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 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