Frances Walsingham, Countess of Essex Frances Walsingham, Countess of Essex Frances Walsingham, Dowager Countess of Essex and Countess of Clanricarde (1567 – 17 February 1633) was an English noblewoman. The daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I's Secretary of State, she became the wife of Sir Philip Sidney at age 16. Her second husband was The 2nd Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth's favourite, with whom she had five children. Shortly after his execution in 1601, she married her lover, The 4th Earl of Clanricarde, and went to live in Ireland. She was the only surviving child of Sir Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State for Queen
Richard Baines fellow-seminarist his rejection of the Catholic faith and his plans to return to England to report to the queen's spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham about the various plots being hatched in Rheims. In May 1582 he was imprisoned in Rheims town gaol, but a year later was back at the seminary, still a prisoner, where he wrote a lengthy confession of his offences. It seems quite likely that he had in fact been an agent of Sir Francis Walsingham all along. Walsingham died in 1590, and Baines was next heard of in early 1592, when he was in Flushing, at that