"Elizabeth's Spymaster — Francis Walsingham and the Secret War That Saved England" (Thomas Dunne Books St. Martin's Press, 399 pages, $25.95), by Robert Hutchinson
More than 400 years ago, England's Queen Elizabeth I appointed a single man to be in charge of both intelligence and security, with input on military strategy, too.
His covert staff covered pretty near all of Europe. At his peak, he had 18 secret agents in foreign courts and 53 other spies besides those within Britain. He had few humanitarian scruples.
"Without torture I know we shall not prevail," Sir Francis Walsingham told his immediate boss.
Walsingham was reporting to Elizabeth's chief minister, Lord Burghley, on a conspiracy centered on Mary Queen of Scots, who wanted to be Queen of England, too.
One member of Walsingham's network was Christopher Marlowe, an early rival of Shakespeare.
Marlowe's allegedly blasphemous play, "Tamburlaine," almost cost him a degree from Cambridge University. The damage was repaired by a note from Elizabeth's privy council, praising his service to the queen.
As a student in France, Marlowe had worked for Walsingham.
Biographer Robert Hutchinson portrays Walsingham in "Elizabeth's Spymaster" as a man who devoted his career to protecting Elizabeth and the Protestant religion.
Her enemies wanted to re-establish Roman Catholicism in Britain. They included King Philip II of Spain and Pope Sixtus V.
Hutchinson also has chronicled "The Last Days of Henry VIII" — Elizabeth's father and founder of the Anglican church.
Mary herself was not tortured, though many of her sympathizers were. Her head was chopped off after long years of genteel imprisonment by Elizabeth and a conviction of treason against her.
Her body was wrapped in baize stripped from a billiard table that had only recently been taken from her.
Some of her letters had been smuggled out in beer barrels with the connivance of a local brewer. Walsingham's people found them and added forged paragraphs that made her seem even more guilty.
The biography covers in fascinating detail how Walsingham frustrated Elizabeth's foes and helped defeat Phllip's final attempt, the huge Spanish Armada that was to have invaded England.
Before it set sail, Walsingham worked successfully to send ships under Francis Drake to attack Spanish ports where preparations were under way.
Elizabeth was slow and stingy about the preventive strike, and about much else.
Hutchinson sums up Walsingham's career: "To him bribery, treachery, blackmail, coercion, internment, torture and state-sponsored murder were merely handy tools to be employed unhesitatingly to stamp out the contagion of Popish treason and conspiracy.
"In addition let us remember that these tools were the customary penal method of the period, used similarly by oppressive Catholic governments and administrations in the Low Countries, in Spain, France and Italy."
— The Associated Press
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