham. She served as Lady of the Bedchamber to queen Elizabeth I. In 1603, she was selected to be in the English entourage who met the new queen at the Scottish border, and accompanied her to London. She was appointed Mistress of
Francis Walsingham for an invasion of England. Walsingham's recruitment of Anthony Standen, a friend of the Tuscan ambassador to Madrid, was an exceptional intelligence triumph and Standen's dispatches were deeply revealing. Walsingham worked to prepare England for a potential war with Spain, in particular by supervising the substantial rebuilding of Dover Harbour, and encouraging a more aggressive strategy. On Walsingham's instructions, the English ambassador in Turkey, William Harborne, attempted unsuccessfully to persuade the Ottoman Sultan to attack Spanish possessions in the Mediterranean in the hope of distracting Spanish forces. Walsingham supported Francis Drake's raid of Cadiz in 1587, which wrought havoc with