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 to Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley. His younger brother, also called Anthony was made the cupbearer at the queen's table.[1] Both Standen brothers received fee as members of the Scottish court in 1566.[2] Standen helped the queen during the murder of David Riccio and escaped with her to Dunbar Castle.[3] 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 Darnley's mistress.[4]

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."[5]

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".

Mary sent him to Charles IX of France, with an official payment of £100 Scots,[6] 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.[7]

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.[8]

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.[9] 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.[10]

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.[11]

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.[12]

In 1603 Standen was asked to travel and announce the succession of James VI and I to the English throne in Florence and Venice.[13] 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.[14] He hoped the queen would become Catholic, "doubtless and reconciled", perhaps by the means of Anne Howard, Countess of Arundel.[15] Confronted by Robert Cecil with this letter, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London.[16]

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.[17]

He obtained a licence to travel in July 1605 from the king.[18] 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.[19] He was still in Rome in 1615.

References
  1. Joseph Stevenson, History of Mary Stewart by Claude Nau (Edinburgh, 1883), pp. cii-civ.
  2. Gordon Donaldson, Thirds of Benefices (SHS: Edinburgh, 1949), p. 186.
  3. HMC Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury at Hatfield, vol. 16, p. 15.
  4. 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', 3434 Oo. VII. 57.
  5. Standen's "Relation" is in The National Archives, TNA SP14/1/237.
  6. Gordon Donaldson, Thirds of Benefices (SHS: Edinburgh, 1949), p. 186.
  7. Kathleen Lea, 'Sir Antony Standen and Some Anglo-Italian Letters', English Historical Review, vol. 47 no. 187 (July 1932), p. 463-4.
  8. Kathleen Lea, 'Sir Antony Standen and Some Anglo-Italian Letters', English Historical Review, vol. 47 no. 187 (July 1932), p. 465-6.
  9. William Boyd, Calendar State Papers Scotland: 1581-1583, vol. 6 (Edinburgh, 1914), pp. 339-40.
  10. William Boyd, Calendar State Papers Scotland: 1581-1583, vol. 6 (Edinburgh, 1914), pp. 339-42.
  11. Will Tosh, Male Friendship and Testimonies of Love in Shakespeare's England (London, 2016), pp. 59-71.
  12. 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).
  13. Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, vol. 3 (London, 1838), pp. 12-3.
  14. Mary Anne Everett Green, Calendar State Papers Domestic, Addenda 1580-1625 (London, 1872), pp. 433-5.
  15. Kathleen Lea, 'Sir Antony Standen and Some Anglo-Italian Letters', English Historical Review, vol. 47 no. 187 (July 1932), p. 475 citing TNA SP15/35/119.
  16. Leo Hicks, 'The Embassy of Sir Anthony Standen in 1603', British Catholic History, vol. 7 issue 2 (April 1963), pp. 50-81.
  17. Thomas Birch, Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1754), p. 503.
  18. HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. 17 (London, 1938), p. 300.
  19. 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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