As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Affiliate disclosure.
Historical person
1532–1590
Francis Walsingham was Elizabeth I’s principal secretary and the organiser of an extensive intelligence network. A committed Protestant, he monitored Catholic exiles, foreign ambassadors and suspected plots, using agents, interception and code-breaking.
His officers uncovered the Babington Plot, providing evidence used to convict Mary, Queen of Scots. Walsingham also supported maritime ventures and preparations against Spain, although he died in 1590 with significant personal debts. Francis Walsingham was born in Chislehurst and died in London.
Timothy Ashby’s Elizabethan Secret Agent reconstructs the life of William Ashby (1536–1593), an Elizabethan diplomat and intelligence agent who worked within the network of Sir Francis Walsingham. In Steven Veerapen’s Divided Loyalties, Jack and Amy Cole have become useful to Francis Walsingham’s intelligence network, but their assignments pull them in opposite directions. Francis Walsingham is treated fictionally in S. J. Parris’ Execution, S. J. Parris’ Heresy, Rory Clements’ Holy Spy, Rory Clements’ Martyr, and S. J. Parris’ Prophecy.
Series
G. J. Williams’s Tudor Rose Murders follow the historical scholar, mathematician and astrologer John Dee and his fictional apprentice Margaretta Morgan through murder investigations embedded in the dynastic and religious crises of the mid-Tudor period. The Conjuror’s Apprentice is set under Mary I in 1555; The Wolf’s Shadow…
All books in this series
The Giordano Bruno novels follow the historical Italian philosopher through a fictional career as investigator and intelligence agent. Beginning with his youth in Dominican Naples and continuing through exile in Elizabethan England, France and Prague, the series combines murder mysteries with Reformation conflict, court politics, espionage and Renaissance…
All books in this series
The Tudor Saga recounts the dynasty from Henry VII’s exile and victory in the Wars of the Roses to the final years of Elizabeth I. Historical rulers, ministers and royal relatives occupy the centre of the sequence, while fictional attendants and agents reveal how decisions at court affect…
All books in this series
The Elizabethan series tells the later Tudor story through six real people whose ambitions and relationships brought them close to Elizabeth I. Francis Drake, Robert Devereux, Walter Raleigh, Penelope Rich, Frances Walsingham and Bess Throckmorton each occupy a different part of the queen’s world: the sea, war, exploration,…
All books in this series
The John Shakespeare series follows an Elizabethan intelligencer working first for Francis Walsingham and later Robert Cecil. Murder investigations become inseparable from Catholic conspiracies, war with Spain, court faction and the developing machinery of state surveillance. Set between 1582 and the mid-1590s, the novels move through London, recusant…
All books in this series
The Queen’s Intelligencer series fictionalises the career of Robert Poley, a real Elizabethan agent associated with the Babington Plot and the death of Christopher Marlowe. In publication order, Poley infiltrates the Essex circle, manages the 1603 succession, follows the Gunpowder conspirators, works against a poison network during the…
All books in this series
Steven Veerapen’s Jack and Amy Cole trilogy follows a married couple drawn into the intelligence and religious conflicts surrounding Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots. A Dangerous Trade begins during Mary’s English captivity; Divided Loyalties moves to the crisis created by the papal excommunication of Elizabeth in…
All books in this series
The Kit Marlowe mysteries follow Christopher Marlowe from Cambridge student to playwright, intelligence operative and reluctant investigator in Elizabethan England. Trow places Marlowe’s documented education, theatrical career and association with government service inside murder plots involving universities, religious division, court politics and the clandestine world surrounding Francis Walsingham’s…
All books in this series
The Tom Musgrave mysteries follow an Elizabethan Master of Defence whose training in logic and swordsmanship draws him into murder cases connected to theatre, state intelligence and court politics. The early books move through London in 1594–1595, from a killing during Romeo and Juliet to crimes on London…
All books in this series
The Christian Hardy series follows an English soldier and intelligence agent through the military and religious conflicts of the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Blood Rock introduces Hardy during the Great Siege of Malta in 1565, where the Knights Hospitaller resist the Ottoman invasion and a traitor…
All books in this series
The Christopher Marlowe Spy Thrillers imagine the playwright as an intelligence operative in the years immediately before his literary fame. The Queen’s Gold is set in 1585 amid privateering and the worsening conflict with Spain; The Queen’s Jewel follows the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1587;…
All books in this series
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
