Frances Walsingham

Frances Walsingham was the only surviving daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I’s principal secretary and intelligence organiser, and Ursula St Barbe. Raised in a politically sophisticated Protestant household, she received an unusually strong education. In 1583 she married the poet and soldier Philip Sidney, who died in 1586 from wounds received after the Battle of Zutphen.

Frances later married Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, whose increasingly fraught relationship with Elizabeth I ended in the failed Essex Rebellion and his execution in 1601. She subsequently married Richard Burke, Earl of Clanricarde, and spent part of her later life connected to Ireland. Her three marriages placed her at the intersection of court culture, war, intelligence and dynastic politics.

Frances Walsingham appears directly in Tony Riches’s Essex – Tudor Rebel and is the central figure of Frances – Tudor Countess, where the death of Philip Sidney, the rise and fall of Essex and her later attempt to rebuild her life form the principal historical arc.