To Paris and Back—Again

Abstract This chapter considers Beale’s activity and life in the early and mid 1570s. After working for a time in Paris, Beale became a clerk of the Privy Council in 1572, and later a Member of Parliament. In response to the St Bartholomew’s Day massacres in Paris and elsewhere, Beale penned a discourse on the perils that threatened England, with special attention paid to Mary Queen of Scots and the threat she posed to Protestant England. If Beale had previously been a specialist on German affairs, he had also become increasingly knowledgeable in French and Scottish affairs. Beale stayed in touch with Hubert Languet and gained further friends and patrons during these years, especially in Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, and Francis Walsingham, with whom Beale had a family relationship because the two men married sisters and were, thus, brothers-in-law.