Anthony Standen (spy)

Sir Anthony or Antony Standen (b. c. 1548 - d. ?) English spy or intelligencer.

This article is about the 16th- and 17th-century spy. For the chemist and author, see Anthony Standen.

Standen was a "goodly tall fair man with flaxen hair and beard". According to his own accounts, in 1565 Standen came to Scotland at the instance of Margaret Douglas Countess of Lennox and was appointed an equerry of the royal stable, or Master of the Horse, to Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley.[1] His younger brother, also called Anthony was made the cupbearer at the queen's table.[2] Both Standen brothers received a fee as members of the Scottish court in 1566.[3] The Standen brothers did not have permission to travel and were regarded with disdain by English diplomats.

Standen was welcomed by Mary, Queen of Scots at Edinburgh Castle

In October 1565 the English sailor Anthony Jenkinson was sent in the Ayde to Scotland during the political crisis of the Chaseabout Raid.[4] He sailed into the Firth of Forth on 25 September 1565. His mission was to blockade Leith to prevent Lord Seton landing munitions for Mary sent from France. An adverse wind brought him within range of the cannon of the fortress isle of Inchkeith.[5] Jenkinson had been ordered not to declare that he had been sent by the English government, and said he was looking for pirates. Mary, Queen of Scots sent aboard Anthony Standen and his brother with a present of a bow and arrows and a "box of conserve" for Queen Elizabeth, with a gold chain and gilt cup for the captain. Jenkinson considered capturing Standen, and the English diplomat Thomas Randolph wished the ship had been blown back to England with Standen.[6]

Standen wrote that he helped the queen during the murder of David Riccio, and escaped with her to Seton Palace and Dunbar Castle.[7][8] According to a narrative of a talk between Darnley and his father, Standen smuggled his mistress into Edinburgh Castle during Mary's pregnancy, and it was rumoured the woman was also Darnley's mistress.[9]

Standen described the circumstances of his knighthood in his "Relation" which he sent as a petition to King James in April 1604;

"after Her Majesty was most happily delivered of the then Lord the Prince ... at which time in acknowledgement of Standen's services, it pleased the King by the Queen's appointment to honour him with the order of knighthood, as also it pleased Her Majesty, some days after the childbirth to cause the knight to be called into her bedchamber, where the infant Prince laid asleep, a cross of diamonds fixed on his breast, upon this cross Her Majesty commanded the knight to lay his hand, to whom it her pleasure herself to give the oath of fidelity."[10]

Standen wrote that Mary, Queen of Scots, declared he was the first Englishman to do homage to the prince, saying, "For that you saved his life". An English envoy Henry Killigrew came to Edinburgh to congratulate Mary on the birth, and refused to speak to Standen. In July, William Rogers offered to capture the two Standens and another English Catholic, Christopher Rokesby.[11]

Mary sent him to Charles IX of France, with an official payment of £100 Scots,[12] and he received a pension of annuity from the Cardinal of Lorraine. (Anthony the younger brother was imprisoned at Berwick for a year). In 1570 he was said to be involved with Corbeyran de Cardaillac Sarlabous in a plot to invade England.[13]

In 1576 he was banished from Antwerp by Philip II of Spain for over familiarity with Madame de Blomberg, mother of Don John of Austria. From 1582 Standen worked for Mary Queen of Scots in Florence, and in 1587 started working for Francis Walsingham. He was at the Spanish court reporting on preparations for the Armada.[14]

On 23 March 1583 he wrote to James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, expressing his wish to return to Scotland and serve James VI until Mary Queen of Scots was freed. He said he had told the Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany of the likely "association" of Mary and James, by which the captive queen would be returned to Scotland. He would like the portrait of the king for the Grand Duke. Standen wondered if the duke's daughter Eleanor de' Medici would be a suitable bride for James.[15] On the same day he wrote to John Lesley, Bishop of Ross, also conjecturing that Eleanor de' Medici, a wise and fair lady, would be a good bride for James VI.[16]

In 1590 Standen was in prison in Bordeaux and was helped by Anthony Bacon who paid his debts, and made his return to England possible.[17] On 25 November 1593 Mary Radcliffe spoke to him at Windsor Castle and told him the queen woould give him an audience if he waited at the castle.[18]

Rowland Whyte mentioned that Standen was too old to be a "gallant suitor" to a rich widow Mrs Shelley in February 1598. Standen's suit was favoured by Lord Buckhurst, but the Earl of Essex preferred another candidate, Sir Thomas Smith who he had knighted at Cadiz in 1596.[19][20]

In 1603 Standen was asked to travel and announce the succession of James VI and I to the English throne in Florence and Venice.[21] He went to Rome to collect altar ornaments and beads for Anna of Denmark which was supposed to open a relationship leading to the conversion of England to the Catholic religion. Standen himself wrote to Robert Persons that "the Queene [is] warned from dealing in Cath: causes, and she ys very assyduous at sermons, so that I am in a stagger what shall become of my tokens", meaning his efforts would not be successful.[22] He hoped the queen would become Catholic, "doubtless and reconciled", perhaps by the means of Anne Howard, Countess of Arundel.[23] Confronted by Robert Cecil with this letter, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London.[24]

Some of the beads and other items intended for Anne of Denmark were given to the Papal nuncio in Paris to be returned, according to a letter of Nicolas de Neufville, seigneur de Villeroy. Villeroy and Christophe de Harlay, comte de Beaumont doubted that Standen had official instructions from King James, and also conjectured that he was sent to Italy to give the impression that James would be sympathetic to Catholics. Standen was released from the Tower in November 1604.[25]

He obtained a licence to travel in July 1605 from the king.[26] In August 1606 Anne of Denmark sent a letter to Christina of Lorraine Duchess of Tuscany on behalf of her servant Standen who was travelling in Italy for reasons of conscience and religion.[27] He was still in Rome in 1615.

References
  1. Joseph Bain, Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1898), p. 310.
  2. Joseph Stevenson, History of Mary Stewart by Claude Nau (Edinburgh, 1883), pp. cii-civ.
  3. Gordon Donaldson, Thirds of Benefices (SHS: Edinburgh, 1949), p. 186.
  4. Edward Delmar Morgan, Charles Henry Coote, Early voyages and travels to Russia and Persia, by Anthony Jenkinson and other Englishmen (London, 1886), pp. xlvi-xlviii, 167-176
  5. Joseph Bain, Calendar State Papers Scotland: 1563-1569, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1900), p. 220-1.
  6. Calendar of State Papers Scotland, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1900), pp. 220-1.
  7. HMC Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury at Hatfield, vol. 16 (London, 1933), p. 17
  8. Herries, John Maxwell, Historical memoirs of the reign of Mary Queen of Scots: and a portion of the reign of King James the Sixth (Abbotsford Club, 1836), p. 78
  9. Cambridge University Library, 'Some parte of the talke between the late king of Scotland my sonne and me, therle of Lennox ryding between Dondasse and Lythkoo', CUL 3434 Oo. VII. 57.
  10. Mrs Hubert Barclay, The Queen's Cause: Scottish Narrative, 1561-1587 (London, 1938), p. 151: Standen's "Relation" is in The National Archives, TNA SP14/1/237.
  11. Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1900), pp. 289, 293.
  12. Gordon Donaldson, Thirds of Benefices (SHS: Edinburgh, 1949), p. 186.
  13. Kathleen Lea, 'Sir Antony Standen and Some Anglo-Italian Letters', English Historical Review, 47:187 (July 1932), p. 463-4.
  14. Kathleen Lea, 'Sir Antony Standen and Some Anglo-Italian Letters', English Historical Review, vol. 47 no. 187 (July 1932), p. 465-6.
  15. William Boyd, Calendar State Papers Scotland: 1581-1583, vol. 6 (Edinburgh, 1914), pp. 339-40.
  16. William Boyd, Calendar State Papers Scotland: 1581-1583, vol. 6 (Edinburgh, 1914), pp. 339-42.
  17. Will Tosh, Male Friendship and Testimonies of Love in Shakespeare's England (London, 2016), pp. 59-71.
  18. Thomas Birch, Memoirs of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 1 (London, 1754), p. 136.
  19. Michael Brennan, Noel Kinnamon, Margaret Hannay, The Letters of Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney (Philadelphia, 2013), p. 292 (Arthur Collins, II, (1746), pp. 89-90).
  20. Thomas Birch, Memorials of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 2 (London, 1754), p. 50.
  21. Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, vol. 3 (London, 1838), pp. 12-3.
  22. Mary Anne Everett Green, Calendar State Papers Domestic, Addenda 1580-1625 (London, 1872), pp. 433-5.
  23. Kathleen Lea, 'Sir Antony Standen and Some Anglo-Italian Letters', English Historical Review, 47:187 (July 1932), p. 475 citing TNA SP15/35/119.
  24. Leo Hicks, 'The Embassy of Sir Anthony Standen in 1603', British Catholic History, 7:2 (April 1963), pp. 50-81.
  25. Thomas Birch, Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 2 (London, 1754), pp. 502-5.
  26. HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. 17 (London, 1938), p. 300.
  27. HMC 3rd Report, Rev. Hopkinson (London, 1872), p. 264: Maureen Meikle, 'Once a Dane, Always a Dane? Queen Anna of Denmark’s Foreign Relations and Intercessions as a Queen Consort of Scotland and England', The Court Historian, 24:2 (2019), pp. 175-6.
  • "Paul Hammer, 'Standen, Sir Anthony (d. in or after 1615)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/39703. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  • Antony Standen, The National Archives "Secrets & Spies
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