William Wade

Sir William Wade (or Waad, or Wadd; 154621 October 1623) was an English statesman and diplomat, and Lieutenant of the Tower of London. Early life and education Wade was the eldest son of Armagil Wade, the traveller, who sailed with a party of adventurers for North America in 1536, later, one of the clerks of the privy council in London and a member of parliament, and his first wife, Lady Alice Patten. Both his parents died in 1568, and Wade succeeded to the family property, his father's sons by his first wife having predeceased him. In 1571 he was admitted a student of Gray's Inn, and a few years later, doubtless with a view to entering the service of the government, he began travelling on the continent. Career In July 1576 Wade was living in Paris and frequently supplied political information to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, whose "servant" he is described as being. He claimed "familiar acquaintance" with the celebrated French publicist Jean Bodin, from whom he seems to have derived some of the news he forwarded to Burghley. In the autumn of 1576 Amias Paulet took Wade to Blois. During the winter of 1578–79 he was in Italy, from where he forwarded to Burghley reports on its political condition. From Venice in April 1579 he sent Burghley fifty of the rarest kinds of seeds in Italy. In May he was in Florence, and in February 1579/80 he was living in Strasbourg. In the following April he was employed on a delicate mission in Paris by Sir Henry Cobham.