Thomas Stukley, born around 1520 and raised the son of Sir Hugh Stukley, of Afheton, near Ilfracombe in north Devon, a well-off clothier and knight of the body to King Henry VIII, and Jane Pollard.

Descended on his mother's side from a noble line, Thomas is supposed by some of his contemporaries to be an illegitimate son of Henry VIII himself.

He had been present at the siege of Boulogne in 1544-1545, and again in 1550 on the surrender of the city to the English.

A standard-bearer at Boulogne from 1547 to 1550, he had then entered the service of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset.

A warrant had been issued against him in 1551 after his master's arrest, but he had succeeded in escaping to France, where he serves in the French army.

His military talents have brought him to the attention of Henri I Montmorency, and he is sent to England with a letter of recommendation from Henry II of France to his supposed half-brother Edward VI of England.

He proceeds on arrival on September 16, 1552, to reveal the French plans for the capture of Calais and for a descent upon England, the furtherance of which, according to his account, is the object of his mission to England.

John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, evades the payment of any reward to Stukley, and seeks to gain the friendship of the French king by pretending to disbelieve Stukley's statements.

Stukley, who may well be the originator of the plans adopted by the French, will be imprisoned in the Tower of London for some months.

Thomas Stukley, prosecuted for debt on his release in August 1553, had been compelled to become a soldier of fortune once more.

This was not his only financial difficulty: once, claiming a legacy, he had broken into the late testator's house and searched the coffers, in defiance of a court injunction.

In another episode, he had been imprisoned in the Tower at the suit of an Irishman he had robbed.

He had returned to England in December 1554 in the train of Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, after obtaining an amnesty against his creditors' suits, possibly by the grace of the Duke of Suffolk.

His credit had temporarily improved upon his marriage to an heiress, Anne Curtis, but he is reputed to have squandered £100 a day and to have sold the blocks of tin with which his father-in-law had paved the yard of his London house.

Within a few months, a warrant for his arrest had been issued on a charge of uttering false money and he had fled abroad again, deserting his wife, to enter the service of the duke of Savoy, fighting on the victorious side at the Battle of St. Quentin in 1557.

The following year, Stukley had been summoned before the council on a charge of piracy, although he was again acquitted owing to insufficient evidence, and had managed to retain Mary's favor.

On the death of his wife's grandfather at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign he had come into money, and things looked up for him as he accommodated himself to the Protestant succession and became a supporter of Sir Robert Dudley.

He had in 1561 been given a captaincy at Berwick, where he lived sumptuously; during the winter, he had made firm friends with the Gaelic Ulster lord, Shane O'Neill, upon the latter's visit to court at London.

He had earlier in 1562 obtained a warrant permitting him to bring French ships into English ports although England and France were only nominally at peace.

At about this time, on being presented to the queen, his reputed half-sister, he said he would prefer to be sovereign of a molehill than the subject of the greatest king in Christendom and that he had a presentiment he would be a prince before he died.

She is said to have remarked, "I hope I shall hear from you when you are installed in your principality".

He responded that she surely would, and she demanded, "In what language?"

He answered: "In the style of princes, to our dearest sister."

The Queen falls ill with smallpox in October 1562.

Believing her life to be in danger, she asks the Privy Council to make Robert Dudley Protector of the Realm and to give him a suitable title together with twenty thousand pounds a year.

There is universal relief when she recovers her health; Dudley is made a privy councilor.

He is already deeply involved in foreign politics, including Scotland.

Stukley now devises a plan for a colony in Florida and, to this end, persuades Elizabeth to supply a ship of one hundred tons (including one hundred men, plus sailors), to supplement his fleet of five vessels.

Having staged a naval pageant for the queen on the Thames, he promptly sails his fleet to the coast of Munster in Ireland in June 1563 to go privateering against French, Spanish and Portuguese ships.

After repeated remonstrances on the part of the offended powers, Elizabeth disavows Stukley and sends a naval force under the command of Sir Peter Carew to arrest him.

One of his ships is taken in Cork haven, and Stukley surrenders, but he is acquitted once more (though not forgiven by the queen), with O'Neill pleading his case through diplomatic channels.

Having developed an extended interest in Irish affairs from his meeting with O'Neill, Stukley is on June 30, 1563, recommended by the queen to the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Sir Thomas Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex.

Thomas Stukley is forty-six in 1566 when he is employed as a captain by the lord deputy of Ireland, Sir Henry Sidney, in a vain effort to induce Shane O'Neill to enter into negotiations with the government.

The Ulster lord seeks to use him as intermediary with Sidney and in the same year requests his presence in fighting the Scots, an arrangement favored by the lord deputy.

Sidney then seeks permission of the crown for Stukley to purchase the estates and office of Sir Nicholas Bagenal, marshal of Ireland, for three thousand pounds, but Elizabeth refuses to permit the transaction.

The lands lie mostly in the east of Ulster, a territory anciently in Hiberno-Norman possession, which has been much fought over by the Irish and Scots, and will be used by the English within a decade as a base for their efforts at colonization of the province.

The mercenary Thomas Stukley had left Ireland for London with twenty-eight men on board, but only the sole Italian had known their real destination lay at Vimiero, in Portugal, and the rest fall into despair when they arrive in Iberia after a five day voyage.

Philip II invites Stukley to Madrid, where he is loaded with honors, probably with a view to impressing upon Elizabeth the threat of an invasion of Ireland to detract from English support for the Dutch rebels in the Netherlands.

With the approbation of the Duke of Feria, Stukley is known at the Spanish court by the title of "Duke of Ireland", and is established with a handsome allowance in a villa near Madrid, while his son, William, is sent to Alcala to be educated with the Prince of Orange.

His own wish is to be made Duke of Leinster, and his son a marquis, but the highest honor he receives is a knighthood in the order of Calatrava, and he prepares to become a member of a religious order.

Speculation about Stukley's future role becomes intense.

It is claimed in 1570 that he had sought to interfere in the Ridolfi plot with an attack on Ireland in the following year during the planned invasion of England from Flanders.

The Irish invasion was to have been aided by the Plymouth fleet of Sir John Hawkins, who betrayed the supposed plot to the privy council, which led to the arrest of the Duke of Norfolk.

Stukley seeks in the same year to have an English spy, Oliver King, brought before the Inquisition.

The suspect has a history of attendance at mass and of knocking his breast daily and so is merely stripped and banished, but he then has to cross the Pyrenees in the snow while Stukley's thugs pursue him.

The Spanish ambassador informs King Philip on the twelfth of February, 1571, that news had been had in London from France of the pope’s cession to the Spanish crown the kingdom created for Philip and Queen Mary of England, which had fallen vacant upon the excommunication of Elizabeth by the bull Regnans in Excelsis, and that it is rumored that Stukley is to be sent to England with fourteen to fifteen companies of troops.

Amidst this international feinting and shaping, the papal Archbishop of Cashel, Maurice Reagh Fitzgibbon —an ally of the Irish rebel, James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald—makes some effort while in Spain to discredit Stukley's ambitions, much to the dislike of Feria, and is supported by the Duke of Alba, who dismisses the proposed invasion on the ground that, once England falls, Ireland will fall of itself.

The archbishop's brief is to request the appointment of Don John of Austria as king of Ireland, but the upstart's arrival has disrupted his efforts, although Stukley's Irish followers had deserted to him upon their arrival.

Fitzgibbon, on removing to Paris, informs the English ambassador there, Sir Francis Walsingham, of Stukley's schemes.

Stukley’s credit with Spain has by now been seriously injured by Fitzgibbon, and he obtains his passports to leave Spain after Elizabeth demands his dismissal.

Stukley, undeterred by his failure to purchase lands in Ulster, had been appointed seneschal of the lands in the possession of the ancient Kavanagh clan in the southeast of the province of Leinster, and had some say in the controversial land claims of his adversary, Peter Carew (who succeeds him in that office).

He had gone on to buy lands from Sir Nicholas Heron in the adjacent County Wexford, and had been appointed by Sidney to the office of seneschal there, but the queen objected to the appointment and in June 1568 he had been dismissed in favor of Sir Nicholas White.

Stukley had fallen prey to the disputes between Sidney and White's patron, Sir Thomas Butler, which had resulted, in the following year, in a rebuke to Sidney by the queen for his use of Stukley in the negotiations with O'Neill.

Stukley had in June 1569 been committed to custody in Dublin Castle for eighteen weeks, on White's information that he had used coarse language against the queen and supported certain rebels.

He had again been acquitted, and in October 1569 the authorities had released him.

He had been suspected of proposing an invasion of Ireland to King Philip II of Spain, and soon after his release he had offered his services to Fénelon, the French ambassador in London.

He returns to Ireland in 1570, where he fits out a ship at Waterford and makes a great show of his piety, proceeding through the streets of the city on his knees as he offers himself up to God.

He sails from Waterford on the seventeenth of April, supposedly for London, but his real destination lies at Vimiero, in Portugal.

He has twenty-eight men on board, but only the sole Italian knows their course.

Stukley has meanwhile moved to Rome, where he has found favor with Pius, who had excommunicated Elizabeth earlier in 1571.

Under Don John, he had been given the command of three galleys at the Battle of Lepanto, and has shown great valor.

This crucial victory for the Holy League over the Ottoman Empire of Selim II allows Spain to devote more resources to its campaigns in northern Europe.

The illustrious Italian composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, although he has received invitations to serve the emperor Maximilian II and Guglielmo, Duke of Mantua, has remained in Rome, and in 1571 returns to the Julian Chapel as director of music.

Stukley's exploits had restored him to favor at Madrid, and by the end of March 1572 he was at Seville, offering to hold the narrow seas against the English with a fleet of twenty ships.

He is said to have received in four years (1570-1574) over twenty-seven thousand ducats from Philip II of Spain but, wearied by the king's delays, he seeks more serious assistance from the new pope, Gregory XIII, who aspires to make his illegitimate son, Giacomo Buoncompagni, king of Ireland if the Catholic faith were to be restored to dominance there.

When his father was elected pope in March 1572, Giacomo had moved to Rome where, two months later, he had been appointed castellan of Castel Sant'Angelo.

His father had later named him also Gonfalonier of the Papal Army, and he had moved first to Ancona and then Ferrara, remaining in the latter until 1574.

Florentine native Philip Neri, who studied in Rome as a young man and also worked among the poor and sick of the city, was ordained in 1551 and becomes noted as a confessor and for bringing about a religious revival among the Romans.

Pope Gregory XIII in 1575 approves Neri’s Congregation of the Oratory, where priestly members lead a devotional life without vows.

The charismatic Neri, whose good judgment and friendly, playful disposition earn him love and respect, becomes known as the Apostle of Rome.

Italian mathematician Gerolamo Cardano, a pioneer in the study of probability, publishes one of the first modern psychological autobiographies, De vita propria liber (“Book of My Life”) in 1575.

Spanish composer Tomas Luis de Victoria, who may have studied with Bartolomé Escobedo and Palestrina, gains experience in Rome, where he first studies, as an organist and choirmaster, having competent Catholic church choirs for the performance of his works.

He enters the priesthood in 1575 but continues to compose and direct music in Rome.

Stukley allies with Fitzmaurice and moves to Rome in 1575, where he walks about the streets and churches barefoot and bare legged (which causes the lord deputy of Ireland, Sir William Fitzwilliam, to write sarcastically of his holiness, remarking that it had caused the people of Waterford, where he had put on a similar performance while awaiting favorable winds for five weeks prior to his departure, to believe in his piety).

He has an interview at Naples with Don John in June, when he gives details of the plans hatched with the pope for an October expedition.

The intention is to deliver Mary Stewart from prison and take possession of England.

He has corresponded with Nicholas Sanders at this stage.

Don John, who is now in charge of the Spanish forces in Flanders, says the king would have to approve and that three thousand men are too few, but is cautiously optimistic that the expedition would help to contain the rebellion in the Netherlands.

The prospect of a major invasion has been growing, and detailed proposals are put forward for Ireland.

Friar Patrick Healy arrives at Rome in 1575, bearing a letter from the king and announcing that he seeks sanction for an unnamed Irish gentleman to revolt and to request assistance; he insists Philip II has given his blessing.

Gregory stresses that the crown ought not to go to a French or Spanish claimant, but to a native Catholic, i.e. Mary Stewart, lest the king gain too much power and territory, and is opposed to Don John being crowned in Ireland.

The king denies O'Healy's authority to enter discussion on the Irish matter and queries the pope's opposition to the increase of Spanish authority; he is willing to guarantee six months pay for two hundred men and their shipping expenses to go to England in the pope's name, and wonders if a personal attempt might be made against Elizabeth.

Later, it is suggested that five thousand go to Liverpool and free Mary before possessing the country, or go to Ireland.

Gregory bargains for Philip II to defray the entire expense of the expedition, and suggests that if the Vatican is to pitch in then it should receive some benefit in Italy by way of material return.

The Spanish think the leader of the expedition should be married, so as to prevent papal approval of a match with Mary.