#francis walsingham
St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre
The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572 was a targeted group of assassinations and a wave of Catholic mob violence, directed against the Huguenots (French Protestants) during the French Wars of Religion. It was traditionally believed to have been instigated by Catherine de Medici, mother of King Charles IX. Many of the most wealthy and prominent Huguenots had gathered in largely Catholic Paris to attend the wedding of King Charles IX. The original plot was directed at a group of Huguenot leaders, but the slaughter extended throughout Paris and the surrounding countryside to all Protestants.
At the time of the massacre, Elizabeth I of England’s ambassador to France, Sir Francis Walsingham, was present in Paris along with his pregnant wife and child. The Walsinghams opened their Parisian home as a refuge to fleeing Huguenots. The family managed to escape the carnage and return to England. Protestant countries, such as England, were horrified at the events. The massacre was later dramatized in Elizabethan theater by Christopher Marlowe as a story of Machiavellianism with Catherine de Medici playing the main aggressor.
Lady Ursula Walsingham
Born in 1532, Ursula was the daughter of Henry St Barbe and Eleanor Lewknor. She first married Sir Richard Worsley, Captain of the Isle of Wight. She bore Worsley two sons, John and George. When Worsley died in 1565, Ursula was considered a wealthy woman owning two estates left to her by her late husband.
Shortly after her first husband died, Ursula remarried to Sir Francis Walsingham. The same year, her sons by Worsley, John and George, were killed in a gunpowder accident at their estate on the Isle of Wight. Ursula and Francis had two daughters: Frances born in 1767 who married Sir Phillip Sidney, and Mary who died young.
Sir Francis served as English Ambassador to the French court, and Ursula traveled with him. When the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre took place in 1572, Sir Francis and Ursula opened their home in Paris to Protestants seeking refuge from the terror. Ursula escaped to England with her daughters as soon as it was safe where Sir Francis later rejoined her. 
Ursula and Francis had a comfortably happy marriage and kept busy with their separate duties. He was a loyal “spymaster” to Queen Elizabeth I. She was a devoted wife and mother. When Francis died in 1590, Ursula lived on an annuity at their house in Barn Elms. She outlived him by twelve years and died in 1602.
Geoffrey Rush as Sir Francis Walsingham
Ursula St. Barbe, The Spymaster’s Wife
“You have a duty—a duty to every one around you—a duty in which the high dignity of your profession is particularly apparent.” —Ursula St. Barbe, Lady Walsingham in a letter to her husband.
