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
Frances Seymour, Duchess of Somerset 2nd Earl of Essex and his wife, Frances Walsingham. Her paternal grandparents were Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex and Lettice Knollys, and her maternal grandparents were Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's trusted spymaster, and Ursula St. Barbe. Frances was also a direct descendant of Mary Boleyn, the sister of Anne Boleyn. At the time of Frances's birth, her father, who was a former favourite of Queen Elizabeth and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, was under arrest for treasonous behaviour in the Nine Years' War during the disastrous Irish campaign in which he parleyed with the rebellious Earl of Tyrone, and