William Herle (died 1589 [1]) was an Englishman who was both a Member of Parliament and the county sheriff; he was also a privateer and spy while imprisoned in the Marshalsea prison in 1571. He became known for his part in Elizabeth I's intelligence network inside the jail.

A Spanish ambassador considered him, unsurprisingly, a great spy and a zealous heretic.2 The first known record of Herle’s activities concerns his visit in August 1560 to the Dukes of Holstein and Brunswick.

Mar 23, 2010 · In this group of men, participating on the fringes of the polity and whose activities, whether clerical or more recondite, contributed to the formation of domestic and international policy, is found William Herle, an agent, diplomatic envoy and …

William Herle was an agent, spy and diplomat to the court of Elizabeth I. His date of birth is unknown but his letters - which survive from 1559 to his death in 1588 - reveal that over a thirty-year period he was a client of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and the Earl of Leicester.

William Herle (died 1589) was an Englishman who was both a Member of Parliament and the county sheriff; he was also a privateer and spy while imprisoned in the Marshalsea prison in 1571. He became known for his part in Elizabeth I 's intelligence network inside the jail.

Oct 6, 2011 · In exchange for Cecil‘s protection, Herle became deeply involved in Elizabethan intelligence networks, both domestic and foreign, throughout the 1570s and 1580s. Herle helped uncover plots against Elizabeth, passed vital information about events in the Spanish Netherlands back to England, and provided analyses of English foreign policy for ...

William Herle is a fascinating historical figure whose unfortunate lack of success during his own lifetime is equalled only by the paucity of attention historians have paid him since his death.

William Herle was an intelligencer, diplomat and spy for the Elizabethan administration. The extant corpus of his correspondence covers the years 1559 – 1588.

In this essay I propose to interrogate the relationships between these ministers and their agents, by examining the epistolary forms and strategies deployed in the intelligence letters of William Herle.2 I will focus on a particular sequence of Herle’s correspondence addressed to Walsingham, Leicester and Burghley, written at a critical point ...

This essay examines the letters of the Elizabethan intelligencer William Herle during a period of intelligence-gathering in the Low Countries in 1582. Writing to his patrons Lord Burghley and Sir Francis Walsingham, Herle’s letters offer a rich landscape of detail and information.