William Wade

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Sir William Wade (or Waad) (1546 - October 21, 1623), English statesman and diplomatist, was the eldest son of Armagil Wade (d. 1568), the traveller, who sailed with a party of adventurers for North America in 1536, and later became (1547) one of the clerks of the privy council in London and a member of parliament.

William Wade obtained his entrance into official life by serving William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, sending information to this statesman from Paris and from Italy. He also passed some time in Strasbourg; then in 1581 he became secretary to Sir Francis Walsingham and in 1583 a clerk of the Privy Council.

He visited Vienna, Copenhagen and Madrid on public business, and in 1585 he went to Paris, being waylaid and maltreated on his return near Amiens by influential personages who disliked the object of his mission.

In 1586, he went to Chartley and took possession of the papers of Mary I of Scotland, and in 1587 was again in France. During the remainder of the reign of Elizabeth I of England, Wade was much occupied in searching for Jesuits and in discovering plots against the life of the queen.

James I, who knighted him in 1603. employed him in similar ways, and he was fully occupied in unravelling the plots which marked the early years of the new reign. For some time Wade was a member of the Parliament of England.

He retired from public life in 1613, and died on the 21st of October 1623. Sir William was a shareholder in the Virginia Company, and the Wades of Virginia claim descent from his father.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.