The figure that crept through the darkened chambers of a Rome apartment made little noise. He knew every inch of the route and expected no interruption. His master was asleep, the servants consigned to their quarters, the guards outside patrolled clueless of events within. He padded on.
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The figure that crept through the darkened chambers of a Rome apartment made little noise. He knew every inch of the route and expected no interruption. His master was asleep, the servants consigned to their quarters, the guards outside patrolled clueless of events within. He padded on.

Quietly, he opened the door to the study, felt for the writing-desk and inserted the stolen key. A quick turn of the lock, a slide of the drawer and he had found what he searched for.

A letter for sure, but one of unimaginable importance. For he was a groom to the chamber of a slumbering Pope Sixtus V and had been coerced into treachery by the dark forces of England.

And what he held in his hand was correspondence sent by His Catholic Majesty King Philip II of Spain, detailing to the last ship and quintal of gunpowder the entire battle-plan and formation of the 'great enterprise of England' - the forthcoming Armada.

It was just the latest intelligence coup engineered by Sir Francis Walsingham, whose prosaic title of Principle Secretary of State disguised his position as all-knowing spy chief to Elizabeth I.

By any measure, he would have been more than a match for the fictional entities of Ian Fleming's SMERSH and SPECTRE. After all, this was the man who invented the very concept of extraordinary rendition when he hired Huguenot pirate to attempt the kidnap of the papal legate to Paris. A stickler for human rights and civil liberties, he was not.

From his manor house in Barnes - known as Barn Elm - his couriers rode day and night carrying secret messages to and from his agents at home and overseas (he is believed to have planted spies in every royal court in Europe).

From his City mansion in Seething Lane, his cryptanalysts and master-forgers worked to intercept and read the coded communiqués of England's enemies and to create the disinformation and black propaganda that would sabotage their plans.

The Tower of London and its well-populated dungeons stood only a few hundred yards distant.

It allowed Walsingham and his interrogators easy access to the suspected traitors and captured Catholic priests from whom they hoped to force confession.

Time was critical, the threat real, and information was required. Sir Francis was not squeamish in his approach. Many techniques were employed to extract the intelligence demanded - 'pinching' (starving the suspect, sometimes to death), 'pressing' him (by using heavy weights to crush the body), and 'racking' with the most feared torture implement of them all.

There were few who could withstand such horrors and mere sight alone of the device tended to encourage full cooperation.

If Walsingham appreciated the value of terror, so too did his grim and dedicated adversaries, the Spanish Inquisition, guardian-stormtroopers of the Catholic faith - it was they who perfected 'waterboarding' (they called it toca) in order to bend prisoners to their will. They were not exactly fastidious in how they applied their techniques.

This was the age of plot and subterfuge, of poison in the goblet of wine and a stiletto-blade to the back. Every day, whisper reached Walsingham of planned assassination and attempted coup against Elizabeth.

There was even talk amongst some plotters of poisoning her bedlothes or mounting a cavalry charge against her while she rode out to take the air.

Once, a wildfowler had accidentally discharged his gun and wounded a courtier as the royal barge passed by on the Thames. For the Secretary of State, threat lurked everywhere. As a former English ambassador to Paris, he had witnessed French Catholics rise up and slaughter thousands of Protestants in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572. He would never allow such things to happen in London, would not roll over before the hated Catholic menace. The thought and the memories haunted him.

Yet it was in the years preceding the 1588 Armada that his fears grew to fever pitch. Hidden in lengths of ship-rope, in secret compartments of wine barrels and even in the canvas soles of shoes worn by sailors, from every quarter the scribbled warnings came.

Giant galleasses (hybrid oared-galley/galleons) were on their way from Italy; King Philip was begging for bank loans to fund his endeavour; the Spanish foundries were producing cannon at a furious rate. Walsingham needed to act and he knew precisely what to do. No subterfuge or dastardly ruse was ignored. As the enemy fleet assembled on the Tagus river in Lisbon, his spy ships disguised as fishing vessels and merchant barques sailed close. Details were noted and carrier-pigeons sent. Little could happen without Walsingham learning of it.

Next, he set out to disrupt the preparations, circulating pamphlets apparently penned by Spanish and Portuguese soothsayers and predicting disaster should the Armada ever leave port. Hundreds of sailors and soldiers deserted (so much so that peasants and fishermen around Corunna would later be pressganged to make up numbers).

So the Armada sailed to disaster and shipwreck and Walsingham played his part. One of his agents purportedly even blew up a Spanish galleon sheltering in the Sound of Mull.

In the modern age, the record of this spymaster in recruiting or turning agents and facing down the threat posed by religious extremism still commands respect. Few current espionage bosses or their agencies could match his raw ability, his feel for the craft or even his success.

He was indeed a genius and a giant of his time, England retains much of its character and independence because of him. He was no democrat and certainly shed no tears in crushing all dissent.

Yet he was a patriot and a selfless servant of the crown and there was no final-salary pension awaiting him in retirement (in fact, his funeral was held at night in order to lower costs and outwit his creditors).

M would have been both perplexed and impressed. So visit the National Portrait Gallery and study the portrait of Sir Francis Walsingham and pay homage to the man. We owe him.