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
Francis Walsingham (Jesuit) He published "Search made into Matters of Religion, by F. W., before his change to the Catholike" (s. l. 1609; 2nd edit. St. Omer, 1615). The work was dedicated to James I, to whom the author states he had formerly submitted his religious difficulties. Down to the time of Alban Butler it was frequently commended to those showing an inclination to Roman Catholicism, and was often reprinted and abridged. In the controversial parts, and especially in the attack on the "falsities" of Matthew Sutcliffe, Walsingham perhaps worked with Parsons. In 1618 he published his "Reasons for embracing the Catholic Faith"