Queen's Agent

January 1, 2013
The featured functionary in Stephen Alford's recent history (The Watchers, 2012) of Elizabeth I's intelligence service, Francis Walsingham here receives the full biographical treatment. In a fluid narrative tightly sewn from historical sources, Cooper portrays a man utterly confident of his religious righteousness and ruthlessly effective against those his sovereign's regime regarded as enemies. Raised in a Protestant household, Walsingham fled England during the brief Catholic restoration in the reign of Elizabeth's half sister, Mary I. Returning from exile upon the 1558 ascension to the throne of Elizabeth, Walsingham began an ascent in royal favor. It was as Elizabeth's ambassador in Paris that Walsingham witnessed the 1572 St. Bartholomew's massacre of Protestants by Catholics, a trauma that Cooper implies, by making it his opening scene, as an explanation for Walsingham's subsequently pitiless pursuit of Catholic recusants, suspected assassins, and Mary, Queen of Scots. In addition to the espionage that accounts for Walsingham's enduring interest to history fans, Cooper critiques his role in English settlement, or colonization, of Ireland. This well-wrought work will be popular with Elizabethans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

December 1, 2012

Devoted secretary, Machiavellian spymaster famously reserved in dress and manner: Sir Francis Walsingham has left us with an impression of a sinister and mysterious figure. Touching on the major events of Walsingham's early life and following the full course of his career, Cooper (history, Univ. of York, UK; Propaganda and the Tudor State) sets the statesman's tireless efforts to protect Queen Elizabeth I and England in relation to Walsingham's own fervent Protestantism, spurred by his witness of the slaughter of thousands of Calvinist Protestants in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in Paris. His determination to protect queen and country led him to develop his extensive network of espionage contacts--and eventually drove him to work himself to death in Elizabeth's service. Tellingly, Cooper mentions Walsingham's less pleasant tactics such as torture and entrapment but rarely judges them, letting them stand within their own context. VERDICT Though Cooper seeks to draw out his subject's personal side, Walsingham remains somewhat enigmatic. However, Cooper's book, more scholarly than Stephen Budiansky's Her Majesty's Spymaster and more evenhanded than Derek Wilson's Sir Francis Walsingham, is an excellent treatment of Walsingham's work and methods and a clear evocation of the intrigue that seethed in Elizabeth's reign. Those with previous studies of Walsingham should consider this optional.--Kathleen McCallister, Univ. of South Carolina Libs., Columbia

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