Edmund Walsingham


Sir Edmund Walsingham of Scadbury Hall, Chislehurst in Kent, was a soldier, Member of Parliament, and Lieutenant of the Tower of London during the reign of King Henry VIII.

Origins

He was the eldest son and heir of James Walsingham of Scadbury by his wife Eleanor Writtle, the daughter and heiress of Walter Writtle of Bobbingworth in Essex. Sir Edmund, according to a monumental brass formerly in the church at Scadbury, had three brothers and seven sisters, including:
Although the Walsingham pedigree is said to date to the thirteenth century, the family is first recorded in the County of Kent in 1424, when Thomas I Walsingham purchased the manor of Scadbury. The descent was as follows:
Walsingham entered the service of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, and was knighted by him on 13 September 1513, four days after the decisive English victory over the Scots at the Battle of Flodden, in which the English army was commanded by Surrey's father Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk. In 1520 he was part of the Kent contingent accompanying King Henry VIII at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in Calais in June, and at the King's meeting with the Emperor Charles V at Gravelines in July.
In 1521 he was appointed a sewer in the royal household, was made a freeman of the Worshipful Company of Mercers, was on the jury which tried and convicted Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, and succeeded Sir Richard Cholmondeley as Lieutenant of the Tower of London at a salary of £100 a year. He held the office until Henry VIII's death in 1547, residing in a house at the Tower, and taking personal charge of prisoners of state, among them Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, Catherine Howard, Henry Courtenay, 1st Marquess of Exeter, Henry Pole, 1st Baron Montagu, Agnes Howard, Duchess of Norfolk, Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle, Anne Boleyn, Bishop John Fisher and Sir Thomas More. It was to Walsingham that More made his jest on ascending the scaffold, "I pray you, Master Lieutenant, see me safe up, and for my coming down, let me shift for myself".
In the 1530s Walsingham acquired long-term leases of the manors of Tyting in Surrey and Stanground in Huntingdonshire, and in 1543 purchased the manors of Swanton Court, West Peckham and Yokes near Scadbury from Sir Robert Southwell. In 1539, after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the king granted him nine houses in London, former monastic property.
In 1544 he became vice-chamberlain to Henry VIII's sixth wife, Katherine Parr. He was elected to Parliament as a Knight of the Shire for Surrey in 1545.

Marriages and issue

Walsingham married twice:

First marriage

Firstly he married Katherine Gounter , widow of Henry Morgan of Pencoed, Monmouthshire, and a daughter of John Gounter of Chilworth, Surrey, by his wife Elizabeth Attworth, a daughter and heiress of William Attworth, by whom he had four sons and four daughters:
He married secondly, Anne Jerningham, a daughter of Sir Edward Jerningham of Somerleyton, Suffolk, by his wife Margaret Bedingfield. At the time of her marriage to Sir Edmund Walsingham, Anne Jerningham was the widow of three successive husbands: Lord Edward Grey, eldest son and heir of Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of Dorset, and grandson of King Edward IV's wife, Elizabeth Woodville; Henry Barley of Albury, Hertfordshire; and Sir Robert Drury, Speaker of the House of Commons.

Death and burial

Walsingham died on 9 February 1550 and was buried in "a table tomb, richly ornamented with roses, acorns and foliage gilt" in the Scadbury chapel in the church of St Nicholas at Chislehurst. His son and heir, Thomas Walsingham, erected a monument to his memory in 1581; the inscription begins:
A knight sometime of worthy fame,
Lieth buried under this stony bower,
Sir Edmund Walsingham was his name,
Lieutenant he was of London Tower.

His will, dated 8 February 1550, was proved on 8 November of that year.