English statesman, born at Chiselhurst; was ambassador at Paris, and was there during the St. Bartholomew massacre, and was afterwards appointed one of Queen Elizabeth's Secretaries of State; he was an insidious inquisitor, and had numerous spies in his pay, whom he employed to ferret out evidence to her ruin against Mary, Queen of Scots, and he had the audacity to sit as one of the Commissioners at her trial (1536-1590).