Walsingham to Leicester (12 Nov. 1587), ‘maketh me to take no comfort of my recovery of health, for that I see, unless it shall please God in mercy and miraculously to preserve us, we cannot long stand.’ In the following year Walsingham's information failed him. As late as May he was in doubt as to the exact intentions of the Spanish fleet, and on 9 July, ten days before the armada appeared off Plymouth, he was inclined to believe that it had dispersed and returned to Spain. Throughout August, while the armada was in the Channel, Walsingham was with the queen at the camp at Tilbury, vainly urging that every advantage should be pressed against the enemy's disabled ships. But the English admiral was not equipped with sufficient ammunition to pursue effectively the flying Spaniards, and Walsingham, at Tilbury, wrote justly of this new exhibition of the queen's indecisive policy (8 Aug. 1588): ‘Our half-doings doth breed dishonour and leaveth the disease uncured’ (Wright, Queen Elizabeth, ii. 385).
Walsingham, who never enjoyed robust health, died at his house at Seething Lane in London on 6 April 1590. He left directions in his will that he should ‘be buried without any such extraordinary ceremonies as usually appertain to a man serving in his place, in respect of the greatness of his debts and the mean state he left his wife and heir in.’ Accordingly he ‘was, about ten of the clocke in the next night following, buried in Paules Church without solemnity’ (Stow, ed. Howes, 1631, p. 761). A long biographical inscription to his memory was fixed on a wooden tablet in the north aisle adjoining the choir of the old cathedral (Dugdale, St. Paul's Cathedral, ed. Ellis, p. 67).
Walsingham bequeathed to his only surviving child, Frances, an annuity of a hundred pounds, and ordered his ‘lands in Lincolnshire’ to be sold for the payment of his debts. His widow was appointed executrix. The will, which was dated 12 Dec. 1589, was proved on 27 May 1590 (Wills from Doctors' Commons, Camden Soc. pp. 69–71).
Camden summed up the estimation in which Walsingham was held at the time of his death in the words: ‘He was a person exceeding wise and industrious … a strong and resolute maintainer of the purer religion, a diligent searcher out of hidden secrets, and one who knew excellently well how to win men's affections to him, and to make use of them for his own purposes.’ Of his patriotism it is impossible to doubt. Almost alone of Queen Elizabeth's advisers, he always knew his own mind, and expressed his opinion fearlessly and clearly. He achieved little, owing to the distrust of the queen. His methods of espionage were worked at the expense of some modern considerations of morality, but his detective weapons were those of England's enemies, and were employed solely in the public interest.
Walsingham's statesmanlike temper is especially conspicuous in his attitude to religious questions. Although he was personally a zealous protestant, he was no fanatic. The punitive measures which he urged against disturbers of the peace of the established church were due to no narrow-minded attempt to secure uniformity either of belief or of practice in matters of religion. To him was attributed the axiom that the consciences of those who dissented from the belief and practice of the established church were ‘not to be forced, but to be won and seduced by force of truth, with the aid of time, and use of all good means of instruction and persuasion.’ But when conscience was pleaded as a justification for covert rebellion or for habitual breach of statute law and violent disturbance of the peace of state or church, it passed, in his view, beyond the bounds within which it could command the respect of government, and grew ‘to be matter of faction.’ ‘Under such circumstances sovereign princes ought distinctly to punish practices and contempt, though coloured with the pretence of conscience and religion.’ These views were defined in a letter which, it was pretended, Walsingham wrote to a Frenchman, M. Critoy, towards the end of his life. That he held the opinions indicated is clear, but that he was himself the author of the exposition of them that was addressed to M. Critoy is doubtful. Spedding gives reasons for regarding the letter to the Frenchman, assigned to Walsingham, as an innocent forgery, and attributes it to Francis Bacon writing in collusion with his former tutor, Archbishop Whitgift (Spedding, Bacon, i. 96–102). It was first printed in ‘Scrinia Sacra,’ 1654, p. 38, and was reprinted in ‘Reflections upon the New Test’ in 1687, and in Burnet's ‘History of the Reformation,’ ii. 661–5.
Walsingham was an enthusiastic supporter of the contemporary movement for the country's colonial expansion. He subscribed to Fenton's voyage in 1582–3; he took Richard Hakluyt [q. v.], the chronicler of English travel, into his pay; he corresponded with Lane, the explorer of Virginia, with Sir Richard Grenville [q. v.], and with Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and was the patron of all the chief writers on the exploration of the new world. Almost all forms of literature and
