Holy Spy (60 page)

But it may be that, for all his protestations, Walsingham
wanted
Gifford to return to France, where he could easily insinuate himself back into the world of the Catholic seminaries and continue his spying.

He had all the attributes of a spy. He spoke fluent French and enjoyed going by a variety of aliases. He was known variously as Colderin, Number Four, Pietro, Cornelys, The Secret Party or simply GG. He had escaped from England pretending to be a servant to Monsieur Dujardin of the French embassy.

His first act on arriving in Paris was to go to the Spanish ambassador, Bernardino de Mendoza, and ask him to send a letter to the Babington plotters urging them to proceed with the assassination of Elizabeth. Mendoza agreed to this and sent two letters, one in Italian and one in Latin.

It is likely that Gifford assumed the letters would be intercepted by Walsingham’s searchers, thus strengthening the case against Mary and the conspirators. But the letters never reached England, having been retrieved by Mary’s agent in Paris, Thomas Morgan.

This was not the end of Gifford’s double-dealing activities, however. He returned to Rheims and was ordained a priest but a year later he was caught in a brothel, having his way with a whore.

He was imprisoned – the charge itself is not clear, although it might relate to his part in destroying Mary Queen of Scots

– and yet even from his cell he managed to send reports of the movements of various priests back to his masters in England. He died in gaol three years later.

Babington’s Last Letter

On the morning of the day he fled in August 1586, Anthony Babington wrote an elegant and anguished letter to Robert ‘Robin’ Poley, the Walsingham spy he had believed to be his friend and who was now missing. I contend that this letter reveals a great deal more about their relationship than is generally acknowledged.

This is what Babington wrote:

ROBIN,
Sollicitae non possunt curae mutare aranei stamina fusi
[nor care nor cunning ever mends of spider’s threads the broken ends]. I am ready to endure whatever shall be inflicted.
Et facere et pati Romanorum est
[to do and to suffer is the virtue of a Roman]. What my course has been towards Mr Secretary you can witness, what my love towards you, yourself can best tell. Proceedings at my lodgings have been very strange. I am the same I always pretended. I pray God you be, and ever so remain towards me. Take heed to your own part, lest of these my misfortunes you bear the blame.
Est exilium inter malos vivere
[to live among the wicked is as bad as exile].

Farewell, sweet Robin, if as I take thee, true to me. If not, adieu,
omnium bipedum nequissimus
[of all two-footed things the most wicked].

Return me your answer for my satisfaction, and my diamond, and what else you will. The furnace is prepared wherein our faith must be tried. Farewell until we meet, which God knows when.

Thine, how far thou knowest, ANTHONY BABINGTON

In fact, Poley was by then in gaol. His master, Sir Francis Walsingham (in whose household he lived), clearly wanted him out of the way so that the world would not know he had infiltrated the Babington conspiracy with his spies. A year later, long after the execution of the Babington plotters, Poley was freed to continue his secret work. Among other things, he was employed as a special envoy to Denmark in 1588 and in the 1590s he was used as a spy in Flanders. Along the way, he is believed to have poisoned the Archbishop of Armagh. He also spent more time in gaol for ‘using lewd words against Walsingham’ – and then seduced the gaoler’s wife! And in 1593 he was to be found in a small room in Deptford with the dead body of the playwright Christopher Marlowe, who had been stabbed in the eye.

There can be no doubt that Poley, a Cambridge graduate of gentry stock – but born poor – was a dangerous and duplicitous man. He claimed to be a Catholic, but some Catholics found him obsequious and never trusted him. Even Walsingham and his top agents had their doubts. Francis Mills called him ‘a notable knave’ and Thomas Phelippes was jealous of his closeness to Walsingham.

So what exactly was Poley’s relationship with Babington? I suggest they almost certainly had a homosexual love affair. The whole tenor of the letter speaks of an intimacy a great deal deeper than mere friendship. And the final line –
Thine, how far thou knowest
– confirms it for me. Homosexuality was illegal in the sixteenth century, the love that dared not speak its name.

Babington is saying, ‘You know how much I love you, but I cannot write the words’. And he so wanted to trust him. Yet the truth was he had, indeed, been betrayed by the very person he loved most dearly. Poley was the two-legged beast:
omnium bipedum nequissimus.