Francis Walsingham persuaded Elizabeth I to execute her cousin and was instrumental in the Spanish Armada’s defeat
Francis Walsingham established a secret network to guard against the assassination of his monarch, Elizabeth I. He deployed up to 53 spies in England and 18 agents overseas, whose late-16th-century methods remain in use around the world today: dead-letter boxes, cyphers, and double-and triple-agents, supplemented by blackmail, forgery, and torture. Walsingham also used experts who could open and reseal letters, unnoticed, as well as codebreakers.
Walsingham was ruthless. On uncovering the Babington Plot, in 1586, which demonstrated that Mary Queen of Scots approved of Queen Elizabeth’s murder so she could replace her on the throne, Walsingham was frustrated by Elizabeth’s refusal to execute her cousin Mary. So, he invented scare stories, which eventually persuaded Elizabeth to have Mary beheaded.
Walsingham is an unsung hero in the defeat of the Spanish Armada. He had a well-placed spy in Rome who, in 1587, confirmed that Philip II of Spain planned a seaborne invasion of England. Walsingham’s intelligence led to Francis Drake attacking Cádiz, sinking 37 ships, which delayed the Armada by a crucial year. This gave Walsingham time to place a spy in the household of the Duke of Santa Cruz, the Spanish admiral, and to help beef up England’s militia. Meanwhile he fed the Spaniards false information about the harbours and tides of England. Philip II greeted Walsingham’s death with the words: “Good news for the Spanish” – as fine an epithet from the enemy as a spymaster could hope for.
The United States Secret Service was formed by Abraham Lincoln to tackle financial crime. With bills and coins being produced in each state by individual banks, Lincoln was advised that a third of the money in circulation during his presidency was counterfeit, with confidence in the economy suffering. In its first year, the USSS closed down 200 counterfeiting plants. Given that a branch of the USSS developed into the bodyguards of American presidents, it is ironic that Abraham Lincoln agreed to the establishment of the USSS on 14 April 1865 – the same day on which he was assassinated.