Gilbert Gifford (c. November 1560–November 1590) was a double agent who worked for Sir Francis Walsingham and played a role in the uncovering of the Babington Plot.
Born in Staffordshire in 1560, Gifford was the son of a recusant Catholic landowner and former Member of Parliament, John Giffard of Chillington Hall.
In October 1585 Gifford left Rheims again and went to Paris, where he met Thomas Morgan, an agent of Mary, and Charles Paget, another conspirator in the plot to assassinate the Queen.
In December he crossed over to the port of Rye on the southern coast of England, where he was arrested and brought to London for questioning by Sir Francis Walsingham, head of the Queen's security forces.
In late 1587 in Paris, he was arrested in a brothel, being found in bed with a woman and a male servant of the Earl of Essex.
[7] In August 1589 he was brought before the court and sentenced to twenty year's imprisonment for acting against the interests of the Catholic Church.
[8] This supposition sits uneasily with the facts of his Catholicism, his flight from England when the Babington Plot was thwarted, and Walsingham's disapproval of his emigration.
The English ambassador in Paris, Sir Edward Stafford went through Gifford's papers after his arrest in 1587 and concluded that: "He had showed himself to be the most notable double, treble villain that ever lived.