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abroad. Since these were largely well-to-do, educated Protestants who could afford to leave home and settle in a foreign land the loss to the nation was not inconsiderable.Moreover they did not abandon the hope of reconverting England. Some of the exiles became ardent propagandists who flooded their homeland with partisan pamphlets. Others were directly involved in plots against the regime.
    Francis Walsingham did not hurry to join the flood of religious emigrants, even though London was rapidly becoming an uncongenial and even a dangerous place. Forced attendance at the popish mass distressed him and he may well have become a focus of government attention. The first victims of the new regime were those most closely associated with its predecessor. Several of Walsingham’s friends and acquaintances found themselves taken in for interrogation. The government had no widespread extermination policy but as trails were discovered leading to secret presses, unauthorized religious gatherings and the hatchers of plots, they had no alternative but to follow them up. Sooner or later the bishop’s men would come knocking at Walsingham’s door. He knew people who were involved in Wyatt’s rebellion. He was, at the very least, acquainted with John Day, the publisher of subversive literature who had withdrawn to Stamford, from where, financed by William Cooke, Cecil’s brother-in-law, he continued his business. With this and other information in his possession Francis was vulnerable.
    Walsingham had good reasons for quitting England and family matters provided him with the opportunity to do so. At what point Walsingham decided to leave for more congenial and safer climes is not known. We only have tantalizing glimpses of his movements over the next few years. The cities of Basel and Padua feature prominently in the sparse account of his peregrinations but this may be due to the random survival of records and may not indicate the real significance of his sojourn in these places. Right at the beginning of Mary’s reign he could claim a good reason for applying for a passport.
    In 1553 his aunt, Lady Denny, died, leaving a young family of four daughters and three sons as orphans. Jane Denny’s close relatives took charge of the girls and Francis accepted responsibility for their brothers. The boys, all under the age of fourteen, cannot have been in any danger but presumably the family was determined to have them brought up in a good Protestant environment. By the autumnof 1554 the Dennys were at Padua in the charge of John Tamworth (soon to be Walsingham’s brother-in-law). It seems likely that Francis was with them. About this time he enrolled in the university. A year later we find the party in Basel where the Dennys were left in the care of Walsingham’s friends. He then hastened back across the Alps to resume his studies.
    The fact that our knowledge of Francis’ itinerary is so sketchy should not deceive us into dismissing the exile years as unimportant. On the contrary, they were formative. He emerged from this life of scholarly vagabondage with beliefs strengthened, opinions defined, friendships established, understanding of continental religion and politics clarified and character developed. The policies he later pursued in government stemmed directly from his experiences between 1553 and 1558. The 500 or so men of substance and conviction (most of them young) who spent all or part of Mary’s reign in the Protestant hot spots of Europe constituted a kind of evangelical university. They sat at the feet of the leading scholars of the Reformation – John Calvin at Geneva, Peter Martyr Vermigli at Strasbourg (and, later, Zurich), Heinrich Bullinger at Zurich. The exiled community also produced its own notables. Walsingham’s old teacher, John Cheke, went to Padua, as he said, ‘to learn not only the Italian tongue but also philosophically to course over the civil laws’. He devoted part of his time there to lecturing on