Thomas Walsingham (literary patron) Thomas Walsingham (literary patron) Sir Thomas Walsingham (c. 1561 – 11 August 1630) was a courtier to Queen Elizabeth I and literary patron to such poets as Thomas Watson, Thomas Nashe, George Chapman and Christopher Marlowe. He was related to Elizabeth's spymaster Francis Walsingham and the employer of Marlowe's murderer Ingram Frizer. This connection is one of the reasons offered for suggesting that Marlowe's death may have been linked with intelligence work, and not a dispute over a bill for food and accommodation, as in the coroner's verdict. Walsingham was the third son of Sir Thomas Walsingham (1526–1584), an important
Francis Walsingham 1566, Walsingham married Ursula St. Barbe, widow of Sir Richard Worsley, and Walsingham acquired her estates of Appuldurcombe and Carisbrooke Priory on the Isle of Wight. The following year, she bore him a daughter, Frances. Walsingham's other two stepsons, Ursula's sons John and George, were killed in a gunpowder accident at Appuldurcombe in 1567. In the following years, Walsingham became active in soliciting support for the Huguenots in France and developed a friendly and close working relationship with Nicholas Throckmorton, his predecessor as MP for Lyme Regis and a former ambassador to France. By 1569, Walsingham was working with William