Acknowledgements

A book such as this relies heavily on archival research and thus much travel, and would not have been feasible without time away from the lecture theatre, which was enabled by a VENI research fellowship from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), and a one-year visiting fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS-KNAW). An Aspasia stipend, also awarded by NWO, allowed me to make some further, final archival trips, fine-tune drafts, and pay for reproductions and image rights. This book has received close attention at Oxford University Press; I am grateful that Cathryn Steele welcomed the project enthusiastically. Even though the following list of debts is long, any remaining mistakes are mine.

The image of the lone scholar has never been one that I recognized. I have always been fortunate to meet inspiring people along the way. Even before my research properly started, Joris van Eijnatten and Judith Pollmann gave generously of their time in order to turn loose ideas into a coherent grant proposal. James Daybell supported this project from beginning to end. I am grateful to the late Margaret P. Hannay for encouraging me to write about Lady Carlisle. Julia Donaldson’s enthusiasm for Lady d’Aubigny was contagious and it was a true pleasure to work with her, as well as with Lauren Hawthorne and her assistant Emily Hall from Nutshell TV, to chase spies in London’s British Library for an episode of Skyarts’ ‘Treasures of the British Library’ in 2016. Without meeting Julia, I would never have believed that the story of Lady d’Aubigny hiding papers in her hair found its origin in a contemporary source.

As with all such works, the debt owed to those who have already prepared the ground is immense, if not always obvious. In this instance the work of Margaret Everett Green, David Underdown, and Alan Marshall stands out: without their efforts, this book would probably never have been written. Studying espionage also opened up a world of related disciplines that I could never have explored by myself. I thank Alex Barber, Maureen Bell, Simon Davies, Gareth Digby, Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen, Florike Egmond, Marcus Nevitt, Sara Pennell, Paul Seaward, John Young, and in particular Erica Longfellow for answering ad hoc emails, readily sharing their expertise.

Some of these trips made in the service of knowledge created memories that will never leave me. My friend and Leiden colleague Katinka Zeven’s determination to find Sarah Gall’s grave in a Putney church when she visited me in London brought with it all the excitement of a detective novel and was met with success. To excavate Sarah’s secrets went beyond the scope of this book, but promises to bring further secrets to light relating to Christina Bruce, Countess of Devonshire, at another time. With my father I flew to Dublin and drove to breathtakingly beautiful Connemara to not only spend time with a diary that had lain undiscovered in a family archive for centuries, but also to spend time with each other. I thank Lord Roden for his hospitality and permission to publish extracts from Lady Mordaunt’s manuscript, and papers now housed at the Kent History and Library Centre in Maidstone are published by kind permission of Viscount De L’Isle from his private collection.

While a scholar working on espionage becomes secretive, secrets consume a person and must ultimately be shared. My thanks to Rachel Weil, who read a chapter on her flight from the United States to Manchester, as well as to Cedric Brown, Helmer Helmers, Philip Major, Rosalind Marshall, Steve Murdoch, Sarah Poynting, and Gillian Wright, for their assistance in the reading of a chapter in its penultimate stages. A special note of thanks, however, must be accorded to Geoffrey Smith, who has given liberally of his time and expertise, read the manuscript in its entirety, and saved me from more mistakes than I care to admit. Sarah Poynting also shared with me her transcriptions of Charles I’s letters as housed in the Royal Library in Windsor. Even though I spent many months in dusty archives, private estates, and modern libraries, transcribing hundreds of documents myself, I have been touched that colleagues and friends have, like Sarah, generously shared transcriptions with me, without which this book would have been even longer in its making. Cedric Brown shared dozens of transcriptions of Lady Mordaunt’s correspondence without hesitation even though he had just met me once, and Caroline Bowden searched her archive turning typewriter-scripts into scans to share her transcriptions of Lady Mary Knatchbull’s correspondence.

Archival research comes with its own geographical challenges and time constraints. I would like to thank Ann Hughes for sharing a transcription of a Lady d’Aubigny letter in the Sloane MSS that I needed urgently when I found myself already at Gatwick on my way back to Amsterdam. Thanks too, to Nicola Kirkby, Ineke Huysman, Catherine Stihler, and Miranda Lewis, for double­checking manuscripts from the Clarendon and Rawlinson collections for me, and Ruben Verwaal for locating charts in Lilly’s notebooks, long after I had left the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

I thank Jana Dambrogio’s team and colleagues at MIT Libraries for testing secret writing techniques, and especially Ayako Letizia for proving that messages can be secreted in eggs, Brien Beidler for creating early modern sealing wax, and Laura Bergemann for testing how effective silver nitrate is as a reagent on seventeenth-century paper, a theory proffered to me by Will Scott.

I feel grateful that I can count some of the best and most talented scholars among my dearest friends, many of whom have already been named. The ‘Signed, Sealed, & Undelivered’ team, Rebekah Ahrendt, David van der Linden, Jana Dambrogio, and Daniel Starza Smith, was essential in bringing me joy and broadening my understanding of the materiality of texts. Their generosity and support is boundless. Jana bringing books that can best be described as doorstops in her hand luggage from the United States to Europe because I needed to consult some footnotes is typical, and I can never thank her enough for making me countless models, teaching me that the epistolary world is three dimensional. Without Daniel’s friendship, and him opening up his house to me time and again so that I could spend more time in libraries, this book would probably not have been finished. As I do with Lotte Fikkers, who will soon surpass me, I could easily thank him for doing all of the above. I hope we will continue our conversation for many years to come.

My greatest personal debt, however, is to Pete Langman, who has almost lived as long with these spies as I have, shared many adventures, and whose magic with words, never-ending patience as a sounding board and critic, as well as his reassurance, love, and friendship enabled me to catch them.

Contents

List of Figures

List of Plates

List of Abbreviations

Note on Transcription of Manuscript Sources

Note on Dates

Introduction

Invisible Agents, She-Intelligencers or Spies Invisible by Birth

1.     Ciphered Pillow Talk with Charles I in Prison, 1646-9

‘intrigues, which at that time could be best managed and carried on by ladies’

2.     The Credibility and Archival Silence of She-Intelligencers

Women on the Council of State’s Payroll

3.     Susan Hyde, a Spy’s Gendered Fate and Punishment

Hide and Seek the Sealed Knot

1.1.      Elizabeth Murray, Loyal Subject, Lover, or Double Agent?

Rumour, Hearsay, and the Sins of the Father

1.2.      Elizabeth Murray’s Continental Foray

Incompetence, Invisible Inks, and Internal Wrangling

5.     Elizabeth Carey, Lady Mordaunt

The ‘Enigma’ of the Great Trust

6.     Anne, Lady Halkett’s ‘True Accountt’

A Married Woman is Never to Blame

7.     Aphra Behn’s Letters from Antwerp, July 1666-April 1667

Intelligence Reports or Epistolary Fiction?

Epilogue

Invisibility and Blanck Marshall, the Nameless and Genderless Agent— Spies Are Best Disguised as Women

Bibliography

Index

Index Occultus Colour Plates

List of Figures

1.1.       Engraving, pamphlet The malignants trecherous and bloody plot. Lady d’Aubigny at the head of the table of plotters.

1.2.       Engraving, pamphlet Englands monument of mercies. Lady d’Aubigny surrounded by plotters.

1.3.       Manuscript, ‘Figures set upon Horary Questions by Mr. William Lilly. Volume III’, Lilly’s notebook with cases from 17 August 1646 to 4 May 1647. Hand: William Lilly.

1.4.           . Manuscript, cipher key, with Lady d’Aubigny scribbled in as an afterthought.

1.5.           . Manuscript, cipher key used by Charles I during his imprisonment in Carisbrooke Castle, in which five she-intelligencers figure prominently. Hand: Henry Firebrace.

1.6.       Manuscript letter, [Charles] to [Jane], Monday 24 July 1648.

2.1. Manuscript petition, Elizabeth Alkin’s mark.

4.1.       Manuscript, cipher key shared between Inchiquin and Lady Dysart. Hand: unknown.

4.2.       Manuscript letter written in invisible ink, made legible by ultraviolet light, of Anna Leveson to Mr Grin, 26 Dec. 1655. Hand: Anna Leveson.

5.1.       Manuscript, decoded letter of Clarendon to Lady Mordaunt, by John Wallis. Hand: John Wallis.

E.1a and E.1b. Musical cipher key allegedly shared between Jane Lane and Charles II (unfolded and folded). Hand: Ellen Lane.

List of Plates

1.        The ‘Rainbow Portrait’ of Elizabeth I, c.1602. Artist: tentatively attributed to either Isaac Oliver or Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger.

2.        Portrait of Lucy Percy-Hay, Countess of Carlisle, c.1637. Artist: Sir Anthony Van Dyck.

3.        Manuscript, cipher key. Hand: John Wallis.

4.        Top image. Walsingham's Anti-Spy Letter, modelled after BL, Add. MS 33594, fos. 56-7. Artist: Jana Dambrogio.

Bottom image. Dagger Trap, modelled after TNA, SP 101/81, fos. 344-5. Artist: Jana Dambrogio.

5.        Wax seal. Imprint: Sealed Knot. Fran: Edwards to [Susan Hyde], 6 July 1655.

6.        Portrait of Elizabeth Murray and a black page boy. Artist: Peter Lely.

7.        Portrait of Elizabeth Murray, her sister Margaret, and future husband, Sir Lionel Tollemache. Artist: Attributed to Joan (Anne) Palmer, Mrs Carlile.

8.        Portrait of Catherine Mary Ford (1634-1682), Lady Grey. Artist: Peter Lely.

List of Abbreviations

Archives and Libraries

BL Add. Bod. Misc. Rawl. LPL E NLS NPG NRS

British Library (London) Additional Bodleian Library (Oxford) Miscellaneous Rawlinson Lambeth Palace Library (London) Court of Arches National Library of Scotland (Edinburgh) National Portrait Gallery (London) National Records of Scotland (Edinburgh), formerly NAS/National Archives of Scotland

GD TNA SP SP 08 SP 09 SP 14 SP 15 SP 16 SP 18 SP 19 SP 25 SP 29 SP 44 SP 46 SP 77 SP 78 SP 89 SP 101 SP 106

Gifts and Deposits The National Archives (Kew), formerly PRO/Public Record Office State Papers King William’s Chest State Paper Office: Williamson Collection, Pamphlets, Miscellaneous State Papers Domestic James I State Papers Domestic Edward Vl-James I: Addenda State Papers Domestic Charles I Council of State, Navy Commission, and related Bodies: Orders and Papers Books and Papers of the Committee for the Advance of Money Council of State: Books and Accounts State Papers Domestic Charles II State Papers: Entry Books State Papers Domestic: Supplementary State Papers Foreign Flanders State Papers Foreign France State Papers Foreign Portugal State Papers Foreign Venice State Papers Foreign Ciphers

 

Edited Volumes

CJ ClSP	Journal of the House of Commons, 13 vols (London: HMSO, 1802-3) Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers Preserved in the Bodleian Library, 5 vols, O. Ogle, W. H. Bliss, W. D. Macray, and F. J. Routledge (eds) (Oxford: Clarendon, 1869-1970)
CSP CSPD CSPDI	Calendar of State Papers Calendar of State Papers Domestic Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Interregnum, 13 vols, Mary Anne Everett Green (ed.) (London: HMSO, 1875-86)
CTB	Calendar of Treasury Books, first 5 vols, William A. Shaw (ed.) (London: HMSO, 1904-11)
HMC HMSO LBM	Historical Manuscripts Commission Report Her/His Majesty’s Stationery Office The Letter-Book of John Viscount Mordaunt 1658-1660, Mary Coate (ed.) (London: Royal Historical Society, 1945)
LJ NL	Journal of the House of Lords, 42 vols (London: HMSO, 1767-1830) New Light on Aphra Behn: An Investigation into the Facts and Fictions surrounding Her Journey to Surinam in 1663 and Her Activities as a Spy in Flanders in 1666, W. J. Cameron (ed.) (Auckland: Wakefield Press, 1961)
NP	The Nicholas Papers: Correspondence of Sir Edward Nicholas, Secretary of State, 4 vols, George F. Warner (ed.) (London: Camden Society, 1886-1920)
ODNB OED TSP	Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford English Dictionary A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe, Esq., 7 vols, Thomas Birch (ed.) (London: Thomas Woodward, 1742)
References	to Shakespeare’s plays are taken from The RSC Shakespeare,

Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen (eds), William Shakespeare, Complete Works (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2007); those to Ben Jonson’s works from The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, 7 vols, David Bevington, Martin Butler, and Ian Donaldson (gen. eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Note on Transcription of Manuscript Sources

The seventeenth-century spelling has been maintained so that the women’s voices come across as authentically as possible. The often-idiosyncratic spelling (including i/j/y and u/v) has not been modernized. In favour of readability, however, the following abbreviations have been expanded: Lo                                                                            Lord

wch                                                                         which

wth                                                                            with

wt                                                                             what

ye                                                                            the

ym                                                                           them

yt                                                                               that

yor, yr                                                                     your,  your

Added letters have been indicated        in italic. The more common abbreviations,

such as S^r, L^d, or Ma:^tie, have not been expanded. Deletions are indicated by strikethrough (i.e. strikethrough) and superscript insertions are enclosed within angle brackets (i.e. ^Asuperscript^A). The seventeenth-century punctuation and paragraphing has been maintained, but the lineation has been normalized. Words between square brackets have been inserted by the author unless otherwise indicated. Words that are left out are indicated by […]. Additions in the margins of the manuscript are indicated by angle brackets. Those brackets are also used to indicate a change of one letter into another (i.e. l> b<etter).

Note on Dates

Two calendars were in use throughout the period and the lands covered by this book: the Julian calendar (proclaimed by Julius Caesar in 46 bce and finally modified in 8 CE), and a revised calendar, the Gregorian. The Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1578 to ‘correct’ the disparity between the Julian calendar and the equinoctial reality, which by the late sixteenth century had led to the Julian calendar falling ten days behind equinoctial time. Thus in 1600, for instance, 5 October in the Julian calendar, also known as ‘Old Style’ (OS)/stilo veteri (s.v.) was 15 October in the Gregorian calendar, or ‘New Style’ (NS)/stilo novo (s.n.), which remains in use today in the Western world other than those regions of Europe where the Orthodox Church still holds sway. The Gregorian calendar, named after Pope Gregory XIII under whose pontificate (1572-85) it was introduced, was adopted at different times by different countries. It was almost immediately implemented in most Catholic countries and states, but long rejected in many Protestant states and territories. For example, it was introduced in France, Spain, Italy, and Portugal in 1582, but Sweden continued to use the Julian calendar until 1699, and England until 2 September 1752 OS, after which the following day became 14 September NS. In England, the civil New Year still began on the Feast of the Annunciation (25 March) but Scotland was among the earliest Protestant countries which, even though retaining OS dating, brought the New Year back to 1 January.

Mobility was a prerequisite for spying, and with change of context often came a change of calendar. Both calendars were used in the Dutch Republic, for instance, the location of not one but two alternative Stuart courts on the continent: those of Elizabeth Stuart, sometime Queen of Bohemia, and her niece who married William II in 1641, Mary Stuart. These joined-up courts attracted so many refugees that one of John Thurloe’s informers described it as ‘the nest of malignant vypers’.¹ The province of Zeeland, as well as Holland, where the courts were located, had adopted New Style, primarily for commercial reasons, so Stuart-born princesses and their itinerant courtiers in The Hague, whether refugee or intelligencer, would therefore be likely to communicate with officials in the style that the Dutch States General also most often followed, New Style.

When they found themselves in the Bohemian summer palace and hunting lodge in Rhenen, in the province of Utrecht, however, they found themselves in territories still accustomed to the Julian calendar. As such, letters sent from Rhenen were dated in Old Style, if not indicated otherwise. Most Royalist refugees, from diplomat to spy, also adapted to their surroundings: they used the Julian calendar when in England, but the Gregorian when visiting Queen Henrietta Maria’s exiled court in Paris, for instance. As explained, an added difficulty when dealing with British correspondents is that the civil year in England began on 25 March, and not on 1 January. So 18 March 1634 and 28 March 1635 were in fact the same day, but one was in London, the other in The Hague.

In order to allow the reader to follow a chronological sequence in a correspondence which crosses the narrow seas and other national boundaries, the dates of the letters have been converted to one calendar system in the running text, the Gregorian. The authorial date, the exact way in which the writer of any given letter dates the document, is nevertheless still retained as information for the reader and can be found in the footnotes.

1

An anonymous letter from Holland to Pieter Hacker in London, 12 June 1654, TSP, ii. 344. I thank Marika Keblusek for this reference.

Colour Plates

 

Plate 1. The ‘Rainbow Portrait’ of Elizabeth I, c.1602. Artist: tentatively attributed to either Isaac Oliver or Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger. Oil on canvas. Reproduced with permission of the Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House

Plate 2. Portrait of Lucy Percy-Hay, Countess of Carlisle, c.1637. Artist: Sir Anthony Van Dyck. Oil on canvas. Private Collection, BAL 72301. © The Bridgeman Art Library Limited

Plate 3. Manuscript, cipher key. Hand: John Wallis. Bod., MS Eng. Misc. e 475, p. 65. Reproduced with permission of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

Plate 4. Top image. Walsingham’s Anti-Spy Letter, modelled after BL, Add. MS 33594, fos. 56-7. Artist: Jana Dambrogio. Photo credit: Emily Hishta Cohen. Courtesy of Unlocking History Materials Collection Bottom image. Dagger Trap, modelled after TNA, SP 101/81, fos. 344-5. Artist: Jana Dambrogio. Photo credit: Emily Hishta Cohen. Courtesy of Unlocking History Materials Collection

L* 6段加0工

還播 一宀 一 ./£, di;：，r . Nd：焚f .■心… >/:/：<_ /：■ ■■ 於以.，：犷2 J a N 一 .一 . . ，一 ..次仙人4,以&心上.灰，〃弦/夕 碑金 7" U:丄大:“，J                          "/T;廿；£\ L _              .        ..一 一7二？ 」支股；邛/ J .、：I「…不：““ ,.■ .，£ 一- Ể Ị f         j Zi. _   1 J Ul人"上一 士：…id ：ííỉ                  ,/.., ,- cgf 'Áả ỉiựựí 方d&/ 心& G 二赢Ệk", L / ，一 ，二，.ủ.:：:...                    ?扌二 . . , ■■■ .」:一、用£ 女侬，.. 一

Plate 5. Wax seal. Imprint: Sealed Knot. Fran: Edwards to [Susan Hyde], 6 July 1655. Bod., Rawl. MS A. 41, p. 206 ii. Reproduced with permission of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plate 6. Portrait of Elizabeth Murray and a black page boy. Artist: Peter Lely. Oil on Canvas. Ham House. © The National Trust

 

Plate 7. Portrait of Elizabeth Murray, her sister Margaret, and future husband, Sir Lionel Tollemache. Artist: Attributed to Joan (Anne) Palmer, Mrs Carlile. Oil on Canvas. Ham House. © The National Trust

 

 

Plate 8. Portrait of Catherine Mary Ford (1634-1682), Lady Grey. Artist: Peter Lely. Oil on Canvas. Photo credit: Pete Langman. © From a private collection on display at Audley End House, Essex

Introduction

Invisible Agents, She-Intelligencers or Spies

Invisible by Birth

Alexandrine of Rye-Varax, Countess of Taxis (from 1649/50 Thurn and Taxis), became de facto Postmistress of the Holy Roman Empire following the death of her husband Count Leonhard II, who held the office of Postmaster as a hereditary monopoly: their son Lamoral was a minor at the time of his father’s death. The holder was responsible for, and thus controlled, all the post within the Empire, which for all practical purposes meant most of continental Europe. In 1633, when Balthazar Gerbier, the Stuart agent in Brussels, suspected that his post to and from England was being opened, he told the countess that someone in her post room must surely be to blame because her honesty, dignity, and sex automatically placed her above all suspicion (‘vostre probité, dignité et sexe vous me a l’abry de tout et particulierement des noises’). Seventeenth-century men simply ‘knew’ that a woman would never do what was required of a spy.¹ To discuss this delicate issue with Alexandrine he took his wife Deborah with him as mediator; the offender, whoever it was, had to be unmasked as soon as possible. After all, the crime was foul—someone had ‘kidnapped’ a sacred pile of documents and robbed them of their innocence by illegally opening them (‘rapt & violement de la virginité de nos pacquets sacréz’). The gendered rhetoric of violence and sexual ravishment Gerbier uses to refer to the interception and opening of letters—especially the striking trope of deflowering —indicates his supposition that such ‘crimes’ were only committed by men. Nevertheless, he was forced to confront the possibility that the countess, not one of her male employees, had initiated or ordered the postal tampering. Gerbier left detailed notes for his successor, explaining how to circumvent her offices in Brussels and Ghent.²

Alexandrine’s success was largely down to privilege of birth, dowager status, and crafty organization. She took full advantage of her temporary inheritance, running a spy-riddled postal network that sold intelligence to the highest bidder —Catholic or Protestant—and which extended to France, Spain, Portugal, and England.³ She ran a sophisticated operation from her estate in Brussels, at the heart of which was her ‘Black Chamber’.⁴ It was here that Gerbier’s post was violated, as Alexandrine’s employees systematically opened letters and copied their contents before resealing them and sending them on their way. Her gender, though, was arguably the vital factor in her success, since contemporaries, much like modern historians, seemed reluctant to believe a woman could be involved in such nefarious activities.

In fact, espionage is such a dirty, secretive business that one would be forgiven for thinking that women have no place in it at all: certainly that is what might be assumed if reading one of the many studies covering the turbulent decades of the mid-seventeenth century. While it is slowly being acknowledged that women played a vital role in the political machinations that were then re­forming early modern Europe, they are still largely absent from discussions of intelligence or espionage practice. This book aims to correct that omission. Not only were women deeply involved in Civil War and Restoration espionage, but the qualities that made them so effective then led directly to their modern invisibility. This account offers a wider European perspective by taking mid­seventeenth-century Britain as a case study, since British spies were active not only at home but also (exiled) on the continent.

This work traces the women who carried out espionage and counter­espionage during and around the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (i.e. the English Civil War),⁵ the Interregnum, and the Restoration. While these activities took place in England as well as on mainland Europe where the court of Charles Stuart took up exile, much of this game of deadly hide-and-seek took place behind the desks of the Black Chamber.

Set a Spy to Catch a Spy: the Historian as Spymistress

Alexandrine’s intelligence bureau, which originated during the Thirty Years’ War, may well have been the first Black Chamber in Europe: a back room in which letters were quickly and systematically opened, copied, translated, and deciphered, before being sent on, resealed with the intention of covering up these methodical espionage practices. I ‘caught’ her in 2011, albeit almost accidentally, when I was running my own Black Chamber of sorts as I edited the correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia. This massive task required the painstaking examination of piles of letters, collecting, transcribing, translating, and deciphering hundreds more, seeking out plots and conspiracies, as if I were a modern John Thurloe, Oliver Cromwell’s most memorable spymaster. As I read, transcribed, and deciphered I began to catch whispers of an underground postal channel. I followed the paper trail: there, waiting at the end, was Alexandrine. The historian of early modern espionage resembles Thurloe in the way that she sets about her business—although they must both extract confessions, she must do so from the letters intercepted or incarcerated in the archive: she runs her own Black Chamber.

While Postmistress Alexandrine sparked my curiosity, as I felt I had come face to face with a woman spy, she simply posed a new question: ‘are there more women like her?’. Hours spent scouring the archives led me to conclude that they were everywhere, but scholars had simply been unable or unwilling to discern their activity. Women have always wielded power behind the scenes: though they could not be appointed as ambassadors or official diplomats, they were welcomed within alternative, semi-private spaces—such as the secretariats of households and distribution centres of post—engaging with the production, surveying, and gathering of intelligence. Even early modern religious women were involved, with nuns in English continental convents embroiled in politics and espionage. A few spies for the Stuart cause have received significant attention, most notably Lady Mary Knatchbull, abbess of the English Benedictine convent in Ghent.⁶ Yet these women are still considered unique. This book argues that female spying activities were at the very heart of British international relations in the mid-seventeenth century. In fact, women in all manner of professions and classes operated as spies during this period, from postmistresses to playwrights, from low-life fraudsters to nurses, and from laundry women to ladies-in-waiting. Sometimes they worked alone, but there is substantial evidence to suggest that they were not only involved in secret spy networks but also created and sustained them.

There were many reasons why a woman would take to espionage, but what they held in common is that as women they were automatically above suspicion. Even when faced with the evidence, people simply refused to believe that women could possibly be involved in such plots—and subsequent historiography has tended to follow suit. This freedom from suspicion in the early modern period, which derived from the commonly held belief that women were less capable of rational thought, also meant they enjoyed a freedom of movement often denied to men during wars, an essential attribute for an intelligencer. Furthermore, just as their words were legally considered to be those of their husbands rather than their own, they were less likely to be believed when under interrogation, and thus more likely to be released.⁷ Even if they were interrogated, their captor’s hand was often stayed by a natural distaste for mistreating women, especially those high-born. There are several instances in which the one individual involved in a foiled plot who avoided execution was also the sole woman involved. Even when caught red-handed women were often committed to prison only to be silently released in a matter of weeks. This unwillingness to punish was quite an advantage at a time when even writing in cipher was technically treason and punishable by death.

Counsellor, Ambassador, Secretary, Spy, She- Intelligencer?

Women active in early modern espionage were rarely called spies, complicating their identification. Searching the archives, I came across the term ‘she- intelligencer’, a pejorative phrase used by parliamentarian news pamphlets to indicate that their Royalist counterparts worked with women and were thus merely peddlers of untrustworthy news and gossip. Playwright Aphra Behn was dismissed as ‘the she-spy’ by a Royalist colleague and rival. In this study, however, the term is neutral.

Like the spies themselves, definitions of early modern ‘professions’ are slippery, and to catch an ‘intelligencer’ in one definition is next to impossible, let alone a ‘she-intelligencer’. Philip de Commynes, the medieval writer and diplomat, was the first to suggest that diplomat, messenger, and spy were essentially the same.⁸ In 1589, Giovanni Botero published his Italian tract Della ragione di Stato (The Reason of State), which also failed to distinguish spies from ambassadors. On their recruitment, for instance, he wrote that ‘counsellors and ambassadors, secretaries and spies are those who deal most often with secret matters, they should be selected for their acute minds and for their taciturnity’.⁹ Likewise, the Doge of Genoa, Andrea Spinola, took it as received wisdom that ‘spying on the designs and secrets of princes is the very trade of ambassadors, and especially residents’ (i.e. resident ambassadors).¹⁰ In later periods, it became commonplace to typify the ambassador as ‘honourable spy’.¹¹ Yet there is no question that, unlike the ambassador, the spy and the intelligencer engaged in a forbidden trade. During the Second Anglo-Dutch War in 1667, for instance, Henry Oldenburg, alias ‘Monsieur Grubendol’ (an anagram), was imprisoned in the Tower ‘for having been suspected to write intelligence’.¹² The wording indicates that such activities were seen as far from innocuous.

Over time diplomacy and intelligence became inextricably connected: the rapid development of regular diplomatic institutions was only possible because of organized espionage.¹³ This complicates the matter of definition: ambassador, spy, intelligencer, messenger, spymaster—each of these incorporates elements of the other. Thurloe’s tactics were the tactics of the spies he sought. To catch a spy, he acted like a spy—or, at least, had others act as spies on his behalf. A spy, at its most basic, is one who sees, one who gathers information. An intelligencer makes information intelligible; his or her ‘intelligence’, in the early modern sense, constitutes ‘Exchange of knowledge, information, opinion, etc.; mutual conveyance of information; communication, esp. of confidential information’.¹⁴ A postmaster or messenger transmits information, whether raw from a spy or distilled from an intelligencer, to another. A spymaster coordinates the gathering, transmission, processing, interpretation, and retransmission of information. Thurloe was simultaneously spy and spymaster, intelligencer and interpreter. The responsibilities of intelligencer and spy overlapped to such a degree that they are practically interchangeable. Furthermore, as Susan Wiseman suggests, ‘the spy and the conspirator […] were hard to tell apart’,¹⁵ though it seems that the difference here is one of agency: while a spy simply gathers and disseminates information, a conspirator acts autonomously upon the information found. For the sake of simplicity, I have employed my own basic definition to select the subjects of this book:

An Intelligencer is an individual engaged in the trade of sensitive information with the intent to fuel either religious or political action, action that will in turn serve to protect, undermine, or directly influence the interests of the state. Their motivation might be principle or payment. The trade covers gathering and disseminating information which is anything the recipient desires, or can be convinced they desire, to know. Any covert activity designed to uncover secrets, encode information to avoid its discovery, or peddle information presented as secret is therefore considered to be intelligencing.

This definition sets intelligencers apart from the more peaceful and docile information traders who riddled the diplomatic spheres, knowledgeable agents who doubled as art brokers or dealt in commercial espionage.¹⁶ The definition also includes informants as well as spies: whereas spies were ‘recruited, authorised, or instructed’ to obtain intelligence, informants ‘personally initiated’ their probing and lines of enquiry.¹⁷ Women do not appear to have acted as agents provocateurs, or ‘trepanners’ as early moderns would say, that is, they did not seek to flush out others with fake conspiracies.¹⁸ Some she- intelligencers, such as Diana Gennings (see Chapter 2) and Elizabeth Murray (see Chapter 4), were accused of honey-trapping, the luring of men into incriminating themselves or exposing their plans injudiciously with the promise of sexual relations, but no evidence has surfaced of such practices either.

Profiling the She-Intelligencer

In Intelligence and Espionage in the Reign of Charles II, 1660-1685 (1994), Alan Marshall considers the trade ‘male-dominated for the most part’, with ‘successful women […] very few and far between’, before concluding that ‘[t]he femme fatale figure, so beloved of spy fiction, had not yet arrived’.¹⁹ It is fair to say that they did not overrun the country, but neither were they ‘few and far between’, as of the many she-intelligencers I have identified several play important, if not vital, roles during the decades of crisis of the mid-seventeenth century. As for the femme fatale, she had most definitely arrived and would inspire Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers (1844): her name was Lucy.

In The Three Musketeers, Dumas’ novel set in the first half of the seventeenth century, Anne de Breuil, in the guises of Comtesse de La Fère, Lady Clarick, and Countess de Winter, is a powerful, well-connected woman who traffics in information, diamonds, and double-dealing.²⁰ Milady de Winter, as she is most commonly addressed, is the archetypal female spy: beautiful, sexually aggressive, dangerous, and highly effective. Her sexual availability is part of her professionalism. In Dumas’ narrative Milady is eventually branded a common whore: ‘a burning iron, a red-hot iron, the executioner’s iron […] stamped its mark [a fleur-de-lis] on [her] shoulder’.²¹ If Milady de Winter is a long way from the traditional image of the early modern woman, modern representations of her muddy the waters still further, producing a specious cross between James Bond and Mata Hari. No matter how many ‘layers of paste applied to it’, the ‘reddish color’ of the ‘fleur-de-lis’ brand will not wash out.²²

Milady de Winter’s presentation, both in Dumas’ novel and in films and television, says more about us then it does about her. Her real-life inspiration was every bit as beautiful, sexually aggressive and professional, but did not meet with the same end. Lucy Percy was daughter of Henry, 9th Earl of Northumberland and Dorothy Devereux. In 1617, she married James Hay, soon to become 1st Earl of Carlisle. Aged eighteen, she became a woman who liaised with and manipulated the most powerful men in the kingdom. In many respects Lucy is atypical. What makes her unique, however, is the manner in which the vastly diverse social, political, and cultural aspects of women spies all seem to come together in her.

Though hated by many, Lady Carlisle was no assassin or poisoner as was Dumas’ Milady de Winter.²³ While untouched by either the torturer’s brand or the executioner’s axe, the dual arbiters of Milady’s fate, Lucy did spend considerable time in the Tower of London for her intelligence activities. Lady Carlisle acted like a man while being seen only as a woman. In that respect, Dumas’ portrayal of Milady fits the bill: ‘heaven made the mistake of placing this virile soul in this frail and delicate body’.²⁴ In 1634, a certain Thomas Cromwell (no relation to the imminent Lord Protector) wrote to a friend about Lucy:

for all my Lady Carlyle be the killinge beauty of the worlde, yet I will see her when I come vp. It will cost me too [i.e. two] women, the thought of her and my wife gets somthinge by such thou thoughts nightly: wherein I committ I doubt Adultery: satisfy my consyence I pray in that point; And as for my desir, I will repaire to Sam Turnor [that is, to Samuel Turner, a physician], or Sir John Sauage [that is, in all likelihood, 25

to a minister].

Thomas was so aroused by the simple thought of Lady Carlisle that he expected to need to employ the services of not one but two prostitutes in order to quench his desire, while suggesting that he regularly used the thought of Lucy to stimulate him into sex with his wife. While critics are keen to rid modern women spies of the taint of Mata Hari,²⁶ for early modern women spies sexuality cannot be ignored, as it brought with it two advantages. The first was simple sexual allure, the leverage of sexual attraction apparently employed by she- intelligencers such as Lady Carlisle and even Aphra Behn: the second was relative invisibility. As John Michael Archer puts it, women ‘were traditionally the subjects of sexual surveillance by men’, and this surveillance often worked to blind the watcher to other activities.²⁷

In Dumas’ novel, Milady lies that she was drugged and in her unconscious state raped by Buckingham, who subsequently had her branded when she threatened not to love him but to betray him instead.²⁸ Lady Carlisle’s long­standing affair with George Villiers, later Duke of Buckingham, began sometime around 1619. It is impossible to tell whether it was consensual or not, but Villiers, the king’s favourite and in many ways the most powerful man in the country, was used to getting what he wanted. Certainly he sent Lady Carlisle’s husband out of the country on an ambassadorial mission in order to have unfettered access to Lucy: Carlisle was not only aware of this, but by acquiescing in, if not actively encouraging her affair he effectively prostituted his wife in return for social advancement. Lady Carlisle was not content with gaining position for her husband, however, and became a major player in contemporary politics herself. In 1626 Buckingham placed her in Queen Henrietta Maria’s household as Lady of the Bedchamber, specifically to spy on his behalf. The queen tried unsuccessfully to thwart the appointment: her source told her that both Buckingham and Carlisle, hungry to extend their power, intended to share Lucy’s body with the king, too.²⁹

Lady Carlisle’s lover Buckingham was assassinated in 1628, and her husband, twice her age, died of a stroke in 1636. She used the relative freedom of widowhood well, plotting, scheming, and playing one side against the other in the increasingly hostile climate leading up to the Bishops' Wars (1638-41). She sent to France state secrets shared with her by the queen, such as the gathering of an army in Ireland in support of Charles I, perhaps actively facilitating their interception by Cardinal Richelieu.³⁰ Lady Carlisle’s ‘soft’ power became increasingly influential, as the king relied ever more on ‘the politics of intimacy’: those closest to him had the most influence. For some time, and certainly when he was incarcerated, women could reach him more easily than men. The Wars of the Three Kingdoms allowed the influence of women to extend beyond its usual, domestic environment, as not only were their skills now of ever-greater importance, but their invisibility allowed them greater freedom to act.

At the start of the First Civil War (1642-6), Lady Carlisle moved with ease between two spheres: she was welcome at the Royalist headquarters in Oxford as well as the parliamentarian capital, London. Both parties believed her to be their spy. In 1641 she had seemingly switched sides after the king, under pressure from parliament, had signed the execution warrant of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, one of her long-time admirers and legal advisor on Irish assets that she had inherited. Suddenly, she was to be found at the estate of Edward Montagu, Viscount Mandeville, in Chelsea, socializing with parliamentarian leaders such as Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, Mountjoy Blount, 1st Earl Newport, and Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex. The queen believed her lady­in-waiting to be spying for her: Secretary of State Sir Edward Nicholas even attempted to have printed the intelligence letters she brought back from Chelsea to court.³¹ Those letters were full of feigned secrets brought into the Royalist camp to create unrest, which Lady Carlisle possibly provided under the instruction of her new parliamentarian gallant, John Pym. Still trusted by the queen, she also overheard secrets in the Queen’s Bedchamber: she warned Pym that the king planned to impeach him, as well as four other members of parliament. Pym made a statement in the House of Commons requesting leave for him and his four companions because he had ‘private intimation from the Countess of Carlisle that endeavours would be used [that] day to apprehend’ them.³² Moments before the king made his entrance, the five men dashed away, having been granted leave. The king promptly left London for Oxford. Significantly, Pym’s speech had publicly declared Lady Carlisle a parliamentarian spy. It was the perfect cover. She continued to convince Pym he should trust and write to her. Meanwhile, her house in London, Little Salisbury House, became a nest of Royalist conspirators.³³ A full-length portrait of Lady Carlisle painted by Sir Anthony Van Dyck captures the air of secrecy that surrounds her: she invites the viewer to accompany her behind the curtain, but the darkness offers no glimpse of what there is to be found (see Plate 2).

A spy always had to act as a go-between between two worlds, and do so unsuspected. This quality is perhaps best captured in Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667). When Satan falls downwards, his mistress and daughter having opened the gates of hell, he deceptively states ‘[…] I come no Spy With purpose to explore or to disturb The secrets of your Realm’.³⁴ At that precise moment, though he denies it, Satan is the epitome of a spy. He hovers between two worlds: hell, and God’s new creation, earth. A spy occupies liminal space. Lady Carlisle, then, plied her trade in the relative secrecy of full view. She kept her cards close to her chest, so close, in fact, that historians have yet to agree whether she was ultimately a spy for the Cavaliers or the Roundheads.³⁵

Lady Carlisle served three years in prison following an accusation of treason in 1651. What started as close confinement in the Tower and ended as house arrest made her acts of espionage public and laid her open to slander, as Chapter 1 will detail. Yet she audaciously hoodwinked her captors, continuing to cipher and send letters from inside the Tower walls. Of course, it is not merely early modern spymasters but modern scholars who are sometimes incapable of seeing just how much influence a she-intelligencer might have, and here Lucy might continue to serve as an example. The key episode of The Three Musketeers— that of the diamond pendants swap—is lifted from two seventeenth-century memoirs, those of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld and the Comte de Brienne, both of which put Lady Carlisle at the episode’s centre. The memoirs recount how Buckingham fell in love with Queen Anne of Austria on a diplomatic mission, a passionate love story for which there is corroborative evidence.³⁶ According to the story, the French queen reciprocated Buckingham’s affection by offering him a diamond brooch as a parting gift. Cardinal Richelieu, who had spies in the queen’s household,³⁷ learned of the gift and intended to present this information to the king, to prove the queen’s infidelity. Richelieu used Lady Carlisle as his instrument: she was to steal the brooch from the duke during a masque at Whitehall and send it to France as tangible proof of adultery. Buckingham realized, however, that Lady Carlisle, ever cunning and consumed by jealousy, had snatched the brooch from his clothing. Pre-empting Richelieu’s intentions, he sealed off the ports, preventing Lady Carlisle from shipping the jewel to France, and had a replica made in great haste, which was then sent to Queen Anne. When the cardinal subsequently accused her of giving away her honour as symbolized by the diamond brooch, she presented the replica, making him look like a treasonous fool. The fact that the diamond episode finds its origin in these two memoirs is also pointed out by the editor of the 2006 Penguin edition of The Three Musketeers.³⁸ It does seem rather strange that he mentions this episode and yet suggests that there is no need to assume that Dumas may have been thinking of Lady Carlisle when he wrote ‘Lady Clarick’, as Gilbert Sigaux in the Pléiade edition did before him, because ‘ “Lady Clarick” will do just as well as an assumed name’.³⁹ That he fails to mention Lady Carlisle or her relationship to Buckingham, one of the main characters in the novel, appears to be something of an oversight.

Lady Carlisle’s career explodes the notion that women had no place in the intelligence and espionage trade and demonstrates how this involvement was one of subtle shade and nuance, then and in its reiteration in subsequent historical works. The cynical exploitation of her sexual attraction by herself and her husband also illustrates the dangers present for women desiring to advance at court at a time when public visibility of a woman was often considered synonymous with questionable sexual morality. Her official position as Lady of the Bedchamber gave her unlimited and privileged access to the queen’s quarters and by extension all the requisites for her to act as spy for Buckingham and, once ‘widowed’ (by her lover) and widowed (by her husband), for Pym. Whether she spied out of fear or her own volition is but the historian’s challenge and illustrates how often it is impossible to identify motives. The state secrets she sent to France show that women’s spy letters could also refer to military matters. She was thus fully engaged in espionage in relation to the Bishops’ Wars starting in 1638, but gained the opportunity to (or felt forced to) develop herself as one of the most active spies of the era when the war reached England in 1642. What Lucy’s life illustrates is a career trajectory for Royalist she- intelligencers (parliamentarian she-intelligencers were a rarer breed and started out differently, as Chapter 2 explains): most elite women commenced intelligence operations within the ceremonial bounds and offices at court, started spying or became more active in such activities once widowed or separated from a husband, and ended up using formerly established courtly connections when the court was displaced. During the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and its aftermath, with men on the battlefield, imprisoned, or exiled, women had more leeway. Lady Carlisle’s falsified intelligence reports which she spoon-fed to Nicholas highlight the unstable nature of such texts and point to the destructive force of paranoia. Moreover, the fact that she was distrusted by her contemporaries, including those she regarded as allies while using her sexual allure to allay their suspicions, introduces some of the key themes in this book— particularly issues of credibility and mistrust linked to gender, and the preconceptions these women turned to their advantage. Lastly, that she escaped true punishment and the historian’s gaze further highlights the enduring invisibility of the early modern woman. Lady Carlisle stands as an exemplar of many women in this book, which examines the ways in which women escaped suspicion and how they became invisible, then and now, and she rears her head in nearly all of the chapters, shedding her cloak of invisibility.

Temporal Scope

Invisible Agents is the first full-length study of women and espionage in seventeenth-century Britain. Intelligence was crucial to domestic security and state formation throughout Europe in the early modern period,⁴⁰ and Britain at this time in particular is often taken to exemplify a culture of surveillance.⁴¹ Concentrating on the 1640s to 1660s, this work analyses what are arguably the decades that defined the development of British espionage, decades that witnessed a significant increase of female participation in the trade of confidential information.

It is impossible to understand the early modern state without appreciating how fragile the lines of communication on which intelligence networks depended could be. The written word, primarily in the form of the letter, was the only means through which even the semblance of private, long-distance communication could be had. The word ‘private’ must be understood in the early modern sense, that is, ‘secret’ or ‘familial’, because while a letter might be addressed to one person, it was rarely meant solely for that one person: letters were read out aloud, shared amongst a small group of readers, and often supplemented by the spoken words of a bearer. Roads were poorly developed or dangerous.⁴² The information that travelled from place to place was misread, mislaid, or misappropriated as often as it was made full use of by interceptors. The period under scrutiny was an age of suspicion, and no one was immune from it.⁴³

Elizabeth I’s secret service thrived as an organized and centralized operation, as Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir William Cecil, from 1571 Baron Burghley, carried on with the work Cardinal Wolsey had started under Henry VIII.⁴⁴ Its mechanisms and ideals were asserted in the so-called Rainbow Portrait, tentatively attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger or Isaac Oliver, painted approximately a year before Elizabeth’s death. The monarch holds open her cloak, exposing the lining, which is decorated with a pattern of watchful eyes and attentive ears, the primary tools of spies. The only mouth in the painting is the queen’s: only she channels intelligence. On her left sleeve a serpent balances an armillary sphere on its head while dangling a ruby heart from its tongue: stability of the universe is accomplished by sly wisdom controlling passion.

Elizabeth looks piercingly at the viewer, asserting her autocratic control of intelligence (see Plate 1).⁴⁵

The reign of Elizabeth’s successor James had been relatively stable: although he tried to style himself the ‘peacemaker king’, his military was active in the Thirty Years' War (1618-48) on the continent, but mostly through intermediaries such as the Scots regiments seconded to the Dutch army. While spies had always gathered intelligence about domestic enemies, these had generally been relatively small conspiracies, albeit with sometimes great ambitions, such as the Gunpowder Plot. This all changed under Charles I. What had started with the Bishops’ Wars in 1638 came to full effect in 1642: the beginning of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms split the fledging Stuart-British state asunder, each part treating the other as the House of Stuart had once treated foreign powers. The Royalists, however, had largely abandoned the mechanics of government in England when the king fled Whitehall, even though they largely retained their diplomatic network abroad, and their ‘state’ was riven with different factions: in short, their intelligence service was neither centralized nor organized, in sharp contrast to Tudor times.⁴⁶ State intelligence services also tended to lack continuity with the change of regimes, as Marshall reminds us: ‘lessons learned in one reign frequently had to be relearned at a later date’.⁴⁷ It is telling that in 1649, Thomas Scott, then head of the parliamentarian intelligence service, complained that ‘he received no assistance or briefing from those previously responsible for secret affairs, either on the Committee of Both Kingdoms or the Committee of Safety’.⁴⁸ One reason for this lack of continuity can perhaps be put down to a spy’s loyalty being tied more to their patron, the spymaster, than to the state. This appears to hold true even though payments were few and far between, which perhaps points to ‘an underlying “traditional” patron-client relationship, where in the end non-financial reciprocity (personal advantages, social status and the like) simply mattered more,’ as Marika Keblusek has argued.⁴⁹ The outbreak of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms severely curtailed the freedom of movement for men, and spymasters on both sides of the conflict had to rethink their procedures: these proved to be ideal conditions for the advance of the she-intelligencer.

This study considers the decades from the outbreak of the Civil Wars to the first half of the reign of Charles II, its terminus ad quem in April 1667 marked by the end of Behn’s mission to Antwerp and the death of Katherine Stanhope, Countess of Chesterfield, who for three years had held the office of Postmaster­General. It was hers by right through her deceased husband, Daniel O’Neill, one of the pre-Restoration master spies. Stanhope does not figure in this book, but it is highly significant that a woman could officially and openly hold an office so blatantly linked to intelligence machinations (indeed, the office of Postmaster­General was one of the primary mechanisms that allowed Thurloe to become so successful as Secretary of State and chief of intelligence). While she- intelligencers were much maligned at first, by 1667 they were formally employed in the top echelons of the secret service. I do not argue that they had conquered a patriarchal world in proto-feministic fashion. Even the Royalists, who had been much more willing to employ she-intelligencers at the outbreak of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms than their enemies, preferred the ‘reliability’ of men to that of women once they had regained power: spymaster Joseph Williamson's expense claim of 1660-2 shows that the eighteen to twenty-two intelligencers he employed were all men.⁵⁰

Entering the Black Chamber

It was the Secretary of State, the keeper of secrets, who bore ultimate responsibility for intelligence matters and, as Marshall puts it, ‘was to sanction some of the more dubious activities of the regime’.⁵¹ On the Royalist side, this was Sir Edward Nicholas. While Nicholas was a meticulous record keeper, and the volumes of his papers now housed in the British Library include boxes of cipher keys and secret documents that survived the strenuous travels of the court in exile, he was no ‘notable director of royalist intelligence and espionage’.⁵² The fact is, the Royalists were internally divided. Feuds and factions made it difficult for one man to manage the army of intelligencers; instead, secret agents sought protection under the wings of several patrons.⁵³ With the benefit of hindsight, George Monck considered spies to have a mercenary nature, writing that ‘the most effectual means to be well served by these kind of men [that is, spies], is to be very liberal to them; for they are faithful to those who give them most’.⁵⁴ War and exile had certainly made it difficult for Nicholas to access funds for intelligence. His counterpart John Thurloe, on the other hand, had no such problems, but during his rule as spymaster appears to have worked on the principle that poverty kept spies eager.

Thurloe had not always been parliament’s master of spies, however. From the end of 1647, the unofficial position was occupied by Thomas Scott. A year and a half later, in July 1649, Scott’s intelligence work was authorized—the Council of State intended to appoint one person to carry the weight of what was essentially their shared responsibility:

That M:^r Scot[t] bee desired Authorized and Ordered to manage the businesses of Intelligence both at home & abroad for the service of the State, and for the better dischargeing of the great trust reposed in this Councel, And that a Committee bee appointed to consider of fitt meanes for the better enabling of him to Carrie on that Affaire.⁵⁵

In the beginning Scott was paid £200 quarterly ‘for his paynes in managing the businesses of intelligence’,⁵⁶ which later in his career seems to have increased to £2,000 to £2,500 annually, including his own salary, if his own testimony is to be believed. Although this was a considerable sum, according to Scott, it ‘could not purchase anie great matter, or dive very deepe’.⁵⁷ Yet it was amply sufficient for him to recruit spies ‘in places as diverse as Danzig, Hamburg, Paris, Madrid, Genoa and Rome’.⁵⁸ The Council of State soon decided that there was too much work for just the one man, and appointed George Bishop as secretary to the Committee of Examinations in 1650. From that moment up to 1653, Scott and Bishop jointly directed the Commonwealth’s intelligence system: regicide Scott supervised foreign intelligence and Bishop domestic intelligence.⁵⁹

Occasionally, Scott and Bishop consulted Parliament’s top cryptographer John Wallis, who had served since 1643. Their spies sent intelligence on a regular basis. But just like the Commonwealth and Protectorate officials who followed them, Scott and Bishop were especially keen on gathering intelligence via their own Black Chamber. These practices were relatively new to England, however. Tucked into some dark corner in Whitehall, their Chamber could not compare with the sophisticated operation run by Postmistress Alexandrine in Brussels. In short, their Black Chamber methods were crude. According to a contemporary, they did not stop to consider which letters were suspicious and therefore worth opening. Rather, ‘they constantly sent for all the letters to Whitehall, and had every letter opened before them without ceremony’ [emphasis mine].⁶⁰ The writer presumably means that the letters were opened without great care, which would have prevented their being resealed in such a way that they could be sent on their way with the eventual recipients none the wiser. Such carelessness would have led the correspondents in question to either seek a more secure mode of conveyance or even to put on hold any plots, driving the conspiracy deeper underground.

It was not long before both Scott and Bishop made way for the more memorable Thurloe, the man who succeeded Gualter Frost as secretary to the Council of State in 1653, following the dissolution of the Rump Parliament. Thurloe’s reputation for efficiency overshadowed Scott’s in later centuries, but it was Scott who, as Micheál Ó Siochrú reminds us, ‘was in fact responsible for creating many of the structures of the Cromwellian intelligence system’.⁶¹ Even though it would be another two years before Thurloe was to take complete control over surveillance activities in the state, when he gained the Post Office in 1655, he accelerated the professionalization of the Cromwellian intelligence system that had been set in motion by Scott. Thurloe appointed trained men with unique skills, consulted Scott’s recruit Wallis more regularly, and hired the Dutchman Isaac Dorislaus to not only open but to reseal letters. Although Dorislaus was considered something of a butcher when it came to this practice, he had an unparalleled ability to recognize handwriting, allowing him to pick out the letters of Charles Stuart’s counsellors, for example, from the vast swathes of intercepted post. Moreover, he was fluent in Dutch, Spanish, and French, the languages spoken in and around the Stuarts’ nomadic courts in exile.⁶²

When Cromwell placed the post under state control and made Thurloe Postmaster-General in 1655, he did so ‘primarily to get wind of subversive plots, not to provide a public service’.⁶³ The Black Chamber practices overseen by Thurloe were not endorsed until two years after the state took control of the post, however: in June 1657, Cromwell declared letters as the means par excellence by which spies could communicate secrets, and that these should therefore be scrutinized. In this way, the foundation of ‘one general Post Office’ would ‘discover and prevent many dangerous, and wicked Designs […] the intelligence whereof cannot well be Communicated, but by Letter of Escript’.⁶⁴ In essence, Cromwell’s decree legalized the opening of letters in Black Chambers.⁶⁵

Great efforts were made on both sides of the conflict to discover who was telling what to whom, and how, as demonstrated by the words of Samuel Morland, a ne’er-do-well of flexible loyalty who struggled with his finances and who by all accounts ended up a beggar.⁶⁶ He looked back on his career as intelligencer and his work in various Black Chambers, which started in one of Thurloe’s. According to Morland:

a Skilfull Prince ought to make Watch towers of his General Post Offices of all his kingdoms, and there to place such carefull Centinells, as that by their care & diligence he may have a constant view of all that passes of any Moment thro’ out the Universe: but more especially a true Account of the various tempers of 67

his own Subjects, & of the first ferments of all Factions[.]⁶⁷

Naturally, Morland was particularly expansive regarding his position and importance, asserting that even the communications of the most powerful, such as the French Chief Minister Cardinal Mazarin, were grist to the mill:

It was by the help of Intelligence that Cardinal Mazarine could hardly write a letter in his private Closset >S^r Samuel Moreland had means of knowing this, being at that time Clerk to Thurloe[,] Cromwells Secretary< but a copy of it was transmitted to Cromwell in 4. or 5. days, & likewise a key to the Cypher: 68

who thought 150000£ well bestow’d yearly for intelligence at home and abroad[.]

It was this sort of intelligence that Secretary Thurloe coveted for his master Cromwell, for with it he could unearth conspiracies, identifying those who directed the information and to whom it was sent. Morland not only boasted of his success, but of his prowess at the mechanics of Black Chamber practice, even though by this time he was double-dealing in favour of the Royalists:

It was by the dexterous opening and Sealing up of one letter Sealed carefully with a Wafer (which was written by S.^r Richard Willis) that Samuel Morland saved the life of King Charles the 2. who had otherwise been most barbarously murder’d at Weston [i.e. Westen] Hanger in Kent, which house was hired on purpose to receive him by S.^r Henry Vane and Secretary Scot, and near 3000 Men well arm’d and placed round about it in the woods & private places for 3 weeks together for that purpose.

And by this Art of opening letters & Seals, and copying out dispatches in a moments time &c. were very great services done to King Charles 2. about a year or two before the [Great] fire [of 1666], and once in a year it may so happen that a discovery may be made that may pay the expence of Such Arts 100. times over.⁶⁹

Unlike Dorislaus, Morland had mastered the art of opening letters, with ‘engins and utinsils’.⁷⁰ He might even have been privy to Samuel Hartlib’s discovery of an ink that allowed copies of entire sheets to be made within minutes.⁷¹ As for the value of intelligence, Morland noted that ‘for want of this Art and good intelligence, a Prince may lose his Crown or life, witness Charles 1. and James 2.’.⁷² One of the ironies of Morland’s boast is that Thurloe’s opposite number, Nicholas, had a man in the French post office (see Chapter 4), making it quite possible that any letter of Mazarin’s was opened, copied, and resealed in France, then sent on its way, only to be opened, copied, and resealed in Thurloe’s Black Chamber by Morland. When it eventually reached its destination, its addressee might be pretty much the only person of note yet to read it.

A Female Modus Operandi?

Women were generally considered to inhabit the domestic sphere, and it made perfect sense that they would use ‘feminine’ techniques to communicate secrets. In 1569, informers were eyeing the needlework of Mary, Queen of Scots, for secret messages because the Tudor intelligence bureau believed the embroidered materials potentially communicated furtive signs. There are four detailed descriptions extant of Mary’s bed of state, which would have stood in the audience chamber, its coverings and canopy decorated with embroidered emblems and mottos. These descriptions survive because Walsingham received them as intelligence reports and apparently thought them useful, storing them among his papers.⁷³ Nicholas White, one of Sir William Cecil’s informers, reported on Mary’s needlework: ‘I noted this Sentence embroidered, En ma fin est mon commencement [“in my end is my beginning”]; which is a Riddle, I understand not’.⁷⁴ His suspicions were ungrounded: at Tutbury Castle, far from stitching a steganographic message, Mary embroidered ‘her mother’s impresa of the phoenix’, a bird arising from its own ashes, which she crafted for the hangings of her bed of state but also for Bess of Hardwick.⁷⁵ The decoration might have given her consolation in her times of imprisonment (she was incarcerated for sixteen years), and could be read as her determination to survive, but it was innocuous from an intelligence point of view. The report of it was, however, a telltale sign that the Tudor intelligence service was beginning to suspect everybody and everything, because normally, as Susan Frye explains, ‘needlework in the early modern period was not a mark of leisure but was accepted proof that hands were not up to mischief’.⁷⁶ If even needlework could contain ‘mischief’, then everyone was in trouble.

In the same year, during a period of secret courtship, Mary embroidered a panel; she presented it mounted as a cushion to Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, her marriage candidate. At Norfolk’s trial, a trial that ended with his beheading, Ambassador John Lesley identified the cushion as the queen’s personal handiwork.⁷⁷ It illustrated her motto ‘Virescit vulnere virtus’, the alliterative Latin phrase also found on her signet ring, which can be translated as either ‘Virtue flourishes through a wound [that is, by wounding]’ or less literally ‘Courage grows strong at the wound’:⁷⁸ in the middle it featured a large hand, God’s, descending from a cloud [shechinah or shining cloud], clasping a sickle blade and cutting a barren branch, so that new shoots will find nourishment to grow. Etymologically, ‘virtus’ is connected to the word ‘vir’ (that is, ‘man’) and implies manly behaviour, which a woman entering the political domain also had to make her own. The work is now kept at Oxburgh Hall,⁷⁹ but was presented as evidence against the duke, adding corroborative evidence of his treasonous intentions. Clearly, the cushion pictured emblematically how Mary and he were plotting to do away with the barren Elizabeth I and start a new, fruitful branch.⁸⁰ As Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass argue, the meaning of Mary’s needlework was two-fold: ‘simultaneously erotic and political’, emboldening Norfolk’s conjugal desires as well as encouraging Catholic rebellion.⁸¹

The fact is that women used the same technologies as men, such as ciphers and invisible ink, cover addresses, bribery, eavesdropping, interception of communications, and so forth. (Tellingly, it was not Mary’s embroidery that brought her down, even though it was brought forward at her trial, but the ciphered so-called Casket Letters.) It is impossible to consider the intelligencing activities of women without considering their position within society, and the agency they did or did not possess. Yet if women used methods comparable to the men, but have hitherto remained hidden, then other methodologies are needed to uncover them besides sensitivity to gender. Two approaches current in the history of archives⁸² prove suitable for chasing early modern women spies: paying attention to materiality of documents, and reading texts and archives against the grain.

Methodologies and Approaches I: Materiality

Black Chamber practices were designed to read and manipulate marks of authentication—they were based in the materiality of texts. Paying close attention to this materiality is crucial to the understanding of early modern intelligence practices. To a knowledgeable viewer, signs such as handwriting, shellac seals, papered wafers holding the imprint of a signet ring, coloured floss, folding patterns that display tears, slits, cuts, or needle holes in specific places, the orientation of paper fibres, and paper locks that functioned like puzzles were all authentication markers potent with meaning, meaning that could be falsified.

That generic name of the period’s intelligence units, ‘Black Chamber’, reminds us that the mechanisms of intelligence were kept well hidden, just like the she-intelligencers. That the everyday machinations of Thurloe’s officers, or those of anyone working in a Black Chamber in Europe, are only known in the most general of terms is exemplified by Morland’s proposals for a new secret service in 1689. In that year, Morland requested twelve lines in William III’s own hand, some sheets of paper, and a stick of the king’s sealing wax, so that he could demonstrate his skills in counterfeiting a hand, the locking of a letter, and the imprint of a seal, whether in wax or in a wafer. The king was impressed enough to consider hiring him, but disquieted enough to discourage him from writing down all the techniques he had learned and developed during his time in the Black Chambers of Cromwell and Charles II, writing that ‘he thought that the secret[s] ought to die with him, as too dangerous to be encouraged’.⁸³ And so they did. Morland seemingly respected his patron, because he never committed the details of how to open a letter and forge wafers and seals; he only claims to have demonstrated and mastered this art. Only serendipitous discovery might reveal such arcane knowledge: during his research on postal culture, Jay Caplan came across a 1717 letter of Liselotte of the Palatinate, the Queen of Bohemia’s granddaughter, which details how seals were softened ‘with a mixture called gamma (or gama), made of quicksilver and other substances today unknown’. Starch wafers could fall victim to the kettle’s plume. Yet early modern sealing wax was made of anything but wax, but instead comprised ‘a compound of chalk, resin, plaster, shellac, turpentine and coloring matter’, on which water vapour would have no effect.⁸⁴ Only the liquids of the alchemist might work to loosen them whole from the resisting paper fibres.

Opening and resealing letters undetectably was quite a feat, not least because of this brittle sealing wax. The most complicated part of the process, however, was that of unfolding the packets that these letters were folded into—before the introduction of the mass-produced envelope in the nineteenth century, letter writers would manipulate the paper on which their letter was written so that it would form its own packaging. Jana Dambrogio, who has been analysing the techniques used to fold and manipulate paper since 2000, coined the term ‘letterlocking’ to refer to the ‘act of folding and securing an epistolary writing substrate (such as papyrus, parchment, or paper) to function as its own envelope or sending device’.⁸⁵ A letter writer, whether merchant or monarch, would employ one of several possible letterlocking techniques, ‘each one having greater or lesser built-in physical security, depending on the combination of steps required to build it’.⁸⁶ The principle was simple. The more intricate the manner in which the letter was prepared for delivery, the more difficult it was to open the letter without advertising the fact. Indeed, the techniques used to seal the letter ‘often necessitated intentional damage (slits, cut off corners), with further damage caused upon opening (such as tearing a paper lock)’.⁸⁷ The techniques used also functioned as a key, first to identify the letter writer, and, second to indicate any potential interference en route.

Charles I indicates how individuals had their own letterlocking technique comparable to a signature when he recognized the sender of an unsigned letter to be his trusted female spy Jane Whorwood, not by her hand (a spy could employ and counterfeit several hands) but by the letter’s folds. He wrote in code to a mole in Carisbrooke Castle, using a feigned hand himself, ‘D:/[Henry Firebrace] This Note; that you, this Morning left me, & which now I returne to you, I know, by the fowldings; to be the same, that I had once inclosed to W: [Captain Titus] & that it is written by N: [Mrs Whorwood, wife of Broome Whorwood]’.⁸⁸

That letterlocking techniques functioned as anti-tamper devices or as a useful means of detecting interference by individuals such as Dorislaus becomes plain when the contents of a letter are matched with its material manipulations. When, in September 1584, Sir Francis Walsingham wrote to Sir Ralph Sadler regarding the custody of Mary, Queen of Scots, he used one of the most secure categories yet identified: a triangle-shaped lock cut from the writing sheet, laced through a slit, and adhered to the folded letter.⁸⁹ This complex method of locking necessitates several stages of security, from a triangular lock threaded through the slit made through all the panels of the folded letter (see Plate 4, top image), to the wafer or wax seal with the authentication of a signet ring imprint. On receipt, the addressee can check whether this letter has been tampered with: the lock shape should be intact, and its paper fibres should match those of the letter, the cut-off words should match the letter like the one missing piece of the puzzle, with handwriting and colour of the ink needing to match, too. A careful recipient would therefore know whether others had been privy to the letter’s contents.

Ironically, spies did not necessarily opt for the most secure letterlocking technique: letters that advertised themselves as highly secure from the outside might awaken the curiosity of the possible interceptor, and such letters, passing through a Black Chamber, would feasibly be opened first. While a highly secure technique would be expected from those whose position indicated a letter’s probable contents—a ruler’s letters would probably contain matters of state— anyone else using one would be drawing attention to themselves. Therefore, and paradoxically, a spy might rely on an insecure format, such as a pleated letter, hoping the overworked interceptor might cast it aside on the assumption that it would only contain gossip about family affairs. Such a letter, simply folded, wrapped with expensive silk floss held in place by two wax seals, one on each outer panel, communicated intimacy rather than security.⁹⁰ Elizabeth Stuart, sometime Queen of Bohemia, used this format to lend a personal air to her correspondence, even though the majority of her letters were political in nature.⁹¹

The most cunning spies combined the two techniques, however: at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Sir Robert Cecil’s intelligencer Simeon Fox disguised the reports he sent his employer from Italy as pleated letters, but the inner layers sported a thin, dagger-shaped lock, a Black Chamber’s nightmare (see Plate 4, bottom image).⁹² If an interceptor opened the letter in the manner one would open a pleated letter, the lock would self-destruct. It would be impossible to repair well enough to fool the correspondents that their secrets were still safe. Letter writers typically included a list of letters received and their dates before the main text so their correspondents could check whether the epistolary sequence was intact. If the letter was destroyed in the Black Chamber and hence did not arrive at its destination, correspondents could safely assume that their communication had been compromised and would seek out a new postal channel.

The material signs of paper documents were interpreted and manipulated by their creators, intended recipients, and interceptors alike. I will not only examine the document as text, analysing verbal elements such as rhetoric, lexical choices, and orthography, but also as an object, applying a range of techniques, such as palaeography (the study of handwriting), letterlocking (the way in which a letter was folded and secured for delivery), codicology (the manuscript’s physical description), and sigillography (the study of seals). Moreover, I build on the scholarship of Jana Dambrogio, James Daybell, Adam Smyth, Daniel Starza Smith, Alison Wiggins, and others, in whose work ‘materiality of the letter’ takes on two meanings: one, the ‘physical characteristics of manuscript letters and the meanings generated by them’; two, the ‘ “social materiality” of letter texts, in other words the social and cultural practices of manuscripts and the material conditions and contexts in which they were produced, disseminated and consumed’.⁹³ In short, I use the materiality of manuscripts in a broad sense, as a raking light to expose the otherwise invisible agents and invisible workings of spymasters.

Methods and Approaches II: Reading Against the Archival Grain

Archives are sites of power, and of memory, but also oblivion. As Alexandra Walsham puts it, theorists such as Michel Foucault, Arlette Farge, Jacques Derrida, and Carolyn Steedman ‘have fostered awareness of how the archive (in a literal as well as a figurative sense) operates as a distorting filter, lens and prism’.⁹⁴ In the early modern period, statesmen built archives to exert power, to govern, and regulate the critical mass, as the work of scholars such as Randolph C. Head, Jacob Soll, and Filippo de Vivo asserts.⁹⁵ Archives became mechanisms of government related to the formation of a public sphere in which information, intelligence, and news were contained. Archives tend to exhibit a path of least resistance to the reader, encouraging a seemingly simple, directed, and neat reading that resembles cutting with the grain of a piece of wood: the course of the cut is decided partly by the archive itself. Yet far from being neutral sites of storage, archives are, in essence, collections of records assembled for quite specific purposes; their processes of selection unavoidably excludes documents and their makers, ‘generates gaps, omissions and silences in the record’.⁹⁶ Awareness of the biased nature of archives is particularly important for tracing the lives of prosecuted women. In the early modern period, interrogations were an important part of evidence gathering, because without either two eyewitness accounts or a confession a person could not be convicted.⁹⁷ The lives of she-intelligencers are therefore often captured in documents written down by their interrogators and persecutors, stories fabricated in light of opposition, and their intelligence letters when intercepted are stored in their enemy’s archive. Reading against the archival grain, a method in which traces are found in the archive of the ‘authoritative other’, is therefore a vital technique for tracing women spies.⁹⁸ It puts the archive under your control, if one also tries to interpret the gaps it generates: silences can be analysed by searching other archives that possibly offer another perspective. And while just as when cutting wood this method may be harder to control and leaves the fibres a little ragged, the resulting joints are extremely strong.

An example of an archive of the ‘authoritative other’ are the seventy-three volumes of the Rawlinson manuscripts held in the Bodleian Library that make up Thurloe’s state papers. In effect, these are the archive of the Black Chamber in London where he had letters opened, translated, decoded, copied, and sometimes resealed (nearly all letters came through the capital, so in theory nothing escaped his officers’ eyes).⁹⁹ Scrutinizing a select set of Rawlinson manuscripts offers insights into the never-before-detailed practical workings of one of the most important Black Chambers of the period—Cromwell’s, as designed by Thurloe. It will reveal how spychasers such as Samuel Morland read letters, scouring tiny, delicate packages for material clues, before breaking, and sometimes repairing, their shellac seals. More importantly, it will bring to the surface the she-intelligencers he kept under surveillance. The set of letters explored in Chapter 3 not only exposes the practices of the Black Chamber, but also how they helped to catch a she-intelligencer. One of the main networks unpicked by Thurloe and his team was that of Susan Hyde, sister of Edward Hyde, Lord Chancellor from 1658, and after the restoration 1st Earl of Clarendon. Remarkably, for a woman with so illustrious a sibling, she has remained as unknown as the workings of the Black Chamber in which she was ultimately exposed. A concerted investigation of contemporary Black Chamber operations reveals her as one of the most important invisible agents of the period, and one of the few who lost her life following her merciless treatment at the hands of Cromwell’s new Council of State, set up under Thurloe’s direction.

The most effective spies will remain undiscovered, now as then, and certainly will not loom large in a spymaster’s archive. And while the instruction ‘burn after reading’ still remains on many letters, indicating that it may merely be ‘a rhetorical gesture’ of trust, a topos creating intimacy that many letter writers either did not take literally or simply ignored, it is equally true that during times of crisis incriminating papers were often reduced to ashes.¹⁰⁰ Spymasters’ archives that I read against the archival grain form the basis of Chapters 1 to 4; gaps are easier to understand by reading across a plurality of sources, such as news pamphlets, libels, and poems. The traces of more successful spies appear in either life-writing documents or in letter books in which they attempt to construct their posterity, and are to be found in their familial archives. As those she-intelligencers then escaped prosecution, so their correspondences also survive, if you can identify them. Such sources, which come with their own sets of challenges because of the spy’s acts of self-censorship, form the basis of Chapters 5 to 7.

This book does not aim to be comprehensive. Women’s records are too scant and patchy, spy records too cryptic, to be easily mined for statistics. A series of case studies can nevertheless reveal trends and recurring themes, especially when ordered chronologically. The sheer number of she-intelligencers that crop up in the first two chapters demonstrates a supposition of this book, that women in espionage were not an extraordinary phenomenon in the mid-seventeenth century. The first two chapters introduce the book’s main themes, such as how women ensured their own invisibility, but also how a hypocritical patriarchal stance towards she-intelligencers distorts the records. Chapter 1 discusses Royalist women, while Chapter 2 interrogates their parliamentarian counterparts. Combined, these opening chapters discuss the difference between the two. While the first chapter ends with a discussion of the dangers of women entering the espionage trade, the second elaborates on the gendered nature of punishment, while considering how parliamentarian women in particular were obliterated from the archival record. The ensuing chapters each take one woman as their figurehead, but move beyond anecdotal narratives of individual figures, instead unpicking the operations of spy networks, revealing how early modern women operated differently from their male spy colleagues, and how their news networks, seemingly informal and reliant on female modes of interrelation, intersected with the world of high diplomacy, intelligence, and espionage. Chapters 3 to 5 explore the history of the two most famous Royalist secret organizations, the Sealed Knot and the Great Trust, showing women’s involvement. Chapter 3 continues the theme of archival silence and invisibility with the mysterious case of Susan Hyde. Sister to one of the most well-known actors of the Civil Wars, Sir Edward Hyde, author of the multi-volumed and authoritative History of the Rebellion, Susan was both involved in espionage and yet remained absent from her brother’s history. She was not so much written out of history as never written into it. Chapter 4 strips away the myths surrounding Elizabeth Murray, replacing them with a more compelling narrative. It shows she was not the grand dame of the Sealed Knot, but that she and her sisters were minor figures in a spy ring of the Great Trust run by Catherine Grey from Covent Garden, thus situating her in an altogether different network and unmasking another woman spy in the process. It also explores how the Royalists’ distrust of each other was more damaging to their plots than Thurloe’s counter-intelligence. Chapter 5 analyses how Elizabeth Mordaunt, whose husband John led the Great Trust, was an important part of a spy partnership that continued to struggle with the Royalists’ inner factions. It uses manuscripts from private archives and familial records rather than the enemy’s archives as they may better illustrate a woman’s agency and subjectivity. The last two chapters place the lives of two well-known women—Anne, Lady Halkett and Aphra Behn —both of whom have canonical status in literary studies, in the interrogation room where these methods may offer new insights, in particular showing how women struggled psychologically with the trade of espionage but managed to shape it in their favour.

This book is populated with women more numerous and with lives more interesting than I could have hoped for, and in some ways it feels a betrayal that they have been exposed as the liars and cheats of sometimes dubious morality that they undoubtedly were. This, however, is and has always been the spy’s lot, and at the last we can but admire their simple effectiveness: they were not only invisible agents, but extremely successful ones. These women were not dilettantes but bona fide spies, and if they were rarely punished in the same manner as men when caught, this was merely their good fortune. Whereas queens, consorts, or women running estates were politically active in Europe by means of desk-bound letter writing, she-intelligencers of different walks of life were mobile, crossed enemy lines, were drawn into or devised furtive schemes, and even walked in and out of the king’s prison cell to discuss secrets. It was largely the invisibility of women, social, financial, sexual, and familial that allowed them to be as effective as they were, but this same invisibility makes the job of the contemporary spy hunter and the modern historian particularly hard. There are, doubtless, many more women waiting to be uncovered.

1

This point was first made by Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, 1550-1720 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 413.

2

Nadine Akkerman, ‘The Postmistress, The Diplomat, and a Black Chamber?’, in Robyn Adams and Rosanna Cox (eds), Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 172­88 at 176-7.

3     Akkerman, ‘The Postmistress’, 182.

4    See Akkerman, ‘The Postmistress’, throughout. The estate lay on the junction of Rue de la Régence and Rue des Sablons. The Chambers discussed in this monograph are precursors of the French Cabinet Noir founded in the 1670s, on which see David Kahn, The Codebreakers (rev. edn New York: Scribner, 1996), 157-88, specifically 162; and the Habsburg Geheime Kabinets-Kanzlei in eighteenth-century Vienna, on which see F. Stix, ‘Zur Geschichte und Organisation der Wiener Geheimen Ziffernkanzlei (von ihren Anfangen bis zum Jahren 1848),, Mitteilungen des Osterreichischen Instituts fur Geschichtsforschung 51 (1937): 132-60. There is no comprehensive overview of European Black Chambers, but see Karl de Leeuw, ‘The Black Chamber in the Dutch Republic during the War of the Spanish Succession and Its Aftermath, 1707-1715’, The Historical Journal 42, no. 1 (1999): 133-56; and Christopher Andrew, ‘The Nature of Military Intelligence’, in Keith Neilson and B. J. C. McKercher (eds), Go Spy the Land (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992), 1-16.

5        While the English Civil War began in 1642 when Charles I raised an army against parliament, it was preceded by wars in the two other kingdoms ruled by him, namely the Bishops' Wars in Scotland (1638- 41) and the Irish rebellion (1641). While the conflict between parliament and king devastated England during the 1640s, the wars between the contesting Royalist and opposition parties across the British Isles saw armies representing factions from all three kingdoms fighting on the soil of their neighbours. As early as 1639, English, Irish, and Scottish Royalists sought (unsuccessfully) to defeat the Covenanters in Scotland. These same Covenanters moved an army into Ireland in 1641 to defend the English and Scottish Protestant interest, while the English Civil War itself could only be successfully fought by the English Parliament after the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 which led to an army of 22,000 Covenanter allies crossing the border to defend the parliamentary interest in 1644. It is for this reason that the period of conflict that ended with Charles Stuart, the later Charles II, seeking exile in France is more properly termed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms or British Civil Wars.

6      See Caroline M. K. Bowden, ‘The Abbess and Mrs. Brown’, Recusant History 24, no. 3 (1999): 288- 308, and Claire Walker’s essays ‘Prayer, Patronage, and Political Conspiracy’, The Historical Journal 43, no. 1 (2000): 1-23; 'Loyal and Dutiful Subjects,, in James Daybell (ed.), Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450-1700 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 228-42, and 'Crumbs of News’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 42, no. 3 (2012): 635-55.

7      Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 85-95. Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 50-1, 53, 234, 251.

8           

Ian Arthurson, 'Espionage and Intelligence from the Wars of the Roses to the Reformation’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 35 (1991): 134-54 at 134.

9           

Giovanni Botero, The Reason of State, P. J. and D. P. Waley (trans.) (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956), 48.

10        

Paolo Preto, I servizi secreti di Venezia (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1994), 197, as paraphrased by Eric R. Dursteler, 'The Bailo in Constantinople’, Mediterranean Historical Review 16, no. 2 (2001): 1-30 at 3. See also Steve Murdoch, 'Oxenstierna’s Spies’, in Daniel Szechi (ed.), The Dangerous Trade (Dundee: University of Dundee Press, 2010), 45-65 at 48.

11        

Maurice Keens-Soper, 'Wicquefort’, in G. R. Berridge, M. Keens-Soper, and T. G. Otto (eds), Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 88-105.

12        

John Evelyn’s Diary quoted in Alan Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage in the Reign of Charles II, 1660-1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; paperback edn 2002), 57.

13        

Arthurson, 'Espionage and Intelligence’, 142.

14     OED noun 7a.

15    Susan Wiseman, ' “The most considerable of my troubles” ’, in Jo Wallwork and Paul Salzman (eds), Women Writing 1550-1750 (Bundoora, Australia: Meridian, 2001), 25-45 at 26, also referring to Marshall, Intelligence, 117.

16    See also Daniel Szechi, 'Introduction’, in Daniel Szechi (ed.), The Dangerous Trade, 2, who makes a similar distinction. Marika Keblusek and her research group called these more pacific go-betweens 'double agents’: see Keblusek, 'The Business of News’, Scandinavian Journal of History 28 (2003): 205-13; Badeloch Noldus, 'Dealing in Politics and Art’, Scandinavian Journal of History 28 (2003): 215-25; and the various chapters in Hans Cools, Keblusek, and Noldus (eds), Your Humble Servant (Hilversum: Verloren, 2006). Steve Murdoch, however, points out the inappropriateness of the term 'double agent’ in this specific context: 'Both Keblusek and Noldus use the term to mean an agent or representative who held two positions (such as a cultural broker who was also employed as a diplomatic representative), thus a “dual agent” rather than a “double agent” ’. In other words, the term 'double agent’ is unhelpful for news agents because it conjures up association with espionage, a covert trade which news agents are not necessarily involved in. Murdoch defines the differences as follows: news agents are 'information providers’ and spies are ‘people who subtly influenced—or tried to influence—events by their actions’. See Murdoch, ‘Oxenstierna’s Spies’, 46, 62.

17        

Marshall, Intelligence, 4.

18        

For more on trepanners see Marshall, Intelligence, 126.

19      Marshall, Intelligence, 125.

20        

In the novel, Milady hides her real name, which was probably Anne de Breuil; she became Comtesse de La Fère because she married Athos, Comte de La Fère, one of the three musketeers; thereafter, she became Milady de Winter because she married the brother of Lord de Winter. Once she is referred to as Baroness Sheffield (how she receives the latter name is not clear), and Lord de Winter has Buckingham sign a warrant to deport her to overseas colonies but that document is written out under the false name of Charlotte Backson. See Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers (1844), Richard Pevear (trans. and Introduction) (London: Penguin Classics, 2006; paperback 2008), 653.

21        

Dumas, Three Musketeers, 581. For the revelation of the fleur-de-lis on Milady’s shoulder, see also 311 and 399.

22        

Dumas, Three Musketeers, 403.

23        

Milady sent poisoned wine to D’Artagnan, but he was warned off by the dying convulsions of a thirsty fellow soldier. However, she succeeded in poisoning D’Artagnan’s lover. Dumas even has her commissioning John Felton to murder Buckingham (Dumas, Three Musketeers, 553, 638-9, 654).

24       Dumas, Three Musketeers, 536.

25       Thomas Cromwell to an unnamed recipient, 5 Oct. 1634, TNA, SP 16/275, no. 23.

26        

26      See, for instance, Tammy M. Proctor, Female Intelligence (New York: New York University Press, 2003), and Elizabeth P. McIntosh, Sisterhood of Spies (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998).

27        

John Michael Archer, Sovereignty and Intelligence (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 53. See also Chapter 3 of Karma Lochrie’s Covert Operations (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), which discusses the early modern notion of women as secrets.

28             Dumas, Three Musketeers, 571-83.

29        

See Akkerman, ‘A Triptych of Dorothy Percy Sidney (1598-1659), Countess of Leicester, Lucy Percy Hay (1599-1660), Countess of Carlisle, and Dorothy Sidney Spencer (1617-1684), Countess of Sunderland’, in Margaret P. Hannay, Michael G. Brennan, and Mary Ellen Lamb (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to the Sidneys, 1500-1700 (vol. I: Lives) (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 133-50, esp. 135-7.

30             Akkerman, ‘A Triptych’, 144.

31             Akkerman, ‘A Triptych’, 145.

32        

John Rusworth, Historical Collections of Private Passages of State (London: Browne, 1721), iv. 474, as quoted in Akkerman, ‘A Triptych’, 145.

33             Akkerman, ‘A Triptych’, 145-6.

34      John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 2, ll. 970-2, in Barbara K. Lewalski (ed.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 64.

35        

Raymond A. Anselment, ‘The Countess of Carlisle and Caroline Praise’, Studies in Philology 82, no. 2 (1985): 212-33 at 213.

36        

36      For contemporary sources see Richard Pevear, ‘Introduction’, Three Musketeers, by Dumas (London: Penguin Classics, 2006), pp. ix-xx, endnotes 58-9.

37        

Richelieu had indeed several informants and spies in Anne of Austria’s household. Mlle de Chérmerault, one of the filles d’honneur, spied for him on the queen’s correspondence in the 1630s, for example: see Oliver Mallick, ‘Spiritus intus agit.’ (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 250, 340 (n. 678). For Richelieu’s interventions in the queen’s household see Sharon Kettering, ‘Strategies of Power’, French Historical Studies 33, no. 2 (2010): 177-200, specifically 197. For the fictionalized accounts see Dumas, Three Musketeers, 93, 155-6, and 193.

38        

Pevear, ‘Introduction’, The Three Musketeers by Dumas, p. xvii.

39            Pevear, Dumas, Three Musketeers, 346, endnote 132.

40            Arthurson, ‘Espionage and Intelligence’, 134. Szechi, ‘Introduction’, 14. Marshall, Intelligence, 2.

41      See Archer, Sovereignty and Intelligence, and Daniel Jutte, The Age of Secrecy, Jeremiah Riemer (trans.) (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015).

42      Mark Brayshay, Land Travel and Communications in Tudor and Stuart England (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014).

43            Marshall, Intelligence, 10-11.

44      For Burghley’s key role see Ronald Pollitt, ‘The Abduction of Doctor John Story and the Evolution of Elizabethan Intelligence Operations’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 14, no. 2 (1983): 131-56.

45      Daniel Fischlin, ‘Political Allegory, Absolutist Ideology, and the “Rainbow Portrait” of Queen Elizabeth I’, Renaissance Quarterly 50, no. 1 (1997): 175-206.

46       For different Royalist factions see David Scott, ‘Counsel and Cabal in the King’s Party, 1642-1646’, in Jason McElligott and David L. Smith (eds), Royalists and Royalism during the English Civil Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 112-35; for a recurrence of the same problems a decade later see Ronald Hutton, Charles the Second (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), 72-4, and Geoffrey Smith, Cavaliers in Exile, 1640-1660 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 116-19.

47            Marshall, Intelligence, 4, 304.

48        

See Micheál Ó Siochrú, ‘English Military Intelligence in Ireland during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms’, Historical Studies, ‘Special Issue: Intelligence, Statecraft and International Power’, Eunan O’Halpin, Robert Armstrong, and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds), 25 (2006): 48-63 at 49.

49        

Keblusek, ‘Introduction’, in Cools, Keblusek, and Noldus (eds), 9-15 at 13; Szechi, ‘Introduction’, 13.

50       ‘M^r Wiliamson’s arrears for Intelligence money’, Midsummer 1660 to Oct. 1662, handed in to and annotated by Sir Edward Nicholas, BL, Egerton 2543, fos. 115-16. Williamson spent £981 in total on intelligence, which included the purchase of gazettes.

51            Marshall, Intelligence, 50.

52        

Geoffrey Smith, Royalist Agents, Conspirators and Spies (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 8.

53            Smith, Royalist Agents, 8-9; Marshall, Intelligence, 20.

54      George Monck, Observations upon Military and Political Affairs (London: Printed by A. C. for Henry Mortlocke . . . and James Collins . . . 1671), 39-40, Wing no. A864.

55            ‘Day’s proceedings’, 4 July 1649, TNA, SP 25/2, no folio or page number.

56            ‘Day’s proceedings’, 9 July 1649, TNA, SP 25/2, no folio or page number.

57        

[Thomas Scott], ‘Thomas Scot’s Account of His Actions as Intelligencer during the Commonwealth’, C. H. Firth (ed.), English Historical Review 12, no. 45 (1897): 116-26 at 124.

58            Ó Siochrú, ‘English Military Intelligence in Ireland’, 49.

59  David Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy in England 1649-1660 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, I960), 20-1; C. H. Firth, reviser Sean Kelsey, ‘Scott [Scot], Thomas’, ODNB; Maryann S. Feola, ‘Bishop, George’, ODNB.

60      C. H. Firth, ‘Thurloe and the Post Office’, English Historical Review 13, no. 51 (1898): 527-33 at 530. Firth tentatively attributes the words to John Wildman, who became Postmaster-General in 1689: Firth, 529.

61             Ó Siochrú, ‘English Military Intelligence in Ireland’, 49. See also Marshall, Intelligence, 22.

62             Marshall, Intelligence, 80 (n. 10).

63             Jay Caplan, Postal Culture in Europe 1500-1800 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2016), 108.

64      ‘June 1657: An Act for settling the Postage of England, Scotland and Ireland’, in C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait (eds), Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642-1660 (London: HMSO, 1911), 1110-13, also cited in Caplan, Postal Culture, 108, n. 56.

65        

65      In 1660 and 1663, Charles II issued similar warrants, permitting his government officials to open letters; tellingly, the Post Office Act of 1711 underwrote those warrants, which in modern times would be seen as a violation of privacy. See Kahn, The Codebreakers, 172.

66             Alan Marshall, ‘Morland, Sir Samuel’, ODNB.

67        

67      Samuel Morland, ‘A Brief discourse concerning the Nature and Reason of Intelligence’, BL, Add. MS 47133, fo. 13r. Fo. 8 of the same manuscript is another copy of Morland’s tract, but since it is somewhat less detailed, I cite the more complete version at fo. 13.

68             Morland, ‘A Brief discourse’, BL, Add. MS 47133, fo. 13r.

69             Morland, ‘A Brief discourse’, BL, Add. MS 47133, fo. 13v.

70        

Marshall, Intelligence, 54, 86, citing ‘Sir Samuel Morland’s proposalls for secret service’, HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of Allan George Finch, esq., of Burley-on-the-Hill, Rutland (London: HMSO, 1913), ii. 264-6 at 265.

71             Marshall, Intelligence, 87.

72             Morland, ‘A Brief discourse’, BL, Add. MS 47133, fo. 13v.

73        

Susan Frye, Pens and Needles (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 54, refers to Michael Bath, Emblems for a Queen (London: Archetype Publications, 2008), 19.

74       Nicholas White to William Cecil, 25 Feb. 1568, HMC, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury, i. 509-12, as quoted in Frye, Pens and Needles, 54.

75        

Frye, Pens and Needles, 55.

76        

76       Frye, Pens and Needles, 128. As an example Frye refers to Lady Halkett’s education.

77        

Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 154, refer to Francis de Zulueta, Embroideries by Mary Stuart and Elizabeth Talbot at Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923), 7. See also Neville Williams, A Tudor Tragedy (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1964), 236.

⁷⁸ Frye, Pens and Needles, 52.

79

For an image of the so-called ‘Norfolk panel’, see Frye, Plate 2, or Margaret Swain, The Needlework of Mary, Queen of Scots (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1973), Plate 42.

80

Frye, Pens and Needles, 52, drawing on Joanne Gaudio, ‘A Message in Tent Stitch and a Reply’, Piecework 9, no. 5 (2001): 36-40. Frye also refers to Swain, Needlework of Mary, 75.

81

Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 154.

82

The year 2016 saw three special issues on the history of archives, which shows that ‘the archival turn’ is far from over: Filippo de Vivo, Andrea Guldi, and Alessandro Silvestri (eds), ‘Archival Transformations in Early Modern Europe’, European History Quarterly 46, no. 3 (2016); Elizabeth Yale (ed.), ‘Focus’, Isis 107 (2016); and Alexandra Walsham (ed.), ‘The Social History of the Archive’, Past & Present 230, supplement 11 (2016). They built on the special issues in Archival Science: Anne Blair and Jennifer Milligan (eds), ‘Toward a Cultural History of Archives’, Archival Science 7, no. 4 (2007); and Randolph C. Head (ed.), ‘Archival Knowledge in Europe, 1400-1900’，Archival Science 10, no. 3 (2010). For an overview see also Elizabeth Yale, ‘The History of Archives: The State of the Discipline’, Book History 18 (2015): 332-59.

83

Morland to Shrewsbury, 18 June 1689, enclosing a ‘Copy of [his] Proposals [for Secret Service]’, HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, K.G., K.T., Preserved at Montagu House, Whitehall (London: HMSO, 1899), ii. 48-51 at 51 (Shrewsbury papers). For another version of Morland’s ‘Proposals’ see this introduction, n. 70.

84

Caplan, Postal Culture, 105, basing himself on Eugène Vaillé, Le Cabinet Noir (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950), 104-5.

85

⁵      Jana Dambrogio and Daniel Smith (gen. eds), Dictionary of Letterlocking (DoLL), 2016 online <http://letterlocking.org/dictionary/>. See also Dambrogio, ‘Historic Letterlocking: The Art and Security of Letter Writing’, Book Arts/Arts du Livre Canada 5, no. 2 (2014): 21-3.

86

I have been privileged to read parts of Dambrogio’s and Smith’s co-authored forthcoming monograph Letterlocking in draft form.

87

Dambrogio and Smith, Letterlocking (forthcoming).

88      I. [Charles I] to D. [Henry Firebrace], 27 Apr. 1648, BL, Egerton MS 1788, fo. 21r. The letter is not deciphered in the manuscript itself, but by using the cipher key in Firebrace’s hand, BL, Egerton MS 1788, fo. 54 (Fig. 1.4b). Special thanks are due to Pete Langman for noticing the significance of this passage.

89      Jana Dambrogio, et al. ‘Walsingham’s Anti-Spy Letter to Sir Ralph Sadler, England (1584)’, Letterlocking Instructional Video. <https://vimeo.com/letterlocking/trianglelock6> (accessed 30 Nov. 2017).

90     Heather Wolfe, ‘ “Neatly Sealed, With Silk, and Spanish Wax or Otherwise” ’, in S. P. Cerasano and Steven W. May (eds), ‘In Prayse of Writing’ (London: British Library, 2012), 169-89.

91        

Jana Dambrogio and Nadine Akkerman, ‘Elizabeth Stuart’s Holograph Letter to Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland’, Letterlocking Instructional                                                                                                  Video.             Filmed:               Sept. 2014.

<https://vimeo.com/letterlocking/pleated1>.

92        

Jana Dambrogio has speculated that this might be the sort of letter Constantijn Huygens is passing to his clerk in the famous painting by Thomas de Keyser at the National Gallery in London. Such a letter is time-consuming to engineer (Dambrogio’s reconstruction took over twelve minutes), and with one intermeshed wax seal with floss sewn through and with further floss and wax covering up the slits and needle holes, it is a practically infallible security device. See Jana Dambrogio, et al., ‘Intelligencer Simeon Fox’s DaggerTrap Pleated Letter Sent from Venice (1601)’, Letterlocking Instructional Video. <https://vimeo.com/letterlocking/daggertrap> (accessed 18 Jan. 2017).

93        

The quote is from James Daybell, The Material Letter in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 11; For other key examples of material studies of the letter see Alison Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters (Oxford: Routledge, 2017) in particular, and Daniel Starza Smith, ‘The Material Features of Early Modern Letters’ (2013) <https://www.bessofhardwick.org/background> in general.

94        

Alexandra Walsham’s introduction with the same title as her special issue, ‘The Social History of the Archive’, Past & Present 230, supplement 11 (2016): 9-48 at 11, referring to Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (London: Routledge, 2002; orig. 1966); Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse of Language, A. M. Sheridan Smith (trans.) (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972); Arlette Farge, The Allure of the Archives, Thomas Scott-Railton (trans.) (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013; orig. 1989); Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996); and Carolyn Steedman, Dust (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001).

⁹⁵ See Randolph C. Head, ‘Knowing Like a State’，Journal of Modern History 75 (2003): 745-82; Filippo de Vivo’s Information and Communication in Venice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); De Vivo, ‘Ordering the Archive in Early Modern Venice, 1400-1650’, Archival Science 10, no. 3 (2010): 231­48, and Jacob Soll, The Information Master (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2011).

96

James Daybell, ‘Gender, Politics and Archives in Early Modern England’, in James Daybell and Svante Norrhem (eds), Gender and Political Culture in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1800 (London: Routledge, 2017), 25-45 at 27. See also Alan Stewart, ‘Familial Letters and State Papers’, in James Daybell and Andrew Gordon (eds), Cultures of Correspondence in Early Modern Britain (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 237-52.

97

John H. Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 4. 98

Walsham, ‘The Social History of the Archive’, 44, explains that reading against the archival grain explores the power dynamics between two unequal parties, whether between court magistrates and deponents (e.g. Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: [Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987]); witches and their torturers (e.g. Lyndal Roper, Witchcraze [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004]); or slaves and colonizers (e.g. Marisa J. Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives [Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016]).

99

Thurloe’s papers were ‘discovered in […] a false ceiling in the garrets belonging to secretary Thurloe’s chambers, No XIII. near the chapel in Lincoln’s-Inn’. Soon after the discovery they were sold to John, Lord Somers, then Lord High Chancellor of England [thus not until 1697] ‘who caused them to be bound up in sixty seven volumes in folio’ (TSP, i., ‘Preface’, p. v).

¹⁰⁰ Arnold Hunt, ‘ “Burn This Letter” ’, in Daybell and Gordon (eds), Cultures of Corrrespondence, 189-209 at 202; see also Daybell, ‘Gender’, 31.

Ciphered Pillow Talk with Charles I in Prison, 1646-9 ‘intrigues, which at that time could be best managed and carried on by ladies’

Charles I’s incarceration challenged the traditional flow of information from male advisors to king. While men found their access to the monarch suddenly blocked, women, whose sex placed them above suspicion, suddenly found themselves vital conduits for intelligence. The king’s prison transfers from Holdenby House to Hampton Court, then to Carisbrooke Castle, Newport, and Hurst Castle, among other locations, provided ever-changing opportunities for courtly women to pass secret messages to and fro and become part of underground correspondence networks. The role of these women evolved slowly as they were transformed from being mere couriers into intelligence agents who not only carried messages but also wrote them. By considering the interwoven stories and ciphered correspondences of glamorous and publicly visible women such as Lady d’Aubigny, Lady Carlisle, and Lady Thynne, and of lesser-known women such as Head Mistress of the Royal Laundry Elizabeth Wheeler and the king’s mistress Jane Whorwood (if a woman who assisted or planned three escape attempts from Carisbrooke Castle deserves to be known merely as his mistress), this chapter shows the rise of the she-intelligencer in the mid­seventeenth century. We start with what might have been the last sight the king had of a she-spy: his dinner with Lady d’Aubigny.

In December 1648, Charles I dined at the house of Katherine, Lady d’Aubigny, and her second husband, James Livingston, Viscount Newburgh, in Bagshot, Surrey. The atmosphere must have been somewhat subdued, as the king was being escorted from his cell on the Isle of Wight to Hurst Castle and then to Windsor, where he was to await trial. Royalist sympathizers were ever open to an opportunity, however, and the Newburghs conjured up a plan as simple as it was bold. The king was to convince the armed guard who accompanied him that his horse was lame, at which point the Newburghs would offer him one of theirs, a mount that just happened to be considered the swiftest in the country. It was on this horse that he would make a break for it, outpacing his guards and galloping into the distance, and to freedom.¹ His captor, Major­General Thomas Harrison, was not to be tricked, however, refusing the Newburgh horse and instead providing Charles with a Rocinante of his own choosing.² While the escape plot failed, it is intriguing that parliament agreed to Charles’s dining at the Newburghs at all, as even if James’s conniving had gone unnoticed, Katherine was a well-known Royalist plotter.

Katherine, daughter of Theophilus Howard, 2nd Earl of Suffolk, and Lady Elizabeth Home, had always been a somewhat mischievous girl. In May 1638, she eloped with George Stewart, 9th seigneur d’Aubigny, younger brother of the king’s confidant James Stewart, 4th Duke of Lennox, later the 1st Duke of Richmond. In doing so, she defied not only her parents but also Charles I who was guardian to the Stewart boys.³ Charles was furious about the ‘private’ (that is, unlicensed) marriage held in the parish of St Mary Axe, London, a fury most probably the result of both temporal and spiritual slights: Katherine had not only married a relatively poor younger son rather than an heir, but she had converted to Catholicism in the process. To add insult to injury, she had done all this without consulting him. Nevertheless, the newlyweds petitioned the king, seeking absolution from William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, for both themselves and for those, such as John Penruddock, who attended the solemnization of the marriage.⁴ George’s apologies were quite plainly half­hearted as he simultaneously commemorated his secret marriage by having himself portrayed by Sir Anthony Van Dyck in the guise of a lovesick shepherd in matching Arcadian landscape: the full-length portrait bears the Latin inscription ‘me firmior amor’ [‘Love is stronger than I’].⁵

While he might have wilfully offended his guardian, George would still die for him at the Battle of Edgehill in October 1642: in this he preceded his younger brothers John and Bernard, killed at the Battles of Cheriton-Alresford in March 1644, and of Rowton Heath in September 1645, respectively.⁶ After a mere four years of marriage, Lady d’Aubigny found herself a widow with two young children: the three-year-old Charles and two-year-old Katherine.⁷

For the widowed Lady d’Aubigny, however, George’s funeral arrangements brought with them the boon of a passport to Oxford. It was there that she met with the king and turned she-intelligencer. As the Memoirs of regicide Edmund Ludlow testify, ‘the King, to encourage his friends in the City to rise for him, sent them a commission to that purpose by the Lady Aubogny [sic], which she brought made up in the hair of her head’.⁸ She hid a royal commission of array in the locks of her hair, smuggling her sovereign’s secret instructions for a Royalist uprising back to London, where she successfully delivered it to Nathaniel Tompkins, brother-in-law to Edmund Waller after whom the plot would be named.⁹ In spite of her efforts, the plan to raise funds and enlist men in London, Westminster, and Southwark was discovered, and it was reported on by several parliamentarian news pamphlets. One of these, A Brief Narrative of the late Treacherous and Horrid Designe, dated 25 June 1643, not only described the document as pure treachery, but printed the commission of array itself as an appendix:

A Commission under the great Seal brought from Oxford, about a fortnight ago, by the Lady Aubigny, with the Authorities aforesaid, thereby inabling and commanding them by force of Arms to destroy, kill, and 10

slay, the forces raised by the Parliament, and their Adherents as Traitors, and Rebels.

How the document surfaced, and how Katherine’s role in its travels became known is unclear, but Peter Barwick’s biography of his brother John, who before becoming Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral had acted as a Royalist spy, provides perhaps the most likely explanation. Barwick tells how his brother relied on the ‘adventurous Women’ in the employ of bookseller Richard Royston to transfer secret messages between London and Oxford, ‘for between those two Places […] these Women used frequently to travel on Foot, like Strowlers begging from House to House, and loitering at Places agreed upon, to take up Books’. The women’s trade gave his brother John a handy way to communicate stealthily: ‘it was easy to sew Letters privately within the Cover of any Book, and then give the Book a secret Mark, to notify the Insertion of such Letters therein’.¹¹ He described the women, who were carefully selected by his brother and the bookseller Royston, as ‘faithful and honest Messengers, but such for the most part, as were in Circumstances not much to be envied, and were consequently, through the Mediocrity or rather Meanness of their Condition, less conspicuous and more safe’. He juxtaposed the low-key bag ladies with the ostentatious Lady d’Aubigny, whom he counted amongst those Royalists ‘of more extraordinary Note’ who ‘betrayed and discovered themselves by their own Splendor’.¹² According to Barwick, not one of the many letters sewn into books had fallen into enemy hands: a somewhat better record than that of Lady d’Aubigny’s hair,

as the single document smuggled out by that method was next seen gracing the news pamphlets of the day.

According to Ludlow’s Memoirs, after the unravelling of what later became known as the Waller plot, Lady d’Aubigny sought sanctuary at the French embassy in the vain hope that her French title would allow her to escape imprisonment. The French appear to have tried to protect her, ‘refusing to deliver her to Sir Henry Vane and Mr. John Lisle’ who had been sent by parliament to remove her, but had relented in remembrance of a precedent dating back to the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1588.¹³ The French thus saved face, while Katherine was taken to Lord Petre’s house, which had recently been converted to a prison, in Aldersgate Street in London. There she spent over a year in confinement,¹⁴ following which she was either released or escaped. Edward Hyde’s The History of the Rebellion is quite clear regarding the fate that awaited her:

she had endured a long imprisonment, under a suspicion or evidence that she had been privy to that design which had been discovered by Mr. Waller, upon which [Nathaniel] Tom[p]kins and [Richard] Challoner had been put to death, and had likewise [herself] been put to death if she had not made her escape to Oxford.¹⁵

Unlike Waller, who by informing on his own plot had escaped execution and instead was fined £10,000 after having suffered eighteen months’ imprisonment, Katherine seems to have escaped the attentions of the executioner by the rather simpler expedient of fleeing to Oxford. Sadly, there is no indication of how she won her freedom: indeed, it may be that as with several other women before her, her captors had, if not actively colluded with her escape, at the very least turned a blind eye to it.

Lady d’Aubigny certainly was not the only lady connected to the Waller plot. In fact, some months prior to Lady d’Aubigny’s visit to Oxford, Edmund Waller had already attempted to have the young Dorothy Sidney, niece of the notorious Lady Carlisle, smuggle a list of the men considered well-disposed to the plot from London to Oxford. Gerolamo Agostini, Venetian secretary in England, wrote to the doge and senate, on 5 February 1643:

Although the severity about going to Oxford is maintained, in accordance with the late decree, yet the daughter of the earl of Leicester has obtained a passport, her sex being less open to suspicion. But the officials who met her on the way, having carefully searched her, found a catalogue with the names of all his Majesty’s partisans in London. She was able to escape arrest herself with the excuse that it was put in her baggage by the servants without her knowledge, but the king could not escape the mischief done, which is

16 considerable.¹⁶

Agostini’s report is revealing in three respects. First, that Waller was happy to involve the girl whom he celebrated as Sacharissa (sweet little girl, playing on the Latin saccharum, meaning sugar) in upwards of twenty poems, directly in his plot. Secondly, that despite the discovery of the document on her person, a discovery that might have revealed the wider plot, a lady could, and would, deflect blame on to her servants in order to escape arrest. Finally, and most revealingly, it shows that the Roundheads were more willing to provide passports to women wishing to cross enemy lines than to men intending to do the same as they were ‘less open to suspicion’. Perhaps, however, this ought not be such a surprise, as Hyde in his The History of the Rebellion, Barwick’s observations notwithstanding, recalls Lady d’Aubigny to be ‘a woman of very great wit, and most trusted and conversant in those intrigues, which at that time could be best managed and carried on by ladies’.¹⁷ Ladies were, it seems, simply given more licence than men.

While women other than Lady d’Aubigny worked as intelligencers, a parliamentarian pamphlet reveals that the Roundheads not only imagined that she lay at the heart of all plots, but literally situated her there. The anonymous The malignants trecherous and bloody plot against the Parliament and Citty of London wch was by Gods providence happily prevented May 31. 1643 ([London]: Printed according to order by Io Hancock, 1643) shows Lady d’Aubigny standing at the head of a table, around which are sat male plotters who hang on her every word (see Figure 1.1).¹⁸ This portrayal was memorable. The anonymous Englands monument of mercies in her miraculous preservations from manifold plots, conspiracies, contrivances and attempts of forraigne and home-bred treacherous enemies, against the Parliament, kingdome, and purity of religion ([London]: Printed for S. W. and I. P., 1646) has a full-length portrait of Lady d’Aubigny (holding the commission of array), flanked by smaller half­length portraits of Laud, Strafford, Sir Basil Brooke, and Baron George Digby, the future 2nd Earl of Bristol, to her left, and Rupert, Newcastle, Jermyn, and Montrose to her right, as if they were all her minions (see Figure 1.2). Years after her arrest, as the latter pamphlet shows, she was still seen as a figurehead.

Figure 1.1. Engraving, pamphlet The malignants trecherous and bloody plot. Lady d’Aubigny at the head of the table of plotters. BL, 669. fo. 8[22]. © The British Library Board

 

Figure 1.2. Engraving, pamphlet Englands monument of mercies. Lady d’Aubigny surrounded by plotters. BL, 669. fo. 10[85]. © The British Library Board

Why the king’s captors allowed Charles to dine with a woman they considered to be a malicious plotter is something of a mystery, though Oliver Cromwell was, as we shall see, himself strangely supportive of the escape of the parliamentarians’ trump card. If they were counting on the Royalist factions to take full advantage of the invitingly lax security they must have been sorely disappointed, however, as the whole scheme dreamed up by the Newburghs was characterized by ineptitude. Indeed, they had even managed to lose the star of the show the day before Charles’s visit: ‘the horse so much depended upon was the day before, by the blow of another horse, so lamed, that he could not be of use to the purpose he was designed for’.¹⁹ In other words, the horse that had been meant to replace the king’s horse, which he had lamed to get a replacement, was itself lame. This inconvenient accident could not, however, disguise the fact that the plan to ride off into the distance on an especially speedy mount, when at any given time during this journey the king was ‘in the middle of a hundred horse’, seems ludicrous and beyond all measure of desperation.²⁰

This incompetence notwithstanding, it is perhaps only to be expected that Charles would place so much trust in the Newburghs and in Lady d’Aubigny in particular, considering the years of correspondence, much of it in cipher, which had passed between them. Indeed, the king’s relationship with this particular lady is indicative of the trust he and other Royalists placed in she-intelligencers, and the sometimes farcical situations that resulted. On the one hand, these women attempted to take control of Royalist underground postal networks from the very beginning of the king’s house arrest in England, and consequently appear to have exerted influence over royal decision-making; on the other, the intelligence they provided was seldom acted upon, and their being privy to the king’s secrets arguably did more to hinder his prospects than to help them. By placing Lady d’Aubigny in a central position, parliamentarian engravings may have done more than simply identify her as a figurehead, as they may well have been intimating that Royalist plots were doomed to failure on account of their reliance on women, or perhaps even that the Royalists were ungodly, as they engaged women in unwomanly undertakings.²¹

Holdenby House, 17 February-14 June 1647

Charles’s period of incarceration had begun with his surrender to the Scots in May 1646, a surrender that led to an extended stay in Newcastle, where he engaged in embryonic negotiations for a treaty that would become known, appropriately, as ‘the Engagement’.²² In exchange for a Scottish army of 20,000, the king was to promise to extinguish episcopacy and to introduce Presbyterianism in England for a trial period of three years, after which time an enduring religious settlement would be sought. The Scottish army was to be backed by Royalist risings from other parts of the Three Kingdoms.²³ The Scottish faction headed by Archibald Campbell, Marquess of Argyll, insisted that the king swear to and sign the Solemn League and Covenant there and then, on the conclusion of negotiations. Charles, as ever, failed to act expediently, and with his refusal to sign all hope of Scottish military assistance seemingly evaporated.²⁴ Denied the possibility of imposing a religious settlement on the Three Kingdoms, the high Presbyterian Scots accordingly handed Charles over to the English parliament’s commissioners in February 1647. The king eventually signed the Engagement on 5 January 1648, but it was too late for it to have any true effect. Indeed, the promised army that gathered after the Scottish parliament ratified the treaty in March in support of the king would be annihilated by Cromwell at the Battle of Preston in August 1648, crippling the Engagement party and dispiriting Royalist risings in England.

The commissioners brought Charles to Holdenby House, six miles northwest of Northampton, where he remained until June that year.²⁵ Surveillance was further intensified, and as a result communication with the king became next to impossible. Nicholas Oudart, the king’s clerk, wrote to his former employer Sir Edward Nicholas on 14 March 1647: even ‘M^rs Harwood herself, with all her fathers boldnes and art, dares adventure no farther then Northampton’.²⁶ Jane Whorwood [pronounced Horwood], daughter of William Ryder and Elizabeth de Boussy (born in Augsberg and Antwerp respectively), was one of the most skilful of the she-intelligencers. Elizabeth had served as Queen Anna of Denmark’s ‘lavender’, the now obsolete word for washerwoman or laundress, at Somerset House, while William had been James VI and I’s ‘Principal Harbinger’ of the stables.²⁷ William died in December 1617, and Elizabeth subsequently married James Maxwell, an influential and wealthy gentleman of Prince Charles’s Bedchamber, in 1619. It is unclear whether Oudart’s letter refers to the presumably excellent horsemanship of her late father, or to the subterfuge of her stepfather, who had smuggled jewels for Charles I. Perhaps he referred to both.

In 1634, Jane’s stepfather arranged a marriage for her with the 21-year-old Brome Whorwood. Brome was to take her as his wife, accepting family influence as compensation for an inadequate dowry: Maxwell was to ensure that Brome’s father Sir Thomas, who had ordered a man’s murder, would be treated leniently in Star Chamber.²⁸ The marriage turned out to be abusive. Years later, in 1673, Jane testified in the High Court of Chancery:

some AfewA yeares next after the said marryage haveing been by the said Broome Whorwood ^Aher husbandA most cruelly and barbarously misused by AbeateingA strikeing kicking and revileing of her and confineing her to a Garrett or Chamber and locking her upp and denying her necesaries of meat and clothes and by exercising barbarous cruelties upon her she for preservacion of her life was necessitated to fly from him.²⁹

In 1643, when Brome finally abandoned her for Katherine Mary Allen, his mother’s servant, Jane’s name is recorded for posterity as a smuggler. To be precise, in the year Brome fled to the continent to start a new life, a ‘P. P.’, presumably Sir Paul Pindar, and several other men, made cash donations to the king’s war chest, using Jane as their courier to Oxford: the records of Ashburnham’s servant John Browne read ‘Mistress Horwood for P. P. and others at times £6,041’.³⁰ That Jane embraced her stepfather’s trade on being abandoned by her husband is perhaps more than simple coincidence. It is unclear whether she had become sole provider for her two surviving toddlers or whether Brome had taken them with him, nor is it certain when she moved in with her mother-in-law Lady Ursula at Holton.³¹ What is clear, however, is that she excelled in her new profession: in 1680, George Carew, executor of Pindar’s will, not only identified Jane as a mule but as an excellent gold smuggler:

out of his great zeal and Loyalty towards the preservation of the Royal Family, [Pindar] sent several Sums of Money in Gold to Oxford, (by the Hands of Madam Jean Whorewood, yet Living,) in the year 1644. For Transporting of His Majesty [Charles II], when he was Prince of Wales, and the late Queen [Henrietta 32

Maria] his Mother, with their Servants and Goods to Brest in France.

Jane’s biographer, John Fox, estimates that she smuggled a minimum of £83,041 in the period 1642-4 on behalf of Pindar, or ‘2,073 lbs troy of gold, 1,705 lbs avoirdupois (775kg)’, possibly in soap barrels.³³ If she had indeed chosen soap barrels, the method that Thomas Coke testified in 1651 was often used to smuggle pistols and powder,³⁴ then the gold smuggling would have kept her busy: she would have had to distribute the weight over countless barrels to avoid detection.³⁵ Perhaps her mother, as royal laundress, taught Jane the trick.

In spite of such prodigious smuggling skills, Jane seems to have been at her wit’s end on 12 May 1647, as it was on that day that she consulted the astrologer William Lilly, possibly on how best to reach the king at Holdenby. Lilly’s published almanacs, with titles such as Merlinus Anglicus Junior (1644) and Merlini Anglici Ephemeris (published annually from 1647 to his death), sold about 16,000 copies annually and would gain him the reputation of a latter-day Merlin. While he had an extensive client base, he was ridiculed by many, most famously Dorothy Osborne. Osborne had always believed him to be ‘an imposture’, or so she claimed in a letter to her future husband Sir William Temple. Allegedly in pursuit of some light-hearted entertainment, Osborne visited him with a female friend in July 1654, where she found him ‘simple’, writing that ‘noe old woman that passes for a witch’ could have given her ‘soe rediculous a discourse’ as a consultation.³⁶ Jane, however, on a more serious mission than Osborne, seems to have trusted Lilly without reserve. He records her name in his notebooks as ‘doowroh Lady’, writing her name backwards in an attempt either to protect Jane’s identity or to cover up his own acquaintance with her (see Figure 1.3).³⁷ Lilly’s consultation notwithstanding, the received wisdom is that Jane either failed to get close to the country house in which the king was kept or deemed it too hazardous to attempt.³⁸ Such claims, however, are inferred solely from Oudart’s letter, but Charles remained at Holdenby House until 14 June, a full three months after this letter was written. The truth of the matter is that we do not know whether she was able to communicate with the king or not in this period.

Figure 1.3. Manuscript, ‘Figures set upon Horary Questions by Mr. William Lilly. Volume III’, Lilly’s notebook with cases from 17 August 1646 to 4 May 1647. Hand: William Lilly. Bod., Ashmole MS 185, fo. 276r. Reproduced with permission of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

 

Whatever her reasons, Jane’s wariness in approaching Holdenby House proved her to be of sound judgement. Shortly after her visit to Lilly, another she- intelligencer was betrayed to Captain Abbott, Officer of the Guard at Holdenby, and arrested as she tried to deliver ciphered writings to the king.³⁹ To even be in possession of a ciphered letter was highly dangerous. Before the outbreak of the British Civil Wars, Latin had been largely replaced by cipher as the language of the elite, of men as well as women: it was part of the education of heads of state, as well as ambassadors. Ciphers were far from advanced, often being no more than substitution systems designed to create a semblance of privacy and coterie playfulness. As the stakes surrounding political activity rose ever higher, however, specific communicative acts were deemed illegal: writing in cipher, or even being in possession of a cipher key, was now considered treason. In this manner, from 1643 onwards, it was not merely the trading of information that made one an intelligencer but the possession or use of tools associated with occlusion that did so: information and action were in this sense conflated. While this decision led to a marked falling off in the use of cipher codes after 1643, it also led to an increase in the use of steganography, that is, riddles and invisible ink. A ciphered letter advertised its secret nature in the numbers or hieroglyphics that stared back at the reader from the very page. With steganography, however, the letter may appear completely innocuous: a shopping list could be code for something else, but the interceptor would be none the wiser. This would be a lesson conspirators learned gradually, however: steganography was to replace cryptography, but not until the Second Civil War (1648-9).40 During the First Civil War (1642-6), plotters still risked communication in cipher, an unnecessary risk that had now laid Lady Mary Cave, who was caught in possession of a ciphered letter, open to charges of treason.

Jane might have heard of the arrest of Lady Cave, daughter of Mr William Cave of Stamford, Lincolnshire, from any one of the five news pamphlets that reported it.⁴¹ The printed letter of Roger Corbet, allegedly an insider’s perspective written from within Holdenby House, gives the fullest account.⁴² Lady Cave approached an unnamed gentlewoman who was on good terms with Captain Abbott’s landlady, and a plan was hatched. The anonymous gentlewoman was to pay her friend a visit, ostensibly to catch up on family affairs, but intent on the landlady persuading Abbott to allow her to kiss the king’s hands. This being achieved, Lady Cave was to repeat the trick, delivering the letter in the process. Lady Cave travelled to the lodgings, and stayed with Abbott’s landlady for some days. Before begging her tenant’s favour once more, however, the landlady had informed her husband of her design, ironically to ensure its success. The husband, reportedly a Royalist but not in favour of unnecessarily courting danger, believed the women’s plotting would be discovered, ‘because of the Commissioners about the King their vigilant eyes’; in short, ‘he durst no[t] run the hazzard of secresie to the businesse’, and acquainted Abbott with the women’s plans.⁴³ Abbott arranged Lady Cave’s exposure. Feigning ignorance, he escorted her from the lodgings to Holdenby House, a five-mile journey. Rather than finding herself in the king’s presence, however, she was being led into a trap. Commissioners were waiting en route to arrest her, and they were accompanied by some gentlewomen who were to search her immediately: ‘Hereupon she was appointed presently to be taken into a room to be searched […] yet she […] had so conveyed away her Letter, that nothing was found about her’.⁴⁴ She confessed that her design was to deliver a letter to the king, however, and the sheriff of Northampton thereupon incarcerated her. The letter itself, according to Corbet, was discovered later:

Some 2 or 3 dayes after (upon an accident) the Letter was found behind an hanging, in the room where she was searched, where it seemes she had put it, when she stood with her back to the Hangings, and conveyed it with her hands behind her, whilest she talked with the Gentlewomen.⁴⁵

Apparently, granting Lady Cave the courtesy of women searchers was a mistake: she had managed to distract them with chit chat. While Corbet asserts that the letter was discovered by accident, it may well have been the case that Lady Cave, having first hid it successfully, yielded and revealed its whereabouts to her interrogators, because another pamphlet reads: ‘she being examined confessed […] and promised if the Commissioners would appoint some to go with her to the place where she lay she would send it’.⁴⁶

As with Lady d’Aubigny in ‘her’ pamphlets, Lady Cave was painted as something of a glamorous celebrity. Corbet described her as ‘a very handsome Lady, and wondrous bold’,⁴⁷ while simultaneously questioning her credentials: ‘how she comes to be a Lady, I know not’.⁴⁸ Another pamphlet held that ‘she was said to be as full of height of spirit in her deportment as delicate in her beautyes’,⁴⁹ while yet another recorded that ‘Those that carried her away, were strucken into blushes by her beauty, boldnesse, and carriage’.⁵⁰ It seems that she-intelligencers were as beautiful as they were bold.

The news pamphlets all report that Lady Cave carried letters from the queen to the king, but in this they were jumping to conclusions, albeit perhaps reasonable ones. Lady Cave’s own confession of 21 May 1647, and that of her accomplice John Browne, reveals that it was not a letter from the queen, if indeed she carried any such letters, that was the key document. Instead, she carried information in the form of a ciphered letter from the king’s confidant, John Ashburnham, that had been written on the back of an invented petition in an attempt to distract the casual reader from its importance. It was Ashburnham’s servant Browne, a former innkeeper of St Ives,⁵¹ who gave the letter to Lady Cave, which again shows the Royalists preferring to entrust the delivery of a secret document to the softer hands of a woman. (Browne plainly believed that Lady Cave’s designs were more likely to succeed than his own.) As for the information itself, the members of the House of Lords thought it important enough to appoint a seven-man committee to decipher it.⁵² Their suspicions proved correct, as the letter, once deciphered, contained Ashburnham’s assurances from The Hague that the Prince of Orange— presumably William, as Frederick Henry died in March 1647— would ‘land a gallant Army’ as soon as the Dutch had concluded peace with the Spanish. As such, according to Ashburnham, there was no need for the king to give in to parliament’s demands; he advised the king to wait for the Dutch army, which he could have meet up with the Irish confederates.⁵³ Ashburnham was still in The Hague, and thus immune from punishment for writing in cipher, but Lady Cave’s fate is unknown.⁵⁴

Lady Mary Cave and Jane Whorwood were certainly not the only she- intelligencers who tried to assist the king, as Sir Lewis Dyve’s letter books make clear. Dyve was one of the king’s more ingenious male intelligencers, who, despite being locked up in the Tower for two years, still managed to supply the king with useful intelligence, including some concerning Leveller leader John Lilburne, his fellow prisoner. Dyve further proved his ingenuity by extending his credit from within the Tower and purchasing all of the king’s seals, writing triumphantly to his sovereign: ‘Your great seale of Ierland, which was maid [sic] for the earle of Straf[f]ord, your signet, and your privy seale, with many other seales, belonging to divers offices […] I have in safe custody […] But your great seale of England I have only the mould of’.⁵⁵ The thick walls of the Tower were indeed permeable. Dyve notes that some ‘prisoners’ held certain privileges, coming and going as they pleased, himself numbering amongst them: ‘as my Occasions required, I went abroad, which I did openly and avowedly, not conceiving it would have beene judged a Trespas in me, more then in other men in the same Condition that I was’.⁵⁶ When truly confined within the Tower walls, however, Dyve used women as couriers to carry letters between his prison and the king’s. Tellingly perhaps, Jane was one of these: in his letter of 16 July 1647 to the king, Dyve refers to a letter that ‘Mistress Horwood undertooke the care to convay’.⁵⁷ Yet Dyve also trusted another woman, a Mistress Windam, to deliver a list of possible Roundhead turncoats to Charles: ‘I gave a note of their names to Mistress Windam […] who I humbly conceive, by your Majestie’s great wisdome and dexterity, may be made very usefull instruments for your servis, which I desired her to present unto your Majestie.’⁵⁸

While Dyve used at least two women to facilitate secret correspondence with the king, Jane and Mistress Windam, he appears not to have been seduced simply by their sex. When an anonymous lady revealed herself to him as the king’s secret agent, requesting that he give her the appropriate key to decipher one of the king’s letters that she had in her possession, Dyve was convinced he was being played. ‘I told her I durst not adventure without the king’s expresse command let the cipher goe out of my hand’, he wrote to Ashburnham. Instead,

Dyve offered to decipher the letter for her, which she refused, demonstrating that the distrust was mutual. Dyve concluded, with perhaps a little self-satisfaction, that ‘the letter remaines ussless [sic] unto her untill I receive farther order therin from the king’.⁵⁹

Dyve did not have to wait long for his ‘farther order therin’, however, as the very next day the king instructed him to share their cipher key with this lady. Dyve was unrepentant, however, explaining that the lady had communicated indirectly with him, through a messenger he did not know, and the letter itself seemed to be in an unfamiliar hand. He did so while assuring the king that he had ‘immediately repaired’ the ‘error’, that is, he had shared the cipher key with this anonymous lady. In Dyve’s eyes, the act of temporarily putting their cipher into the hands of another raised the possibility of its being compromised or even copied. To ensure continued security of communication, Dyve therefore enclosed another cipher in his letter to the king: ‘only for your owne use, which I beseech your Majestie to reserve unto yourselfe’. Naturally, he exempted the lady in question from all criticism—how could he not, after the king had personally vouched for her character—but he could not help but give the king some advice about ladies in general: ‘truely, sir, the dear-bought experience purchased by my owne folly which I have had of that sex, makes me generally to judge them to be vessels two [sic] weake for the retention of strong liquor’.⁶⁰ Dyve’s message, conveyed by word and deed, was clear: women might be useful, unmatchable even, as couriers, but could never be trusted with the documents embodying communicative acts of true secrecy, cipher keys.

The king would not take Dyve’s advice to heart, however. In fact, he paid no heed to Dyve’s warning whatsoever. In the year that followed, Charles wove a web of invisible agents around himself, female agents who not only carried messages but also conducted their own correspondence with him in cipher. He placed his trust in an entire spy ring of she-intelligencers. Some of those women might have visited Lilly, like Jane—on 13 June the astrologer summarizes a consultation as ‘d[omi]na ex Oxford de amico [[a] mistress/lady from Oxford about her friend]’.⁶¹ Perhaps some soothing words from Lilly might have been welcome to those writing to the king in numbers and symbols, an activity now officially designated as treason.

Hampton Court, 3 September—21 November 1647

In the middle of the night on 14 June 1647, George Joyce, a man with the rank of cornet in Captain General Fairfax’s regiment, fearful that the king might escape parliamentary hands, took a few hundred men and with them spirited the king away from Holdenby House, an action Cromwell may or may not have sanctioned.⁶² The Roundheads spent the summer moving him from house to house and palace to palace before finally transferring him to Hampton Court.⁶³ Jane sensed that here was a prison in which she might reach him more easily, and perhaps even organize his escape. Charles certainly appears to have trusted Jane with matters of importance, if we are to believe Lilly’s report that the king placed into her hands half of the £1,000 worth of gold sent to him at Hampton Court by Alderman Thomas Adams.⁶⁴ The movement of large quantities of gold in and out of Hampton Court also suggests that surveillance was not quite what it had been at Holdenby House, and this may well have encouraged Royalist thoughts of escape. Indeed, Jane paid Lilly ‘Twenty Pieces of that very Gold’ for an astrological consultation on how to effect Charles’s escape, a price Lilly referred to as his ‘Share’ of her portion.⁶⁵ Jane’s gold, it appears, was always intended to grease the rails of a royal jailbreak.

It was in November 1647 that Lilly advised Jane on how best to get the king out of Hampton Court. The king had been spooked by a letter, forwarded by none other than Cromwell himself, in which a certain ‘E. R.’ stated baldly that ‘Your majesty is but as a dead dog’.⁶⁶ Charles, convinced that his assassination was imminent, saw his only hope as to flee, an act that suited Cromwell perfectly as it would remove the king from the very public gaol that was Hampton Court.⁶⁷ In his autobiography, his life as narrated to his friend the antiquary Elias Ashmole, Lilly recorded Jane’s subsequent visit and his ‘professional’ advice:

Upon the King’s Intention to escape, and with his Consent, Madam Whorewood (whom you [Elias Ashmole] knew very well, worthy Esquire) came to receive my Judgment, viz. In what Quarter of this Nation he might be most safe, and not to be discovered until himself pleased.

When she came to my Door, I told her I would not let her come into my House, for I buried a Maid­Servant of the Plague very lately. I fear not the Plague, but the Pox, quoth she; so up we went. After Erection of my Figure [that is, the drawing of an astrological chart], I told her, About Twenty Miles (or thereabouts) from London, and in Essex, I was certain he might continue undiscovered. She liked my Judgment very well; and, being her self of a sharp Judgment, remember’d a Place in Essex about that

68

Distance, where was an excellent House, and all Conveniences for his Reception.

Lilly’s mention of Jane fearing ‘the Pox’ might hint at the impropriety and danger involved in a woman’s requesting admittance to a man’s chamber without a chaperone; the ‘Pox’ could refer to either smallpox or syphilis, both of which were disfiguring. Whether Lilly made a move on Jane is pure speculation, but the ‘Erection of [his] Figure’—that is, the drawing of the astrological charts —came in any case too late.⁶⁹ Before Jane could acquaint the king with Lilly’s vision at Hampton Court the next morning, Charles had already set an altogether different plan in motion.

Each Monday and Thursday the king was allowed to retire early to write letters in the privacy of his chamber. On Thursday, 21 November, while Hampton courtiers believed him to be scribbling away alone, he was in fact scurrying away in the company of three of his Bedchamber attendants, William Legge, Sir John Berkeley, and Ashburnham.⁷⁰ These men took Charles to Sir John Oglander’s house on the Isle of Wight, where he was to be concealed until convinced of the loyalty of Colonel Robert Hammond, the island’s governor.

Cromwell could not have been happier with the king’s choice of a ‘safe’ retreat. Andrew Marvell poetically captured Cromwell’s cunning in his ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’ (written 1650, published 1681):

And Hampton shows what part

He had of wiser art,

Where, twining subtle fears with hope, He wove a net of such a scope

That Charles himself might chase

71

To Caresbrook’s narrow case[.]

By relaxing surveillance and simultaneously convincing the king of a plot against him, it appears that Cromwell had driven Charles to the Isle of Wight, a more dangerous place than Hampton Court had ever been.

The Royalist plan was to carry the king to the Isle of Wight from where he could be transported to France, and it depended wholly on the goodwill of Hammond, the island’s governor: but would Hammond allow him to escape to France? Neither Ashburnham nor any other of the king’s counsellors had any previous acquaintance with Governor Hammond, but Ashburnham told Berkeley that the information ‘which made him conceive the best hopes of him [that is, of Hammond], was the Character Mr. Denham, and the Commendations my Lady Isabella Thynn[e] gave of him’.⁷² It is entirely possible that this was an invention on the part of Ashburnham to deflect some of the blame of the fateful decision to transfer Charles to the Isle of Wight after the fact. It may equally have been true that it had been either John Denham or Denham’s fellow plotter Isabella Thynne, the 1st Earl of Holland’s daughter,⁷³ who had ultimately convinced Ashburnham, and thus the king, that the Isle of Wight was a safe haven: all that remains by way of evidence is Ashburnham’s word as recorded in Berkeley’s memoirs.

Lady Isabella’s reputation, that of being a key player in the espionage of the day, is perhaps not one that would stand up in court. After April 1643, parliament decreed that the use of cipher was strictly forbidden, and if caught in possession of ‘unknowne characters’, you would be punishable as a spy.⁷⁴ Historians seem to have followed parliament’s lead, because the fact that Nicholas shared a cipher key with Lady Isabella, in which she also shared a keyword with George Morley,⁷⁵ is the sole evidence they present to justify branding her as a spy.⁷⁶ However, as is so often the case, the evidence against her is sketchy and circumstantial, a mixture of hearsay and happenstance. Waller, in his poem ‘Of my Lady Isabella, Playing on the Lute’, portrayed her as a scornful enchantress, an Orpheuse whose music gave her full control over her (male) audience:

SUCH moving sounds from such a careless touch!

So unconcerned herself, and we so much!

What art is this, that with so little pains

Transports us thus, and o'er our spirit reigns? (ll. 1-4)

The ‘sounds’ (l. 1) of her lute turned men, traditionally the hunters, into ‘deer’ (l. 10), the hunted, utterly defenceless against Cupid’s arrows: ‘Here love takes stand, and while she charmes the ear, Empties his quiver on the listening deer’ (ll. 9-10). The poem ^,s concluding couplet warns the reader of just how dangerous the seductive qualities of Lady Isabella truly were: ‘So Nero once, with harp in hand, surveyed His flaming Rome, and as it burned he played’ (ll. 15-16).⁷⁷ In 1643 John Aubrey characterized her with these words: ‘One might say of her as Tacitus said of Agrippina: Cuncta alia illi adfuere, praeter animum honestum (All other things are present in her, except an honest mind)’.⁷⁸ Despite Waller’s and Aubrey’s misgivings, she was trusted by the Royalists: she was one of Hyde’s correspondents and in 1654 double agent Joseph Bampfield spied on her and informed Thurloe that she also held ‘a constant correspondence’ with the Marquess of Ormond.⁷⁹ Had Ashburnham actually listened to this lustful, lute­playing siren? If so, then Isabella might have unwittingly prevented Jane from transporting the king from Hampton Court to a safe house in Essex, inadvertently condemning him to imprisonment in Carisbrooke Castle. If, as is perhaps more likely, Ashburnham merely mentions the illustrious Lady Thynne as a method of downplaying his role in the disastrous decision to move Charles to the Isle of Wight, then her reputation, as evidenced by Waller’s poem and parroted as fact by historians since, seems to have been enough to help save this servant of the king.

Isle of Wight, 23 November 1647-11 December 1648

Soon after Berkeley had brought Charles to the Isle of Wight, he advised his king to escape from it, noting that they had misjudged Hammond’s character. Even though the governor treated them as guests, it was clear that he was not to be converted to the Royalist cause, and instead stayed true to parliament. Luckily, a quick retreat seemed possible because Queen Henrietta Maria had managed to send a ship to the island.⁸⁰

Charles stalled, however, hoping to conclude his treaty—the Engagement— with the Presbyterian Scots. Three of his she-intelligencers were caught up in the negotiations, Lady Carlisle, Lady d’Aubigny, and Jane Whorwood (see Figures 1.4a and 1.4b). Leading men of the Engagers, such as William Murray, Elizabeth Murray’s father, frequented Lady Carlisle’s apartments in London.⁸¹ Lady d’Aubigny passed ciphered letters to Charles, letters that, according to Hyde’s The History of the Rebellion, were concerned primarily with the Engagement:

Figure 1.4a. Manuscript, cipher key, with Lady d’Aubigny scribbled in as an afterthought. BL, Egerton MS 1788, fo. 52v. © The British Library Board

Figure 1.4b. Manuscript, cipher key used by Charles I during his imprisonment in Carisbrooke Castle, in which five she-intelligencers figure prominently. Hand: Henry Firebrace. BL, Egerton MS 1788, fo. 54r. © The British Library Board

 

she [Lady d’Aubigny] had not been a stranger to the most secret transactions with the Scots, and had much conversation with the lord Lanricke [William Hamilton, Earl of Lanark, the Duke of Hamilton’s brother] during the time the King was at Hampton Court, and whilst he stayed afterwards in London when the King 82

was imprisoned in the Isle of Wight.

Lady d’Aubigny was not the only one in touch with Lanark, one of the prime leaders of the Engagement. Jane also corresponded with him, perhaps making use of their familial ties: he had married her stepsister Elizabeth Maxwell in 1638. Charles was anything but decisive, however, possibly because he was overwhelmed with information. Certainly, he was at one point so exasperated by the flurry of ciphered letters he received from Lady d’Aubigny that he put them aside for a more leisurely hour. As he wrote, ‘ther is so much in Cypher from K: [Lady d’Aubigny] that I doe not thinke fitt to stay this Packet upon the decyphering of them; because it will cost more then a dayes worke’.⁸³ Loathe to leave the island until the treaty was signed, he fell prey to Lady d’Aubigny’s caution. Deciphering the negotiations took so long that he was unable to sign the Engagement until the end of December, but by then the wind had turned, rendering the queen’s ship useless.⁸⁴

Two weeks later, on 8 January 1648, a certain John Burley tried to stir the people of the island to storm the castle to free the king; he was stopped by the mayor and executed for high treason.⁸⁵ Hammond had also got wind of both the king’s intentions to escape and his negotiations with the Scots. The castle gates closed, and Charles’s three attendants, Ashburnham, Legge, and Berkeley, were dismissed. As legend would have it, they managed to smuggle the signed Engagement out of Carisbrooke: ‘they had taken the precaution to induce his majesty to provide for the safe-keeping of so important and dangerous a document, by allowing them to encase it in lead, and afterwards temporarily deposit it in a garden belonging to Sir Charles Berkley’.⁸⁶

The king’s actions were not without consequences. One such was that Parliament, set on preventing further negotiations comparable to the Scottish ones, on 13 January 1648 decreed ‘The Vote of No Addresses’: ‘That it shall be treason for any person whatsoever to deliver any message to the king, or to receive any letter or message from him, without leave from both Houses of Parliament’.⁸⁷ Cromwell informed Hammond of the decision taken.⁸⁸ Another was that the Derby House Committee and the House of Commons decided to keep the king under close and continuous surveillance, selecting four men:

whose office it was, by turnes, to wayt at the King’s two Dores of his Bedchamber by Day, when his Ma:^tie was there; and to lodge there by Night, their Beds being layd close to the Dores; so that they could not open 89

untill the Beds were removed.

These four were Thomas Herbert, Anthony Mildmay, Robert Preston, and

Captain Silius Titus. While his own servants Ashburnham, Legge, and Berkeley had been dismissed, Cromwell and Hammond allowed Charles a further thirty new royal servants whose appointments they personally authorized.⁹⁰

Increased surveillance and the fact that it was now high treason to communicate with the king did not stop him from writing and receiving ciphered correspondence, as well as whole packets of pamphlets, in his prison cell. From the outset he set up a weekly correspondence with his wife Queen Henrietta Maria in France, passing on letters to Abraham Dowcett, the clerk of the kitchen.⁹¹ That the Italian Dowcett was willing to commit treason for his king was perhaps not surprising, as he had been the Earl of Holland’s servant.⁹² Intriguingly though, it was not Dowcett but rather Dowcett’s wife who was to deliver or convey the letters further. The king himself showed a preference for using women as couriers for secret messages, writing to Abraham: ‘I desyre to knowe when you cane send a Letter of myne to London: But especially when Your wife goes’.⁹³ By July 1648, communication to London had become so regularized that Charles casually referred to it as his ‘London dispache’, for which he either employed another woman or possibly still Dowcett’s wife, who could ‘neither write nor reade’ and who thus was a very reliable instrument for the transportation of secret, written messages.⁹⁴ Dowcett’s wife also forwarded the letters to the exiled court in France: as Charles wrote to his kitchen clerk, ‘deliver the biger of thease two unto your wife, [it] is for france, I neede say no more you know to who’.⁹⁵

On 29 January 1648, Charles asked Abraham ‘who was She that brought me the first Letter at Hornby [sic for Holmby]’.⁹⁶ This question shows us that if neither Lady Mary Cave nor Jane Whorwood had managed to pass secret letters to the king while he was incarcerated at Holdenby House, as Oudart and the pamphlets reporting Lady Cave’s arrest suggested, another woman certainly had, and, perhaps more importantly, that the king never missed an opportunity to be introduced to a skilful she-intelligencer. The next letter the king wrote tells an interesting story, as while it lacks an addressee, it appears to have been written to a woman, possibly the enigmatic letter-bearer who penetrated the security of Holdenby House: a woman who initiated a correspondence with him while at Carisbrooke. While the letter was printed in the early twentieth century, the editor silently left out the somewhat coy phrase here given in bold:

I know not your hand, but I find by your sence that You are one of my good friends: & that you judge rightly of these people in whose power I now am: who yet have made no adresses to me: but be confident that now I know them too well to be any more deceaved by them: However I hartely thanke you for your Adverticement desiring to know who you are, for seriously I cannot guese: onley I beleive that you & I are not made alike below the guirdle: & I hope you neither will mistrust my discretion nor secresie: wherefore I expect that you will not let me be long ignorant to whom I owe the thankes of this tymely warning, & good advyce; besides I would by this safe way aske you some Questions, If I knew by which of my friends thee were trusted. M:

97

I have burnt your Letter.

Being cut off from conversations with aristocrats and nobles (all the men in the castle were commoners), the king created a level of intimacy with some ladies, persons of higher standing, through flirtation. One wonders how this she- intelligencer who had given the king ‘tymely warning’ and ‘good advyce’ had given away that she was a woman.

While the king attempted to win over a she-intelligencer, his erstwhile servants Ashburnham, Legge, and Berkeley, lingered at Netley Abbey, the seat of the Marquess of Hertford in the village of Netley near Southampton, Hampshire, from where they arranged a secret underground postal network with the assistance of Major Humphrey Bosvile, but also using some newly installed female servants at Carisbrooke, lady laundress Elizabeth Wheeler and Mary, as go-betweens.⁹⁸ (Mary’s surname was possibly Lee, but she was in any case an assistant to Elizabeth.)⁹⁹

The Derby House Committee, fully aware of the network, allowed it to continue, as it provided them with a convenient centralized source for intelligence gathering. It must have been particularly irritating for the committee to watch the Royalists scupper their own organization. Major Bosvile was to smuggle a packet of letters into the castle. He was fully aware of the danger of this action as, like Lady Mary Cave, he had been arrested for his attempt to deliver a letter to the king at Holdenby House in May 1647.¹⁰⁰ This time his packet was addressed under a cover to Mildmay, and he was to drop it off by pretending a visit to Mary at Carisbrooke. Bosvile, however, presumably frightened by the prospect of risking his life rather than a prison sentence on this occasion, resorted rather too liberally to Dutch courage at Newport, and accordingly forgot these layers of protection. Having also forgotten Mary’s surname, he headed straight for the king’s quarters, even though they were strictly off limits. Having thereby advertised himself as a suspicious character, he was searched and his packet found. While Mildmay and Mary were ‘committed to safe-keeping’, Bosvile ‘quietly effected his escape’ to France.¹⁰¹ The Derby House Committee had no choice but to dismiss Mary and her mistress Elizabeth Wheeler.¹⁰² What happened to Mildmay is unclear.

An alternative way of communicating secretly was quickly found. Henry Firebrace, who had also been among the new appointments of thirty royal servants, could speak with the king through a ‘slit, or chink through the wall, behind the Hanging’, which, Firebrace writes, ‘served as well as the opening of the Dore, and was more safe: for, upon the least noyse, by letting fall the Hanging, all was well’.¹⁰³

The First True Escape Attempt

Jane Whorwood kept her stepsister’s husband Lanark informed. In her first surviving letter addressed to him, she signed as Agent ‘409’:

Your expressions highly endeare and might if possible make mee ^Amore^A yours:[…]The Generali [Cromwell] dines this day at the Tower; where I belieue some results wilbe about the Citty; what you shall know know by my next. the busines we whisper,d about I am in hope may succeed. I sent a Messenger thereabout and with probable instructions for the accomplishment: […] I conceiue it well takes as to the proiect and desire the continued coniunction of your prayers as to the successe, hauing soe little of consequence at present to write I shall referr my enlargement in it to the next opportunity: against when I shall doubtless ^Abe^A bee furnished with abundance (and if expectations with eminent wishes faile not) of pleasing newes.

In a postscript she emphasized familial connections: ‘my Messenger brought this inclosed: and assurances things go well in the whispered business, but not a word thereof for your loue[’s] sake. I had another which I deliuered to your wife concerning my father’.¹⁰⁴

It was around this time that the Derby House Committee discovered Charles’s use of laundry ladies to smuggle letters in and out the castle, a discovery that meant that the king’s first true escape plan from Carisbrooke Castle, presumably Jane’s ‘whispered business’, was communicated loudly to his enemies. As they wrote to Hammond on 4 February 1648, ‘And whereas you say, you do believe the King hath intelligence; but know not where to lay it; in our last we gave you particular notice, that it was by the woman, that [sic] brings him his clean linen, which we again recommend to your care’.¹⁰⁵ Jane’s letter to Lanark cited earlier was dated 11 February 1648. Less than a week later, on 17 February 1648, Hammond was informed through a ciphered letter by Henry Grey, 10th Earl of Kent, representative of the Derby House Committee, that Mr Napier, the king’s groom of the Privy Chamber and his barber,¹⁰⁶ and David Murray, the king’s tailor, were planning to help the king escape as follows: ‘The King is to be drawn up out of his bed chamber into the room over it, the ceiling whereof is to be broke for that purpose; and then conveyed from one room to another, till he be past all the rooms, where any guard are at any doors or windows’.¹⁰⁷ On 23 March, Northumberland, Lady Carlisle’s brother, informed

Hammond in cipher that two others of the king’s servants in Carisbrooke were working on this plot to convey the king to France.¹⁰⁸ On 30 March 1648, the king was to climb through the window and subsequently Firebrace was to fling him over the wall. The plan was executed as predicted, but Charles got stuck halfway, ‘sticking fast between his Breast and shoulders’ and pushed himself back into his chamber (‘before he endeavoured to come out, he mistrusted, and tyed a peice [sic] of his cord to a Barr of the window within: By meanes whereof he forced himself back’.)¹⁰⁹ Firebrace warned those waiting on the other side of the wall to convey the king away by ship—Sir Edward Worsley, Richard Osborn, and John Newland of Newport—that the plan had gone up in smoke. They scuttled away.¹¹⁰

The Second Escape Plan

The king had almost escaped on 30 March: he now simply needed some way of enlarging the window. Jane consulted astrologer Lilly once more, and this time he gave her practical assistance. As Lilly writes, ‘The Lady Whorewood came to me, acquaints me herewith, I got G. Farmer (who was a most ingenious Lock­smith, and dwelt in Bow-Lane) to make a Saw to cut the Iron Bars in sunder, I mean to saw them, and Aqua Fortis [nitric acid] besides’.¹¹¹ The Derby House Committee learned of this new plan and purposed to thwart it. Hammond was to intercept the man who travelled from London to Portsmouth, where it was thought he planned to hand over the hacksaw to fishermen going to Newport, and who, in turn, were awaited by either Dowcett or James Harrington. The man was also reported to be carrying letters to the king, and the Derby House Committee were especially interested in intercepting those.¹¹² Still hacker and letters reached the castle, and on 1 May, the committee wrote to Hammond that ‘The Aqua Fortis was spilt by the way by accident; but yesterday, about 4 o’clock, a fat plain man carried to the King a hacker, which is an instrument made here [in London], on purpose to make the King’s two knives, which he hath by him, cut as saws’.¹¹³ The Royalist plot went ahead.

On 14 May 1648, the Derby House Committee again wrote to Hammond:

for Sunday a ship is fallen down from hence to Queenborough, where-abouts she rides, to waft him [that is, Charles I] into Holland. Mrs. Whorwood is aboard the ship, a tall, well-fashioned and well-languaged 114 gentlewoman, with a round visage, and pockholes in her face. She stays to wait upon the King.

It appears that Jane’s fear of the pox was well-founded. Charles’s ciphered letter of 24 May 1648 to Titus makes it clear that Jane was not only on board waiting for her king, but that she had also assisted Titus in arranging the ship: ‘thanke A187.A [her] because I fynde that 63.14.91.90. [shee] 194. [hath] 437. [assist] 143. [ed] 420. [you] 212. [in] 571. [prouide] 216. [ing] 360. [the] 356. [ship]’.¹¹⁵

On 8 June 1648, Hammond informed the Speaker of the House of Lords that the king’s escape plans were so far advanced that the window bar had been cut by means of aqua fortis (apparently, not all the nitric acid had been spilled or they had successfully managed to smuggle in a second batch); only Dowcett and an anonymous soldier were imprisoned for the offence and carried to London.¹¹⁶

Charles would never board Jane’s ship.

How did the Derby House Committee know of the plans? In May 1648, the king wrote to Firebrace in relation to Lady Carlisle: ‘In points of secresie, giue no Trust to E: [Lady Carlisle],’¹¹⁷ perhaps because of her divided loyalty—her brother Northumberland sat on the committee. Charles’s statement was scribbled in a tinier hand, as an afterthought. Subsequent letters make clear that he still wished to hear from her, however. Around this time he also wrote a more nuanced statement to Titus: ‘As for 714. [Dr Fraizer] 715. [Jane Whorwood] I beliue you are not mistaken; for I am confident she will not deceaue your trust: I thinke 457. [Lady Carlisle] wishes now well to me but I beliue she loues 546. [Scotland?], 493. [-] aboue all things’.¹¹⁸ He believed she would not betray him, but was still advocating a Presbyterian settlement. In Firebrace’s copy of the cipher key that Charles used with his correspondents, three code names are marked with an asterisk as ‘Prou’d faulty’, Lady Carlisle’s among them (the other two being those of Lowe, a merchant in London, and Titus).¹¹⁹ This has been taken as sufficient proof of Lady Carlisle’s guilt.¹²⁰ However, it is uncertain when Firebrace made his copy, branding the alleged betrayers. He, like Charles, might have changed his mind about Lady Carlisle. There is no proof whether she deserved the king’s trust either way.

However, Lady Carlisle’s correspondence with Lanark and Lauderdale in July 1648 was deciphered by John Wallis, the cryptographer for parliament, though it is uncertain how and when the letters were delivered to him. There are two options: either parliament intercepted them or Lady Carlisle handed them over. The letters were enclosed in one package and comprised two from Lauderdale and one from Lanark to Lady Carlisle, as well as a cipher key employed in the letters that they wanted her to deliver to the Earl of Holland. Lady Carlisle is given her own cipher in the key, indicating that, if not a part of, she was expected to crop up in the secret discourse the men would hold (see Plate 3). The news of Holland’s imprisonment had reached them, and the letters discuss how their task has doubled: not only were they to free the king, but the earl as well.¹²¹ Wallis made copies of the letters, as well as the key, suggesting that the originals passed to the recipients who were thereby kept in the dark that their letters’ contents had been read.

On 7 July 1648, the Marquess of Hertford, who oversaw the underground postal service from his seat Netley Abbey, wrote from London to Lanark, Jane’s brother-in-law, in Edinburgh: ‘Had the rest done their partes as carefully as Wharwood [sic], [the] King had bein at larg[e]’.¹²² Hertford’s favourable opinions of Jane notwithstanding, her naiveté might have caused the king’s downfall. In contrast to Lady Carlisle, Jane has always been described as loyal to the king, most notably by the contemporary historian Anthony à Wood, who ‘remembered her well, as having often seen her in Oxon’. He immortalized the ‘red-haired’ Jane as ‘the most Loyal person to King Charles I in his Miseries, as any Woman in England’.¹²³ To back up his statement, he does not rely on personal memories of Jane, however, but renders Lilly’s autobiography almost verbatim. This is ironic because it is Lilly’s account that suggests that, despite her loyalty, Jane might accidentally have betrayed the king.

From the very moment of Charles’s incarceration in Holdenby House, the astrologer Lilly had become Jane’s regular consultant. She trusted the soothsayer wholeheartedly and consulted him at three key moments, visiting his house in the Strand just prior to the king’s escape from Hampton Court, shortly before his second escape attempt from Carisbrooke Castle, and again around the time she was planning his escape from Newport. It was a lucrative business for Lilly in more ways than one. Not only did he receive payment in gold from Whorwood herself, as his autobiography reveals, but he subsequently sold her secrets to parliament, a transaction on which he is rather less vocal.

Lilly had been acquainted with parliamentarian espionage ever since Charles’s court had moved to Oxford. The clairvoyant informs the reader of his autobiography how parliamentarian spies smuggled information out of Oxford, and, more importantly, that he knew every single one of these shape-shifters personally:

There were several Well-wishers unto the Parliament in Oxford, where each left his Letter, putting it in at the Hole of a Glass-window, as he made Water in the Street [that is, when he took a piss]: What was put in at the Window in any of those Houses, was the same Day conveyed two Miles off by some in the Habit of Town-Gardners, to the Side of a Ditch, where one or more were ever ready to give the Intelligence to the next Parliament Garrison: I was then familiar with all the Spies that constantly went in and out to Oxford.¹²⁴

Though Lilly held what appear to be genuine friendships with Royalists such as Ashmole, he was a parliamentarian at heart. The astrologer’s autobiography might come across as Royalist at times, but it is important to keep in mind that it was written after the Restoration, when parliamentarian sympathies were dangerous. The fact is that Lilly was hired as an intelligencer by parliament around the time of Jane’s visits, receiving £50 up front and double that amount annually.¹²⁵ There is a distinct possibility that he shared the escape plans with the Derby House Committee, a suggestion corroborated by the fact that they knew about the aqua fortis that Lilly provided almost as soon as he had done so. Jane was waiting for Charles’s arrival on board her ship, not realizing that she had been betrayed, most probably by her own words.

Another possible candidate for betraying the king is Osborn. Like Jane, he was always involved in arranging ships to effect an escape, but ‘Osborn […] was ostensibly recommended to Colonel Hammond by Lord [Philip] Wharton, to be placed in some near attendance about the king as a spy’.¹²⁶

Frolicking with Jane, July-August 1648

In his letter to Titus of 11 July 1648, Charles indirectly expresses his apologies to Jane for his decision not to climb through the window, thus not showing up at the meeting point and letting the escape plan go to waste:

I am glad to heare of the welfaire of Z: [Worsley] & L: [Osborn] for I feared that they had been in some disorder, to whom I pray you commend me hartely; as lykewaise to all the rest of my ffrends; and particularly to 715: [Mrs Whorwood] telling 187: [her] that I hope 24:63:186: [she] knowes, before this, how it was not my fault that I did not waite upon 187: [her] according to my promis; for which, you may 127

asseure 715: [Mrs Whorwood] that I was, & am, verry much greeued.

According to Lilly, the bars of the window had given way, Charles even climbed halfway through but had simply lacked courage to push himself to freedom, a perhaps logical conclusion for the parliamentarian astrologer to record for posterity.¹²⁸ However, Charles might have been thinking on his feet. Why would he try sneaking out of the castle if his captors would be willing to open the castle’s gates voluntarily? The king might already have looked forward to his negotiations with parliament at Newport, which required his captors to willingly remove him from the castle grounds. His alleged willingness to make a treaty, but only in more privileged conditions of freedom, might have been part of another, safer escape plan, as, on 1 June 1648, the king wrote to Titus pressing him to thank Lady Carlisle for helping him to feign readiness to conclude a treaty with parliament.¹²⁹ Pretending willingness to negotiate was a guise necessary for his next escape plan.

In the months in which Charles had to await his transport to Newport, his relationship with Jane developed into a highly flirtatious and, most likely, sexual one, possibly out of mere boredom. Historiography tends to see Charles I as the chaste martyr king, partly fuelled by the devotional cult created by the Eikon Basilike that went through twenty contemporary editions in English alone, not to mention many translations. In 2006, however, Sarah Poynting revealed that one sentence in one of the king’s private letters to Jane dated 3 August 1648 had been incorrectly deciphered by Captain C. W. Firebrace, a descendant of Henry Firebrace and Firebrace’s modern editor. That mistake, or possibly deliberate concealment, masked a different king, not altogether so saintly, whose thoughts were not always bent towards God or his wife Queen Henrietta Maria. A key
ciphered fragment, formerly incorrectly decoded by Captain Firebrace as the grammatically-forced sentence ‘[Jane] you may get answering from me (you must excuse my plaine expressions)’, in correct transliteration reads ‘[yet] I imagen that [there] is one way possible that you may get a swyuing from me (you must excuse my plaine expressions)’¹³⁰ (see Figure 1.5). Captain Firebrace also left out Charles’s ciphered instruction that followed, possibly because he struggled with the indecency of the suggestion: ‘get you alone in to my chamber’.¹³¹ If ‘answering’ reads in truth as ‘swyving’, as Poynting’s article persuasively demonstrates by breaking down the alphabetical substitution system step by step, then there is no beating around the bush: Jane ‘is to be smuggled into the “stoole roome” [within Charles’s chamber], and fucked’.¹³²

圧耳e出事工二普J -- 用£》旷伴” t碎普j 2*1声1占1工字四期吸" “i西t/卄1硯# M步 呼f2t给ỈO施FL可J St一 城!喊…1号七!'. '就0N jm 纸》d z ：E^X次昂宀 /出”:。七的 一夕E代卜 一加；5二2£爼工步律出工吃”此3名呷海斗逐I。：尹,3線3?¥ 丁野 小痴2；齧俎募；」储，”此& i£Xx个“,£1#广伊T沟，C

■僻 tM嬴了 —:卡専:^4^. _ _「宀.：： *屮f 気 乌亂。…£照"+婿 @ 举K区；％&/= riỴĩfS^i^ 士/十严 L ?飞 W 尸 1 Jg&tASri骷百■‘力色Í干事产3± ' "”7修鬲 扌缶＜ tiứty 七気土 ,；*3况％外二‘#父

dỉistr扌;J3厂少

.禽海：7底斗手陶5斗

叼二科威/y 1沁力『7：审抬3心 川Fy1G皆w                            『"

3铲*下:两a小“4尹;3 L?E：H击"2a翎 近挈K'旳洋下心樹莊Sir &浮W：磷眨T融；帆出 叼:学.事丐户:疗ail瓚F「3第金扌僚心:,喊/锌郎*："'

如党产一， 3.用**八，

Figure 1.5. Manuscript letter, [Charles] to [Jane], Monday 24 July 1648. BL, Egerton MS 1788, fo. 34r. © The British Library Board

产 Sts；ey，
1vo/7m< 加

•&_#■ +<™ -^T!

While the king had already spoken to her in person, it may well be that on seeing Jane once more, his baser instincts were aroused.¹³³ He may well have had designs on her as early as January 1647. In that month the appointment of Sir Thomas Bendish as Stuart resident ambassador to Constantinople was the subject of controversy.¹³⁴ The Levant Company was irritated that their bribes had failed to ensure the appointment of their candidate, the consul in Aleppo, Edward Bernard;¹³⁵ instead, Jane had managed to secure the appointment for Bendish through the politics of intimacy: in invisible ink, Oudart confessed to Sir Edward Nicholas ‘the [Levant] company, who are now discontent and begin to thinck Mrs. Harwood did avayle more for S^r Thomas her paramour then the friends they imployd for Bernard’.¹³⁶ Apart from Oudart’s letter, there seems to be no evidence that Bendish was having or had had an extramarital affair with Jane. It is conceivable, however, considering his possible own romantic interest in Jane, that Charles would have been ready to follow the example of King David and send Jane’s alleged ‘paramour’ to Turkey.

It seems Jane ‘excused’ the king’s ‘plaine expressions’, since Charles’s letter to Sir William Hopkins, dated 13 August 1648 ‘at night’, makes it clear that she went ahead and visited him:

hauing this day beene visited by a frend, with whom I had noe tyme to speake unto, I must desyre you to delyuer this inclosed Note unto her; asseuring you that you may freely trust her in any thing that concernes my seruice; for I haue had perfect tryall of her frendship to me: I haue now no more to say but that the speedie deliuery of this to M:^s Whorwood (who is this frend I mention) will be no smale courtoisie to 39: [me].¹³⁷

Lust might have left little time for scheming and plotting. How else to explain the fact that she had visited him in person but that they had had no time for conversation? However, her visit might have been too brief for anything, whether business or pleasure, as Charles complained to Hopkins of Jane’s coyness on 23 August:

Tell N: [Jane] (when you deliuer this inclosed to her) that it is >now< the best Caudle I can send her; but if she would haue a better, she must come to fetch it his herselfe: & yet, to say trueth, her Platonique way, doeth much spoill the taste [of the wine/caudle], in my mynde; & if she would leaue me to me my free 138

Cookery, I should thinke to make her confess so her selfe.

Jane might not have wanted to deny the king sexual favours. Instead, she might just have wanted to tread carefully. After all, Governor Hammond distrusted her intensely; Charles complained to Hopkins about the governor’s ‘inciuility’, ‘doggedness’, and ‘Barbaritie’ towards Jane.¹³⁹ Jane repeated her nocturnal visit on 8 September, which took the king by surprise. As he wrote to Hopkins, ‘when you deliuer, this other to N: [Jane] thanke her for the Visite she stole upon me yesternight; for seriously I scarce beliued my owen eyes when I saw her’.¹⁴⁰ Also, instead of being let into ‘the stoolroome’, as the king had initially suggested, she might have thought of a safer way to secretly visit her royal lover. This becomes clear not only from the fact that she had managed to surprise him, but also from the instructions he sent Hopkins the next day: ‘tell N. [Jane] that I shall be willing to see her […] her owen way [emphasis mine]: & so after diner shall expect your key’.¹⁴¹ After Hammond’s discovery in June that the window bars had been melted through with nitric acid, there was nothing further to plot for the king, nothing else to do but to await his removal to the next location. It was the worst summer in forty years, making impossible the only leisure activity that he had always been allowed, bowling on the green.¹⁴² It seems the king whiled away the months of July and August with Jane, his most trusted she- intelligencer. On 17 August 1648, Charles had instructed Hopkins to share their cipher key with her: ‘giue my frend N: [Jane] a Copie of all those Names & figures I haue with you’,¹⁴³ showing that his trust in her was boundless.

Treaty at Newport—Third Escape Attempt

On 7 September 1648, Charles I was free to choose servants again to accompany him to Newport: the list of names includes ‘M:^s Whiler. Laundress: with such Maids as She will choose’.¹⁴⁴ Lady Elizabeth Wheeler, whose attendants the Derby House Committee knew had smuggled letters in linen, was reinstalled. Charles also requested the attendance of the still imprisoned Dowcett, but that request was denied.¹⁴⁵ The Vote of No Addresses was repealed; they ‘released’ Charles and took him to Newport to continue negotiations.

Jane hastened to her astrologer for a consultation. As Lilly writes, ‘About September the Parliament sent their Commissioners with Propositions unto him into the Isle of Wight […] the Lady Whorewood comes again unto me from him or by his Consent, to be directed’. Lilly advised her that the king was to sign the papers.¹⁴⁶ It is uncertain whether Jane initially urged Charles to follow Lilly’s advice. On 23 November 1648, however, she informed the king in cipher using an undercover name that army and parliament would have him murdered, and that he had no choice but to escape. She advised him to do so the Thursday or Friday next and to further abandon foolish plans: do not try to reach the top of the house by means of ladders, but use a normal door instead. She also assured him that the governors of Newport would not stop him. She brushes her own worries aside ‘it being a subiect for the variety of accidents (and especially dangers) that may more become a Romance then Lettre’. Her subscription assures him that she will always be ready to serve him in disguise: ‘I shall be ready in this or any kind of command to show how really I am Your most affectionate Hellen’.¹⁴⁷

After dinner with the Newburghs, Charles awaited his trial and his now inevitable execution. The story of Jane running to her lover when he stepped through a window of the Banqueting House onto the scaffold cannot be substantiated.¹⁴⁸ Even if it was more than a romantic fiction, it plainly could not have been more than a futile gesture of loyalty. One of the last letters the king wrote to Hopkins read ‘comend my seruice to all my feminin frends’.¹⁴⁹ His ‘feminin frends’ did not fare much better.

Now that the Commonwealth had nothing more to gain from intercepting their correspondence, they moved in on the plotters and all she-intelligencers.

The Newburghs fled to The Hague where Lady d’Aubigny died of stress, if not natural causes, within months. Lady Carlisle, not making such a quick escape as the Newburghs, was ‘committed close prisoner to the Tower upon suspition of Treason’ in March 1649.¹⁵⁰ John Evelyn was the first to report on her incarceration and painted a bleak picture to his father-in-law:

And to the end their impartiality may be notorious, they have confined and examined the Lady Carlisle, upon whom there is now a strong guard. Some are not ashamed to say, that they mean to put her to death; others, that her honourable brother [Northumberland] shall secure them [i.e. ensure] that she shall no more play the stateswoman.¹⁵¹

In May 1649, Nicholas enclosed an anonymous letter in his letter to Ormond that reported that ‘The Countess of Carlisle hath been again shewn the rack; but she desires them not to hurt her, for she is a woman and cannot endure pain, but she will confess whatsoever they will have her’. The letter added that ‘My Lady Isabella Thynne and Mrs. Howard [presumably a sister of Lady d’Aubigny] are escaped from them’.¹⁵² The clustering of female names shows that the parliamentarians perceived the women to have operated as a little group. This is also evident from the follow-up letter Nicholas penned a month later from which it becomes apparent that the women were persecuted as a group: ‘Of the three Ladies who were so severely pursued by the rebels in England, the Lady of Carlisle is said to be now out of the Tower, though under constraint; the Lady Aubigny, being escaped into Holland, is there lately dead; and the Lady Isabella Thynne is come hither [to Caen]’.¹⁵³

In July 1650, Hertford was forced to exchange Netley Abbey for a house in Wiltshire, also instructed not to give refuge to ‘many dangerous and disaffected persons’.¹⁵⁴ In April 1651, Thomas Coke’s confessions indicated that neither the rounding up of Hertford’s underground postal network nor her imprisonment had prevented Lady Carlisle from continuing her intelligencing activities, finding a new female comrade in the person of Lady Peterborough, soon to be mother-in­law of Elizabeth Carey, to convince the Royalists to pursue a Presbyterian alliance with the Scots.¹⁵⁵ As Coke maintained, ‘The ladies lookt upon as active in the presbyterian designe are the Lady Carlisle, the Lady Peterburgh, the former, though in prison, yet kept weekely correspondence by cyphers till the King [that is, Charles II] went into Scotland [at the end of June 1650]’.¹⁵⁶ In January 1650, Henry Neville, author of the defamatory pamphlet Newes from the New Exchange, or The Commonwealth of Ladies, claimed Lady Carlisle had had affairs with Pym and Holland, among others, had engaged in a secret correspondence on behalf of the Royalists with several foreign ambassadors, ‘till she was put in the Tower, where she now pines away for want of fresh-Cod, and knoweth not which way to lead her Nags to water, since the State hath cut off all her pipes of intelligence’.¹⁵⁷ The citation appears to link Lady Carlisle’s ability as a she-intelligencer with sexual impropriety: the ‘fresh cod’ for which she pines is a reference to male genitalia, as, most likely, is the reference to her ‘pipes’ of intelligence. Lady Carlisle acquires her intelligence from her lovers. Coke’s statement about Lady Carlisle continuing a ciphered correspondence with Charles Stuart while in the Tower shows that Neville, blinded by her sexual allure, if not thoroughly underestimated her resourcefulness, grossly exaggerated her helplessness. Lady Carlisle received her full liberty three years after she had been threatened with torture in the Tower. Within a month of her incarceration, she had already been permitted 'to take the xx ayre xx in the Tower [so] that she may also speake withe her friends’, albeit always in the presence of the lieutenant of the Tower or his deputy.¹⁵⁸ The leniency Lady Carlisle and her female friends enjoyed was not, it seems, extended to the male plotters. Isabella Thynne died shortly after she heard of her father the Earl of Holland’s execution.

In June 1651, Coke's confessions also brought to light Jane Whorwood's intelligence activities, as his statement read:

There was one Mrs. Whorwood, the wife of Mr. Broome Whorwood in Oxfordshire, that was wont to bring intelligence to the late King as well to Oxford as to the Isle of Wight. She was sent severall times of [sic] messages, and came in the last Scotch designe, wherein Duke Hamilton miscarried, from Scotland to Carisbrooke Castle privately to the late King &c.¹⁵⁹

Jane was fined £600 and briefly imprisoned. Her estranged husband Brome refused to pay for her maintenance during her incarceration.¹⁶⁰ When she finally returned to Holton he was waiting for her. He beat her almost to death. Women were treated more leniently, also because of the principle of ‘coverture', which meant that the husband was legally responsible for his wife's actions. However, this had certain consequences: ‘Legal liability for their wives' behavior justified husbands' rights to discipline their spouses with physical punishment'.¹⁶¹ Jane took her husband to court for alimony, which was eventually granted to her in 1659. In answer to allegations that Brome ‘and Catherine Allen have many and sundry times frequented the company of each other at suspected times and places and have had the Carnall knowledge of the body of each other', Brome got irritated and answered the judge, ‘Goddamne me I had rather kisse Kate Allens arse then touch thee, or my Wife’.¹⁶² He was still with his mistress Katherine Mary Allen at the time of his death in 1684.¹⁶³

This chapter has shown that ‘A number of women were also caught up in the wartime espionage trade and all too often took graver risks than the men by passing through enemy lines’, as Alan Marshall also suggested. Their ‘hopes that the licentious soldiery would not molest them’ if they were caught were possibly not always ‘vain’.¹⁶⁴ Women searchers, rather than rude male officers, for instance, patted down Lady Cave, with the disclaimer that her archival trail stops after her arrest. Lady d’Aubigny misused the passport she had received to arrange her husband’s funeral to smuggle a document with royal seal in her hair (which she might not have tucked away deeply enough, because it was found). The description of Lady Cave emphasized how Royalist she-intelligencers were not only bold, but beautiful and glamorous. The wife of Dowcett the kitchen clerk was trusted to carry messages from Carisbrooke Castle to London, just as Elizabeth Wheeler’s laundry ladies were trusted to facilitate a correspondence between the king and Firebrace. While the aforementioned women ‘only’ carried ciphered letters, an offence considered treason, others wrote those ciphered letters themselves: an anonymous woman travelling between the Tower and Hampton Court shared the king’s cipher key and was quite capable of using it to decipher letters, much to Sir Lewis Dyve’s disbelief and dismay; Lady Carlisle and Jane Whorwood wrote in cipher to the king frequently. Whorwood transformed herself from a gold smuggler into a she-intelligencer, which sounds adventurous enough, but her dire fate, as well as Lady Carlisle’s house arrest lasting three years, indicates that the trade of a she-intelligencer was sometimes far from glamorous and not without its risks.

She-intelligencers often found themselves in a precarious situation, because, as Rachel Weil explains: ‘female informers straddled the boundary of private and public, or because the trade in knowledge was associated with the trade in sex, informing by women could carry a sexualized stigma’.¹⁶⁵ A lady’s virtue does not seem to have been questioned as a matter of course (even if the literary conventions of salons allowed poets the liberty to discuss them in highly sexualized terms), but when it was, as we have seen, no quarter was given. Women without a title to protect their reputation, however, trod dangerous ground. Though outside the chronological boundaries of this chapter, in 1680, midwife Elizabeth Cellier’s information on the Popish Plot, for instance, was taken as ‘Female Tittle Tattle’, with her opponent Thomas Dangerfield asserting that ‘the King had better means of discovery than by such a Female Intelligencer as Mrs. Elizabeth Cellier’,¹⁶⁶ but not only was her credibility challenged, she was also ‘relentlessly painted as a whore’.¹⁶⁷ And as this chapter has shown, even the reliable Jane Whorwood laid herself open to sexual advances, if admittedly those made by the king. Of course, it is questionable whether she was ever in a position to refuse: she had already crossed the threshold. If the morals of Royalist she-intelligencers were open to attack, then their parliamentarian counterparts found themselves in an even more precarious situation: Royalist ladies acted out of loyalty, parliamentarian middling women sought and needed pecuniary reward. The next chapter will show how this difference affected the ways in which they were treated by their spymasters.

1

Perfect Occurrences of every dayes journall in Parliament 104 (London: Printed for I. Coe and A. Coe, 1648), Thomason Tract 82, E. 526 (45), 22-30 Dec. 1648, the entry of 28 Dec. 1648.

2

Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England begun in the Year 1641, 6 vols, W. D. Macray (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon, 1888; repr. OUP, 1958), iv. 478/Book xi, Section 222.

3       Ann Hughes, ‘Stuart [née Howard], Katherine’, ODNB.

4       Petition of George, seigneur d’Aubigny and Lady Katherine, his wife, to the king, undated, TNA, SP 16/537, fo. 51r (no. 108). Penruddock also wrote independently to Laud, praying pardon for his attendance by which he had incurred the king’s displeasure and for which he stood ‘in question in his Ma.^ts high Court of Commission’, writing that he had neither been present ‘by waie of presumpcion or any manner of contempt, but was altogether ignorant that the [marriage] was vnlicensed, or of the danger and penalty in that case provided’ (undated, TNA, SP 16/408, fo. 300r (no. 157)).

5      NPG 5964.

6           

6       George’s brother Bernard wrote a report on Edgehill: see G. Davies, ‘The Battle of Edgehill’, English Historical Review 36, no. 141 (1921): 30-44 at 38-9.

7       Lady Elizabeth Cust, Some Account of the Stuarts of Aubigny, in France (1422-1672) (London: privately printed at the Chiswick Press, 1891), 106.

8           

[Edmund Ludlow], The Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, 2 vols, C. H. Firth (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon, 1894), i. 67-8.

9

Geoffrey Smith, Royalist Agents, Conspirators and Spies (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 49.

10

[Francis Rous], A Brief Narrative of the late Treacherous and Horrid Designe […] (London: Printed for Edward Husbands, 15 June 1643), Thomason Tract E. 106 (10), p. 4.

¹¹         

Peter Barwick, Life of the Reverend Dr John Barwick, D.D., H. Bedford (ed. and trans.) (London: I. Bettenham, 1724), 61-2. Peter Barwick’s biography appeared posthumously in Latin in 1721; I cite the English translation by Helkiah Bedford.

¹²       Barwick, Life of the Reverend Dr John Barwick, 62-3.

¹³       [Ludlow], Memoirs, i. 68.

¹⁴       CJ, iii, 1643-4, has entries relating to Lady d'Aubigny's imprisonment dating from 13 June 1643 to 12 July 1644. In the last entry there is mention of a possible pardon. There are no records that indicate that she spent her time in the Tower of London.

¹⁵       Hyde, The History of the Rebellion, iv. 477/Book xi, Section 222.

¹⁶       CSP Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Allen B. Hinds (ed.) (London: HMSO, 1925), xxvi. no. 219. Alison Plowden, Women All on Fire (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), assumes that this concerns Lady d’Aubigny (Plowden, p. xiv). However, Lady d’Aubigny was daughter to the Earl of Suffolk, not the Earl of Leicester.

¹⁷       Hyde, The History of the Rebellion, v. 19-20/Book xii, Section 20.

18

I thank Geoffrey Smith for drawing my attention to this pamphlet.

¹⁹       Hyde, The History of the Rebellion, iv. 478/Book xi, Section 223.

²⁰        Hyde, The History of the Rebellion, iv. 478-9/Book xi, Section 223.

21

For a fuller development of this line of thought see the opening of Chapter 2.

22

For the full text of ‘The Engagement between the King and the Scots’ see Samuel Rawson Gardiner (ed.), The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625-1660, 3rd edn (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), 347-53.

²³       See John J. Scally, ‘Hamilton, James,’ ODNB. Austin Woolrych, Britain in Revolution 1625-1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 342, 400.

²⁴        Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, 349.

²⁵        Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, 363.

²⁶        Oudart to Nicholas, 4 Mar. 1646/7, NP, i. 80.

²⁷        John Fox, The King’s Smuggler (Stroud: History Press, 2010), 32-3.

²⁸        Fox, King’s Smuggler, 55.

²⁹        LPL, E5/29 Whorwood con Whorwood, July 1673, no. 1.

30

[John Ashburnham], A Narrative by John Ashburnham of His Attendance on King Charles the First […], To Which is Prefixed, A Vindication of His Character and Conduct from the Misrepresentations of Lord Clarendon, by His Lineal Descendant and Present Representative (London: Payne and Foss, 1830), ii. Appendix I, the accounts of Royalist contributions in cash from Apr. 1642 to Oct. 1643 as recorded by Browne, p. xiv (see also Fox, King’s Smuggler, 76-7).

31

Fox, King’s Smuggler, writes at p. 70: ‘He left Jane, the children and his mother at Holton’, but his two sources are inconclusive. His first source, LPL, E5/29, no. 10, reads as follows: ‘in or about the yeare 1643 the said Broome Whorwood did Willfully and of his owne accord and without any cause given him by the said Jane his Wife for about two yeares forsake the company of and absent himselfe from his said Wife and went beyond the seas’. The document also mentions that on his return Brome went to live in London, but it does not mention any children. His second source, the entry on Brome Whorwood in Basil Duke Henning (ed.), House of Parliament (London: Secker & Warburg, 1983), iii. 714-16, notes that Brome returned to England in Dec. 1645, but sheds no more light on the whereabouts of the children.

32

[George Carew], Several Advertisements concerning the Services and Sufferings of Sir William Courten, and Sir Paul Pyndar, for the Crown of England ([London?]: s.n., 1680?), 1, Wing no. S2748.

³³        Fox, King’s Smuggler, 78, 80.

³⁴       [Thomas Coke], ‘The Several Examinations and Confessions of Thomas Coke Esquire’, the ‘Fifth Paper’, HMC, The Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Portland (London: HMSO, 1891), i. 582.

³⁵         

Fox, King’s Smuggler, 80-1, notes that a soap barrel weighed 127 kg or 280 lbs gross (254 lbs soap plus 26 lbs per barrel). The question is how much extra weight could be added to a barrel without arousing suspicion. An extra 20 lbs per barrel would mean the gold would have had to have been distributed over eighty-five soap barrels, for example: it is unclear what level of soap usage was considered usual.

³⁶       Osborne to Temple, 22 July 1654, letter no. 72, [Dorothy Osborne], Dorothy Osborne, Kenneth Parker (ed.) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 208.

³⁷        Fox, King’s Smuggler, 114.

³⁸       Captain C. W. Firebrace, Honest Harry (London: John Murray, 1932), 132; Fox, King’s Smuggler, 109. Pauline Gregg, King Charles I (London: Dent, 1981), 412, however, suggests that James Maxwell provided Jane with access to Holdenby House, but without giving evidence.

³⁹         

Gregg inaccurately assumes this to have been Jane (Gregg, King Charles I, 412).

⁴⁰       Nadine Akkerman, ‘Enigmatic Cultures of Cryptology’, in James Daybell and Andrew Gordon (eds), Cultures of Correspondence in Early Modern Britain (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 69-84 (notes at 266-71).

⁴¹       See The Perfect Weekely Account 20 (London: s.n., 1647), Thomason Tract 62, E. 388 (9), 12-19 May 1647, the entry of 14 May, and the other pamphlets mentioned in nn. 42, 46, 49, and 50.

⁴²       Roger Corbet, A Letter from his Majetties [sic] court at Holmbie (London: Printed by B. A., 21 May 1647), Thomason Tract E. 388 (16).

⁴³        Corbet, A Letter from his Majetties, A3r.

⁴⁴        Corbet, A Letter from his Majetties, A3r.

⁴⁵        Corbet, A Letter from his Majetties, A3v.

⁴⁶       A perfect diurnall of some passages in Parliament 198 ([London]: Printed for Francis Coles and Laurence Blaikelock, 1647), Thomason Tract 80, E. 515 (12), 10-17 May 1647, the entry of 10 May, p. 1584.

⁴⁷        Corbet, A Letter from his Majetties, A3r.

⁴⁸        Corbet, A Letter from his Majetties, A2r.

⁴⁹       The kingdomes weekly intelligencer 209 (London: s.n., 1647), Thomason Tract 62, E. 388 (6), 11-18 May 1647, the entry of 14 May, p. 527.

⁵⁰ Perfect Occurrences of every dayes journall in Parliament 19 (London: Printed for I. Coe and A. Coe, 1647), Thomason Tract 61, E. 387 (5), 7-14 May 1647, the entry of 14 May, p. 152.

51

Firebrace, Honest Harry, 24.

52

Browne and Cave’s examinations dated 11 May 1647 are entered into LJ, ix, entry date 13 May 1647. The journal also mentions the names of the seven men who were to decipher Ashburnham’s letter.

53

The partially deciphered letter is entered into LJ, ix, entry date 21 May 1647.

54      Firebrace, Honest Harry, 40. Fox, King’s Smuggler, 110, in contrast, claims Lady Cave was released. However, as Fox does not provide a source, it is uncertain how he came across information pertaining to her release.

55      Dyve to Charles I, 12 July 1647, [Sir Lewis Dyve], ‘The Tower of London Letter-Book of Sir Lewis Dyve, 1646-47’, H. G. Tibbutt (ed.), Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 38 (1958): 49-96 at 67 (no. 14).

56       H. G. Tibbutt, Life and Letters of Sir Lewis Dyve, 1599-1669, Series: Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 27 (1948), 87.

57             Dyve to Charles I, 26 June 1647, [Dyve], ‘The Tower of London Letter-Book’, 63 (no. 11).

58     Dyve to Charles I, 6 July 1647, [Dyve], ‘The Tower of London Letter-Book’, 66 (no. 13). Mistress Windam is not identified by Dyve’s editor Tibbutt, but might possibly be Christabel Wyndham, former nurse and alleged lover of the king’s son and namesake.

59             Dyve to Ashburnham, 6 Aug. 1647, [Dyve], ‘The Tower of London Letter-Book’, 75-6 (no. 22).

60     Dyve to Charles I, 10 Aug. 1647, [Dyve], ‘The Tower of London Letter-Book’，76-7 (no. 24); see also Fox, King’s Smuggler, 106.

61     ‘A volume of Figures set by Mr. Lilly from Aprill 1647 to 16 Sept 1648’, Bod., Ashmole MS 420, fo. 31r (entry date 3 June 1647). Fox, King’s Smuggler, 114, suggests that the anonymous lady is Jane, as he believes all anonymous women are bound to be, but there is no evidence for this suggestion.

62             Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, 363-4.

63       

63      For a list of the places of abode see Firebrace, Honest Harry, 43-7.

64      [William Lilly], The Last of the Astrologers, reprinted from the 2nd edn of 1715, with notes and intro. by Katharine M. Briggs (London: Folklore Society, 1974), 57. If Lilly was telling the truth, then Adams’s repeated incarcerations in the Tower in the years 1646-8, once even for being suspected of hiding the king, were not based on false accusations only; see Keith Lindley, ‘Adams, Sir Thomas’, ODNB.

65       

65     [Lilly], Last of the Astrologers, 57. Twenty pieces of gold might not sound so much, but for Lilly it must have been a small fortune: in 1627 his annual income amounted to £20 (see Patrick Curry, ‘Lilly, William’, ODNB).

66       

⁶⁶       George Hillier, A Narrative of the Attempted Escapes of Charles I from Carisbrook Castle […] (London: Richard Bentley, 1852), 6, 17, referring to Edward Whalley’s letter to Lenthall as printed in Francis Peck’s Desiderata Curiosa (London: s.n., 1735), ii. / Section 11, p. 42. In Peck’s edition, Whalley, the colonel commanding Hampton Court, mentions Cromwell writing to the king informing him of an assassination plot. The letter subscribed ‘E. R.’, possibly code for Henry Lilburne, is printed in [William Cobbett], Cobbett’s Parliamentary History of England (London: R. Bagshaw, 1808), iii. 788. See Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, 394.

67

⁶⁷              Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 14.

⁶⁸              [Lilly], Last of the Astrologers, 57.

⁶⁹              [Lilly], Last of the Astrologers, 57.

⁷⁰              Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 2-3.

⁷¹        

Andrew Marvell, ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’, ll. 47-52, in Nigel Smith (ed.), The Poems of Andrew Marvell (London: Pearson Longman, 2003), 275-6.

⁷²              John Berkeley, Memoirs of Sir John Berk[e]ley (1699; 2nd edn, London, J. Darby, 1702), 56-7.

⁷³        

There are two letters of Denham addressed to Isabella in which he discusses the distribution of £15,000 that he had raised in Poland in the early 1650s to assist the king; these letters are printed in Hilton Kelliher, ‘John Denham’, British Library Journal (1986): 1-20 at 9-12. Denham requested Isabella to act as an intermediary between himself and the Ormonds. See also Geoffrey Smith, ‘ “The good Fellow is no where a stranger" '，in Philip Major (ed.), Sir John Denham (1614/15-1669) Reassessed (London: Routledge, 2016), 31-51.

⁷⁴              Akkerman, ‘Enigmatic Cultures of Cryptology’, 79.

⁷⁵      See Nicholas’s undated cipher key, BL, Egerton MS 2550, fos. 49-50, at fo. 49r. Fo. 50v is endorsed: ‘Cypher with D^r [George] Morley & Lady Isabele & Colonel [Roger] Whitley [&] Mr Aiton’.’ ‘Aiton’ can be identified as Kenrick Eyton, who also used the spy name Thomas White: see Gillian Darley, John Evelyn (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 98. The key phrase ‘& Lady Isabele’ is written in darker ink, if added later, perhaps indicating that Nicholas first shared the cipher key with Morley, Whitley, and Eyton, but with Isabella only at a later stage. The group as a whole used the same nomenclature, in which Isabella was no. 148, but individuals had their own cipher alphabet, for which the key consisted of a single word that determined the arrangement of letters. Whitley’s keyword was ‘lo[rd] buckingham’, Eyton’s keyword was ‘westmorlandb’, in which no capitals were used because capitals made up ‘nulls’, letters meaning precisely nothing to confuse unwanted readers. Isabella’s and Morley’s keyword was ‘profligantes’ (Isabella not having her own keyword, but instead sharing one with Morley, also suggests that she was invited into the coterie at a later stage). The keywords consisted of twelve letters, which is exactly half the alphabet (the letters i/j and u/v are interchangeable in seventeenth-century script and therefore both count as one). By writing the letters that are still missing from the alphabet below the keyword, the key is

 

⁷⁶     Darley, John Evelyn, 93, calls Isabella ‘a highly effective agent’ and ‘a key secret agent’ (Fig. 11 in Darley), but gives no further evidence to substantiate such superlatives other than the cipher key.

⁷⁷     Edmund Waller, ‘Of my Lady Isabella, Playing on the Lute’, in G. Thorn Drury (ed.), The Poems of Edmund Waller (London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1893), 90.

⁷⁸               Ruth Scurr, John Aubrey (London: Chatto & Windus, 2015), 51.

⁷⁹     ‘A paper of Colonel Bampfylde’s’, undated, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 32, p. 401. Darley, John Evelyn, 93, without giving sources, writes about Isabella Thynne: ‘While she was parted from her husband, there were rumours of a liaison with the marquess of Ormonde’. According to Kelliher, ‘Carte’s account of her affair with the Marquis of Ormonde, by whom she is said to have had a son, is probably true in essence, though his dating it to about 1629, “just before his marriage”, when Isabella was only six years old, seems to be an absurd attempt to redeem the marquis’s reputation’. Kelliher, ‘John Denham’, 14, refers to Thomas Carte, The Life of James Duke of Ormonde (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1851), iv. 701-2. Carte does not footnote his sources.

⁸⁰     Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 51. Firebrace, Honest Harry, 68­9. She had done the same when Charles was in Newcastle: see Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, 347.

⁸¹    Doreen Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot (Kineton: Roundwood Press, 1975), 29-30.

⁸²               Hyde, The History of the Rebellion, v. 20/Book xii, Section 20.

⁸³       I., aka Charles I, to D., aka Firebrace, Tuesday 22 Aug. 1648, BL, Egerton MS 1788, fo. 45r. Not deciphered in the manuscript.

⁸⁴               Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 54-5.

⁸⁵               T. F. Henderson, reviser Sarah E. Trombley, ‘Burley, John’, ODNB.

⁸⁶               Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 104-5.

⁸⁷               Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 36.

⁸⁸       Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 40. For the ‘Vote of No Addresses’ see Gardiner (ed.), The Constitutional Documents, 356.

⁸⁹       Firebrace to Sir George Lane, secretary to the Duke of Ormond, 21 July 1675, BL, Harley MS 4705, p. 102 (fo. 58v); the passage is paraphrased in Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 85.

⁹⁰               Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 85.

⁹¹       Firebrace to Sir George, 21 July 1675, BL, Harley MS 4705, p. 101 (fo. 58r).

⁹²       Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 86, 181. Firebrace, Honest Harry, 36, however, gives evidence that Dowcett was French.

⁹³               Charles to Dowcett, 13 Jan. 1647/8, Bod., Rawl. MS b 225, p. 1.

⁹⁴       Charles to Sir William Hopkins, 19 July 1648, Royal Library, MS RICN 1080413 (there are no folio, item, or page numbers to this collection).

⁹⁵               Charles to Dowcett, 19 Jan. 1647/8, Bod., Rawl. MS b 225, p. 2.

⁹⁶               Charles to Dowcett, 19 Jan. 1647/8, Bod., Rawl. MS b 225, p. 2.

⁹⁷       M., aka Charles I, to an anonymous woman, 27 Feb. 1647/8, Bod., Rawl. MS b 225, pp. 2-3.

⁹⁸       Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 91. For Bosvile see [Dyve], ‘The Tower of London Letter-Book’, 59 n. 13. It is Firebrace who accords Wheeler the title of Lady: see his cipher key in BL, Egerton MS 1788, fos. 54-5 (see Fig. 1.4b). Interestingly, Hertford had had earlier interactions with she-intelligencers: he got one Joan, wife of Richard Greenliff of Kilpeck exchanged when she was arrested as such in Aug. 1646. Her captor Mr Wingfield, a porter, refused to release her for another four days, however: see Margaret Everett Green (ed.), Calendar, Comittee for Compounding (London: HMSO, 1889), i. 651.

⁹⁹       The she-intelligencer who frequently turns up in the correspondence by the name of Mary, and who was given her own code letter ‘B.’, was by Captain C. W. Firebrace tentatively identified as Mary Lee, after the Restoration laundress assistant to Elizabeth Wheeler (Honest Harry, 209-10). While Firebrace indicated that his identification was speculative, subsequent accounts show no signs of awareness of the uncertainty and always refer to Mary as Mary Lee.

¹⁰⁰       Bosvile was imprisoned in Newgate in May 1647: see The Perfect Weekely Account 20, the entry of 14 May; see also Firebrace, Honest Harry, 37- 8.

¹⁰¹       Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 91-2; Firebrace, Honest Harry, 78.

¹⁰²            Firebrace, Honest Harry, 78.

¹⁰³       Firebrace to Sir George, 21 July 1675, BL, Harley MS 4705, p. 102 (fo. 58v).

¹⁰⁴       Signed ‘409.’ and addressed to ‘103.82.38.410.104.’, 1 Feb. 1647/8, NRS, GD 406/1, no. 2205; see also Fox, King’s Smuggler, 125-6.

¹⁰⁵        H. Kent, in the name of the Derby House Committee, to Hammond, 25 Jan. 1647, letter no. 5 in [Robert Hammond], Letters between Col. Robert Hammond, Governor of the Isle of Wight, and the Committee of Lords and Commons at Derby-House, Thomas Birch (ed.) (London: printed for Robert Horsfield, 1764), 29.

¹⁰⁶            Firebrace, Honest Harry, 31.

¹⁰⁷        Kent to Hammond, 7 Feb. 1647, letter no. 8 in [Hammond], Letters […] Derby-House, 33; see also Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 100-1.

¹⁰⁸        A. Northumberland to Hammond, 13 Mar. 1647, letter no. 11 in [Hammond], Letters [. . . .] Derby-House, 36; see also Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 101.

¹⁰⁹       Firebrace to Sir George, 21 July 1675, BL, Harley MS 4705, p. 103 (fo. 59r).

¹¹⁰       Firebrace to Sir George, 21 July 1675, BL, Harley MS 4705, pp. 102-3 (fos. 58v-59r); see also Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 109-10.

¹¹¹            [Lilly], Last of the Astrologers, 58.

¹¹²        [Committee] to Hammond, 22 Apr. 1648, letter no. 18 in [Hammond], Letters […] Derby-House, 46-8; see also Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 131-2.

¹¹³        [Committee] to Hammond, 21 Apr. 1648, letter no. 17 in [Hammond], Letters […] Derby-House, 45.

¹¹⁴        [Committee] to Hammond, 4 May 1648, letter no. 19 in [Hammond], Letters […] Derby-House, 48-50. Firebrace, Honest Harry, 106, dates this letter

2 May rather than 4 May.

¹¹⁵       BL, Egerton MS 1533, fo. 13r, date in cipher, not deciphered in the manuscript, but written out in pencil by the archivist as 14 May 1648. Apart from the number ‘187’, which is left undeciphered, the rest of the sentence is deciphered by Titus; see also Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 154-5, Firebrace, Honest Harry, 314.

¹¹⁶                 Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 169-70.

¹¹⁷       I., aka Charles I, to D., aka Firebrace, 27 Apr. 1648, BL, Egerton MS 1788, fo. 21r. Not deciphered in the manuscript, though the letter also notes that ‘My La: Carlile’ should thenceforth be known as ‘E:’.

¹¹⁸       BL, Egerton MS 1533, fo. 7r, unaddressed, unsubscribed, and undated; see also Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 147. Firebrace, Honest Harry, 309-10, deciphers the numbers, because these are not deciphered in the manuscript.

¹¹⁹                 BL, Egerton MS 1788, fo. 54r. See Fig. 1.4b.

¹²⁰        According to Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 144, for instance, it was Lady Carlisle, not Lowe, who betrayed the king (Hillier does not offer any supporting evidence for his statement).

¹²¹                 Bod., MS Eng. Misc. e 475, pp. 54, 57.

¹²²       ‘H’, i.e. Hertford, to ‘410’, i.e. Lanark, 27 June 1648, letter no. 147 in Samuel Rawson Gardiner (ed.), The Hamilton Papers (Westminster: Nichols, 1880; Camden Society, New Series 27), 224 (the passage is in cipher); see also Fox, King’s Smuggler, 17.

¹²³       [Anthony à Wood], The Life of Anthony à Wood (Oxford: Clarendon, 1822), 100.

¹²⁴                 [Lilly], Last of the Astrologers, 77.

¹²⁵                 [Lilly], Last of the Astrologers, 61.

¹²⁶                 Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 85.

¹²⁷       I, aka Charles, to W, aka Titus, Saturday 1 July 1648, BL, Egerton MS 1533, fo. 16r, not deciphered in the manuscript; deciphered by Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 240.

¹²⁸        [Lilly], Last of the Astrologers, 58: the king ‘was out with his Body till he came to his Breast; but then his Heart failing, he proceeded no farther when this was discovered; as soon after it was, he was narrowly looked after, and no Opportunity after that could be devised to enlarge him’.

¹²⁹                 Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 158.

¹³⁰       Sarah Poynting, ‘Deciphering the King’, The Seventeenth Century 21, no. 1 (2006): 128-40 at 135-6, deciphering [Charles] to [Jane], Monday 24 July 1648, BL, Egerton MS 1788, fo. 34r (i.e. Fig. 1.5).

¹³¹       Poynting, ‘Deciphering’, 134, 136, referring to [Charles] to [Jane], Wednesday 26 July [1648], BL, Egerton MS 1788, fo. 37r.

¹³²                 Poynting, ‘Deciphering’, 138.

¹³³       See Charles to Hopkins, 23 July 1648, Royal Library, MS RICN 1080413: ‘47: [Jane] tould me so her selfe’.

¹³⁴       Liane Saunders, ‘Bendish, Sir Thomas’, ODNB. Gary M. Bell, A Handlist of British Diplomatic Representatives (London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1990), entry T12.

¹³⁵                 Fox, King’s Smuggler, 107.

¹³⁶                 Rob. Thomson, sen., [aka Oudart], to Nicholas, 18 Feb. 1646/7, NP, i. 78.

¹³⁷       3 Aug. 1648, Royal Library, MS RICN 1080413, not deciphered in the manuscript; the key to ‘39’ is to be found in a postscript of Charles’s letter of 14 July 1648 of the same collection.

¹³⁸       13 Aug. 1648, Royal Library, MS RICN 1080413; see also Poynting, ‘Deciphering’, 137.

¹³⁹                 21 July, 15 and 23 Aug. 1648, Royal Library, MS RICN 1080413.

¹⁴⁰                 29 Aug. 1648, Royal Library, MS RICN 1080413.

¹⁴¹                 30 Aug. 1648, Royal Library, MS RICN 1080413.

¹⁴²                 Firebrace, Honest Harry, 136.

¹⁴³                 7 Aug. 1648, Royal Library, MS RICN 1080413.

¹⁴⁴                 BL, Add. MS 11252, fo. 6r.

¹⁴⁵       Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 250. Charles’s letter dated 28 Aug. 1648, BL, Add. MS 11252, fo. 5, encloses a list of persons, BL, Add. MS 11252, fo. 6, Dowcett among them.

¹⁴⁶                 [Lilly], Last of the Astrologers, 58.

¹⁴⁷       Monday 13 Nov. 1648, Royal Library, MS RICN 1080413; see also Hillier, Narrative of Attempted Escapes, 280-1.

¹⁴⁸       Antonia Fraser derives her claim that ‘Jane Whorwood ran forward to greet the King as he went to his execution’ (Fraser, The Weaker Vessel (New York: Knopf, 1984), 187) from Gregg (King Charles I, 443), who supplies no sources, and from Philip Bliss’s edition of Anthony à Wood’s Athenae Oxonienses (Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (London, 1813), i, p. xxix), but neither Bliss nor Wood mention it.

¹⁴⁹                 15 Aug. 1648, Royal Library, MS RICN 1080413.

¹⁵⁰                 ‘Draft Order Books’, 21 Mar. 1649, TNA, SP 25/1, fo. 28r.

¹⁵¹       Evelyn to Sir Richard Browne, 22 Mar. 1648/9, London, in William Bray (ed.), Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn (London: George Bell, 1875), iii. 37.

¹⁵²       Anonymous letter, 5 May 1649, Rouen, enclosed in Nicholas to Ormond, 3 May 1649, Paris, in Thomas Carte (ed.), A Collection of Original Letters and Papers concerning the Affairs of England […] (London: James Bettenham, 1739), i. 286.

¹⁵³       Nicholas to Ormond, 7 June 1649, Caen, in Carte (ed.), A Collection, i. 290.

¹⁵⁴                 David L. Smith, ‘Seymour, William’, ODNB.

¹⁵⁵                 For she-intelligencer Elizabeth Carey see Chapter 5.

¹⁵⁶       [Thomas Coke], ‘The Several Examinations and Confessions of Thomas Coke Esquire’, the ‘Sixth Paper’, HMC, The Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Portland (London: HMSO, 1891), i. 585.

¹⁵⁷       Henry Neville, Newes from the New Exchange (London: s.n., 1650), Thomason Tract 90, E. 590 (10), p. 3.

¹⁵⁸                 ‘Draft Order Books’, 24 Apr. 1649, TNA, SP 25/2, fo. 20r.

¹⁵⁹       [Coke], ‘The Several Examinations’, specifically ‘B’, a paper given to the council on 28 May 1651, ‘concerning Correspondencies and Intelligences’, i. 603.

¹⁶⁰                 LPL, E5/29, no. 10.

¹⁶¹       Julius R. Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe 1500-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 133.

¹⁶²                 LPL, E5/29, nos. 3 and 17.

¹⁶³                 Fox, King’s Smuggler, 70.

¹⁶⁴                 Marshall, Intelligence, 20.

¹⁶⁵       Rachel Weil, A Plague of Informers (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 179.

¹⁶⁶        Thomas Dangerfield, Tho. Dangerfield’s Answer To a Certain Scandalous Lying Pamphlet Entituled, Malice Defeated, or, The Deliverance of Elizabeth Cellier […] (London: Printed for the author and are to be sold at Randal

Taylor's, 1680), 5-6, Wing no. D183.

¹⁶⁷                 Weil, A Plague of Informers, 179.

2

The Credibility and Archival Silence of She-

Intelligencers

Women on the Council of State’s Payroll

In the years leading up to the execution of Charles I, the hitherto masculine world of the spy was increasingly infiltrated by women, and not merely at the lowest end of operations. Women could find themselves at the head of a spy ring, as Lady d’Aubigny’s insistence on ‘The Lady Carlisle being now the person that hath the Authority’, in a letter to the Duke of York in August 1648 implies.¹ Considering that a spy was unreliable by nature, however, and a woman’s word was still deemed less reliable than that of a man, any collaboration with she-intelligencers tended to be looked upon with the greatest suspicion. These prejudices were used, for example, by parliamentarian news pamphlets that sought to undermine the credibility of their Royalist counterparts by pointing out that these publications did not hesitate to work with she- intelligencers. The parliamentarian publication Mercurius Civicus, for example, questioned the reliability of the Royalist Mercurius Aulicus by stressing that ‘its editor, Sir John Berkenhead, relied on the words of bands of “shee-informers” for the vast majority of his stories’.² Royalist news pamphlets, in their turn, did not shy away from responding in kind, accusing their parliamentarian opposites of not being trustworthy for precisely the same reason. For instance, in the 1640s, a Royalist reporter described his parliamentarian counterpart Samuel Pecke as ‘a bald-headed buzzard . . . with a Hawks nose, a meagre countenance and long runagate legs, constant in nothing but wenching, lying and drinking […] and seldom walks without his she-intelligencer’.³ Nevertheless, as the years passed and women spies proved their value again and again, it became harder to question their reliability and effectiveness, even for parliamentarians. A parliamentarian news pamphlet from 1645 reported not only the suspected presence of ‘a spie or she-Intelligencer for Oxford,’ but noted that ‘there might be many of these Female-Intelligencers found about London, and in the Lines of Communication, who are capable of doing as much mischief in that kind as any man whatsoever’.⁴ Not only was it accepted that female spies were active, but also that they could be as effective as their male counterparts, a fact with which Royalists appeared rather more comfortable than did their parliamentarian enemies. While parliamentarians still exercised extreme caution when it came to employing women, refusing to take things on trust, they, too, were increasingly confronted with the possibility that women could operate as effective spies. It was left to John Thurloe, from 1653 Cromwell’s chief of intelligence, to accept that women were capable of independent political thought and thus deem that should they happen to fall into a trap or voluntarily seek contact, they ought not simply to be set loose or rebuffed but instead be handled with caution.

The difference in attitude shown by Royalists and parliamentarians in relation to she-intelligencers is perhaps explicable in terms of power structures: class appears to be a major factor. Royalist she-intelligencers were for the most part ladies, and thus stood on a relatively equal social footing to their spymaster, Sir Edward Nicholas, if not with the king. Even if their word was not accorded the same authority as that of a man, their loyalty to the crown was less prone to being questioned because their acts of espionage were largely acts of conscience, with no direct financial incentives. By way of contrast, parliamentarian she- intelligencers were often of lower status, and actively sought pecuniary reward. They had to strive harder to earn respect from a spymaster, who also had to ensure that their perceived unreliability did not reflect on him, as the interaction between the women in this chapter and the Council of State, the body that supervised the gathering and weighing of intelligence, and Thurloe in particular, will also demonstrate.

The Council of State most commonly referred to its spies and informers as ‘intelligencers’ in its administration: for instance, in February 1652, it was noted that a Colonel Reyly received £50 for his services ‘as an Intelligencer into ffrance’, and in August that year, that a Major Richard Faulkoner received £20 for ‘Intelligence’.⁵ The council would on occasion pay a woman for military espionage, and labelled her an ‘intelligencer’, too: on 28 May 1652, for instance, they paid a woman, whose identity they shrouded in anonymity (in draft and fair copy, there is a blank in the manuscript where her name should have been), the extraordinary amount of £100, ‘for the good service done by her in giveing intelligence to the Armies of this Commonwealth at Worcester’.⁶ When made Chief of Intelligence in 1653, Thurloe continued the practice of his predecessors. He not only paid women for titbits of subversive gossip on an ad hoc basis, he also had them on the payroll, but there was one crucial difference, however: he hid their use by the Cromwellian regime, perhaps in order to protect both his own and Cromwell’s reputation. Where his immediate predecessors on the Council of State had kept some women on the books as ‘intelligencers’, if not spies, Thurloe, who was in everything more wary and subtle than his colleagues, seems to have ensured that the true reason for payment was only recorded in the council’s draft books and not copied in their fair, public order books. In the public order books, he coded their profession, transforming them from intelligencers into nurses, a practice in which he was perhaps ahead of his time: later in the period, in the 1680s, female dissenters were called ‘nurses’ or ‘nursing mothers’ by those they assisted.⁷

While, in common with his colleagues, Thurloe appeared increasingly open to the possibility that women could truly operate as effective intelligencers, admitting either to Cromwell or the outside world that the council was placing its trust in such women seems to have been another matter entirely. First, he appears to have concealed the intelligence contributions of the two women— Susan Bowen and Elizabeth Alkin—the council had attracted before his time, from the moment he succeeded Gualter Frost as secretary of the Council of State, possibly to protect the reputation of the council. After all, while perhaps effective, she-intelligencers were apparently seen as immoral creatures not merely because of their trade, which they shared with their male counterparts, but because of the sexual depravity that was assumed to accompany such behaviour. Secondly, Thurloe took suspicion as his default position, as the trouble taken in assessing the fitness of two further women—Diana Stewart (better known as Diana Gennings) and Apolin Hunt—to act as informers or spies bears out.

Susan Bowen and Elizabeth Alkin: Nursing Intelligencers

Royalist she-intelligencers typically had a more personal relationship with their spymasters than parliamentarian ones, one based on long-established, pre-war familial and courtly connections. Before the outbreak of the Civil Wars, the ‘politics of intimacy’ had granted these Royalist ladies undeniable, privileged access to royal quarters, where they had often acted as gatekeepers in determining which petition and familial letters reached the queen, if not the king. Their intelligencing was to some extent a mere continuation of these connective activities in courtly circles, albeit now no longer publicly displayed but covertly executed. Payment occurred in the form of promises of courtly favour and annual pensions, similar to those received by retired ambassadors or other government officials following the Restoration. The Countess of Dysart, for instance, received £800 per annum out of the Exchequer for life in 1662, most likely for her espionage activities in the 1650s, as we will see in Chapter 4. Thus, Royalist ladies did not receive a salary on the job, unlike parliamentarian women. Indeed, payments to Royalist women for espionage do not exist pre­Restoration, and even post-Restoration payments for what Marshall calls ‘secret services’, generally denote expenditures to Charles II’s mistresses for sexual services, though these expenses were ‘lumped in’ with payments to male informers.⁸ That the term ‘secret service’ also functioned as a euphemism for sexual favours in the Royalist camp betrays the fact that even for the Royalists the trade in knowledge was not only routinely associated with prostitution but was sometimes even interchangeable with it. It makes the payment of £20 to ‘[a] woman employed in secret service’ by the king’s go-between John Browne in the 1640s, as mentioned by John Fox in his study of Jane Whorwood, of questionable status.⁹ In contrast, whether male or female, Roundhead spies were paid, albeit poorly and often irregularly; it was feared that large sums of money would only encourage spies to exaggerate and fabricate truths, so irregular payments ranging from £10 to £70 were thought the best policy to keep them honest. Poverty was to be a prime motivation.¹⁰ Because the relationship between spy and the Council of State was professional rather than familial, it was directly hierarchical: spies were inferior to their master. Royalist ladies did not have to strive too hard to prove their credibility to Nicholas, with whom they stood on equal footing. Parliamentarian women, often of lower social status as well as petitioning for employment, had to convince the Council of State to trust them. And if women were thought by nature non-credible, then the implication is that women spies had to accomplish the impossible and show they were the exception to their sex. This became all the more difficult because spies were by their very nature professional dissimulators and were thus always untrustworthy in one sense. The story of Susan Bowen’s and Elizabeth Alkin’s continual, even relentless petitioning to the Council of State over their lack of suitable remuneration for information they had supplied illustrates not only the women’s self-confident assertion of intelligencing, but also the Council of State’s reluctance not merely to accept a woman’s word, but more importantly its reluctance to be perceived to accept a woman’s word. Moreover, their stories exemplify the initial openness of the Council of State to admitting its use of she- intelligencers, and how this changed under Thurloe.

Susan Bowen first appeared on the books in 1650. On 10 August that year, the council’s proceedings noted the following: ‘That the sum of tenn pounds bee paid unto Seusan [sic] Bowen for her giveing intelligence to the State’.¹¹ In November, the council decided to repeat its gesture: ‘That tenn pounds bee payd to Susan Bowen for serverall [sic] good services done to this Commonwelthe’.¹² Again, in January 1652, she received the same amount ‘in consideration of her giveing Intelligence’.¹³ The latter payment followed a petition of Bowen’s, which has not been traced, that the council had referred to the Committee of Examinations: it had suggested that if the committee found ‘shee hath merited in the services shee speakes off, to give Order to Mr ffrost to pay her a certaine summe not exceeding 10 pounds’.¹⁴ That she received payment, and the full sum at that, suggests the committee deemed her intelligencing valuable. The accounts are explicit, free of euphemism: there is no question that Bowen received remuneration for giving intelligence. These three payments were made to Bowen by Gualter Frost, but when Thurloe replaced him on the Council of State the way of recording and dealing with Bowen changed. It was in April 1654 that Colonel Mackworth presented a petition in Bowen’s name to the council. He handed over testimonies from Major General Skippon and several others by which it appeared that she had ‘done good seruice to the Commonwealth by makeing Discoveryes &c.’. Since Bowen was now ‘necessitous’, which is not further clarified but possibly suggests that her husband had died or was disabled,

Mackworth requested that the council double her husband’s pension from 3s to 6s a week till further notice. Furthermore, he requested that a certain sum, not exceeding £40 but not under £20, be paid by the treasurer of Ely House, a hospital. The council backed Mackworth’s proposal, signing off on it a week later.¹⁵ A year later, Bowen again appealed to the council, claiming that she had so far only received £20.¹⁶ Even though that was the minimum Mackworth requested for her relief at the time, the council seems to have agreed that she had been short-changed. The council ordered the hospitals to pay her another £10, the same amount it assigned to Elizabeth Alkin, another of its she-intelligencers, that same week for ‘reliefe’:¹⁷

That the Committee for the hospitalls of the Savoy and Eley howse doe issue doe their Warrant to the Treasurer for maymed Souldyers &c. forthwith to pay out of their Treasury to the said Susan Bowen the 18

summe of Tenn pounds for her further releife.

When it appeared the hospitals’ coffers could not meet such a demand, they ordered the sum to be paid from the council’s contingency fund.¹⁹ Mackworth’s appeal makes it apparent that Bowen was paid for espionage, but that petition was stockpiled separately. If one were only to study the official order books of the council, then it will appear as if Bowen was either a nurse, like her fellow she-intelligencer Alkin was at the end of her career, or simply a woman whose spouse was mutilated in the wars. Why else would she be paid by the ‘Committee for Maimed Soldiers’? What is more, because she was paid out of the council’s emergency fund, as was Alkin, the official accounts did not have to mention her either. Thurloe inherited Bowen as she-intelligencer, and he in any case made sure she became invisible as such.

If the contingency funds of Ely House seem to have been used to mask the fact that the Council of State was paying Bowen for intelligence activities, then the case of Elizabeth Alkin, another of Thurloe’s women, makes this possibility all the more likely. In March 1645, long before Thurloe was involved with parliament’s intelligence business, the Committee for the Advancement of Money granted ‘Elizabeth, alias Joan Alkyn’ £2 for ‘severall discoveries’, adding another ‘40s [= £2] more, as she avers by petition that she discovered [Geo.] Mynnes wire’.²⁰ If it were true that she had been the first informer on George Mynne, then the sum of £4 was a miserly compensation, as he had been supplying the Royalists with raw materials on the sly in order that they might manufacture weaponry. In fact, he had not only supplied them with four hundred tonnes of iron at the war’s outbreak, but had stockpiled a further £40,000 worth of iron and wire around the country.²¹ But as her husband, Francis Alkin, had been hanged as a spy in Oxford in the early 1640s,²² the committee could well have concluded that she was in fact selling her late husband’s information: had he been receiving regular payments they may have considered these ‘severall discoveries’ as information already bought. But intelligence needed to be fresh, and it turned out that someone else had already offered ‘Mynnes wire’ to the committee. Nevertheless, Elizabeth continued to petition the committee, evidently feeling insufficiently recompensed for her spying activities, and two years later her perseverance paid off: in September 1647, the same committee decided upon an extra ‘40s [= £2] to be paid to Joan -, she pretending to have made a discovery of Mynne’s delinquency’.²³ In other words, in the end she received £6 for the same nugget of information in three instalments, but only after insistent petitioning. The committee’s records, however, indicate that they felt the need to show that even though they made the payment, presumably following orders from above, they themselves doubted the veracity of Elizabeth’s statements—‘she avers’ and is ‘pretending to have made a discovery’ [emphasis mine].²⁴ They questioned her every word. Naturally, the payments, such as they were, went down in the book as being to ‘Joan’, a name ‘given to any ill-mannered or ill-kempt rustic woman, or scullery-maid, who had to do dirty work’.²⁵ To name someone Joan is to indicate that they are the opposite of a lady, as Shakespeare put it in Love Labour’s Lost: ‘Some men must love my lady, and some Joan’ (III.i.162).²⁶

Still, Elizabeth continued to complain about what she considered to be her inadequate remuneration, with a petition (probably from February 1650), revealing that she had given a certain William Mills the intelligence on ironmaster Mynne, for which Mills had subsequently claimed a reward that she estimated as being ‘to the value of 2. or 300l’, of which he had given her precisely nothing.²⁷ In the five years following her first petition of March 1645, however, she had proven her reliability as an intelligencer, and her abilities struck fear into many a Royalist. In February 1649, for example, the Mercurius Pragmaticus characterized Alkin as ‘an old Bitch’, with ‘as pocky a Nose (for a scent -) as any of her Masters’; ‘Parliament Ione’ was able to ‘smell out a Loyall-hearted man as soon as the best Blood-hound in the Army’.²⁸ In July 1649, A Perfect Diurnall referred to her as ‘Ione (a clamerous woman) […] sometimes imployed in finding out the Presses of scandalous Pamphlets’.²⁹

Amongst her many successes, she revealed the location of four presses run by William Dugard, a printer who placed profit over principle, publishing John Milton’s justification of the regicide, Eikonoclastes, in October 1649, a mere month before Claudius Salmasius’s condemnation, Defensio Regia pro Carolo I was impressed under his supervision. When Alkin exposed his presses, Dugard was about to print an extended edition of Charles’s eloquent statement of martyrdom Eikon Basilike.³⁰ She made a proposal to the committee. She knew that £40 of Mills’s bounty was yet to be paid, and thus appealed to the committee’s sense of justice, writing that ‘shee hath expended all that ever shee was worthe in the world in the pursuance of your service’. Her petition is perhaps most extraordinary in her open embracing of the identity of a spy while listing three of her most powerful employers as if they were referees who could vouch for her character and effectiveness:

The Humble Petition of Elizabeth Alkin, a poore distressed widdow. Sweweth [i.e. showeth], That your petitioner at the beginning of the warres, & for divers yeares since, was imployed as a Spye by the Earle of Essex, S^r William Waller, & the now Lord Generall ffairfax, & hath performed much service for the State, in that kind, to the hazard of her life, had her husband hang’d at Oxford by the late Kings party.

Her petition closes with some emotional blackmail, emphasizing that if the committee were to deny her the remainder of Mills’s due, which by rights ought all have gone to her, then she would be ‘cast into prison for debt, to the vtter ruine of her & her 3. Children’. This created opportunities for the council, as it did not have to officially recognize her as a spy. Instead, its payments could be presented as charity to ‘a poore distressed widdow’ and her three babes.³¹ It is uncertain whether Alkin ever received her £40, but she did move into lodgings in Whitehall in March 1650,³² a few weeks after Dugard’s imprisonment in Newgate on 20 February 1650.

In subsequent years, Alkin became a writer widely known as ‘Parliament Joan’; though she never wore the name as a badge of honour, always employing her true name or the code name Mrs Strof or Stroffe.³³ She printed her intelligence in parliamentarian news books associated with Henry Walker, but also commandeered Royalist news pamphlets such as the Mercurius Anglicus, silently filling them with editorials of a parliamentarian slant. It is not known whether those picking up their favourite Royalist newsletter noticed the change in the editorial team or not. In late February 1653, during the First Anglo-Dutch War and a month before Thurloe officially succeeded Frost as secretary on the Council of State, Alkin sought a change of career, approaching the council with a request that she be appointed as one of the nurses to attend to the maimed seamen at Dover. The ‘Blood-hound’ was to search no more, it seemed:

That your petitioner hath ever since bene faithfull and serviceable to the State upon all occasions in these late Warres in which she day and night hazarded her life and was from time to time a greate help to the distressed impresoned [i.e. imprisoned] and maymed soldiers by releiving them.

That she being still desirous to continue her best indeavours amongst them.

Your Petitioner humbly beseecheth your honors to be pleased to appoint her to be one of the Nurses for the Maymed seamen at Dover.³⁴

The change of careers, from spy to propagandist to nurse, has always been considered innocuous, that of a predator put out to grass. G. E. Manwaring, admittedly writing in 1918 when sexism was rampant, even presented it as if she regarded nursing as her female vocation; she came to the profession ‘with true womanly instinct’, led a life of ‘self-sacrifice’ ‘unsullied by any hope of private gain or recompense’.³⁵ Several of the details surrounding her apparent change of career, however, suggest that things were not as Manwaring supposed. It was none other than Thurloe himself who signed off on the order that the Admiralty Committee were to grant Alkin’s request, and that on the same day.³⁶ It must have been one of Thurloe’s very first decisions on the Council of State. Two days later, the Admiralty concurred that Alkin was to ‘attend the sicke & wounded souldiers & Seamen at Portsmouth & the parts adjacent’.³⁷ Two months later she received £13. 6s. 8d for her work,³⁸ almost the amount she had received for betraying the printing of Edmund Hall’s Manus Testium Movens in 1651.³⁹ Caring for wounded soldiers was apparently just as profitable as acting the intelligencer,⁴⁰ as her letters to Secretary to the Admiralty Commissioners Robert Blackborne also show. In June 1653, she let him know that the extra £5 she had received on top of earlier payment was not stretching far enough: ‘a great deal of moneys I haue given to haue them cleansed, in their bodies, and their haire Cutt, mending their Clothes, reparations, and severall things else’. That what she left deliberately vague—‘severall things else’—is perhaps most enticing. In her letter she writes of travelling between Ipswich and Harwich, ports and hubs of intelligence, spending time in Harwich whenever Commissioner of the Navy, Major Nehemiah Bourne, needed her assistance, though with what she does not say.⁴¹ It might be considered unlikely that a major, soon-to-be admiral, sought a nurse’s counsel, unless, perhaps, she was continuing her intelligencing practices. Indeed, her new profession gave her ample opportunity to do so, as she did not only care for General Monck’s Roundheads, but also for the enemy, the Dutch, setting up medical reception stations with physician Daniel Whistler. The final phase of the First Anglo- Dutch War brought around 1,000 Dutch prisoners to East Anglia in August 1653. Whistler, who had studied medicine in Leiden where he wrote a thesis on rickets, would presumably have been able to interrogate these men in their own language.⁴² Furthermore, the profession of a nurse gave her an excuse to move freely in and between port towns at a moment when strangers would otherwise be seen with suspicion, as will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3 in relation to the intelligencers in Hyde’s circle. Whether she spied on the Dutch remains uncertain, but being well-situated was profitable: in November 1653 Alkin made a trip to London, offering up viable intelligence to the Council of State, allowing it to investigate a murder allegedly committed by parties connected to the Portuguese ambassador.⁴³

Alkin’s mobility, her travelling between ports and London, meeting her superiors in person, might have been a precondition of her functioning as intelligencer. What has hitherto not been noted is that it appears that Alkin could not write, which is not to say that she could not read, as writing and reading were separate skills in the period, especially in a woman’s education.⁴⁴ The secretary who drew up the fair copies of her petitions submitted to the Council of State consistently records how the originals were signed with a mark, a lop-sided ‘E’ (see Figure 2.1). Later letters addressed to Blackborne are in a different hand, and that same hand signs ‘Elizabeth Alkin’. There is no way of knowing, however, whether a secretary did not write those either. Were she incapable of producing her own script, however, it would explain why she travelled up to London with sensitive information instead of trusting a letter to the post; a spy would be best advised to avoid sharing information with anybody in case they simply stole it—as may, indeed, have been the case with Mynne’s wire at the start of Alkin’s career.

Figure 2.1. Manuscript petition, Elizabeth Alkin’s mark. TNA, SP 19/98, no. 80. Reproduced with

permission of The National Archives, Kew

When Alkin was dying she again sought pecuniary reward, emphasizing the service she had done the Commonwealth in her letter to Blackborne: ‘I am a very weake woman haveing manie infirmities vpon mee which have beene procured in my endeavors to serve this Common Wealth’. In the same letter, she confessed that she spent some of her now settled arrears of £10 upon ‘the poore Dutch prisoners’.⁴⁵ Her last letter repeats her request for more money:

my sickenes & manie infirmities being procured by my continuall watchings Night & Day to doe service for this Common Wealth, And haveing imploied others to doe the like have beene in forced to sell my bed & other Goodes to make them sattisfaction [that is, to pay them] & to prevent their Clamor.⁴⁶

Perhaps this is simply a statement of a nurse who indicates that she never left the bedside of her patients, but it seems apt to remember that it was written by a woman who in the past had spied day and night, week in, week out, for Essex, Waller, and Fairfax. It seems more than probable that Elizabeth combined loyalty to the Commonwealth with care for the enemy quite cynically, as her close proximity to them, especially in the delirium of fever, might have allowed her free rein to sniff out information. Tellingly perhaps, her dying request was met with £60.⁴⁷

Diana Stewart

Other women, too, were offering up information to Thurloe, and historians have settled on Diana Gennings as the example that Cromwell employed women spies.⁴⁸ Diana, so the story told by Eva Scott, David Underdown, and latterly Alan Marshall goes, was employed to spy on Royalists in exile, using her sexual availability to infiltrate their close-knit circle before returning to England to be debriefed by Thurloe. She then vanishes without trace.⁴⁹ The sources, however, tell a different story, that of a fraudstress who adapted to her circumstances like a chameleon in order to make a living, relying on female networks to gain credibility, and in the process hoodwinking both the Royalists and Thurloe, while managing to keep her sexual reputation intact. Her identity, too, is not quite as has been assumed, remaining hidden behind the seventeenth-century phonetic spelling of her married name, ‘Gennings’ for Jennens.⁵⁰ The discovery of her true surname allows her steps to be traced outside of Thurloe’s office.

There are two types of sources from which we may recreate Diana’s story, though it is as well to remember that her modus operandi was to lie without hesitation and to be loyal to no one but herself: five letters written to Sir Edward Nicholas, head of Royalist intelligence, and the transcript of her examination by Thurloe’s men. Both were written in 1655. Four of the letters were written by the Royalists in exile whose circle she infiltrated, Robert Phelips and George Goring, 1st Earl of Norwich. Phelips, whom Diana allegedly seduced, was a married colonel who had assisted Charles Stuart’s escape from the battlefield at Worcester, and was negotiating with the Levellers to protect Royalist interests in 1655.⁵¹ Norwich was an unsuccessful, pro-Spanish Royalist general who had fallen out with his former mistress Queen Henrietta Maria. He was close to Nicholas, addressing him affectionately as ‘my Ned’, but the company he kept was seen as dubious by some: in September 1655, a Peter Talbot wrote to Charles Stuart that Norwich could easily undertake a secret journey to Madrid because ‘no great notice would be taken of his journey by spies, he being so much accustomed to them upon his own score and fancy’.⁵² The final letter was that of the Queen of Bohemia, with whom Nicholas always shared the latest gossip and covert plans, written from her court in exile in The Hague. Close reading of these letters, and especially the one written by the Queen of Bohemia, which has never before formed part of the received narrative of Diana’s story, sheds new light on both Diana’s story and the statement she gave to Thurloe.

Diana’s own words were written down by an inquisitor and appear in the eighteenth-century printed collection of Thurloe’s papers.⁵³ In the margin of that printed edition, or rather calendar, is a reference to the original manuscript source, now deposited in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, a source which appears to have been overlooked, as we shall see.⁵⁴ At page 404, the manuscript is endorsed ‘The Examination of the Ladie Diana Gennings’. It is undated but filed among papers of the year 1655. Cross-referencing it with a letter of Henry Manning, one of Thurloe’s spies, strongly indicates that it should be dated late July or early August 1655.⁵⁵

The examination report offers a partial answer to two important questions: who was Diana, and why did she pass on information to Thurloe? Diana Stewart, for she claimed Stewart as her maiden name, tells us that she eloped with Sir William Gennings of Essex, fleeing first to France and subsequently to Flanders, possibly familiar territory since she also claimed that her father was a Hampshire-born man and had served the King of Spain as a soldier in the Spanish Netherlands. The couple wanted to stay away from her friends, as well as his acquaintances, all of whom had objected to their marriage plans because of Sir William’s age, he ‘being very young not aboue nientiene yeare’.

Diana’s age is unknown, but the context implies that she was clearly older than William: she tells us that she was later erroneously assumed to be another man’s widow. After living for eighteen months in Antwerp as a couple, they travelled to Brussels, hoping to catch sight of the exiled king in ‘the Emperatrice’, a tavern. There, one Wednesday night, they mingled with a group of Royalist plotters: Lord Rochester, Colonel Robert Phelips, lately prisoner in the Tower, and his wife Mrs Agneta Phelips (née Gorges), Lord Taaffe, Lord Dillon, and Major General Massey, and one who assumed the spy name ‘Colonel Brookes’, aka Leveller Edward Sexby.⁵⁶ She claims to have infiltrated the group, something the letters to Nicholas corroborate. In fact, it is the only thing that seems certain. She took up lodging with Mrs Phelips, ‘with whom she lived ever since Easter’ (so the women shared a lodging for approximately four months).

Here, both Underdown and Marshall embellish Diana’s story, quite possibly as a result of their relying on the printed edition of her examination or an assumption that trustworthiness in this period comes only from men. The printed version of the examination report states that ‘Mr. Philips was the means, by which this lady came to be trusted’ [emphasis mine]. Unfortunately, the manuscript clearly reads ‘Mrs Philipps was the meanes by which this lady came to be trusted’: the printed version contains a transcription error. Underdown, who cannot but have drawn his conclusions from the printed edition, notes that Diana managed to infiltrate the Royalist circle because of ‘her flirtation with Phelips’, and Marshall, whose conclusions from this one printed sentence are even more fanciful, notes that ‘Diana abandoned her husband to take up with Colonel Robert Phillips in 1655, either as his mistress or possibly because he saw her as a deserving cause’.⁵⁷ Both Underdown and Marshall spin a story based on another’s misreading, and as such place part of her success at infiltrating the Royalist circle down to her sex, even though the only evidence for a relationship between Diana and Mr Phelips is this one sentence. Both critics also seem to forget that the examination was taken from Diana’s own mouth: it seems unlikely that she would have identified herself as an adulteress, thereby jeopardizing her own sexual reputation and undermining her own rhetorical construction of trustworthiness.

Sexual allure was not always the greatest tool at a female spy’s disposal, as a simple introduction by someone from the inner circle would confer credibility without risking a stain on her sexual reputation. It is here that the letters redraw the narrative Diana constructs for Thurloe. The Royalists had been so quick to trust Diana because they had falsely assumed that she was widow to a Sir Thomas Stanley, under whose name she had earlier procured a pass to travel,⁵⁸ and because, as Colonel Phelips’s letters state, Diana came out of England with his wife, Mrs Phelips.⁵⁹ In other words, it was a woman who conferred credibility on Diana. (This also contradicts Diana’s story that she and Sir William had happened to meet the group in a Brussels tavern, after first having travelled to France). Diana’s husband Sir Thomas was to follow soon after, or so she had informed Norwich. Norwich’s and Phelips’s letters to Nicholas relate the story Diana subsequently invented: how Sir Thomas Stanley perished in a duel with a former friend, a Mr Young ‘whoe dyed alsoe at the same time by his wounds neare each other close to Flushing’.⁶⁰ (Conveniently, in Diana’s account, there were no survivors.) Phelips and Norwich believed Mrs Phelips had brought them the goose that laid golden eggs: Diana was now a ‘greate rich widdow’,⁶¹ whose late husband was no other than ‘cosen german only once remoued’⁶² to the late James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby. Stanley had had a vast estate. They ought, perhaps, to have been more suspicious on discovering that the ‘Lady [Diana] [knew] not certainely the name of [her late husband’s] Lancashire seat’.⁶³ Once they heard she was rich, however, they were quick to believe her ‘heart [was] the same’⁶⁴ as her late husband’s who was reportedly ‘highly affectionate to the King, one who had alsoe courage, interest, fortune, and great intentions and resolutions to serue the King’.⁶⁵ She brought Jennens, her real husband, into the group as her cousin.⁶⁶ In short, they wanted to believe that she could and would finance their Royalist plots, and were keen to impress their friend and patron Nicholas, without fully interrogating the evidence. They, like the historians that followed them, were hoodwinked by Diana’s lies, and were apparently so enamoured with her that they added to her story quite blithely. But for all her stories, she did appear to have a real husband, one who it might be suspected was not, as Underdown suggests, abandoned by Diana in favour of Phelips, but simply stayed out of the way until his part became clear.

It seems most likely that William and Diana Gennings were in fact the Jennenses, the surname with which the wife of naval officer Sir William signs herself in post-Restoration documents.⁶⁷ At least, so his age and the combination of their names would suggest. Just as Diana vanishes for a while after her run-in with Thurloe, so next to nothing is known about William’s career before the Restoration. He first rears his head in 1666, when he was knighted for bravery shown during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, but in the years following his career was notable primarily for its disasters, from accusations of cowardice and a sentence of a year and a day in the Marshalsea prison for, amongst other misdemeanours, disobeying orders by keeping his wife on board during a journey to the Mediterranean in 1670-1, to failed business ventures and drunken brawling.⁶⁸ Samuel Pepys considered him ‘a proud, idle fellow’ and the French ambassador in Portugal was told by his superiors that Sir William was ‘a very pernicious man, and capable of any ill designe, and that therefore he ought to have him diligently observed’.⁶⁹ It may well be that William and Diana were two of a kind, but if they are one and the same couple (and I have found no other candidates), it is crucial for the interpretation of Diana’s interrogation report to realize that she lied through her teeth about her husband’s knighthood and thus her own status as a lady: the report is dated 1655, they were not knight and lady until 1666, though William’s father, MP for St Albans, did boast the title.⁷⁰

If Diana’s provenance was uncertain, one thing could not be denied, namely that she had continuous access to secret Royalist intelligence—she had manoeuvred herself into a position that any dealer in information would envy, and this also by hiding that she was married to Jennens. Diana, then, most definitely behaved as a spy. Her examination report continues with her uncovering of the conspiracy she was privy to, having infiltrated it as the widow of the ‘fictitious cousin of the Earl of Derby’.⁷¹ She learned that there was a plan to assassinate Cromwell. A Major ‘Gemmat’, possibly Major Jammot who figures in the letter book of the Mordaunts, either of Liège or living there, and two of Sexby’s men accompanied by one of Phelips’s men, were to be sent back to England, from whose prisons they had only recently escaped, to contact Hall, a Catholic tailor living in Lincoln’s Inn Fields who was also recently freed from the Gatehouse prison. Hall was to put them in touch with another man, whose name is not given, but who was intimately acquainted with Cromwell’s daily movements: ‘what times his my Lord Protector went to Hampton Court’. Only a mole deep inside the court could inform them of Cromwell’s daily activities, because in the 1650s his bodyguards made sure the Protector did not develop a routine, often changing the route he took at weekends to Hampton Court, sometimes travelling by water rather than land.⁷² The assassins had promised to ‘feare noething but assault him’, knowing full well that they had signed up for a suicide pact and were likely to ‘die in that place’. After the assassination, the men’s retreat, if at all possible, was to be arranged by Sir Francis Vincent of Stoke in Surrey and William Muschamp, who were to stir up fifty men in support. Phelips had vouched that Vincent could be relied upon because Mrs Phelips had personally sent ‘tickets’ [i.e. bonds] to those who had meant to fight in the last Royalist rising in Surrey and ‘soe knew them [i.e. Vincent’s men] all’. (Note the ultimate betrayal: Diana assigns a key role to Mrs Phelips, who had so kindly provided her shelter and vouchsafed her trustworthiness.) Other letters were sent to a Mr Conquest of Bedfordshire to stir up the counties, and to make sure one did not rise before the other, and to a Mrs Cambell of Woodford in Essex, who was to furnish Major Gemmat with £500. Mrs Cambell had already replied that ‘she was not a man to engage in the business her selfe and her husband was too much [a] foole’,⁷³ but that she was happy to come up with the required £500 ‘to reuenge her sisters quarrell against my Lord Protector’s family’.⁷⁴ Diana revealed the sister’s name to be Mrs Philly ‘Moone’, and in so doing identified another of Cromwell’s sworn enemies.

Alan Marshall follows Diana from Dunkirk to London, where she took up residence in the Wind-Mill Court in Butcher’s Row, a tavern mere streets removed from the lodging of that Royalist conspirator Mr Hall at the back of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Here he perhaps assigns rather too much agency to Diana, writing that, ‘From here, of course, she contacted the Cromwellian government to reveal all she knew’.⁷⁵ There are, however, too many imponderables for us to safely conclude that she was a spy who voluntarily got in touch with Thurloe’s intelligence bureau. Diana reveals the names of her travelling companions on the boat from Dunkirk to England: Colonel Talbot, Captain Dungan, an Irishman, and a Mr Skinner. Two of these names had been given to Thurloe in Henry Manning’s letter of intelligence of 13 July 1655: ‘One Captaine Talbott, a tall new young man, & an Irish, & Robert Dungan who hath been Ormonds Page […] are sent into England by the way of Douer.’⁷⁶ Manning warned Thurloe that these Royalists were coming on shore. It remains supposition, but had Thurloe acted on this information and ordered his officers to look out for them, as seems most likely, they would have stumbled upon she-spy Diana in the process. Even if they had not searched and questioned the men, Diana would at best have been identified, at worst taken aside and interrogated, rather than taking the initiative of contacting the Cromwellian secret service herself.

There is more telling evidence against Diana’s contacting the Cromwellian regime herself, however, and it is contained within her own examination. Rather than confess that she had sailed to England to deliver information, she claimed innocence and distanced herself from the plotting: ‘She saith she came ouer onely to see her friends’. She ends her statement attesting that she is a Protestant (thus giving Cromwell more reason to trust her statement), in spite of her father having served the Catholic king of Spain. She also gave up the clearing house the Royalists were using for their weekly correspondence: ‘the Lady saith the letters will be directed to one Chase an Appothecary who she thinkes he liues in Couent garden who receiues thire letters and if they be marked it is with a dash at the Toppe’. Stephen Chase was the royal apothecary who had ‘administered Physick to the King’s Children at St. James’s’ in 1643.⁷⁷ He and his son John were also colleagues of apothecary Hinton: in August 1648 ‘Dr Hinton, and Mr Chase the Apothecary, [received] Mr Speaker’s Warrant, with their Servants, to pass unto the Prince, and to return’.⁷⁸ This is important information because the link with Hinton points towards a larger underground postal network: it was Hinton, an apothecary, who provided a clearing house for Hyde’s letters, as we will see in the next chapter. It also shows that Diana was truly in possession of the Royalist circle’s secrets. Finally, Diana asserted that the Royalists trusted her

enough to write to her: ‘She saith she can procure these letters to be sent to her or any other they confiding in her’. By claiming that she could get access to secret letters and force open the doors of clearing houses such as the Chases’, Diana presumably earned her freedom. It would perhaps have been unwise to inform Thurloe’s inquisitor that she had been unmasked in Flanders and had only sailed back to England to escape from Colonel Phelips and his comrades, which is what appears to have been the case.

Norwich’s letters reveal that the Royalists in Flanders had uncovered Diana’s scheme, that of her passing off a false identity, by 15 June 1655. They had discovered she had lied about having been married to Sir Thomas, that the duel had probably not taken place, and that Sir Thomas might not even have existed. As Norwich wrote to Nicholas:

A greater cheate and more audaciously carryed did I neuer see or heare of, for tis now veryly beleeved and vppon good grounds that there were noe such men killed as her supposed husband and freind, nor shee euer 79

maryed to him, if at all to any of her two former husbands.

Norwich’s statement presents another quandary, namely the number of husbands Diana claimed to have had. Norwich suspected Stanley had never existed, and wrote that ‘Ginnings [sic]’, whom Diana had claimed as husband in front of Thurloe’s officers, was ‘her cozening cozen’ [that is, ‘her dissembling cousin’] by 15 June ‘clapt vpp in prison’ by Colonel Robert Phelips.⁸⁰ This left two husbands unaccounted for, husbands who Norwich plainly believed fictitious. It is perhaps clear why Diana being a she-intelligencer would invent them. These invented men most likely served as cover: with a new husband, she had a new name.

Incidentally, Phelips’s letter of the same date as Norwich’s letter, and also addressed to Nicholas, makes no mention whatsoever of Diana.⁸¹ He was presumably either embarrassed that he had been taken in or had decided against alarming Nicholas by revealing that there was a spy on the loose. While he had incarcerated Jennens, she had either escaped or had been allowed to leave the continent. It is a familiar pattern: the female lynchpin walks, while the male accessory receives the punishment. Phelips may even have concluded that justice had been served. In English law, under the principle of ‘coverture’, it was, after all, the husband, or male relative, who was legally responsible for the wife.

Elizabeth Stuart, sometime Queen of Bohemia, seems to have been in the know about Diana’s true identity. On 15 July 1655, she wrote the following riddle to Nicholas from The Hague:

I ame confident you haue heard alreadie of a riche ladie Stanlie that did cheat poore Collonel Philips and wife of 200 pound, and had cheated more if M^ris Mohun had not discouered her, when she was at Antwerp, 82 she knew her, her name is Skinner, and a take away the K. out of her name and you will finde her trade.

Elizabeth’s letter was written a month after Diana had been exposed. It reveals that not only had Diana been introduced into Royalist spy circles by a woman, Mrs Phelips, she had also been unmasked by yet another, Mrs Mohun. This Mrs Mohun was the same ‘Philly Moone’ named by Diana under interrogation— Philippa Mohun, who like Lady Carlisle, was derided by Henry Neville in Newes from the New Exchange, or The Commonwealth of Ladies (1650), and might thus have been known to Thurloe as follows: ‘Mrs. Phil. Mohun whose Rhetorick is Ribaldry, whose Element is Drinke, whose wit is in Baudery, and whose Beauty is blasted with her own Breath, it being a damp that will kill a Spider’.⁸³ Diana might have wanted to take revenge upon her by giving up Mohun’s name in her testimony. Most importantly, it also reveals that Diana was an impostress in it for financial gain, ‘skinning’ the Phelips of their money.⁸⁴

Diana might have tried to convince her inquisitor that the Royalists trusted her, not only to earn her freedom but also to persuade the Cromwellian regime to employ her as a spy. Even though she had schemed the Phelips out of £200, she would have been forced to find a more regular stream of income now that her husband was imprisoned in Antwerp, and could thus not support her financially. In order to convince her interrogator of her credibility, she lied about one more thing: her social rank. She had seen that pretending to be a lady gained her trustworthiness and protection, as the cloak of ‘Lady Stanley’ had opened up the Phelips’s house. She seems to have tried the same trick with Thurloe’s man: that is, playing her audience by falsely claiming the title of lady and thereby demanding respect. Considering that the interrogator recorded that Diana arrived in England with no spare clothes (‘noe garment at all’), and that she had only one French maid who had ‘refused to come with her’, he might have been suspicious, however, seriously questioning Diana’s status as lady.⁸⁵ Aspiring male spies are known to have used the same trick: as Alan Marshall reminds us, ‘[t]hey often clung to the label of “gentleman” or invented military titles for themselves because it gave them some prestige or credibility’.⁸⁶

Diana Gennings, or Jennens, née Stewart (perhaps), appears to have infiltrated the Phelips’s circle to con them out of money, and having one eye on the main chance collected information too, either out of an instinct for self­preservation or for value. The tales she told cannot be taken at face value, as her economy with the truth, even when discussing the nature of her lies, is quite breathtaking. Diana was not a spy by choice, but by necessity. And two of the weapons she wielded most expertly were plausible indications of her class and marital status. She merely told Phelips and Norwich what their greed wanted them to hear. She played Thurloe in a similar manner, as though her information was valuable, her suggestion that she could extract more was simply nonsense. Why would Thurloe trust such a woman?

Thurloe was perhaps willing to listen to Jennens and trust her information nevertheless, because on 27 August 1654 one of his intelligencers writing from Aachen had warned him about the Royalists’ modus operandi: ‘most of their desings [sic] are executed by Women, whose husbands are with Charles Stewart’.⁸⁷ The same intelligencer had written a similar warning ten days earlier: ‘I am confident, that Women whose husbands are with Charles Stewart, doe very much mischief’. The man even proposed that these women should not be allowed to remain in England once their spouses had fled to the continent: ‘I suppose it would be good for the commonwealth to send them [i.e. these women] thence to their husbands’.⁸⁸ Again, in another letter, he reiterated ‘Some of these Malignants here haue their wiues come to them, bring them supplies, returne to Ingland, to liue there, & doe mischief’.⁸⁹ As the prime example of a woman doing such ‘mischief’, the anonymous intelligencer mentioned a lady, Ann St John, widow of Sir Francis Henry Lee, who had married Henry Wilmot in 1644, in his letters. She had visited Liège when Charles Stuart was at Spa; she had not travelled further herself but ‘cunningly stayed’ in Liège in order to avoid accusations that she was up to something. Yet her son Francis and husband travelled constantly between that town and Spa. Thurloe’s intelligencer spied that ‘Seuerall malignant courtiers wear [sic] with her all the while’—he mentioned Colonel Robert Phelips amongst these men. By concluding the section on Lady Lee, soon afterwards Countess of Rochester, with the sentence, ‘She is returned for Ingland, you may be suer [sic for ‘sure’] she hath her errand from her husband’,⁹⁰ Thurloe’s spy made her into an example. Women such as Lady Lee carried most secret information from the continent back to England, information which was perhaps even concocted by Charles Stuart himself, as they served their conspirator husbands. The intelligencer was implying that while they had the men under surveillance more attention must be turned to their women who hopped back and forth over the narrow seas like frogs. All this might have made Thurloe aware that a woman such as Jennens, whom he might otherwise not have given the time of day, might actually be privy to valuable information.

Apolin Hunt

Diana Jennens presumably did not approach Thurloe of her own volition, but offered to be in his employ when she had his ear, or he, indeed, had hers. Petitions such as those of Elizabeth Alkin, in which a woman exposes herself as a spy in order to receive patronage, financial compensation, and more assignments of espionage, might have been rare but were not unique. Such is the case of Apolin Hunt, if that is her true name. In a letter dated 14 November 1656 to Captain Thomas Strangeways, a parliamentarian officer, she announced that she was ready to give a statement that would build on the information Strangeways had supposedly already been sent by Thurloe.⁹¹ Like Diana, she was fundamentally untrustworthy but, as she too claimed to be a lady, the Cromwellian regime initially placed its faith in her. She was also like Diana in being a ‘spectacular’ rather than a run-of-the-mill informer, claiming to have intelligence about big plots rather than mundane things like presses. She did not sign her letter Apolin Hunt, but ‘Apolin Hall’, and secured it with a red seal imprinted with two Ss. Strangeways forwarded the letter written from Plawsworth, some three miles from Durham, to Thurloe, on 18 November, accompanying it with his own summary of her statements that she gave him on 16 and 17 November.⁹² Thurloe’s endorsement after receipt of these documents, on the verso side—‘The Information & other papers of the Ladie Hall’—reveals that the Cromwellian regime initially believed Apolin to be a lady.⁹³

In her statements she claimed preparations were made by Major Tolhurst to take Tynemouth Castle for the king: they were digging an underground tunnel from the coal mines two miles from the castle to gain entry, and provisions in the form of ‘beefe, bacon, meate, wheate & butter’ were stored at ‘Heburn-howse’ for the relief of the rebellious garrison. In addition, she listed the names of about twenty men who were contributing thousands of pounds to the king’s cause. In comparison to Alkin who claimed to have spied for three Cromwellian generals, Apolin attempted to boost her credentials by claiming:

she is the woman and that did discouer & preuent the betraying of the Tower of London and Langley fforte; and that she did discouer the Irishman that was to stabb his Higness.⁹⁴

Strangeways took down her statement, but his subscription indicates that he was slightly bored with this woman who claimed to have saved the Tower of London and Langley Castle singlehandedly, and had prevented an assassination plot on Cromwell into the bargain. He added this subscription: ‘This is a true relation of what the Lady Hall hath related to mee, as alsoe many other stories too tedious to relate. witness my hand, the 26th of Nouember, 1656, Thomas Strangwayes’.⁹⁵

Strangeways’s distrust is made all the more apparent by the subscription to her statement that he took from her the next day. She reiterated the same information. At the end of her statement, which he apparently took verbatim, he added ‘She pretends their [sic] is many mere, which she cannot remember for want of her papers in her trunke which comes by the Cariers: but the Corporall saith she hath not a paper in the trunke’.⁹⁶ Apparently, her trunk had already been searched and proved as empty as her false statements.

His distrust notwithstanding, receipt of Apolin’s letter had moved Strangeways to immediately begin to search for her so that he might take these statements. While in pursuit, Strangeways had received one of Thurloe’s letters dated 14 November 1656. It had made him all the more keen to track her down because, on talking to the two officers who delivered Thurloe’s letters, he learned of ‘many passages concerning her vpon the Roade, which gaue them great cause to suspect her to be a cheate, and that she would indeauor to escape’.⁹⁷ He found her at Chester on her way to Newcastle. She requested that she be left alone with her old father, so she could work on him to extract further information ‘to make appeare what she had alreadie made knowne to [Thurloe] and much more’.⁹⁸ Strangeways acquiesced, and came to find her at her father’s house the next morning, an old man whom he would describe to Thurloe as an ‘cold Drunken cashierde preiste’.⁹⁹ The jibe at her Catholic descent was surely meant to cast doubt upon her trustworthiness. On the other hand, and despite the fact that Apolin had already backed down from the one claim that could easily be checked (she said she was sorry but the provisions at Hepburn House had been moved to a location unknown to her), Strangeways concluded his letter to Thurloe by saying ‘I am confident this woman knowes much of the Papists conspiraties & Charles Stewards trans Actions, if it could be gotten forth of her’.¹⁰⁰

The next letter that Strangeways sent to Thurloe is dated 11 December 1656. Enclosed within it were three documents that unmask Apolin unforgivingly. The first is an intercepted letter of her lover J. Degrand Baushault dated 25 November 1656. It confirmed Strangeways’s suspicions that she was planning an escape because Baushault writes to her how he is relieved to hear of her ‘Resolue to goe for flanders & not Com any more to London’. He writes all the more lovingly to her, even addressing her as his ‘Dearest Louing & Respected Wife,’ knowing or believing that she is carrying his child: ‘if I had a thousand years to liue, […] I will bee Reall & Constant to thee […] for thy sake & our poore baby, which ^Ais^A in thee’.¹⁰¹ The second is a statement of William Churchey who married her as ‘Appollin Hall Alias Apollin Potter of London Widdow’ in March 1653. After the wedding, when her dowry did not materialize, Churchey paid off her debts at Whitefriars, followed her to the Dutch Republic where she claimed money was owed to her (though once in Amsterdam her debtors were nowhere to be found), and finally agreed to live with her in Rye, where she claimed her debtors in Dover could find her. In November 1656, after one of his business trips to Flanders, he came home to an empty house: she had sold all the furniture and had taken up residence in debtor’s prison at Rye. Finally, after many more shenanigans that involved a child whom she had claimed was his but was neither his nor hers, Churchey was taken to prison for Apolin’s debts. She washed her hands of him, taking off with a Frenchman called Hemy Debry to London, where they lived as husband and wife, having escaped charges of adultery with a small fine at the Old Bailey. Churchey’s statement reveals her father’s name Robert Hunt, and thus her maiden name.¹⁰² Baushault does not seem to know of Hemy Debry, because he warns her to act carefully around her husband Churchey:

Pray, my love, tell mee what seruice doth Churchey doe to thee their [sic]; I beseech thee to not trust in him at all for hee is with thee like to a Cait [that is, cat] to a mous, till such time as hee Can gett the vpperhand vppon thee; then thow may bee confident that hee will play thee a treek [that is, trick]: soe look to yeet; for I should break my hart, if I should hear any such thing.¹⁰³

One wonders whether Baushault broke his own heart when he found out that Apolin had not only left her husband but also him for Debry, yet another lover. The final document is a statement by a Thomas Branker who testified that Apolin had pretended money was owed to her, claiming to be Sir Thomas Hall’s lady with a jointure of ‘ffourestoore pounds’ per annum, and a father with an annual income of £500. Such claims proved false.¹⁰⁴

Strangeways was not amused that he had been played by Apolin Hunt, aka Widow Potter, aka Mrs Churchey, aka Apolin, Lady Hall. He imprisoned her father and ‘one of hir husbands in Durham’. As for the father, Strangeways had reached the conclusion that the man could never be a Royalist informant: ‘he is not a person that the aduerse partie would att all confide in, in respect he is a verie begger and a deboysteed Eiected preeste.’ As for the husband— presumably Churchey, as Strangeways took down his statement and not Baushault’s—Strangeways did not believe he was as naive as he pretended to be: ‘I think hir husband is not the man I tooke him to bee, & now finde him a dissembling fellow’. Apolin fared no better. She was ‘verie sick’ and granted a doctor and midwife, who informed Strangeways that she was ‘in a uerie weak condition’. She was clearly an inconvenience to Strangeways, as he wrote to Thurloe: ‘she lies in gateside neare Newcastle where I am forste to keepe a guarde to secure hir; for I am confident notwithstanding her pretended weaknesse, if she could finde an opertunitie, she would indeauor to be gon’. In other words, Strangeways believed she merely feigned a pregnancy-related illness, partially to allay suspicion of any possible attempt at escape, and partially, of course, because the regime could neither torture nor execute a pregnant woman.¹⁰⁵ He assured Thurloe she would not escape—‘maybe I shall send the Slutt to Tinemouth Castle’—closing his letter subserviently: ‘What further orders you please to communicate to mee concerning these people shalbe dilligently obserued’.¹⁰⁶ Thurloe’s orders are not recorded, and Apolin’s fate, that of a ‘Slutt’ and not a ‘Lady’, unknown. She disappears from the records: either archival censorship or Thurloe did away with her.

And so it appears that the relationship between the Council of State and the spies they either employed or considered employing was a complex one, and one that resembled the patron-client relationship upon which so much of this era's social superstructure was built. The information handed over was necessarily acquired through dishonest means: for instance, by eavesdropping, treachery, duplicity, fraud, or theft. The spymaster, therefore, was the vessel through which this information, potentially flawed and ill-gotten as it was, was made legitimate. The spymaster, in effect, laundered the information, putting his reputation behind it as surety. As Rachel Weil points out: ‘[t]he spymaster-patron who hired an informer not only provided him (or her) with material aid but also loaned the information legitimacy through his own respectable reputation’.¹⁰⁷ As such, poor information could potentially damage the spymaster’s reputation, and no information was as potentially dubious as that acquired by women: as gossip, pillow talk or, as Dangerfield would have it, ‘tittle-tattle’.

That the value accorded to information that came via a woman was less than a man’s seems apparent from the case of ironmaster Mynne: £200 or even £300 given to William Mills, a mere £18 to Elizabeth Alkin, though admittedly the information was less than fresh when she informed the Council of State. It is possible, considering her statement, that she realized that they would pay a man more and had therefore encouraged Mills to give her intelligence to the Council; the possibility that she was illiterate might also have contributed to such a decision. When Mills did not share the wealth, she petitioned the council and eventually received a reward, but a mere fraction of what she could have received if male. Alkin proved herself as an intelligencer, but the Council of State continued to doubt the veracity of her statements: they felt the need to indicate their doubts of her credibility by not only questioning it openly, but also by assigning her the alias Joan in their records, indicating that she was not only a woman but one of lower status, not a lady—her class could not neutralize the untrustworthiness of her sex. It was Thurloe who signed off on her request to become a nurse, an act he performed during his first days as the new secretary to the Council of State. By coding women as nurses, as he did in the cases of Alkin and Susan Bowen, he was plainly disguising the fact that he was employing women as spies. He may have done this to protect his authority from being questioned, or perhaps to hide the sources of his information from Cromwell. Whatever the reason, it appears that the relationship between spymaster and she- intelligencer was more lord and mistress than patron and client: and the lower- born the woman, the closer she came to having the disposability of the prostitute.

It is perhaps for this reason that women such as Apolin Hunt and Diana Jennens passed themselves off as ladies as their assumed status would lend credibility to their testimonies: certainly just as the biggest scoundrels could claim to move in the lowest of circles,¹⁰⁸ so a so-called lady could reasonably claim to frequent the political circles of the higher nobility, where Royalist plots were plotted. Furthermore, if a woman’s voice lacked authority, how much less authority was wielded by a wench when compared to a lady? Finally, though the situation was far from clear-cut, whether a spy was male or female, higher social status generally equated to less severe punishment.¹⁰⁹

In 1604 James I had repealed the last sumptuary law, which in previous centuries had ensured that only the elite had been allowed to wear the finest silk, bodices embroidered with metal thread and trimmed with furs so that nobility was instantaneously recognizable.¹¹⁰ Pretending to have a title was still fraud, however, sentences for which ranged from public penance to fines and imprisonment, depending on whether one appeared in front of a church or common law court. What happened to women who awaited the judgement of the Council of State is not self-evident. High-profile women such as the aristocratic Lady Carlisle, or Jane Whorwood, gentry but stepdaughter of a gentleman of the Bedchamber, appeared to escape with a cursory prison sentence, but the fate of ordinary women such as Diana or Apolin who descended too far into the murky underworld of espionage is less clear.

The problem is that their archival trails grind to a halt, temporarily at least, as soon as they hand over their information to Thurloe, because at that moment they became useless. Diana disappears for approximately a decade, only to apparently turn up as wife to Sir William Jennens post-Restoration, while Apolin’s fate remains completely unknown. But we know that at least Diana, with an MP for a father-in-law, might have reasonably expected to acquire such status. Apolin may have vanished simply by abandoning her name—if Apolin was a pseudonym, then her true identity is mysterious. Whether Apolin simply reclaimed her true identity and slipped out of jail or was condemned to rot inside is also unknown, but that Thurloe was capable of assigning her either fate is plain when we consider the manner in which Edward Hyde’s sister, Susan, was treated.

1

Lady d’Aubigny to the Duke of York, 5 Aug. 1648, as summarized by an interceptor in ‘A Breuiatt of such of the Papers that came from Jersey, that concernes persons whom the Act of Pardon doe not saue’, Apr. 1652, Pepys Library, Cambridge, MS PL 2504, p. 644.

2

Marcus Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture of Revolutionary England, 1640-1660 (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2006), 104, referring to Mercurius Civicus 4 (London: s.n., 1643), Thomason Tract 18, E. 104 (25), 25 May-1 June 1643, p. 32.

³     Bob Clarke, From Grub Street to Fleet Street (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 17, says to cite A Fresh Whip to all Scandalous Lyers (London: s.n., 1647), but that pamphlet does not contain the fragment.

⁴     Mercurius Civicus 110 (London: s.n., 1643), Thomason Tract 48, E. 292 (1), 26 June-3 July 1645, p. 980, also quoted in Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture, 104.

⁵     ‘Order Books’, 16 Feb. 1651, TNA, SP 25/66, p. 344 (no. 21), and ‘Draft Order Books’, 17 Aug. 1652, TNA, SP 25/31, p. 74, respectively. In 1659-60, the administrators grouped twenty-nine men of the dangerous trade together under the heading ‘Correspondents & Spyes’ (Alan Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage in the Reign of Charles II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; paperback edn 2002), 119, referring to BL, Stowe MS 185, fo. 183v).

⁶     ‘Draft Order Books’, 18 May 1652, TNA, SP 25/27, fo. 230v, and ‘Order Books’, 18 May 1652, TNA, SP 25/67, p. 73 (no. 19). The only clue we have to her identity is the note ‘That one hundred and fourtie pounds bee paid to such persons as gave intelligence at Worcester, whereof One hundred pounds to the little maid’ (‘Draft Order Books’, 28 Nov. 1651, TNA, SP 25/24, p. 68 (no. 12)), from which it appears that she was supposed to receive considerably more than others but still had not received payment half a year later.

⁷            

Elizabeth Gaunt is perhaps the most famous example: see Melinda S. Zook, ‘Nursing Sedition’, in Jason McElligott (ed.), Fear, Exclusion and Revolution (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 189-203 at 190.

⁸            

Marshall, Intelligence, 54.

⁹                John Fox, The King’s Smuggler (Stroud: History Press, 2010), 77.

¹⁰             Marshall, Intelligence, 140.

¹¹             ‘Draft Order Book’, 31 July 1650, TNA, SP 25/8, p. 32.

¹²             ‘Draft Order Book’, 14 Nov. 1650, TNA, SP 25/13, p. 11.

¹³             ‘Order Book’, 5 Jan. 1652, TNA, SP 25/66, p. 159 (no. 9).

¹⁴      ‘Day’s proceedings’, 7 Nov. 1651, TNA, SP 25/24, p. 15 (no. 15); ‘Order Book’, 22 Dec. 1651, TNA, SP 25/66, p. 97 (no. 20).

¹⁵      ‘Draft proceedings’, 6 Apr. 1654, TNA, SP 25/75, p. 221 (no. 27); ‘Letters and Papers’, 19 Apr. 1654, TNA, SP 18/70, fo. 74r (no. 42I), and decision taken 25 Apr. 1654, fo. 75v.

¹⁶             ‘Abstracts of petitions and orders thereupon’, 10 May 1655, TNA, SP 25/92, p. 90 (no. 350).

¹⁷             ‘Abstracts of petitions and orders thereupon’, 11 May 1655, TNA, SP 25/92, p. 90 (no. 348).

¹⁸      ‘Order Books’, 10 May 1655, TNA, SP 25/76, pp. 68-9 (no. 9); see also ‘Order Books’, 16 May 1655, TNA, SP 25/76, p. 77 (no. 11).

¹⁹      ‘Order Books’, 9 June 1655, TNA, SP 25/76, p. 129 (no. 9); also ‘Letter Books’, 28 June 1655, TNA, SP 25/105, p. 164.

²⁰        

Mary Anne Everett Green (ed.), Calendar, Committee for the Advance of Money (London: HMSO, 1888), i. 517, both entries dated 7 Mar. 1645, also cited in Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture, 93. The paragraphs on Alkin build on Nevitt’s research. He revised and expanded his chapter on Alkin, ‘Women in the Business of Revolutionary News: Elizabeth Alkin, “Parliament Joan”, and the Commonwealth Newsbook’, in Joad Raymond (ed.), News, Newspapers and Society in Early Modern Britain (London: Frank Cass, 1999), 84-107, in his own book, Women and the Pamphlet Culture. I cite the latter version.

²¹         

Wire (iron, brass, and copper) was put to various uses, including the binding of sword handles, the cleaning of musket touch-holes (‘pryming wyre’) (see James Achesone, The Military Garden, 1629), making bridles for horses (see Francis Markham, Fiue decades of epistles of vvarre, 1622; Robert Ward, Animadversions of vvarre, 1639), the binding of fireballs (see Sextus Julius Frontinus, The stratagems of war, 1686; Robert Ward, Animadversions of vvarre, 1639), as part of tools used by artillerymen (see John Roberts, The compleat cannoniere, 1639; The compleat gunner, 1672), and it made springs for musket firing mechanisms. As for the iron, 400 tonnes was enough to cast around 265 ships’ cannon, and in 1645 bar iron was being bought by the Royalists at £18 a ton (Peter Edwards, Dealing in Death (Stroud: Sutton, 2000), 99). Even allowing for an increased premium for selling to the losing side (say, £30 a ton), and for a quarter of the value of his stockpile being for wire, this is still enough iron to manufacture 670 cannon, the battery of around seven fighting ships, a not insignificant find (my thanks to Ian Atherton for unpicking these figures for me).

²²             Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture, 97.

²³         

Green (ed.), Calendar, Committee for the Advance of Money, i. 202, entry dated 3 Sept. 1647, also cited in Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture, 95.

²⁴             Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture, 93, 95.

25

J. B. Williams’s definition of ‘Joan’, also paraphrased in Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture, 95; see Williams, A History of English Journalism to the Foundation of the Gazette (London: Longmans, Green, 1908), 131.

26

26       Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture, 93-4, gives a similar example from The Character of a Rebellion (1681), 11, whose author describes a society stripped of class, writing ‘in a Commonwealth Joan is as good as my Lady even by day-light’.

27      TNA, SP 19/98, no. 80, given in full in Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture, 102; Nevitt infers the year in his n. 64 (102).

28      Mercurius Pragmaticus 45 (London: s.n., 1649), Thomason Tract 84, E. 544 (9), 13-20 Feb. 1649, 3r.

29      Mercurius Pragmaticus 310 (London: s.n., 1649), Thomason Tract 82, E. 531 (16), 2-9 July 1649, the entry of 6 July 1649, p. 2635; also quoted in Williams, History of English Journalism, 131, and Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture, 101.

30             Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture, 102-3, n. 64.

31             TNA, SP 19/98, no. 80; given in full in Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture, 102.

32        

Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture, 103, n. 64. Detailed information of the various temporary abodes parliament granted her is given in G. E. Manwaring, ‘ “Parliament Joan” ’, United Service Magazine 57 (1918): 301-10 at 303-4.

33        

Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture, 93; Williams, History of English Journalism, 133-4. J. J. Keevil, however, claims she signed herself ‘Elizabeth Alkin, alias Joane’ in later years, but without supplying documentary evidence: see Keevil, ‘Elizabeth Alkin Alias Parliament Joan’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 31 (1957): 17-28 at 18.

34             Alkin to the Council of State, 22 Feb. 1652[/3], TNA, SP 18/33, fo. 163r.

35             Manwaring, ‘ “Parliament Joan” ’, 301-2, 308.

36             22 Feb. 1652[/3], TNA, SP 18/33, fo. 165r.

37             24 Feb. 1652[/3], TNA, SP 18/33, fo. 167r.

38      ‘Draft Order Books’, 5 Apr. 1653, TNA, SP 25/41, p. 57 (no. 21): ‘That the sum of twentie marke bee paid to Elizabeth Alkin out of the Contingent moneys of the Councel, in consideration of her Care ^Aof some^A of the sicke and wounded men ^Awhilst^A at Portsmouth and in their passage upon the road to London’. One mark equals 13s. 4d., so twenty marks equals £13. 6s. 8d.

39      Manwaring, ‘ “Parliament Joan” ’, 303-4; Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture, 103, n. 65: in Nov. 1651, Alkin received £13. 8s. in two instalments (‘Draft Order Books’, 28 Nov. 1651, TNA, SP 25/24, p. 68 (no. 15), assigns her £10; ‘Draft Order Books’, 29 Nov. 1651, TNA, SP 25/24, p. 71 (no. 13) grants her another £3. 8s.).

40      Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture, 118, notes Alkin made less as a nurse, but the evidence suggests otherwise.

41             2 June 1653, TNA, SP 18/38, fo. 8.

42             Keevil, ‘Elizabeth Alkin Alias Parliament Joan’, 23-6.

43             Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture, 99-101.

44      James Daybell, ‘Female Literacy and the Social Conventions of Women’s Letter-Writing in England, 1540-1603’，in James Daybell (ed.), Early Modern Women"s Letter Writing, 1450-1700 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 59-76 at 59.

45             ‘Letters and Papers’, 22 Feb. 1653[/4], TNA, SP 18/66, fo. 135r.

46             ‘Letters and Papers’, 27 Feb. 1653[/4], TNA, SP 18/66, fo. 178r.

47       Williams, History of English Journalism, 153; Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture, 119. This is in contrast to Manwaring, ‘ “Parliament Joan” ’, who believes Alkin never received payment, ‘neither her pension nor arrears were forthcoming’ (309). However, it was common practice of petitioners to exaggerate their financial necessities; if a petitioner wrote he or she was about to be ruined, then the reality might have been somewhat different.

48        

See, for instance, Lois G. Schwoerer, ‘Women and the Glorious Revolution’, Albion 18, no. 2 (1986): 195-218 at 198, and Susan Wiseman, Conspiracy & Virtue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 317.

49        

Eva Scott, David Underdown, and Alan Marshall devote a phrase, two pages, and a page and a half respectively to Diana’s story. See Scott, The Travels of the King (London: Constable, 1907), 154; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy in England 1649-1660 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1960), 171-2; Marshall, ‘ “Memorialls for Mrs Affora” ’, Women’s Writing 22, no. 1 (2015): 13-33 at 25-6.

50             I thank Miranda Lewis for suggesting ‘Gennings’ could be ‘Jennens’.

51        

See entry no. 1125, ‘Phelips, Robert’, in P. R. Newman, Royalist Officers in England and Wales, 1642-1660 (London: Garland, 1981), 295; see also LBM, 85 (n. 1).

52             ClSP, iii. 57.

53             TSP, i. 748-9.

54             Bod., Rawl. MS A. 34, pp. 401-4.

55      Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 172; for the letter in question see n. 76 in this chapter. For Henry Manning see Nicole Greenspan, ‘News, Intelligence, and Espionage at the Exiled Court at Cologne’, in Joad Raymond (ed.), News Networks in Seventeenth-Century Britain and Europe (London: Routledge, 2006), 103-23.

56       Sexby is identified by Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 172, and Marshall, ‘ “Memorialls for Mrs Affora” ’, 33 endnote 59. Phelips escaped from the Tower between September, when his wife had been permitted to reside with him there, and November 1653: see Brian A. Harrison, The Tower of London Prisoner Book (Leeds: Royal Armouries, 2004), 331. It is uncertain whether his wife assisted in his escape.

57             Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 172, Marshall, ‘ “Memorialls for Mrs Affora” ’, 25.

58             See possibly ‘Sir Thomas Stanley and Family, a Pass to the Spa’, CJ, vi. 58 (22 May 1643).

59             Colonel Phelips to Nicholas, 21 May 1655, Antwerp, NP, ii. 299 (fo. 201).

60             Norwich to Nicholas, 25 May 1655, Antwerp, NP, ii. 300 (fo. 203).

61             Norwich to Nicholas, 15 June 1655, Antwerp, NP, ii. 339 (fo. 255).

62             Norwich to Nicholas, 25 May 1655, Antwerp, NP, ii. 300 (fo. 203).

63             Colonel Phelips to Nicholas, 28 May 1655, Antwerp, NP, ii. 310 (fo. 213).

64             Norwich to Nicholas, 25 May 1655, Antwerp, NP, ii. 300.

65             Colonel Phelips to Nicholas, 21 May 1655, Antwerp, NP, ii. 299.

66             Norwich to Nicholas, 15 June 1655, Antwerp, NP, ii. 339 (fo. 255).

67      See, for instance, Diana Jennens to the Navy Commissioners, 20 July 1669, TNA, SP 46/137, fo. 201.

68             J. D. Davies, ‘Jennens, Sir William’, ODNB.

69        

[Samuel Pepys], The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 11 vols, R. Latham and W. Matthews (eds) (London: Bell & Hyman, 1970-83; repr. 1995; repr. 2000), ix. 430, and an intelligence report of Paul Methuen, 16/26 May 1669, Lisbon, TNA, SP 89/17, fo. 348v; also cited in Davies, ‘Jennens, Sir William’, ODNB.

70

I am grateful to J. D. Davies for sharing his unpublished notes that stressed that Diana effectively antedated her husband’s knighthood by a decade.

71

Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 172.

⁷²       Alan Marshall, ‘ “Woeful Knight” ’, in Daniel Szechi (ed.), The Dangerous Trade (Dundee: University of Dundee Press, 2010), 66-92 at 75.

⁷³         

The printed edition leaves out the negative and the article, also adding the word ‘enough’ that is not given in the original, and thus reads ‘she was man enough’, and that is the version Marshall cites: see Marshall, ‘ “Memorialls for Mrs Affora” ’, 26.

⁷⁴                Marshall, ‘ “Memorialls for Mrs Affora” ’, 26, erroneously reads ‘father’ for ‘sister’.

⁷⁵                Marshall, ‘ “Memorialls for Mrs Affora” ’, 26.

⁷⁶       [Henry Manning] to Jeremiah Joseline, aka Thurloe, 13 July 1655, New Style, Cologne, TNA, SP 18/99, fo. 14r, the contemporary deciphered version of TNA, SP 18/99, fo. 12r.

⁷⁷                CJ, iii. 66-7 (2 May 1643).

⁷⁸                CJ, v. 675 (19 Aug. 1648).

⁷⁹                Norwich to Nicholas, 15 June 1655, Antwerp, NP, ii. 339 (fo. 255).

⁸⁰                Norwich to Nicholas, 15 June 1655, Antwerp, NP, ii. 339 (fo. 255).

⁸¹                Colonel Phelips to Nicholas, 15 June 1655, NP, ii. 340-2.

⁸²       The Queen of Bohemia to Nicholas, July, endorsed by Nicholas ‘5 July 1655. Received 8 [July]’, BL, Egerton MS 2548, no. 6 (fo. 8).

⁸³       Henry Neville, Newes from the New Exchange (London: s.n., 1650), Thomason Tract 90, E. 590 (10), pp. 16-17; see also Geoffrey Smith, The Cavaliers in Exile, 1640-1660 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 57.

⁸⁴         

This letter is also interesting from several other standpoints, but most of all because of the name Elizabeth gives her: Skinner. Not only does it show Elizabeth’s awareness that Lady Stanley was an assumed name (and Norwich’s letter suggests that Diana had two further names besides Stanley and ‘Gennings’), but it may not merely have been the name Mrs Mohun knew her under. Skinner was, of course, one of the other passengers on Diana’s boat to England, but more than that, it was also the code name in use for Sir Edward Hyde (see Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 346). Elizabeth was skilled not only in cryptography, but in its manipulation: in October 1641 she had needed a code name for her daughter Louise Hollandine in order to tell Sir Thomas Roe of an alleged poisoning of Frederick William, son of the Elector of Brandenburg, by the Count of Schwarzenberch, one of Brandenburg’s chief ministers, designed to prevent their marriage. As Louise Hollandine lacked her own code name, Elizabeth used her brother Rupert’s, wrapped in a contextualizing narrative following which both Rupert and Louise Hollandine were encoded with the same number, 166. See [Elizabeth Stuart], The Correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart, Nadine Akkerman (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), ii. 1004, 1021 (Elizabeth to Roe of 10 Oct. 1641 (New Style), letter no. 589, and 6 Jan. 1642 (New Style), letter no. 600). Elizabeth’s use of the name Skinner also allows some simple word play: ‘take away the K. out of her name and you will finde her trade’. Of course, sinning was not a trade, but both fraud and intelligencing were, as will become apparent when we consider the life-writing of Lady Dysart and Lady Halkett, considered to be sinful.

⁸⁵                ‘The Examination of the Ladie Diana Gennings’, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 34, p. 403.

⁸⁶                Marshall, Intelligence, 117.

⁸⁷       Anonymous intelligencer to Thurloe, 27 Aug. 1654, Aachen, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 17, p. 283. See also Scott, The Travels of the King, 61.

⁸⁸        Anonymous intelligencer to Thurloe, 17 Aug. 1654, New Style, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 17, p. 150. The manuscript is damaged: the last letters of ‘husbands’ have crumpled away.

⁸⁹                Anonymous intelligencer to Thurloe, 29 Aug./8 Sept. 1654, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 17, p. 350.

⁹⁰        Anonymous intelligencer to Thurloe, 29 Aug./8 Sept. 1654, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 17, p. 352 (same letter as n. 89).

⁹¹                Apolin Hall to Strangeways, 4 Nov. 1656, Plawsworth, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 44, fos. 41-2.

⁹²           

‘The Information & other papers of the Ladie Hall concerning some designes of the Caualiers taken the 7th of Nov: 1656’, Strangeways to Thurloe, 8 Nov. 1656, Durham, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 44, fos. 104-5.

⁹³           

The endorsement is to be found on fo. 105v.

⁹⁴                ‘The Lady Halls Information. Nouember 6^th, 1656’, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 45, fo. 7v (no. 6).

⁹⁵                ‘The Lady Halls Information. Nouember 6^th, 1656’, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 45, fo. 7v (no. 6). The ‘2’ in

26^th of Nouember’ seems to be a later addition.

⁹⁶                Strangeways to Thurloe, 7 Nov. 1656, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 44, fo. 122r.

⁹⁷                Strangeways to Thurloe, 8 Nov.       1656, Durham, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 44, fo.     104r.

⁹⁸                Strangeways to Thurloe, 8 Nov.       1656, Durham, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 44, fo.     104r.

⁹⁹                Strangeways to Thurloe, 8 Nov.       1656, Durham, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 44, fo.     104r.

¹⁰⁰             Strangeways to Thurloe, 8 Nov.       1656, Durham, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 44, fos. 104v-105r.

¹⁰¹             J. Degrand Baushault to Lady Hall, 15 Nov. 1656, London, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 45, fo. 10.

102

‘A Breviat and Relation of William Churchey which was Marryed As her under to Dame Appollin Hall Alias Appollin Potter of London Widdow, &c.’, not dated, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 45, fos. 11-12.

¹⁰³             J. Degrand Baushault to Lady Hall, 15 Nov. 1656, London, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 45, fo. 10.

¹⁰⁴       ‘A Breviat and relation of Thomas Branker Against Dame Appollin Hall Alias Appollin Potter of London once Marryed to William Churchey &c.’, not dated, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 45, fo. 9.

¹⁰⁵             Manon van der Heijden, Women and Crime in Early Modern Holland (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 31, 42.

¹⁰⁶             Strangeways to Thurloe, 1 Dec. 1656, Durham, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 45, fos. 5-6.

¹⁰⁷       Rachel Weil, ‘ “If I did say so, I lyed” ’, in Susan D. Amussen and Mark A. Kishlansky (eds), Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 189-212 at 191.

¹⁰⁸            See Weil, ‘ “If I did say so, I lyed” ’, 190-1.

109

Van der Heijden, Women and Crime, 38; Garthine Walker, Crime, Gender and the Social Order in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 128-30.

¹¹⁰             Maria Hayward, Rich Apparel (London: Routledge, 2017), 17.

3

Susan Hyde, a Spy’s Gendered Fate and Punishment

Hide and Seek the Sealed Knot

Chief of the parliamentarian intelligence service Thomas Scott stationed some of his spies on the continent, giving his successor John Thurloe a mobile and flexible network of eavesdroppers who ranged beyond British ports to centres of intrigue such as The Hague, Brussels, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Danzig, and elsewhere. Thurloe was not against hiring women as intelligencers, either, though he kept their employment hidden, apparently because of questions over their credibility. Maintaining a roster of around twenty spies on the payroll, some of them women, kept the information trickling in: intelligence was sourced and paid for by his agents, both at home and abroad.¹ But Thurloe’s remit also included the discovery and neutralization of enemy spies and conspirators, both male and female. These were discovered by infiltration: of the spy networks themselves and of their communications. His spycatchers were deskbound, skilled officers who intercepted enemy communication, communications that were not paid for but handed over for free: all letters were channelled through the Black Chamber in Whitehall where they were systematically opened. While Thurloe’s spies wrote letters from remote locations, his spychasers read letters in the capital. It was from behind their desks in the Black Chamber that they unmasked Susan Hyde, sister of Edward Hyde, from 1658 Lord Chancellor and after the Restoration 1st Earl of Clarendon,² as a she-intelligencer of the Royalist secret organization the Sealed Knot, and from that moment her fate was sealed. She was hunted down by Cromwell’s new Council of State, arrested in Wiltshire without any of the civility usually accorded a lady, and brought to London where she was subjected to psychological and perhaps physical torture: within a fortnight, Susan was dead.

That such an event should have remained unexamined until now is perhaps as simple to explain as it is astonishing. Susan’s historiographical invisibility is partly due to the imprecision and accidental glosses of twentieth-century historians, as to previous generations women’s lives were simply deemed less significant. A historic survey of Lambeth Palace, for instance, mentions her as an example of the few women prisoners known to have been held in Lambeth’s bleak oubliette, but not only incorrectly notes her name to have been Mrs Anne Hyde but also does not link her to Sir Edward, as if they were not related.³ One of Sir Edward’s biographers, in sharp contrast, denies Susan an independent identity, foregrounding the sibling connection: he discusses Susan’s death, albeit in a single succinct paragraph, but without mentioning her given name, referring to her as ‘Hyde’s sister’.⁴ Because of this authorial decision and the manner in which indices are collated, neither her name nor her gruesome death are recorded in the index, the first port of call for most historians. The result was archival invisibility, much like the invisibility Thurloe accorded his she- intelligencers.

Documents either written in her own hand, addressed to, or related to Susan Hyde are to be found in Thurloe’s archive, the Rawlinson manuscripts. However, they were not included in Thomas Birch’s eighteenth-century, seven­volume printed edition of these papers, A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe, presumably because Birch did not think of them as political letters or state papers. Instead, their basic metadata (sender, recipient, and date) were merely recorded by William D. Macray more than a century later, who collated a catalogue of letters not included by Birch.⁵ Birch might have been misled by the seemingly domestic content of the letters—a tactic of the letter writer that was still performing its purpose after 150 years. To give a key example, one letter has no address, but opens with ‘Deare Sister’.⁶ A cursory glance will confirm it as a typical familial letter void of content, one that is merely meant to strengthen and reaffirm social connections. It is seemingly a short letter of reciprocity, giving thanks for one of the addressee’s dated 25 June, in which the writer entreats her ‘to say all of kindnesse from vs to little John’ and closes with gratitude ‘god be thanked both he and all your freinds heare and at home are very well’. It is subscribed ‘Fran: Edwards’ and dated 16 July 1655. On closer inspection, however, both the letter’s textual codes and its material features betray its status as a crucial political document, one that should have been included by Birch among the state papers.

Discourses of intimacy and familial relations were commonly used as code.

Jane Jaye, wife of Sir Edward Nicholas, became familiar with the use of intimacy codes during their time of courtship in 1622, addressing him as her ‘father’ and subscribing herself as ‘Your louing daughter’ in letters.⁷ Nicholas’s book of cipher keys includes several that he shared with his wife during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Even though the letters in which these codes were used have not been traced, the nomenclature of the cipher keys, ‘a codelike list of names, words, and syllables’,⁸ indicates how political letters were veiled as familial letters: for instance, the code name for the queen is ‘Mrs Kate’ and ‘Cousin Blithe’; the queen’s secretary Master Robert Long is ‘Vncle Fitton’; the Prince of Orange is ‘Cousin Sitton’; Sergeant Hyde is ‘Mr Knacks cousin’ and Lady Nicholas is to sign herself as ‘Mrs Winnifet’.⁹

Another set of correspondences in which discourses of intimacy and matrimony were manipulated is that of the Percy sisters, Lucy and Dorothy. Lucy Percy-Hay, Lady Carlisle, corresponded frequently with her sister Dorothy, wife of Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester. Dorothy joined her husband’s embassy in 1639, when he acted as Stuart resident ambassador to France. From London, Lucy kept Dorothy and her husband informed about the conflicts in Scotland that would result in the First Bishops’ War, a precursor of the Civil Wars in England. As Henrietta Maria’s Lady of the Bedchamber, Lady Carlisle was privy to politically sensitive information. She instructed Leicester to send her a cipher key, so that she could communicate more freely.¹⁰ She neither addresses nor signs these coded letters to Leicester, which are unmistakably in her hand. She was politically astute and fully aware that letters could be intercepted, as she writes to her sister:

Let me know whether you understand my writing this way [that is, in cipher] and whether there be danger of having the letters either lost or intercepted, for I have some things that I dare scarce write you, and I am not certain that you understand them when I do, and my heart would not conceal anything from you, so 11 much it love and trust you.

Yet the use of ciphers was not the only way to shield information from prying eyes. An extra layer protected a particularly sensitive letter, which contained information that the queen had communicated to Lucy in confidence, such as that Ireland was gathering an army of 10,000 soldiers to rise against Scotland in the name of the king. These secrets were concealed beneath a cloak of domesticity as Lucy did not address this letter to Ambassador Leicester but to her sister instead.¹² It is Leicester’s endorsements, his scribbling on the letter after receipt, and the fact that the letter was filed among his state papers, rather than family papers, which indicate that the communication was meant not for Dorothy, but for her husband.

Other letters Lucy wrote to Leicester are disguised as letters from an anonymous woman—they are not signed nor do they bear Lucy’s seal—to a lover: she does not use an opening formula, such as ‘My Lord’, but starts in medias res, as if the sheet is the second part of the letter, rather than the first, or written by a person unfamiliar with epistolary etiquette. What is more, the closure reiterates this discourse of intimacy: ‘my Dearest I cane wriet [sic] no more’;¹³ ‘my Deerest thinke of me and loue me as the parsone most yours’,¹⁴ uncharacteristic closures for Lady Carlisle whose relationship with her brother­in-law was somewhat strained. She pretends that the unskilled note is addressed to a lover to hide the fact that it is a newsletter from an able stateswoman to an ambassador: a letter of political news is sent under cover of Cupid’s wings.

It is in this context, namely that the letter foregrounds the domestic relationship of ‘Fran: Edwards’ and his ‘Deare Sister’, that it must be read. A letter in Sir Edward Hyde’s archive reveals that Francis Edwards was in fact a code name of none other than Charles II.¹⁵ Charles Stuart, alias Francis Edwards, obscured his gender in the act of subscribing his letter to ‘his sister’ as ‘Fran: Edwards’: ‘Fran:’ could be either short for Francis (male) or Frances (female). As they knew, women’s discourse was often assumed to be free from political content and accordingly subjected to only a cursory examination, if at all. One of Thurloe’s men clearly believed the writer to be male, however, and even though he was blissfully unaware of the writer’s royal identity, he had figured out to whom the letter was addressed: he endorsed the letter on its verso side ‘M^r Francis Edwards to M.^ris Susan Hyde’.

The letter’s material features also suggest it contains rather more than simple domestic tittle-tattle. First, a perfectly straightforward postscript ‘pray conveye the inclosed’ is so faint in comparison to the rest of the letter’s writing that it seems to have been written in invisible ink: the king might not have wanted to draw a possible interceptor’s attention to the enclosure, while, if it did arrive safely, it would have indicated to Susan that it was of high importance. In the letter, he writes that he feels ‘better for the cordiall’. Allusions to medicine were often veiled references to use of invisible ink, as will become clear in the next chapter, and in this case the mention of a cordial could have prompted Susan either to hold the letter to a candle or to apply a wet tissue or some liquid solution to reveal the secret writing.

Secondly, and most revealingly, the letter’s seal, though the size of a small signet ring, is that of the famous secret Royalist society the Sealed Knot (see Plate 5). The two components that make up the name of this secret organization conjure up many associations: a knot is not for display but utility, connects strands, combines strength, will not unravel, is highly secure, and because it is sealed it is strong but also flexible (comparable to a wax seal which has to be solid but not too hard, to prevent it from being brittle and breakable), imprinted with an identity, and, most importantly, authorized. The Sealed Knot, doing its name justice, was the only conspiracy group sanctioned personally by Charles Stuart. Hence the letter, written personally by Charles and bearing the distinctive logo impressed into its red wax seal, identifies Susan Hyde as one of the Sealed Knot’s agents, as one who stood in direct contact with the king.

The Sealed Knot was in all likelihood founded in February 1654, but in any case not earlier than November 1653. In March 1659, the Great Trust, another Royalist secret organization, seemed to swallow it but never did so completely. In our collective imagination, the Knot has taken on enormous, mythical proportions. In reality, however, it was a tiny organization. The Knot comprised of a mere seven select heads, six leaders and a secretary who joined the core members somewhat later: John Belasyse, 1st Baron Belasyse of Worlaby; Henry Hastings, Baron Loughborough; Sir William Compton; John Russell; Edward Villiers; Sir Richard Willys, 1st Baronet; and their secretary William Rumbold.¹⁶ Susan Hyde seems to have operated in the organization’s underbelly. Two things seem to have inspired its institution: one, Sir Edward Hyde’s need to gain some control over the various Royalist splinter groups in order that he might supervise conspiracies to turn whispers into deeds, and two, the need to counter the professionalization achieved by the Commonwealth’s intelligence system under Thurloe’s direction.

Hyde’s History with the Louvre Faction

In order to understand Hyde’s need to unite the various Royalist factions, it is essential to briefly examine Hyde’s relationship with Charles Stuart’s mother, Henrietta Maria, widow of the late Charles I, as that relationship epitomizes how divided the Royalists were on issues of religion. Henrietta Maria and her advisors never agreed with Hyde on anything that was vital. During the First Civil War, Charles I insisted that his heir be taken to safety outside Oxford. Hyde, at the time a member of the king’s junto, escorted the fifteen-year-old Prince Charles to Somerset (March 1645), the Scillies (March 1646), and Jersey (April 1646), successfully persuading the king to keep his son in his dominions. Hyde was intent on delaying for as long as possible the plan to ship the prince to his mother in France under whose pernicious influence, he feared, the heir to the Three Kingdoms might well convert to Catholicism. He managed to keep the prince on his father’s soil for over a year. In June 1646, however, Queen Henrietta Maria’s advisors, John Colepeper, George, Lord Digby, Henry Wilmot, the later 1st Earl of Rochester, and Henry Jermyn arrived in Jersey. They persuaded the prince to leave for St-Germain-en-Laye. Hyde remained behind in Jersey, where for the next two years he donned the scholar’s cloak and doggedly continued work on The History of the Rebellion, which he had started in the Scillies. Officially, he had extracted himself from the king’s counsels; unofficially, he continued to proffer his advice in lengthy epistles to like-minded allies such as Nicholas, Digby, and John Berkeley.

In June 1648, while there was some hope of a Scottish invasion of England, he answered Jermyn’s call to give counsel to the prince in France. The Scottish parliament, which had ratified the Engagement in March 1648, had invited the prince to Scotland to take charge over the forthcoming invasion of England intended to free his father. It took Hyde two months to find the figureheads of the itinerant court in exile, travelling via Nicholas’s house in Caen, and Francis, Baron Cottington’s abode in Rouen, in pursuit of the prince who had already left France, via Dieppe and Dunkirk. The strenuous journey reached an all-time low when Ostend pirates raided Hyde’s ship.¹⁷ Before he was reunited with the prince in The Hague in September, however, where the latter was discussing the religious terms of the invitation with the Scots, the Second Civil War had taken another turn. The destruction of James, 1st Duke of Hamilton’s army at the Battle of Preston had crippled the Engagement movement in Scotland in favour of Archibald Campbell, Marquess of Argyll’s Kirk party, and had subdued the Royalist risings in England. The Scottish parliament withdrew the prince’s invitation. Hyde had always opposed a Scottish alliance, as the king’s commitment to it compromised the beliefs of the Church of England. In The Hague, John Maitland, 2nd Earl of Lauderdale, had vainly insisted on the prince, too, signing the Covenant and giving up rites of worship according to the Church of England. Hamilton’s defeat strengthened Hyde’s view that a ‘foreign’ alliance would be catastrophic.

Queen Henrietta Maria, who could not have cared less about the episcopalian Church of England, was of a different opinion: she felt that the various negotiations continuing with her husband at the Isle of Wight should not be abandoned. Not even the horror of the regicide, which was by that point imminent, could change the queen’s foreign policy, and her son Charles Stuart continued to pursue an alliance with the Scots (though he at first refused to sign the Covenant). In the face of the continuing opposition of Henrietta Maria and her closest advisors, the so-called Louvre faction, Hyde was persuaded by Cottington to leave the hostile court in exile and instead join him on an embassy to Madrid in September 1649. More disillusionment followed, and Cottington’s and Hyde’s position quickly became untenable. First, the Spanish king was not inclined to provide aid to Charles Stuart, and secondly, some Royalist ruffians murdered Anthony Ascham, the Cromwellian agent in Madrid. Cottington stayed on privately, but Hyde decided to be reunited with his wife and children in Antwerp and left the Spanish capital in March 1651.

Hyde was not the only one to return to the continent that year. Charles Stuart, too, returned from Worcester to his mother’s court at the Louvre. While the Scots had declared him king days after his father’s execution, he had believed the religious divide could not be breached and had instead planned an invasion of Scotland under the leadership of James Graham, Marquess of Montrose, in March 1649. Simultaneously, he had concluded an alliance with Irish Catholics; their army under the leadership of James Butler, 1st Marquess of Ormond, was to win Ireland. In May 1650, however, Charles reached a compromise with the Scottish Kirk and parliament: if he were to recognize their authority, then they would help him regain his English throne. Charles’s letter to Montrose instructing him to hold back came too late, however, as the marquess had already landed with troops in Scotland at the end of April: now disowned by Charles, he was executed a month later. In August, under pressure from the Kirk, Charles signed the Covenant and dissolved the alliance with the Irish Catholics. It was all to no avail, however. Cromwell was too powerful.

Charles’s wanderings and escape from England after the Battle of Worcester of 3 September 1651 are the stuff of legend, embellished by, amongst others, Hyde’s own The History of the Rebellion and by Samuel Pepys.¹⁸ It was Jane Lane, whose family owned the large estate of Bentley Hall near Wolverhampton, who counterfeited passports and letters and assisted his escape, riding off with the King of Scots in attendance as her servant, William Jackson. When her involvement in his flight became known, she disguised herself as a ‘country wench’ and arrived in Paris two months later than the king.¹⁹ Archival records show that many other women were involved in organizing Charles’s escape: in 1668, Ann, the wife of Colonel Francis Wyndham, received £400, ‘she having been instrumental in the king’s escape from Worcester’;²⁰ in 1672, Juliana Coningsby, Wyndham’s niece, was granted an annuity of £200 ‘in consideration of her good and hazardous service performed in the King’s escape from Worcester’;²¹ in 1679, Ann Bird received £22. 10s., she also having been ‘instrumental in the king’s escape’,²² and other women, too, such as Catherine Gunter, Joan Harford, Eleanor Sampson, and Ann Rogers, received pensions because they were vital in facilitating the king’s escape.²³ Only the glamorous and resourceful Jane Lane, however, became an icon.

The Battle of Worcester that eventually brought Charles back to Paris had finally wrecked the alliance with Presbyterians in Scotland, without which the Royalists in England were toothless. Hyde, who like Nicholas had always opposed such a ‘foreign’ alliance, was once again viewed favourably by the Louvre faction. Royalist plots over the next two years were negligible or petered out.²⁴ As Charles Stuart’s advisor, he and Ormond, the so-called ‘Old Royalists’, were burdened with finding a way to restore the exiled king to the thrones of the Three Kingdoms: how to found and manage a secret society ‘that would translate vague sympathies into effective action’.²⁵ The Knot was to be the answer, the true alternative to the Presbyterian alliance. It had three objectives. First, it was to have the power to control any Royalist plot, not simply those devised by its members, a power which, naturally, they needed somehow to communicate to the rank-and-file of the scattered and divided Royalist party. Secondly, as Hyde put it, the Knot was to dampen ‘absurd and desperate attempt[s]’ to overthrow Cromwell, and prevent ‘impossible undertakings’. Hyde might have had the actions of the adolescent Swordsmen in mind, a Royalist faction headed by the dashing Prince Rupert, the Queen of Bohemia’s son and cavalry commander in the 1640s, whom Hyde believed acted impetuously. Finally, the Knot was to organize one large, viable Royalist rising.²⁶ Hyde, ever a cautious man, put his trust in a woman less conspicuous than Mistress Lane, hoping she could operate unseen in the shadows. It was his own sister Susan who was to arrange the Knot’s communication between Paris and England.

In all this, Hyde severely underestimated the Cromwellian intelligence service: at least half a year before the Sealed Knot’s formation, it was already intercepting his correspondence with Susan. Indeed, one can question whether the Knot was ever viable with Susan as the arterial conduit of its lifeblood, information, but luckily for Hyde the Knot increasingly relied on other agents, such as Daniel O’Neill, Nicholas Armorer, John Stephens, James Halsall, and others too.²⁷ The earliest letter connected to Susan Hyde to be found in Thurloe’s archive is dated 14 June 1653, from ‘S. H.’ to ‘Monsieur D’Esmond at Paris’, a code name the Sealed Knot would later embrace for Sir Edward Hyde.²⁸ At this time, Thurloe’s agents did not yet know that ‘S. H.’ were the initials of Susan Hyde. They simply copied the letter, letting the original pass through the postal channels hoping to ensure that ‘S. H.’ and her correspondents did not suspect their letters were being opened, accompanying the duplicate with a note for Thurloe saying, ‘This is from that partie that writes mistically’.²⁹ The interceptor used the adverb ‘mistically’ (mystically) in the now obsolete sense of ‘symbolically’ or rather ‘metaphorically’, secretly.³⁰ The short letter is secretive indeed, beginning with a rhyming couplet that refers to the group of young Cavaliers who had Prince Rupert as their ringleader, the Swordsmen: ‘Since our last change the Swordsmen raigne / And threathen much some men to put to paine’. It seems to be a warning to Hyde that Prince Rupert’s faction was taking root in England, something he would have considered damaging to the Royalist cause: he was convinced the Swordsmen were devising courageous but perilous plots that had no true chance of success and could only lead to the unnecessary sacrifice of men. The prevention of such impractical action was, of course, one of the primary functions of the soon to be inaugurated Knot. Susan’s letter then continues:

I received yours of the 17^th instant

Trading is dead here. It is impossible to furnish you with any such commodities as are rendible in your shop: yet that you may not quite breake, we haue furnished him with 200. this is all that can be procured. he labours hard for 4 more. & hopes to haue 1 more. your factor L.S. hath declared himselfe in tearmes. I fully understand your businesse. this part of the world is growne very subtle. An acquaintance of your M. told me hee would ^Asend^A you an usefull Commoditie. God blesse

your servant S.H.

While characterizing her world as ‘subtle,’ that is ‘insidious’ or ‘characterized by slyness or treachery; intended to deceive, delude, or entrap someone’ (OED adj. 7a; 2b), S. H. aims to establish a bond of common understanding, writing ‘I fully understand your business’.³¹ The question immediately arises as to what d’Esmond’s (aka Sir Edward’s) business is, with which Susan is so familiar, and what is being traded. What commodities are sold in the Parisian shop of her brother, whom she cloaked as Monsieur d’Esmond?

In the late sixteenth century, transmitting secrets to foreign countries under cover of mercantile discourse was a tried and tested method. After all, it was common for merchants to send letters across borders, whereas it was suspicious for anyone else to do the same. To interlace sentences of a letter that had to pass through international postal channels with mercantile terms was an ideal way to deflect suspicion. In 1584, Gilbert Curle, Mary, Queen of Scots’ cipher secretary, referred to important persons as merchants: Elizabeth I was ‘the merchant of London’; spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham ‘the merchants wyfe’, and Mary ‘the merchant of Newscastle’. One of Walsingham’s spies used words such as fabric ‘paterns’, ‘parcells’, ‘stuff’, and ‘warres’ to code his messages regarding preparations for an invasion of Scotland.³² It is no surprise, therefore, to find the Sealed Knot employing mercantile terminology to veil secret intentions, with Charles Stuart handing out letters of credence to the Knot members explaining his decision that he was to ‘make another venture in trade’.³³ Code words employed by the Sealed Knot included ‘factor’ for ambassador (a code word Susan used in her letter of June 1653 cited on p. 97); ‘merchandise’ for letter; ‘purchases apace’ for the phrase ‘grow very strong’; ‘spice’ for ammunition; ‘tobacco’ and ‘wool’ for money, and ‘trade’ and ‘wares’ for affairs.³⁴ This forgotten coding, so common in the late sixteenth century, seems to have been revived in the mid-seventeenth century by the correspondence exchanged between Hyde and his sister Susan.

The next letter of Susan’s to be found among Thurloe’s papers, again addressed to Monsieur d’Esmond (aka Sir Edward), is dated almost a year later, 1 June 1654, when the Knot had come into being, and uses the same enigmatic diction. This time the letter is not a copy but a holograph with remnants of wax seals, signalling that the letter was intercepted and kept behind by Thurloe’s officers, though it appears they had no clue as to the identity of its author. Two days after the date of her letter, Thurloe personally interrogated a Joseph Sheldon, questioning him as to whether the hand of the letter writer is that of Helen Sheldon, his sister.³⁵ The letter is again subscribed ‘S. H.’. Clearly, Thurloe suspected Helen of having disguised her identity by the cunning ploy of reversing her initials: simply flipping H. S. to S. H. This was a technique one of Susan’s correspondents indeed used: Dr James Hyde signed his letter to Susan, or rather to Mistress Simburbe, as ‘H. J.’.³⁶

The letter confirms that the trade is the distribution and exchange of secret information. (Hyde’s only ‘trade’ as exiled Secretary of State of course being intelligence.) It is no coincidence that Charles II’s post-Restoration spymaster Joseph Williamson called his intelligence office his ‘shop’.³⁷ Susan warns d’Esmond/Sir Edward:

wee are not like to haue free trafecke, for the people are as made [i.e. madd] as euer, and fall to opening of letters, by which meanes wee may suffer inconveniances in our trade, which I hope wee shall repaire when this fitt is ouer, my best costumer is now questioned about such matters.

She instructs him to relocate and to set up ‘shop’ elsewhere: ‘I hope you will the souner remoue and by your eare preuent all inconveniances at your next shope’. She further assures him that his letter arrived safely in her hands because he is always able to ‘discerne the cuning shuffling of tradesmen’. To check whether she is equally cunning, she requests to be informed of the ‘recept [i.e. receipt] of this [i.e. her letter to him] by my gossup [i.e. gossip]’.³⁸ By not releasing Susan’s letter, but keeping it behind instead, Thurloe’s agents gained a clear if short­lived advantage. If they knew ‘d’Esmond’s’ address at the time, they could intercept further letters, while releasing a letter that urged ‘d’Esmond’ to change addresses might have put them back to square one. The surveillance time that they were buying by keeping ‘d’Esmond’ in the dark was limited, however: Susan would soon conclude that her letter had been intercepted and presumably never use that ‘shop’ address again, because her ‘gossip’ would not be able to confirm Sir Edward’s receipt of the letter.

An Apothecary’s Betrayal

In March 1653, Thurloe became secretary to the Council of State, succeeding Gualter Frost; within three months Susan’s first letter was filed in his archive. He began to improve the secret service from the moment he was appointed secretary, but he only gained full command of intelligence operations when he succeeded Isaac Dorislaus’s brother-in-law John Manley as PostMaster General in August 1655. From that moment onwards, Thurloe had ‘charge of the postage and carriage of all letters and packets, both foreign and inland’.³⁹ There was no escaping him.

In a vain attempt to trick the Cromwellian surveillance system, Susan did not release her letters into the normal postal channels that were patrolled by Thurloe’s bloodhounds, however. Her circle had noticed that their letters were being tampered with at the post house, as had happened with Susan’s letter dated June 1653 (see p. 97). Thomas Crocker, which is possibly a spy name, wrote to Francis Edwards (aka Charles Stuart), in December 1653: ‘Yours and that in which itt was enclosed came to my hands but they had bene both opened and new sealed againe. I conceiue the reason was ^Ato be^A because the direction was to haue them left at the post house till cald for’. Incidentally, in Crocker’s eyes this was not truly cause for concern, because he too had always used mercantile discourse as a veil for secrets. He put the king at ease, writing: ‘I thinke they AnoneA were not much the wiser for the Secrets they discouered[,] our corespondance being more in order to perticular busines then news’. The topic Crocker took up next concerned a mysterious ‘parsell of gloues’.⁴⁰ Perhaps Crocker had noticed someone was tampering with their correspondence because Thurloe’s polymath and translator Dorislaus, who systematically intercepted, opened, and copied letters before allowing them to complete their journey, was not skilled at all Black Chamber practices: a contemporary remarked that he had ‘arrived at a very great perfection of knowing mens hands, yet he was not at all dexterous in opening and closing up letters, which caused great mutterings and many complaints to be made’.⁴¹ Samuel Morland, who later worked alongside Dorislaus, concurred: ‘alas, [Dorislaus] understood no better ways than to cut letters open with a penknife, and then drop wax under’.⁴² Thus, possibly to protect them from Dorislaus’s clumsy handiwork, Susan avoided the regular post house and instead sent her letters by a so-called ‘express’: they were given to an apothecary, Anthony Hinton of the Old Bailey, who doubled as a postmaster.⁴³ Thurloe, no fool himself, presumably counted the man amongst:

a great number of subtil and sly fellowes in and about the Citty, who are paid each of them by a common purse of that respective faction by whom they are employed, whose dayly businesse is it to goe laden with Intelligence, and Instructions […] and so to disperse them among their factious brethren […] and by this way (as looking upon it as the surest of all) they take a perfect liberty to spit their venome.⁴⁴

He accordingly hired ‘messengers in disguises employed on purpose to dog these expresses from house to house, and from place to place, till they were apprehended with all their pacquets, which was most commonly done upon the road, that so no lettre might escape’.⁴⁵ The filing of letters suggests that it was when apothecary Hinton was apprehended that Thurloe found another of Susan’s letters on his person dated 3 September 1656.

Hinton was first examined on 15 September, and was subsequently ‘committed close prisoner to Lambeth-howse’.⁴⁶ Five days later, having acquired pen and paper, Hinton addressed a letter to Thurloe requesting ‘a speedy dispatch to [his] farther examination’. He had at first refused to talk, but now (as he put it) ‘I shall hope to receiue your more fauourable opinion, which may add much towards my release’.⁴⁷ It is no surprise that Hinton talked, as Thurloe’s interrogation methods were famous for their effectiveness. ‘Really’, one of Cromwell’s sons wrote in admiration to the true leader of the intelligence department of the Interregnum, ‘it is a wonder, you can pick so many locks leading into the hearts of wicked men, as you do’.⁴⁸ The examination of Anthony Hinton, taken at Lambeth House on 22 September 1656, reveals that she-intelligencer Susan Hyde had used his house or pharmacy as a clearing house for her letters for over four years.

There were two layers of protection built in to Hinton’s clearing house: first, letter writers used a cover, that is, a false envelope with Hinton’s name and address on it; and second, the actual letter enclosed within that wrapper was enigmatically addressed, that is, endorsed only with Susan’s initials ‘S. H.’ or her code names ‘M^ris St Barbe’ (also alternatively spelled as ‘M^ris Simburbe’) or ‘M^ris Edwards’.⁴⁹ Hinton delivered to Susan the letters that were addressed to her as such, and through him Susan financed the exiled court, paying Hinton ‘several tymes these three or foure yeeres, sometymes 40 ll. sometymes 50 ll. & 60 ll. at a tyme; all which summes hee returnd by bills of Exchange to D^r

Morley, payable by M^r John Shawe’.⁵⁰ Dr George Morley was Sir Edward Hyde’s chaplain in Antwerp, but he also preached to the exiled community at large, for example to the Queen of Bohemia in The Hague. John Shaw was the son of wine merchants, and by around 1654 he had married Sarah Ashe, a daughter of a clothier, with whom he trained as a factor in Antwerp. Shaw was apparently indispensable to the Royalist cause, providing ‘the principal channel of communication between the English royalists and the exiled court’, while Edward Hyde wrote that, ‘without him the king at one time could not have got bread’.⁵¹ Shaw was the Hinton on the other side of the narrow seas, facilitating the communication of the Royalists in England with the king in exile. For instance, several of Susan’s letters were addressed to Shaw: hers of 13 September 1656, found on Hinton’s person and addressed to Charles Stuart’s spy persona, read ‘To M^r Edwardes these present. To be left with M^r Join Shawe Marchant at his house in Antwerpe’.⁵²

Susan Hyde was not alone in using his services, as Hinton acted for others in similar fashion, and he gave them up to Thurloe similarly. He further confessed that Dr Hammond used the code name Westenbergh; John Earle, private chaplain to Charles Stuart in exile and Clerk of the Closet, the code name Andrews; and all letters without any subscription whatsoever he had delivered to a Mr Lovell. He also confessed that he had sent £125 to Bridget, née Dixye, Earle’s wife, who frequently travelled between London and Antwerp (and who like Susan might thus have acted as she-intelligencer).⁵³ An apothecary whose district was the Old Bailey, where the central criminal court of England was and is still located, might quickly become acquainted with the shadier corners of society frequented by those such as plotters and intelligencers. Hinton was a member of the Royal Society of Apothecaries,⁵⁴ and, in 1648, he cared for the princes with his colleague apothecary John Chase. Yet as Diana Jennens’s confession discussed in the previous chapter implies, Chase also had a clearing house for Royalist correspondences in Covent Garden in the 1650s and for members of the Sealed Knot in particular.⁵⁵ Indeed, all the scribblers in Susan Hyde’s intelligence network seem to have been apothecaries, doctors, or nurses, though as they were definitely dealing in the surreptitious transmission of information, it may well be wise to consider the possibility that some of them adopted the guise of the medical practitioner purely for the sake of convenience.

One of the more memorable scenes from Ben Jonson’s Volpone, or The Fox (1606), a play that mocks the hysteria surrounding plotters and conspiracies in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot, has its eponymous character dress up as a quack doctor, his disguise enabling him to spy on the most well-protected secret of Venice, the heavenly Celia. Mountebanks, whom Volpone self-mockingly characterizes as ‘These turdy-facey-nasty-patey-lousy-fartical rogues’ (II.ii.54), sold worthless medical concoctions, panaceas, potions promising health and ever-lasting youth to gullible customers. In Jonson’s play, Volpone, the fox- turned-spy in the guise of a quack gives Celia a bottle, the contents of which are ‘a secret of that high and inestimable nature' (II.ii.190-1).⁵⁶ In a pseudo- monetary exchange, Celia exchanges her handkerchief, a token most likely alluding to her chastity, for secrets of a questionable nature and value hitherto held by an intelligencer.

Generally, a spy chose an occupation as a cover under which they might operate undetected. Jonson, once a spy himself, knew the profession that spies and other shady characters preferred to adopt: ‘that of a doctor or medical man, such as an apothecary’.⁵⁷ As itinerant professionals, the movements of medical practitioners—apothecaries, nurses, midwives, physicians—would not attract unwanted attention, even if they were out and about at the oddest times. The movement of professions was not merely one way, however, as those in distress were more likely to confide their secrets to those caring for them in the event of some subtle probing. Not surprisingly therefore, those practising ‘physick’ could be easily tempted to turn spy. Nurses, such as Susan Bowen, were privy to intimate secrets.⁵⁸ Yet, more often, spies also turned medical practitioners. That Elizabeth Alkin and Anne Murray, the later Lady Halkett, became nurses might not have signalled the end of their careers as she-intelligencers; it could just as well have been a continuation. This was at a time when licences could still be bought from universities and, as Alan Marshall points out, ‘it does leave the historian some little concern as to the exact fate of the patients who were left in the hands of such quacks as [the notorious cut-throat spies] Edward Riggs and Thomas Blood’.⁵⁹ In any case, it is not clear whether the medical practitioners in Susan Hyde’s circle were all eminent men and caring women or charlatans affecting such professions. That Hinton was more than simply ‘an apothecary to many familyes and persons of worth and quality, whose health may alsoe be much concerned by his farther restraint at this seasonable time for phisicke’, as he pleaded, is plain.⁶⁰ What seems more difficult to ascertain is which of his parallel professions, postmaster or apothecary, was the one he considered of paramount importance, or whether his activities as a courier were simply those of an opportunist who knew a valuable business opportunity when he saw one.

The next trace of Susan Hyde is a bundle of sixteen letters inserted in Thurloe’s papers of 1656, though some of them predate that year. The letters were snapped up in one go, when Dr James Hyde was arrested, as is revealed by the endorsement on one of them: ‘Letters to Dr James Hyde found at his lodging when hee was taken’.⁶¹ Dr Hyde was the son of Sir Laurence Hyde, of Heale near Salisbury, and as a fellow of Corpus Christi College in Cambridge he was created Doctor of Medicine in 1646.⁶² Thurloe must have believed Dr James Hyde suspicious because he wrote to Mistress Simburbe, one of the aliases that Susan used as disclosed by Hinton. These sixteen letters found in Dr Hyde’s lodging afford us a way of further examining some of the spying techniques employed by Susan’s circle.

For one, they feigned familial relations. Among the papers taken in Dr Hyde’s lodging, there are two letters endorsed by Thurloe’s men as ‘M^r Francis Edwards to M^ris Hyde’.⁶³ One letter addresses Susan as ‘Sweete Sister’ and claims to enclose a token of remembrance, the other discussed above with the Knot’s seal beginning ‘Deare Sister’ and fills the page by connecting innocent writing to the free passage of letters:

I am very glad our letters haue so good pasage and truly if thay did but know with what inoscey wee write to each other, I am confident thay would not trouble them selues to open our letters, as yett none of yours ^Ato me^A haue bine tuched.⁶⁴

Sister could be short for sister-in-law, but it is clear Susan was neither to Francis Edwards (aka Charles Stuart). Claiming familial relations, that is, feigning to be a correspondent’s sister, aunt, mother, uncle, or cousin, was just another way to throw up a smokescreen, as we have seen. It located the exchange of letters firmly in the innocuous domestic arena, the better to slip past the prying eyes of Thurloe’s agents unexamined. Edwards only has Susan Hyde as his sister in the underground world of spies, Hinton’s confession revealing that one of the code names Susan employed was Mistress Edwards.

That women’s discourse deflected suspicion had certainly not escaped the circle’s attention. In a third letter, this time addressed to Dr Hyde, and subscribed ‘F. H.’, the letter writer is or pretends to be a married woman, and also affects membership of the medical profession, opening the epistle as follows:

If I tell you I am a woman of great imployment you will take it for a preamble to begg your pardon for my long silence, and to lett you know att the last I am turned absolute Nurse both to the young and Ould which takes vp allmost my whole time.

This female persona embraces Susan as a daughter, writing:

it maybe by my Daughters Susans meanes you may finde out the young gentillman my Husbands kingesman that you and I had sum talke of, letters he will not vnderstand [,] but it maybe if handesumbly handled and made vnderstand his frends condition abroad [,] it may produce sumthing.

Susan being Sir Edward Hyde’s sister, then ‘F. H.’ would have been Mary Langford of Trowbridge, their mother. If so, then Mary used false initials. It is more likely that the letter was written by a man pretending to be a woman, a not unheard-of tactic, as we will see in the case of the agent Blanck Marshall. There is at least one further instance of gender reversal, as the letter reads: ‘there is added to our company a littell Juell [that is, Jewel] young ffrank: which [sic] I beleeue wilbe very like her ffather [my emphasis] both complection and heare a very great Beauty’.⁶⁵ This female persona ends the letter by claiming that her husband is grown suddenly deaf, describing his condition and pain in dreary detail. The reference to those living in exile, ‘his frends condition abroad’, and again the obsession with conveyance of letters, might betray the letter writer as an intriguer to a careful reader. However, the weary eyes of an interceptor such as Dorislaus, merely skimming the letter because he has piles of other papers to inspect, would doubtless have been drawn to the opening ‘I am woman’, the few capitalized words, such as ‘Daughter’, ‘Beauty’, ‘My Husband’, and taken in the ending, the whining of a woman about her husband’s deafness, and would have in all likelihood placed the letter on the pile marked ‘innocuous’. It may have been anything but, however, as the letter writer claims to be Susan’s mother, meaning the husband’s kinsman could be Sir Edward Hyde. The letter writer could be suggesting that Sir Edward is not receptive to the latest plots put forward. Such a message would aptly describe the overcautious nature of the Knot.

The sixteen letters also allow us to reconstruct some of Susan’s movements. Susan seems to have resided a while in London, ‘over against Baynard[’s] Castle’,⁶⁶ a medieval palace on the Thames owned by the Herberts, south-east between modern Blackfriars station and St Paul’s Cathedral, which was destroyed during the Great Fire in 1666. At the end of July and the beginning of August 1656, Susan moved from Oxford, Hart Hall, where Sir Edward had previously lived,⁶⁷ to stay with Ms K. Ayliffe in Grittenham, Wiltshire. Ms Ayliffe was presumably a relation of Sir Edward’s first wife Anne, daughter of

Sir George Ayliffe of Grittenham, who contracted smallpox, miscarried, and died six months after their marriage in 1632. From Ayliffe’s letters addressed to Susan, it becomes clear that in addition to Mistress Edwards and Mistress St Barbe/Mistress Simburbe, Susan also used the alias Mr Gotherintone who passed as a ‘Wollendraper at the signe of the Ravene in Paules Church-yarde’.⁶⁸ The bird of bad omen presumably signposted one of the many traders in St Paul’s Churchyard, another clearing house in use by Susan’s circle, the draper passing on letters subscribed to Mr Gotherinstone to Susan Hyde. Similarly, Susan herself instructed Dr James Hyde, who resided at Shaftesbury with ‘Cousin Lowe’,⁶⁹ possibly his future wife Margaret St Lowe: ‘whilst I am at greet name [Grittenham], our convoy must be by Londone, And if you please to directe yours for mee to M^s Lane widdow ouer against Sant Pullkers Church, she will convay them with hers to mee’.⁷⁰

Susan of the Knot Unravels

Susan’s last letter, before the tidings of her brutal death were received, was addressed to Mr Edwardes (aka Charles Stuart) and dated 13 September 1656. She remarks that the apothecary’s travels would prevent her from receiving Charles’s letters. Of course, she could not have known that apothecary Hinton would be apprehended on the road two days later, and would hand over the very letter she was writing before being temporarily incarcerated. She writes from Wiltshire, ‘my wone [sic] contry’; she assures him he is there ‘kindly inquiered for, with harty prayers for the Good successe of your trade’. She believes there is a leak in the organization, warning the king of a possible double agent:

I muste warn you not to trust My contry man Mr R. H., who hath a M^rs in Pariss, that hee furnishet with the Rarest commodityes of your shope, before any of the other Ladyes cane be adorned ther with, and this hee did this last sumer to the prejudice of your trade ther, And least by his meanes ^Aor any others^ I should bee hindered of the blessing of your Trafecke into these partes, I muste desire your cautione, being so much 71

concerned in your trade, that if you fayle, I breacke.

The name of Sir Robert Honywood, the Queen of Bohemia’s master of the household, appears on a list of Cromwell’s spies.⁷² It remains pure speculation, but Susan might have been on to him. His initials fit the bill. Coincidence or not, she describes the double agent as her ‘contry man’, and like herself Honywood was in England at the time.⁷³ Susan continues to fill her letter with familial discourse, but it is likely that like all other narration of domesticity in this circle’s correspondence it contained a coded political message. ‘Mr R. H.’ knew of the circle’s intention to recruit a young man of approximately fifteen years of age to assist Mr Edwards or Mr Edwards’s son in ‘the trade’. He himself proposed a candidate to Dr James Hyde in August 1656.⁷⁴ Around this time the Sealed Knot was regrouping, recruiting two more agents: ‘Major Philip Honywood as a courier to and from the exiles, and Alan Brodrick as a combination of secretary and intelligencer’.⁷⁵ The former might have been a relation of the treacherous Sir Robert. Susan urges the king to carefully consider the fitness of R. H.’s candidate, the youth of fifteen, for the job at hand: ‘let mee know your minde—By the olde way [,] the hartichockes [,] as soune as you cane’.⁷⁶ Her directive to communicate by artichokes seems peculiar, but it is possibly hinting at a recipe for invisible ink, a method they had presumably used before, and one whose main ingredient was perhaps more easily obtained, and perhaps less liable to arouse suspicions, than the oft-used citrus fruits.⁷⁷

Susan knew she was in deep, when she wrote to the king, I ‘being so much concerned in your trade, that if you fayle, I breacke’.⁷⁸ She was more than a mere accomplice; she was to some degree the focal point of communication for the loyalists with the exiled court, Ann Graham addressing Susan as early as March 1652: ‘I haue A frind who is now in fflanders at Antwerpe whear I understand your brother S^r Edward is now residing; my humble sute to you is that you will be pleased to conuey this inclossed to him; […] I know no other waie how it may so saffely com to his hand’.⁷⁹ For safe conveyance of letters and for entrusted information, Susan was at the heart of things, John Seymour writing to Sir Edward in July 1656 ‘M.^ris Susan shall alwayes know where I am, & therefore if you haue any commands, shee will deliver them to mee’.⁸⁰ Seymour frequented Chase’s clearing house in Covent Garden and might have been attempting to assist the Knot’s communication as courier.⁸¹ Things began to unravel when Susan noticed that her letters were intercepted: ‘I haue had no letters from the marchant [John Shaw?] since yours of the 3 of this ^Ain^A stante, nor intelligence, then what I formerly acquainted you withall, at which I maruel’.⁸² Thurloe’s men would break her indeed, if not literally on the rack, then mentally.

On 11 December 1656, John Cosin wrote a long letter to Sir Edward Hyde in Bruges. The letter was endorsed as follows:

A very melancholy Account of the cruel vsage of one M^rs Hyde, a Relation of the Chancellour’s, who had been seized upon suspicion of illicit correspondence; & tho nothing was found upon her, yet they used her 83

so ill, & terrified her so much that she lost her senses, & expired in a few days in that condition.

The letter details how Susan, after having remained at Grittenham for five weeks with the intention of returning to London within a fortnight, was arrested by three officers: ‘entring into her chamber with violence, seizing vpon her person, possessing themselves of what they found belonging to her, & searching her pockets for papers’. Without permitting her food or sleep they took her to Marlborough, and made her stand before a council for two hours without being spoken to. Thereafter she was brought to a private house in Westminster, where she and her maid of twenty-three years were kept in ‘secure custody’. When her keeper heard she had asked for pen and paper, he forced himself into her room: he breake [sic] into her lodging with his company about him, & finding her in her bed, he asked for the paper that she had written, & being answered that there was not any written, he forced her to rise, & at that dead time of night would haue carryed her to Lambeth prison, pretending that she meant to make an Escape, & that he was in danger to be hanged for her, then he called for muskets & pistols & so frighted her that he was faine to let her goe into her bed againe, for she fell into such a trembling that she was not able to speak, or stirre or stop further in the meane time they tare away all her clothes, & threatned to have her 84

away in the morning.

Susan lost her mind soon after: ‘Sometimes she would cry, that her keepers intended to kill her, & to teare her in pieces’.⁸⁵ Her captors had no sympathy and escorted her to Lambeth House, the same prison whose material conditions had made apothecary Hinton confess within days, where she died a week later. The account of her death is so extraordinary that it is given here in full as an appendix. Cosin hoped that Susan would have the ‘glory of Martyrs’. Even though she is not mentioned by name in any of Hyde’s biographies, she was essential to him. The fact that her activities have remained cloaked in secrecy are testament to her effectiveness as an invisible agent. From between approximately 1652 through 1656 she operated at the heart of the Royalist secret communication network.

The question remains as to why Susan Hyde was so roughly handled. Was she the victim of a personal vendetta between Sir Edward Hyde and Cromwell? Cromwell increased security after Penruddock’s rising in 1655, which, although poorly organized by the Knot and other Royalist activists and easily suppressed, had demonstrated the persistence of widespread Royalist hostility to the regime. He threatened to rescind the Act of Oblivion. Hundreds, possibly thousands, were arrested: only a handful were executed.⁸⁶ Furthermore, he published a tract, A Declaration of His Highnes by the Advice of his Council, dated 10 November 1655.⁸⁷ In it he wrote:

the Walks of Conspirators, who are a sly and secret Generation of men, are ever in the Dark, and the measure of all their Feet cannot be exactly taken and compared, yet many of their Steps, having been discovered through the goodness of the all-seeing God, We shall set down such part thereof as may be of 88

use to make publicque.

Cromwell gloatingly reveals the plans of the Sealed Knot’s rising, which had been three or four years in the making, but it all seems to be merely justification of his punitive persecution:

And the reason why States may proceed in this maner, is, because that which is intended to be Exemplary, for the terrifying men from such Attempts for the future, will not other ways be proportionable to the danger of the past Offence.⁸⁹

He argues that one can prosecute without firm evidence. Hyde sent off a reply to a printer immediately.

It may be mere coincidence that Susan was arrested in Wiltshire in September 1656, little more than a month after Sir Edward published his answer to Cromwell’s declaration on 21 July 1656. The conclusion of Sir Edward’s A Letter from a true and lawfull member of Parliament ⁹⁰ taunts Cromwell, arguing that public executions on the gallows and scaffolds of loyalists instil no fear at all but only hatred of the man who has paid the executioner: ‘Trust me, you have gotten nothing by those Spectacles, and men return from them more confirmed in their detestation of you, than terrified from any of their purposes towards you’.⁹¹ Hyde is certain many more are willing to die a martyr on account of Cromwell’s blood spilling: ‘If they shall perish in or upon their Attempt, what a Glorious Fame will they leave behind them? what a sweet Odour will their Memories have with the present and succeeding Ages’?⁹² It is not clear whether either Cromwell or Thurloe intended to bring about Susan’s death, but in treating Hyde’s sister with such fatal disdain, Cromwell appears to have demonstrated that the death of a martyr is not sweet as Hyde assumes. Alternatively, Thurloe might have wanted her silenced because she was one of the first to suspect there was a mole. Her death, whether accidental or actively sought, certainly seems to have placed Hyde in a compromising position. Even though he predicted that historians will preserve the memory of those who died for the Royalist cause—‘Statues will be erected to them, and their Names recorded in those Roles, which have preserved the Bruti, the Horatii, the Fabii, and all those who have dyed out of debt to their Country, by having paid the utmost that they owed to it’⁹³—he neither recorded his sister’s name in his own History of the Rebellion nor in his autobiography.

In fact, Sir Edward, who penned hundreds of folios narrating the history of the Wars up to the Restoration, remains completely silent about his own sister’s death, as if she never existed. His History of the Rebellion praises some of the she-intelligencers who figure in this book, such as Lady d’Aubigny, Elizabeth Carey, and Elizabeth Murray, but does not once mention the name of the woman who might have played the largest role of all in espionage: his own sister. Neither does she get a mention in his autobiography of which the most recent edition dates from 1857. Hyde used his autobiography as an account on which to base his History of the Rebellion, and there is thus a significant overlap between the two texts.⁹⁴ The printed edition of The Life will not assist those desperately seeking Susan. First, the nineteenth-century editors had a clear agenda for publishing the manuscript that is now deposited in the Bodleian:⁹⁵ ‘his noble descendants, willing to do justice to the memory of their great grandfather […] have caused such parts of this manuscript, as related to the Earl of Clarendon’s private life, to be extracted’. As a result, what is printed are heavily edited excerpts. Secondly, while Susan died in 1656, Hyde’s ‘noble descendants’ chose not to print a single line concerning the years 1655-60. In other words, the relevant years that would possibly narrate Susan Hyde’s adventure and death are absent, the editor noting: ‘The only remarkable circumstance of the author’s life during that period is, that in the year 1657, while the king was at Bruges, his majesty appointed the chancellor of the exchequer to be lord high chancellor of England’. Since Hyde led the inept Royalist secret society the Sealed Knot in the years 1654-9, the period the descendants do not record, it seems that they had set ideas of what counted as a ‘remarkable circumstance’. After perusal of the manuscripts of both History and Life, however, it becomes apparent no nineteenth-century editor can be held accountable for Susan’s vanishing— Hyde’s hand has simply not recorded his sister’s death.

Susan’s name does not grace the Lambeth Church Burial Registers because her friends ‘conveyed away [her corpse] by stealth’ from the adjoining prison.⁹⁶ All leaders of the Sealed Knot were younger sons, and purposely chosen for this reason because as such ‘their leadership of the Royalist underground movement did not involve the danger of reprisals against their families’.⁹⁷ Their possible loss was negligible and could not stain the family’s honour. Hyde might have decided to regard his sister’s death in similar vein. Cosin was not the only one bringing tidings of Susan’s death to Hyde. Two months prior to Cosin’s report, a certain Jane Silvester addressed a letter to Hyde announcing that Susan ‘deparrted this world the 23.^rd of September [Old Style]’. Hyde’s endorsement identifies her as another of his sisters, Anne, and while she left the details to be narrated by others she promised Hyde she would search for a will: ‘I haue herr keys and if her Will is in herr trunke I wilbee at the openinge of it as the lok loke shalbee br broke vp open, such a busibody my affections make mee’. It was a short letter, but the very first she wrote as Jane, saying her new husband had only just taught her how to wield a quill. She assures Sir Edward that she is willing to take Susan’s place: ‘I intend to serue you euerr with all my powers […]I declare how perrfectly I kinde I ame to you and yourrs such anotherr forr trruthe and piety is not to bee found in our Sexe’. Hyde’s endorsement on the letter is painful and a reminder of the difficulty of communication across the narrow seas at such fraught times: even though Anne wrote it on 9 October, within a week of Susan’s death, he did not receive it until 6 May.⁹⁸ Hyde’s reply has not been found.

A Spy’s Gendered Fate and Punishment

She-intelligencers are perhaps even more elusive now than they were when active, and the case of Susan Hyde illustrates this perfectly. If the espionage carried out by the sister of Sir Edward Hyde can escape the historiographer’s gaze, then how many more like her lurk in the archives, reputations unbesmirched or unmade? It is perhaps all the more astonishing that she has never before been unmasked by a modern historian, when not only was Susan Hyde caught by John Thurloe’s secret service, but she is apparently unique amongst the sixty or so she-intelligencers active in the seventeenth century in that her fate was to be that of her male contemporaries: death.⁹⁹ Assuming that suitable evidence was presented, the accusation of intelligencing was tantamount to a death sentence for a man, as the most likely outcome was execution, by beheading or, more commonly, by hanging (those few exceptions, ironically, take the intervention of a woman). The arrest of a she-intelligencer seems to have presented the authorities with something of a quandary, however, if their punishment is anything to go by: almost invariably, they received a cursory prison sentence before being released a few weeks later. In Ireland male spies were hanged until 1653, but sentences for women spies were ‘increasingly commuted from death to transportation to Barbados’.¹⁰⁰ Records of women being executed for espionage are hard to come by.¹⁰¹ In December 1653, Viscount Muskerry even found himself accused of murder because he had hanged one Nora, a woman who ‘was looked upon as a spy that passed through the camp into the castle [of Kilfenny]’, alongside her three male colleagues in August 1642. He was eventually acquitted, perhaps because the order for the execution was by General Barry, another commander,¹⁰² but the fact that he had to stand trial suggests that the hanging of women spies was exceptional and not automatically condoned. The rarity of a woman being executed for espionage makes the case of Susan Hyde all the more tantalizing, even though we do not know the exact cause of her death.

There is no evidence that Thurloe ever used ‘the rack or any other form of torture’.¹⁰³ Early modern England had become too civilized for such extremes. In 1628, the rack was even thought too cruel a device to use upon John Felton, the 1st Duke of Buckingham’s murderer. However, the ‘Duke of Exeter’s daughter’—so named after the man who introduced the instrument to England in the fifteenth century—was not removed from the Tower of London.¹⁰⁴ As such, it could still function as a device for psychological, if not physical torture to extract a confession: for instance, Lady Carlisle was shown the rack as late as 1649, upon which she no doubt imagined the popping sound of her muscles tearing, ligaments stretching, and bones dislocating. Susan Hyde might have been held at gunpoint, ‘muskets & pistols’ were called for to frighten her; she might have been frightened to death.

Even though there is no record of Thurloe inflicting pain on his captives personally, the parliamentarians, if not the Royalists, certainly did not shy away from using torture. In 1644, less than a decade before Thurloe gained influence, they discovered ‘a design for betraying Reading’ by ‘apprehending of a spy, having lighted matches put to his fingers’, as Bulstrode Whitelock’s memorials recall.¹⁰⁵ Such methods were not reserved solely for men, if the nineteenth­century biographer of Charlotte, Countess of Derby is to be believed. After defending the Royalist stronghold Lathom House for months, the countess had finally fled with her children to the Isle of Man in July 1644, on the advice of Prince Rupert. In the months following, Lady Derby’s chaplain, Samuel Rutter, who had stayed behind in Lathom, Lancashire, maintained contact with the king ‘by means of a woman, who for several months courageously risked her life to take despatches and bring back answers during the frequent sorties made by the besieged’. When this anonymous woman was caught, she ‘suffered three fingers on both hands to be burnt off’, before her captors set her loose. We may, however, begin to question the story’s reliability at the point at which the countess’s biographer relates how a dog was trained to replace this unfortunate and anonymous female courier (incidentally, the dog was shot).¹⁰⁶

Women might have been subjected to torture like the men, but when it came to the final curtain in a spy’s unsuccessful career—that is, execution, often by hanging—it seems there were gender differences. The pamphlet, A Perfect Relation of the Cause and Manner of Apprehending William Needle and Mistress Phillips, both dwelling in the town of Banbury in Oxfordshire (London, 1643), relates how Elizabeth Phillips, a shopkeeper and ‘playing the good huswife’ to one of the magistrates of Banbury, ‘procured a Messenger’, a William Needle of barely twenty years old, to transmit her intelligence.¹⁰⁷ Needle was to acquaint the parliament forces quartered in Bicester that Captain Trist, a Royalist Commander of Horse, was wounded and thus could easily be apprehended, while he was being escorted from Banbury to Oxford. On the road Royalist soldiers intercepted Needle, who revealed his purpose and the name of his employer. She ‘was committed close prisoner to the Castle, notwithstanding good Bayle was offered […] what misery hereby this poor woman sustained let them imagine who have but common sparks of humanity’.¹⁰⁸ Like Needle, she was sentenced to death in March 1643. Described as a mother of ‘ten children, the most them being small, one whereof she at the same time suckled’, she was made to stand ‘with a halter about her neck over against the Gallowes’, but was eventually only ‘led about the Market-place with much derision, and so carried […] to prison againe’, where the author of the pamphlet ‘leave[s] her’, before relating that Needle was hanged.¹⁰⁹ In short, the male accessory is executed, but the author ‘leaves’ the female instigator in prison, just as the final image of Apolin conjured up by a letter writer is of her in prison, and we are left to ponder her fate. While the pamphlet is parliamentary propaganda describing Royalist atrocities, and should therefore not be taken as factual, it shows that ideas about punishment were gendered.

With their partisan rhetoric and narrative conventions, pamphlets are highly revealing of deep-seated early modern attitudes towards gender relations. On the morning of the Battle of Newbury, on 30 September 1643, it seems that a female Royalist agent infiltrated the Earl of Essex’s camp having crossed the river, possibly using a raft, was discovered, and executed as a spy. The parliamentary news pamphlet the Mercurius Civicus recorded it as a notable event, its title page labelling an old woman who challenged a soldier by the river bank as ‘A witch sent from the Cavaliers’, possibly because the first bullets ricocheted off her, penetrating a horse’s belly but leaving her standing (she was eventually killed by a better aimed shot to the head, one of the soldiers recalling that the way to kill a witch was through the eye).¹¹⁰ The story was soon taken over by another news pamphlet, transforming the relatively factual, sober reporting of the Mercurius Civicus into something altogether more colourful. Its date reveals that this is a report about the same woman, but one in which fear of her perceived magical powers is accentuated. The pamphlet is entitled: A Most Certain, Strange and True Discovery of a Witch. Being taken by some Parliament forces as she was standing on a small plankboard.¹¹¹ It tells the story of an old woman who had no great difficulty in using a raft to cross the river, but instead she manipulated her board with such effortlessness that the soldiers at first believed she trod ‘the water with her feet, with as much ease and firmnesse as if one should walk or trample, on the earth’.¹¹² They laid in ambush, seized her, and put her against a bank; two men shot her, but ‘with a deriding and loud laughter at them she caught their bullets in her hands and chew’d them’.¹¹³ Another drove his sword through her chest, but she, while still speechless, only laughed and kept standing upright apparently unaffected. Another soldier remembered an antidote against such wicked hags: she would only perish when ‘the veines that crosse the temples of the head’ were punctured, as only that ‘would prevail against the strongest sorcery, and quell the force of Witchcraft’. She prophesied that if it had come to this, that she were to die, then Essex would be victorious; ‘wherewith they immediately discharged a Pistoll underneath her eare, at which she straight sunk down and dyed’.¹¹⁴ For Diane Purkiss, ‘[i]t is apparent that the story of the witch of Newbury is a fantasy story, a story that expresses and manages the terrible anxieties created by war and battle’.¹¹⁵ This allows for the possibility that no woman infiltrated Essex’s camp, that the woman on the plank board never existed. The story in any case suggests that a female spy was considered to be unnatural, like a witch, a supernatural phenomenon that defies all expectation. The underlying assumption, in the seventeenth as well as in the twentieth centuries, seems to be that an ordinary woman could not operate as a spy or did not have the abilities, skills, or vices to do so. Certainly, by implication, one could not therefore execute her as a spy either. Hence, in order to condone a woman’s execution, she had to be transformed into something other—a witch. A mid-sixteenth-century intelligence report also suggests that punishment for espionage differed between men and women. William Patenson, spy to Lord Wharton, reported ‘that they hanged two Scotchmen & drowned a woman for Spyes’.¹¹⁶ The men’s bodies were raised on scaffold poles for all to see, the woman’s submerged under water like the ‘witch’ of Newbury. A body of a woman spy would not be displayed like that of her male colleagues but be inundated.

An anonymous pamphlet entitled A True Discovery of a Womans wickednesse, in endeavouring to betray the City of London to the Caveliers, by discovering the strength of the said City to them (London: printed for J. Rich, 19 Nov. 1642) also records the gendered treatment of captives.¹¹⁷ Parliamentarian soldiers billeted at Brainford stumbled upon two of Prince Rupert’s footmen and a woman: ‘the Footmen were sent up to the Parliament, the Woman they examined what she was’. When she kept her mouth shut, ‘they threw her into the River with a long match tyed about her waste […] she then confest she had been two moneths in the Kings Army, and had the constant pay of Fourteene shillings a weeke, to be a Spie and bring them [that is, the Cavaliers] newes from his Excellencies Army what every day shee heard’, also gathering intelligence in London ‘to the disadvantage of the Parliaments forces’.¹¹⁸ She also lied that Prince Rupert had been killed in the Battle of Kineton and was buried at Oxford. The soldiers showed no mercy: ‘this being confessed, they kil’d her presently, and threw her Body backe into the River’.¹¹⁹ The movements are the same: the soldiers do not treat her as human, but examine ‘what she was’; her corpse is then submerged in water.

From 1646-7 espionage roles fell increasingly to women, and they grappled with the paradox of the Stuart court being in exile on the continent while the king was incarcerated in England. While they began as mere couriers, carrying secret messages in their hair or between the many layers of clothing they wore, women were soon taking the quill in hand and writing those letters themselves. With the key male advisors having accompanied the queen and the heir to the throne to France, women from the aristocracy and gentry became the funnel for intelligence, first between king and council, and later between domestic supporters in the kingdoms and those on the continent. Risks seemed negligible. If captured, and especially in the wake of the regicide, women appeared to have been treated leniently, with what was considered ‘a particularly degrading penalty in the view of early modern Europeans’, hanging, reserved for men.¹²⁰ In fact, because women could not truly be held accountable for their actions— the female sex was seen as innately disorderly, which was one of the reasons the legal responsibility resided with the husband—it was safer for them to take on dangerous intelligence missions than for men. Still, the belief that women were not punished as ruthlessly as men may not accord entirely with reality.¹²¹

The new Council of State came to see women differently, holding them answerable for their actions, especially if those women were protected by neither husband nor title. Pamphlets describe the bodies of male spies raised on poles, while she-intelligencers were submerged in water or kept out of sight, in prison. Drowning was usually reserved for women charged with moral or religious offences,¹²² and women spies were guilty not just of crime but also of moral offences through their involvement in the distasteful sphere of male politics. In other European countries, unruly bodies of women were literally covered up: in Germany, for instance, men were racked but women buried alive.¹²³ Women disappeared below the surface, dissolved in water or covered by dust, a process comparable to how they subsequently disappear in texts and archives. Susan Hyde, though at the heart of the Sealed Knot, was a mere strand in the web of espionage networks. By not writing about her, Sir Edward refused to display her —he did not put her on a pole but submerged her—he might have wanted to cover up that he had encouraged her to enter the perfidious world of intelligence held together by sinful behaviour and lies.

Appendix

John Cosin to Edward Hyde, 1 December 1656

Vpon Tuesday last I received an Answere from my daughter at London, concerning the Gentlewoman that had so neere a relation to you, & so great a friendship for her. She tells me that she sought out & mett both with M^ris Hides mayd who servd her 23 yeares, & with one M^ris Chaffin [that is, wife of either Tom or Will Chiffinch, office holders in the exiled court] that were with her when she dyed. from whom she received this sad relation ^Aof her^A that [fo. 73v] having bin retired to M^ris Aliffs house in the Country about 5 weekes together, from whence she intended to returne to London within a fortnight after, suddenly vpon a Sunday morning there came 3 armed men to the house (two of them being messengers sent from the new Councell of M^r Cromwells State, & one an officer taken vp from the next towne to wayte vpon them) where they demanded for her, entring into her chamber with violence, seizing vpon her person, possessing themselves of what they found belonging to her, & searching her pockets for papers (where yet they met coun nothing but what concerned her owne private affayres;) after which without permitting her to eate her dinner, they tooke her away with them to Malborough, where she continued till the Coach-day was ready for London, vpon the Tuesday following. She had her owne mayd, & M^ris Aliffs man to wayte vpon her but the rude soldiers put her into such a fright, that she slept not all the way. When they came to London, they would not suffer her to goe to any house at all, but carryed her before their grand Counsel, from whence after she had attended there 2 houres without having anything said to her, they commanded one of their Officers to take her, & to keep her in secure custody till their pleasure should be further knowne. This was vpon the Wedensday, & the Officer conducted her to his owne house in Westminster, her & her mayd together. Within 2 dayes after she cald for paper & inke, which was brought to her by her mayd, but she vsed it not. nevertheles because her keepers spyed it vpon the table, they thought to haue aprehended some lettre before she should be aware of them; & for that purpose when her mayd was gone to bed at a distant chamber in the other end of the house, the Master Keeper imagining that the Mistris had bin then writing her lettre, he breake into her lodging with his company about him, & finding her in bed, he asked for the paper that she had written, & being answered that there was not any written, he forced her to rise, & at that dead time of night would haue carryed her to Lambeth prison, pretending that she meant to make an Escape, & that he was in danger to be hanged for her, then he called for muskets & pistols & so frighted her that he was faine to let her goe into her bed againe, for she fell into such a trembling that she was not able to speak, or stirre or stop further [fo. 74r] in the meane time they tare away all her clothes, & threatned to have her away in the morning. at which houre when her mayd came to her, she found her M^ris in such a plight, that she durst not stay in the roome, for she perceyved that her M^ris senses were gone, & therfore she ran to call M^ris Chaffin & one or 2 more besides to returne with her. when they were all come M^ris Hide began a little to recover her senses, & told them what had past, & how barbarously her keepers had vsed her; but when she had done her story, she fell againe into such a distraction, that she never recoverd her perfect mind againe ^Amore^A, till about 6 houres before her death. Sometimes she would cry, that her keepers intended to kill her, & to teare her in pieces, & AprayedA that they might not be permitted to carry her to any other prison: Notwithstanding vpon the Tuesday morning following they tooke her away by force & imprisoned her at Lambeth, where she continued in her distraction a whole week together, & dyed at 5 a clock in the morning on Tuesday.

My daughter to whom she had sent her man, was not sufferd to enter into her chamber: Mr Thriscroste prevayled to have a Minister Aof her acquaintance toA attend her, & to pray by her, but she know him not, & yet she prayed with him, and without him, all the time of her trouble. Of other matters she spake not a word, but that she said once she had nothing but innocencie & God to preserve her from the rage of her rude keepers. 6 houres before she dyed she lay very quietly, & fainted away with praying. She disposed of nothing that she had; & my daughter tells me, that what was left is kept very close, though she believes it was not much. M^ris Chaffin got her burryed, but the mayd knows not how. And thus I haue related you all that my daughter (who is very sad at it) was able to write; but I will number your sister among them that haue the glory of Martyrs.

1

Alan Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage in the Reign of Charles II (Cambridge: CUP, 1994; paperback edn 2002), 118-19: alongside around twenty spies, Thurloe kept 104 informers on the side.

2

Susan Hyde was baptized on 22 July 1607. Burke’s Peerage suggests that Susan might have taken Kympton Mabbott, son of the newsletter writer Gilbert Mabbott, as a second husband, subsequently providing him with a daughter Diana who married Sir Henry Tuite, 4th Baronet of Sonagh. This is an enticing idea as it puts Susan within a well-connected news network, but it is, however, of questionable veracity. Documents in the Irish PRO suggest Kympton and Diana were brother and sister, however, with Diana marrying Tuite the year before Kympton marries one Susan Moss (a widow). In the absence of another Kympton Mabbott who may have married Susan Hyde, with a daughter called Diana who might be the Diana in question, the record in Burke’s Peerage appears most likely to have been the result of some conflation of names intended to connect Diana with the Hyde family, thus improving her lineage (pers. comm. by email with Dr Patrick Ludolph, 9 Oct. 2016). More likely, Susan was, like nearly all she- intelligencers, an unmarried or untied woman.

3      Dorothy Gardiner, The Story of Lambeth Palace (London: Constable, 1930), 166-9.

4       Richard Ollard, Clarendon and His Friends (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1987), 160-1.

5      William D. Macray, Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Bodleianae partis quintae fasciculus primus viri munificentissimi Ricardi Rawlinson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1862).

6      Fran: Edwards to [Susan Hyde], 6 July 1655, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 41, p. 206 ii.

7           

Nadine Akkerman (ed.), The Correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), i. 703 (n. 8), referring to TNA, SP 14/135, no. 46.

8           

David Kahn, The Codebreakers (rev. edn, New York: Scribner, 1996), p. xvii.

9      Sir Edward Nicholas, ‘Cypher with my wife (in words)’, BL, Egerton MS 2550, fos. 28-9 at 28r.

10    Leicester to Lucy, 16 Aug. 1639, Kent History and Library Centre, U1475 C.87/1A. Leicester’s endorsement reads: ‘To my Lady of Carlisle 16: Aug: 1639. with a cipher sent vnto her by her commandements’.

11     Lucy to Dorothy, 5 Dec. 1639, in [Dorothy Percy Sidney], The Correspondence (c.1626-1659) of Dorothy Percy Sidney, Countess of Leicester, Michael G. Brennan, Noel J. Kinnamon, and Margaret P. Hannay (eds) (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 148.

12      

Lucy to Dorothy, 5 Dec. 1639, in [Percy Sidney], The Correspondence, 147. For the possibility that this letter ended up in Cardinal Richelieu’s hands see Nadine Akkerman, ‘A Triptych of Dorothy Percy Sidney (1598-1659), Countess of Leicester, Lucy Percy Hay (1599-1660), Countess of Carlisle, and Dorothy Sidney Spencer (1617-1684), Countess of Sunderland’, in Margaret P. Hannay, Michael G. Brennan, and Mary Ellen Lamb (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to the Sidneys, 1500-1700 (vol. I: Lives) (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 133-50 at 144.

13        

The Countess of Carlisle to the Earl of Leicester, 16 Apr. [1640], Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, U 1475 C.87/5.

14      The Countess of Carlisle to the Earl of Leicester, 1 May [1640], Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, U 1475 C.87/6.

15      Bod., Clarendon MS 49, fos. 208-9, a person signing 'H. S.’ addresses his letter at fo. 209v to 'To my esteemed ffrind Mr Francis Edwards,’ ‘Holland’. The letter is dated London 17 Dec. 1654. In an endorsement Hyde identifies the sender as ‘Mr [Thomas] Crocker’; another hand identifies Edwards as Charles Stuart. The code name Francis Edwards was appropriate for a king, since both Francis as well as Edward were traditional Stuart forenames.

16        

¹⁶       David Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy in England 1649-1660 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), 75-6.

¹⁷             Ollard, Clarendon and His Friends, 122.

¹⁸         

Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 52, identifies the following sources as the most accurate: S. R. Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate 1649-1656, 2nd edn (London: Longmans, Green, 1903), ii. 49-57; Eva Scott, The King in Exile (London: Constable, 1905), 220-83; Arthur Bryant, King Charles II (London: Longmans, Green, 1931), 11-40.

¹⁹             John Sutton, ‘Lane, Jane’, ODNB.

²⁰             CTB, ii, entry date 12 Mar. 1668.

²¹             CTB, iv, entry date 16 Dec. 1672.

²²             CTB, v, entry dates 1-10 Mar. 1679.

²³         

John Lingard, A History of England, from the First Invasion by the Romans, 8 vols (5th edn, Paris: Baudry, 1840), vii. 446.

²⁴             Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 66.

²⁵             Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 10-11, 16.

²⁶             Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 89, quoting ClSP, ii. 87.

²⁷         

For these agents see Geoffrey Smith, Royalist Agents, Conspirators and Spies (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011).

²⁸         

Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 346.

²⁹       [Susan Hyde] to Monsieur d’Esmond, aka Sir Edward Hyde, at Paris, 4 June [1653], Bod., Rawl. MS A. 3, pp. 84-5 at 85.

³⁰ mystically adv.: OED 2b.

31

Daniel O’Neill was a Royalist spy, too, and his splendid nickname frequently used by Hyde, Nicholas, and others, was ‘Infallible Subtle’ and usually abridged to just ‘Subtle’. He was in London in the winter of 1652-3, and his intelligence report, his ‘Brief Relation of the Affairs of England’, was received by Hyde in March 1653: Smith, Royalist Agents, 172, 178. This allows for the possibility that Susan and O’Neill might have met, and that here she uses ‘Subtle’ to refer to O’Neill, possibly acquainting Hyde with his agent’s arrival in London.

32

James Daybell, The Material Letter in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 158.

33

Bod., Clarendon MS 47, fo. 120, as quoted in Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 75.

³⁴        Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, gives the Sealed Knot’s cipher key at 345-6.

³⁵       ‘The Examination of Joseph Sheldon, taken this 24th of May 1654’, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 14, pp. 390­3.

³⁶        H. J., aka Dr James Hyde, to Mrs Simburbe, aka Susan Hyde, 11 Aug. 1655, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 41,

p. 218 ii a.

³⁷        Marshall, Intelligence, 76.

³⁸       S. H. [Susan Hyde] to Monsieur D’Esmon[d], aka Sir Edward Hyde, at Paris, 22 May 1654, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 14, p. 320. (gossip noun, OED 1a, sponsor at baptism, from the Old English godsibb, a godfather or godmother.) ³⁹ ‘Order of the Council of State’, Aug. 1655, as quoted in Philip Aubrey, Mr Secretary Thurloe (London: Athlone Press, 1990), 76.

40       Thomas Crocker to Mr Francis Edwards, London, 23 Dec. 1653, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 9, p. 138.

41      Anonymous, ‘A brief discourse concerning the businesse of intelligence and how it may be managed to the best advantage’, undated but post-Restoration, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 477, fo. 10. This memorial described Thurloe’s intelligence practices to the benefit of Charles II’s reign and postmasters; it is clear that it was written down by someone who knew Thurloe’s office inside out. I cite the printed version in C. H. Firth’s ‘Thurloe and the Post Office’，English Historical Review 13, no. 51 (1898): 527-33 at 531.

42      Morland to Shrewsbury, 18 June 1689, enclosing a copy of his ‘Proposals [for Secret Service]’, HMC， Report on the Manuscripts of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry (London: HMSO， 1899)， ii. 50 (Shrewsbury papers)， also quoted in Underdown， Royalist Conspiracy， 62.

43      Hinton’s profession is revealed by the endorsement of one of Thurloe’s agents: ‘For little John in a letter to mrs. Simburbe， which came under cover to mr. Anthony Hinton， apothecary in the Old Baily’， 25 Jan. 1656， printed letter in TSP， iv. 416.

44       ‘A brief discourse’， in Firth’s ‘Thurloe and the Post Office’， 532.

45       ‘A brief discourse’， in Firth’s ‘Thurloe and the Post Office’， 532.

46       Hinton to Cromwell， Lambeth House， undated， Bod.， Rawl. MS A. 42， p. 361. For information on Lambeth as a prison， see Jerome de Groot， ‘Prison Writing， Writing Prison during the 1640s and 1650s’， Huntington Library Quarterly 72， no. 2 (2009): 193-215 at 196.

47       Hinton to Thurloe， Lambeth House， 10 Sept. 1656， Bod.， Rawl. MS A. 42， p. 253.

48      Lord Deputy of Ireland Henry Cromwell to Thurloe， 31 Mar. 1658， TSP， vii. 39， also quoted in Firth， ‘Thurloe and the Post Office’， 528. On the brutality of Thurloe’s interrogation practices， see Marshall， Intelligence， 127-8.

49        

Francis Edwards used the latter， while Dr James Hyde and Sir Edward Hyde， using the alias John Richards， addressed her as ‘Mrs Simburbe’. Hyde’s letter， which he signs as ‘John Richards’， 25 Jan. 1656， starting ‘My dear little John’ and addressed to ‘Mrs Simburbe’， printed in TSP， iv. 416.

50      ‘The Examination of Mr Anthony Hinton， taken at Lambeth-house this 12 of Sept. 1656’， Bod.， Rawl. MS A. 42， p. 329.

51        

John Ferris， ‘Shaw， Sir John’， ODNB. Frustratingly， the ODNB does not explain how he opened up postal channels for the Royalists.

52      S. H. to Mr Edwardes， aka Charles Stuart， 3 Sept. 1656， Bod.， Rawl. MS A. 42， p. 54.

53        

John Spurr， ‘Earle， John’， ODNB. For one of her travels in the company of Elizabeth Elliot， wife to Thomas Elliot， who was according to Thurloe’s spy Henry Manning ‘easily known by her red eyes’， see Geoffrey Smith, The Cavaliers in Exile, 1640-1660 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 149.

54       See [William Bell]， A Sermon preached at the Funeral of M. Anthony Hinton， dedicated to Hinton’s wife, Mary (s.l.: M. Clark, 1679), 34.

55      See also Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 150.

56       Ben Jonson, Volpone, or The Fox (1606), Richard Dutton (ed.), iii. 82, 87-8.

57       Marshall, Intelligence, 130.

58        

⁵       Midwife Elizabeth Cellier is another case in point; see Penny Richards, ‘A Life in Writing’, Women’s Writing 7, no. 3 (2000): 411-25.

59              Marshall, Intelligence, 130.

60              Hinton to Cromwell, Lambeth House, undated, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 42, p. 361.

61              ‘F. H.’ to ‘Dr J. H.’, 26 July 1656, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 41, p. 208 ii.

62        

62      <http://www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/doctors/regius_professors/hyde_james.html> (accessed 27 July 2016).

63              Bod., Rawl. MS A. 41, pp. 236-7, dated 15 May 1655, and p. 206 ii, dated 6 July 1655.

64              Francis Edwards, aka Charles Stuart, to Mistress Hyde, 6 July 1655, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 41, p. 206 ii.

65              ‘F. H.’ to ‘Dr J. H.’, 26 July 1656, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 41, p. 208 ii.

66              R. H. to Dr James Hyde, Wednesday 6 Aug. 1656, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 41, p. 210 ii.

67        

⁶⁷ According to the Rawl. catalogue. The catalogue refers to Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, iv. 833.

68

K. Ayliffe to Mr Gotherintone, aka Susan Hyde (as the endorsement makes clear), Grittenham, 5 July 1656, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 41, pp. 234-5. For traders other than booksellers in St Paul’s Churchyard see F. G. Hilton Price, ‘Signs of Old London’, London Topographical Society Record 3 (1906): 110-65.

⁶⁹       Susan Hyde to Dr James Hyde, 2 Aug. 1656 (though endorsed as 11 Aug. 1656), Bod., Rawl. MS A. 41, p. 223 b.

⁷⁰               S. H. to Dr Hyde, 11 Aug. 1656, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 41, p. 216 ii a.

⁷¹               S. H. to Mr Edwardes, aka Charles Stuart, 3 Sept. 1656, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 42, p. 53.

⁷²               Undated document, BL, Stowe 185, fos. 183-4.

⁷³         

Honywood receives a pass to travel back to Holland on 19 Feb. 1657: CSPDI, x. 587. Honywood was not the only traitor. Around this time one of the Sealed Knot members, Richard Willys, turned too and became an informant for Thurloe: see Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 189, 198.

⁷⁴               R. H. to Dr James Hyde, Wednesday 6 Aug. 1656, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 41, p. 210 ii.

⁷⁵         

Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 186.

⁷⁶               S. H. to Mr Edwardes, aka Charles Stuart, 3 Sept. 1656, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 42, p. 53.

⁷⁷         

Jana Dambrogio and Nadine Akkerman, ‘Artichoke Juice, Invisible Ink’, Letterlocking Instructional Video. <http://vimeo.com/letterlocking/artichoke>.

⁷⁸               S. H. to Mr Edwardes, aka Charles Stuart, 3 Sept. 1656, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 42, p. 53.

⁷⁹ Ann Graham to Susan Hyde, 26 Mar. 1652, Bath, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 41, p. 238.

80

Seventeenth-century copy of an intelligence letter of John ‘Heamour’ to Hyde, 4 July 1656, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 39, p. 436. Apparently, Thurloe’s copyist misread ‘Heamour’ for ‘Seymour’.

81

Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 233.

⁸²        S. H. to Dr James Hyde, 26 July 1656, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 41, p. 230 a.

⁸³        Cosin to Sir Edward     Hyde, 1 Dec.     1656, Bod., Clarendon MS    53, fo.   74v.

⁸⁴        Cosin to Sir Edward     Hyde, 1 Dec.     1656, Bod., Clarendon MS    53, fos. 73v-74r.

⁸⁵        Cosin to Sir Edward     Hyde, 1 Dec.     1656, Bod., Clarendon MS    53, fo.   74r.

⁸⁶        Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy,     162-3.

⁸⁷       The full title is [Oliver Cromwell], A Declaration of His Highnes, by the Advice of his Covncil, shewing the Reasons of their Proceedings for Securing Peace of the Commonwealth, upon occasion of the late Insurrection and Rebellion. Wednesday, October, 31. 1655. Ordered by his Highness and the Council, that this declaration be forthwith printed and published. Hen: Scobel, Cleark of the Council (London: Printed by Henry Hills and John Field, printers to His Highness the Lord Protector, 1655), Thomason Tract E. 857 (3).

⁸⁸        [Cromwell], A Declaration, 14.

⁸⁹        [Cromwell], A Declaration, 37.

90

The full title is [Edward Hyde], A Letter from a true and lawfull member of Parliament, and One faithfully engaged with it, from the beginning of the War to the End. To one of the Lords of his Highness Councell, upon occasion of the last Declaration, shewing the Reasons of their proceedings for securing the Peace of the Commonwealth, published on the 31^st of October 1655 ([Holland?]: s.n., 1656), Thomason Tract E. 884 (2). The pamphlet is endorsed by a hand ‘July 21’.

⁹¹        [Hyde], A Letter, 69.

⁹²        [Hyde], A Letter, 70.

⁹³        [Hyde], A Letter, 70.

94

For a recent study of the intersections between the two texts see Paul Seaward, ‘The Life of Clarendon’，in Philip Major (ed.), Clarendon Reconsidered (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 123-47.

⁹⁵        Bod., Clarendon MS 123.

⁹⁶        Gardiner, The Story of Lambeth Palace, 169.

97

Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 85.

⁹⁸        Jane Silverster, aka Anne Hyde, to Hyde, 29 Sept. [1656], Bod., Clarendon MS 56, fos. 132-3.

99

As the previous chapter has shown, however, the fate of women like Apolin Hunt is impossible to determine.

¹⁰⁰      Micheál Ó Siochrú, ‘English Military Intelligence in Ireland during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms’, Historical Studies, ‘Special Issue: Intelligence, Statecraft and International Power’, Eunan O’Halpin, Robert Armstrong, and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds), 25 (2006): 48-63 at 58, referring to ‘Minutes of Court Martials held in Dublin, 1651/2’, Marsh’s Library, MS Z3.2.17[2].

101

John Webb (ed.), Military Memoir of John Birch ([London]: Camden Society, 1873), as revised by the editor’s son T. W. Webb, vii. 169, notes Sir Barnabas Scudamore executed a female spy at the siege of Hereford in 1645. However, his reference—Sequestration Papers, Series 1, xcviii. 355—is incomplete and I have not been able to trace the source.

¹⁰²      Ó Siochrú, ‘English Military Intelligence’, 58; a full relation of Muskerry’s trial is to be found in Mary Hickson, Ireland in the Seventeenth Century or the Irish Massacres of 1641-2 (London: Longmans, Green, 1884), ii. 192-204 (for Nora see 192, 202).

¹⁰³        Aubrey, Mr Secretary Thurloe, 5.

¹⁰⁴      [William Cobbett], Cobbett’s Complete Collection of State Trials (London: R. Bagshaw, 1822), xxx. 455.

105

Bulstrode Whitelocke, Memorials of the English Affairs (London: Printed for E. Curll, E. Sanger, and J. J. Pemberton, 1709), 114.

¹⁰⁶        Madame Guizot de Witt, The Lady of Latham (London: Smith, Elder, 1869), 109.

¹⁰⁷      Thomason Tract E. 247 (13), pp. 1-2. The pamphlet is also discussed in Charles Carlton, Going to the Wars (London: Routledge, 1992), 263.

¹⁰⁸        A Perfect Relation, 2.

¹⁰⁹        A Perfect Relation, 3-4.

¹¹⁰        Mercurius Civicus 18 (London: s.n., 1643), Thomason Tract 12, E. 69 (8), 21-28 Sept., pp. 137, 140.

¹¹¹        The two versions are identified in Diane Purkiss, ‘Desire and its Deformities’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27, no. 1 (1997): 103-32 at 103-5. Malcolm Gaskill’s study, Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), also discusses the two versions at 47.

112

A Most Certain, Strange and True Discovery of a Witch, 4.

113

A Most Certain, Strange and True Discovery of a Witch, 6.

114

A Most Certain, Strange and True Discovery of a Witch, 7.

¹¹⁵        Purkiss, ‘Desire’, 105.

116

¹¹⁶        ‘The news of William Patenson, late servant to the Earl of Lenox, and now servant and espial to my Lord Wharton, coming from the camp of Haddington to Carlisle’, 12 July 1548, TNA, SP 15/3, fo. 11r.

117

Ann Hughes discusses this pamphlet, too, but only to suggest that women were punished as well as men: Gender and the English Revolution (London: Routledge, 2012), 36.

118

A True Discovery of a Womans wickednesse, 4.

119

A True Discovery of a Womans wickednesse, 5.

¹²⁰        Julius R. Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 98.

¹²¹        Rudolf M. Dekker, ‘Women in Revolt’, Theory and Society 16, no. 3 (1987): 337-62 at 343-4, 346.

122

Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe, 99; see also Florike Egmond, ‘Execution, Dissection, Pain and Infamy’, in Florike Egmond and Robert Zwijnenberg (eds), Bodily Extremities (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 92-127 at 100.

123

Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe, 99.

4.1

Elizabeth Murray, Loyal Subject, Lover, or Double

Agent?

Rumour, Hearsay, and the Sins of the Father

Male spies were hanged, assuming that their status was below that generally honoured with decapitation by the executioner’s axe. But the punishment would not stop there: continuing post-mortem, as the corpses, necks broken, were cut down and transferred to a gallows near the town’s judicial boundaries, often the city walls: ‘The body remained there, hanging in chains or ropes in full view of all passersby, until it disintegrated and the remains fell on the unconsecrated ground of the pit below the gallows’.¹ Women spies, however, suffered a very different fate; rather than their punishment, and thus their crime, being displayed in public, they were purposely hidden from view: in Ireland they were shipped to Barbados, in England imprisoned or drowned. While there might have remained vestiges of folk belief to suggest that a proper burial was vital for a soul’s salvation, there was no theologically sound argument that this was to be the case. Drowning was achieved by the weighting down of the woman’s body: once thrown into the water she was gone. Just as the women’s acts of espionage appear to have been hidden under the surface of history while their male counterparts had their sins exposed for all to see, so their bodies were hidden by the very nature of their punishment. It is, perhaps, instructive that drowning was also used as a punishment for men who committed ‘crimes that should not be mentioned’ such as sodomy, which was also considered a crime against man’s nature.² This may be coincidence, or it may be a reflection of society’s general view that women were either incapable of espionage or that it was a manly act, that it went against women’s very nature. Whatever the reason, in this macabre fact lies a revealing analogue of gender invisibility in early modern archives: while the male crime was presented for all to see, and thus eminently reconstructable, those of the women are simply absent.

Susan Hyde’s story was the story of a she-intelligencer who was less airbrushed from the historical record than barely entered into it, a process beginning with her brother, perhaps revealing a hypocritical stance taken with regards to a woman’s participation in the public sphere and the world of espionage in particular. Her story could only be reconstructed by reading against the grain, picking up scraps left over from her interactions before her effective submerging from the historical record in Hyde’s History of the Rebellion. From the unassembled history of one woman associated with the Sealed Knot we move to the reassessment of the accepted story of another she-intelligencer associated with the same secret organization, Elizabeth, Lady Tollemache, née Murray, suo jure Countess of Dysart, and in later life Duchess of Lauderdale. Elizabeth’s contemporaries, and again Sir Edward Hyde in particular, also felt uncomfortable with her espionage activities, distrusting her every move, but historiography has kept her in full public view, nevertheless. Hers, however, is a story that has been incorrectly reassembled. Chapter 4.1 will unpick the received narrative, and Chapter 4.2 will construct another to take its place.

Elizabeth’s Character Assassination at the Hands of Gilbert Burnet

Nestled elegantly on the south bank of the Thames in Richmond, Ham House was once part of the jointure of Henry VIII’s fourth wife Anne of Cleves, and its courtly interior remains largely intact. Anne is not the only mistress of the house to occupy a space in the British historical imagination, however, as the stories surrounding Elizabeth Murray, who inherited her father’s title to become the suo jure Countess of Dysart in 1655, bear witness. Murray’s chief claim to fame in Scotland is that she was the second wife of the powerful 1st Duke of Lauderdale, Secretary of State (1660-79), Lord High Commissioner to the Parliament of Scotland (1669-74), and Lord President of the Council of Scotland (1672-81). In England, however, she is better known for being Oliver Cromwell’s mistress, though this ‘knowledge’ is based on a rumour that derives from the pen of the seventeenth-century historian and bishop, Gilbert Burnet, amongst others. It is worth quoting Burnet at length on Elizabeth, as his influence has been so great:

She was a woman of great beauty, but of far greater parts; she had a wonderful quickness of apprehension, and an amazing vivacity in conversation; she had studied not only divinity and history, but mathematics and philosophy. She was vehement in every thing she set about; a violent friend, but a much more violent enemy. She had a restless ambition, lived at a vast expense, and was ravenously covetous; and would have stuck at nothing by which she might compass her ends. She had been early in a correspondence with Lord Lauderdale, that had given occasion to censure: when he was prisoner after Worcester fight, she made him believe he was in great danger of his life, and that she saved it by her intrigues with Cromwell; which was not a little taken notice of. Cromwell was certainly fond of her, and she took care to entertain him in it; till he, finding what was said upon it, broke it off.³

This passage seems so wildly prejudiced that one cannot help but agree with Harry Graham’s assessment:

[Burnet’s] drawing [of the Countess of Dysart] is in many senses a caricature; it is everywhere coloured with the author’s prejudice and personal spite. Since that time other writers have for the most part been content to make slavish copies of the bishop’s portrait, if anything deepening its shadows, certainly imbuing it with no fresh colour.⁴

Graham’s remark, which he made in the first decade of the twentieth century, has received only a partial hearing, which appears all the more extraordinary when Burnet effectively gives us the motivation behind his attack, namely his feeling of being personally slighted:

As the conceit took her, she made him fall out with all his friends, one after another: with the Earls of Argyle, Tweed[d]ale, and Kincardin; with Duke Hamilton, the Marquis of Athol, and Sir Robert Murray, who all had their turns in her displeasure, which very quickly drew Lord Lauderdale’s after it. If after such names it is not a presumption to name myself, I had my share likewise.⁵

Rumours are unreliable at the best of times, but they perpetuate themselves because, as Sir Francis Bacon observed, ‘man would rather believe what he wishes to be true’.⁶ In spite of David Underdown’s sober assessment that reports of Elizabeth’s relationship with Cromwell were probably ‘malicious gossip’, and Antonia Fraser’s perceptive thoughts about Cromwell’s own likely Puritan attitude towards a possible relationship with Elizabeth, ‘Bess was certainly never Cromwell’s mistress in the sexual sense, a relationship that would have been unthinkable to him’,⁷ the accusation has proved so tenacious that a senior school text book asks the question: ‘Elizabeth Dysart: Double Agent or Loyal Royalist?’⁸ That the rumour that she was Cromwell’s mistress persists may not only be due to a modern audience’s love for scandal, however, but also to her activities as an art collector and patron, activities which reached their apogee during Elizabeth’s second marriage, to John Maitland, Duke of Lauderdale, and relegated her earlier political activities to the sidelines.⁹ Her association with Cromwell took place during her first marriage to Sir Lionel Tollemache, however, and the suspicion that she was a double agent appears to be based on her family ties: both modern historians and contemporaries have found it difficult not to assume that a woman whose brother-in-law, Sir William Compton, was one of the founding members of the Sealed Knot could have any kind of relationship with Cromwell without this being the case. The fact that another brother-in-law, William, 2nd Baron Maynard, also joined the Knot, albeit later and unofficially, in 1656, merely adds fuel to the fire. There is, however, no solid evidence for either her having an extramarital affair with the Protector or for her being a double agent, and yet her biographer, Doreen Cripps, immortalized her as ‘Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot’, as if Murray was not only associated with, but was the grand dame of that inept secret society.

Perhaps her relations with Cromwell and her intelligencing activities have been exaggerated and misunderstood, and she only ‘dabbled in plots’¹⁰ during her first marriage, when the Dutch court painter Peter Lely first captured her vivacity on canvas. The evidence points, however, to a more interesting picture than the one painted by received wisdom, as while ciphered letters show that Murray was a she-intelligencer, evidence of these espionage activities does not appear until 1658-9, when the Sealed Knot had already died a slow death, at least officially, only to be gradually replaced by other spies as the Great Trust. In short, she was not so much a she-intelligencer of the Sealed Knot but of the Great Trust. These letters also show that two of her sisters were just as active in that particular Royalist spy ring as Elizabeth, suggesting that Murray’s importance has always been overstated, quite probably due to the connection with Cromwell. Ironically, the decoding of Elizabeth’s ciphered letters shows that ‘her’ Royalist espionage network was not only run by other women, but that the Murray sisters were mere pawns within it.

In short, historians have been too quick to copy the salacious biographical portrait of their seventeenth-century colleague Burnet, and from there leap to a series of misconceptions regarding her behaviour and importance. The surviving evidence leads to a more interesting conclusion, however. It has been suggested she was Cromwell’s mistress. It appears she was not. It has been suggested that she was involved in the Sealed Knot, most notably by her biographer Cripps. It appears she was not. Cripps also makes another assertion, namely that the Commonwealth Secret Service intercepted her intelligence letters in traditional fashion. But it appears that the modern obsession with Elizabeth Murray and the assumption of her importance was pre-empted by the mid-seventeenth-century Royalists: it was not agents of the Protectorate who opened and copied her letters, but those of her own side. An examination of the life and correspondence of Elizabeth Murray, later Lady Tollemache, Countess of Dysart, and Duchess of Lauderdale, leads to one conclusion: the Royalists’ suspicion of each other did as much damage to their intelligence work as the machinations of Cromwell’s spymasters could ever accomplish, if not more.

A Family of Spies

Elizabeth was the eldest daughter of parents who came out of the First English Civil War with questionable reputations. They were from relatively humble backgrounds, William being the son of William Murray senior, a Scottish clergyman, and Catherine the daughter of Norman Bruce, a Scottish colonel. In 1603, William Murray obtained a position within the inner sanctum of the new, predominantly Scottish, English court: the brokerage of his uncle, Thomas Murray, Lady Halkett’s father and Prince Charles’s tutor, got him appointed as whipping boy to Prince Charles. Having suffered flagellations to serve his prince, William initially enjoyed a great amount of trust that translated into certain privileges and riches, most pertinently the lease of Ham House in 1626, a year after his prince became king. A decade later William married Catherine. Even though Cripps calls Catherine ‘as Scottish as her [future] husband’,¹¹ Catherine describes herself as ‘being a Stranger and Borne and bred vpp in Holland’.¹² Both were at one time suspected of being Royalist spies, with William being arrested as such in 1646.

It was Catherine, however, who was the first to be suspected of espionage, following William’s decision to sign over Ham House, to which Charles had finally given him full title in 1637, to Catherine in 1641, appointing several trustees to safeguard the estate in her name. The most important trustee was Catherine’s kinsman, the brother of the Countess of Devonshire, Thomas Bruce, 1st Lord Elgin, a Presbyterian Scot and thus a man whom the Puritan party was likely to trust on the eve of the First English Civil War.¹³ Having agreed to be trustee of Ham House, Lord Elgin wanted to ensure that even though Catherine was his kinswoman, he was not assisting a delinquent. In 1644/5, her love of travel had made him suspicious: in a short period she had gone to Holland, where she had further property; France, where her husband William was residing at Queen Henrietta Maria’s exiled court; and also Scotland, and all of this without either visiting or informing Elgin. Therefore, in 1645, Elgin wrote to Covenanter Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston, enquiring whether there was any evidence that Catherine was ‘evil affected’.¹⁴ Johnston thought it unlikely, reassuring Elgin thus: ‘schee keeped compagnie with the best affected of that Kingdome [that is, with the Presbyterian Scots] and displeased non of them, troulye if schee suffer upon any misreports of hir carriage thair schee suffers most innocentlye’.¹⁵ Five days later, on 12 April 1645, Lord Warwick signed a permit, granting Mrs Murray passage to return from Holland to England.¹⁶ Johnston presumably intended to put any idea of her being a she-intelligencer to bed with this letter, but the suspicions remained.

It was not the first time that Catherine Murray was suspected of being complicit in Royalist plots. In 1643, a Mr Calcott accused Catherine of ‘secretly amassing her rents’ and so financing Charles I’s court at Oxford. The Committee of Sequestration, a body set up in Surrey for sequestering estates of those who betrayed the state, deemed the accusations could not be proven.¹⁷ A mere three weeks after Calcott’s accusations against Elizabeth’s mother Catherine were tested, on 8 April 1643, parliament issued a pass allowing her to travel to Oxford to visit her husband, perhaps in an attempt to provoke her into conveying secret messages to the king’s court.¹⁸ Women were known to act as couriers, with Lady d’Aubigny and Lady Cave being arrested as such, while others plainly escaped the attentions of the authorities. Margaret Cavendish’s stepdaughters, for example, enjoyed the protection of Lord Fairfax,¹⁹ with one of them, Jane, exploiting that trust by conveying military intelligence to Oxford.²⁰ If Catherine did likewise, she was not caught in the act. In August 1643, the parliamentarian general, the Earl of Essex, issued her another pass, ‘for herself and children, 6 men and 6 maid-servants, 2 coaches with 4 horses each, and 6 saddle horses’; they stayed in Oxford from September 1643 till February 1644.²¹ On their return journey to Ham House, Major Thomas Buxton stationed at Windsor ordered all of them to be searched, the pass issued by Essex notwithstanding.²² Buxton’s search party yielded nothing to incriminate Catherine. In short, Catherine had fallen under suspicion of being a she-intelligencer three times between 1643 and 1645: Lord Elgin had believed her to be ‘evil affected’, Calcott had accused her of bankrolling Oxford Royalist quarters, while Buxton had thought she smuggled documents out of Oxford. Each time the suspicions proved groundless.

That it must have been extremely damaging for a woman to be accused of espionage, even without firm evidence surfacing, is exemplified in the case of Martha Parratt or Perrott. In August 1650, her property was sequestered because it was decided she had ‘assisted the late King as a spy, rode in Sir John Byron’s troop, and furnished Capt. Ashley with £100 to buy horses to help the king’.²³ A year and a half later, she claimed the accusations were false and begged the committee to lift the sequestration of her estate:

Martha Perrott petitions that she has been sequestered 18 months on a false information of Rich. Afflett, hired by John Ayres, a vagabond in the country, who has since robbed her on the highway and ruined her, and she is now sick, in debt, and in danger of prison, and ready to perish for want, her whole estate being 14l. a year, and she innocent of delinquency; she begs the arrears of her rent, on security in case any delinquency be proved against her.

As the description of her petition makes clear, Martha considered herself to be the victim of a conspiracy led by Ayres, who was not only behind the false accusation that had led to her estate being sequestered, but had also personally robbed her of her last possessions. She appealed to the Committee of Sequestration’s sense of justice, feeling confident that they could not maintain the charges of her having been a spy. Upon her petition’s receipt the committee decided to look at her case again, but the outcome of their investigations is not known.²⁴

In Canterbury in February 1646, Elizabeth’s father William was also arrested as a spy; he spent several months in the Tower waiting for his trial, before bail was set at £5,000 in August.²⁵ He had procured his release by promising to persuade the king to yield to parliamentarian claims, an outcome Charles I saw coming, writing to the queen on 17 September 1646, before William’s bail was set, that ‘I am freshly and fiercely assaulted from Scotland for yielding to the London propositions, likewise William Murray is let loose upon me from London for the same purpose’.²⁶ The king may well have wondered what additional promises William had made. After all, it had not been the first time that William was believed to be in league with parliament. In 1642, William, like Lady Carlisle, had been accused of having revealed that Charles was planning the arrest of the five members of parliament.²⁷ Gilbert Burnet’s description of William captures perfectly how Parliament’s dealings had destroyed his reputation:

well turned for a court—very insinuating, but very false; and of so revengeful a temper, that rather than any of the counsels given by his enemies should succeed, he [that is, William] would have revealed them and 28

betrayed both the King and them.

In the 1650s, however, William joined Charles Stuart in exile. The fact that Charles welcomed Murray to his exiled court in France, allowing him the use of his title 1st Earl of Dysart, shows that William was not entirely bereft of supporters in Royalist circles, even if important figures such as Sir Edward Hyde would never trust him again.

Mud sticks, however. Some English legal theorists, such as the sixteenth­century antiquary and lawyer William Lambarde, believed that in verifying the credibility of a deponent, transgressions of the deponent’s parents should be taken into account: ‘circumstances to be considered in weighing the truth of the suspect’s deposition[:] […] “parents: as if they were wicked and given to the same kind of Fault” ’.²⁹ It will not come as a surprise, therefore, that Elizabeth inherited more than a title and an estate from her parents: she also inherited their reputation. It was perhaps parliament’s decision to release William rather than executing him that had the greatest influence on how Elizabeth was perceived, as some influential Royalists believed that he had agreed to spy for Cromwell in exchange for his freedom and they never truly trusted him again.

Sir Edward Hyde’s Distrust of Elizabeth

In the 1650s, Sir Edward Hyde kept William Murray, 1st Earl of Dysart under surveillance, suspecting him of being a double agent, suspicions he eventually extended to Elizabeth. On 13 March 1653, Sir Edward Nicholas wrote from The Hague to Hyde: ‘Some ^Anow^A tell me, that the virtuous Earl of Disart is gone to England to his Daughter, who is said to be a very powerful favourite of Cromwell’.³⁰ It seems safe to assume that when Nicholas used the adjective ‘virtuous’ to characterize Dysart, he meant it ironically. In 1653, Elizabeth was particularly influential, having been lady of Ham House since her mother’s death in 1651 and being married to the affluent Sir Lionel Tollemache. That Dysart, a man under suspicion of collaborating with the Protectorate, was visiting his daughter, a woman reportedly in Cromwell’s good books, was reason enough for Hyde to extend his surveillance of Dysart to his daughter. He needed to know whether they were using her alleged influence with Cromwell to assist the Royalists or whether they were double-dealing.

The next intelligence report by one of Hyde’s agents on Elizabeth’s movements is from November 1656, almost a year after her father’s death in December 1655. With the pater familias gone and no surviving brothers, Elizabeth was now not only heiress of Ham but also of her father’s title. As if this was not enough to attract renewed attention, she had befriended the Lockharts, William and Robina: Robina Sewster was Lockhart’s second wife and they had married on 12 July 1654, but more importantly she was Cromwell’s widowed niece. Cromwell appointed Lockhart as ambassador to France on 29 February 1656, in order to seek an Anglo-French alliance against Spain.³¹ Understandably, Sir Richard Browne, father of John Evelyn’s wife Mary and since 1641 resident at the French court as Stuart diplomat,³² watched Lockhart’s embassy—or rather Cromwell’s—with a wary eye. The French attitude towards Lockhart affected Browne’s own status directly: were they to admit Lockhart as ambassador, the French would thereby implicitly accept Cromwell as leader of the Commonwealth, and thus no longer recognize Browne’s status as Stuart representative. In Browne’s eyes, possibly, Elizabeth befriending the Lockharts was a sign she was ‘evil affected’ against the Stuart regime and thus his adversary.

Browne watched Elizabeth like a hawk. On 3 November 1656, he reported a sighting of her to Nicholas: ‘The Lady Talmidge, M^r W[illia]m Murray’s daughter, is come to Paris’.³³ Browne had been too eager to believe his own source, however, because on 17 November he had to admit to Nicholas: ‘The Lady Tal[midge] [sic] or Countesse of Disert (for that title, I heare, shee now takes uppon her) will nott (as I am told) come to Paris’. Browne’s parenthetical insertions perhaps betray English prejudice towards or ignorance of Scottish customs: most English titles were passed exclusively down the male line, whereas in Scotland women could also inherit. While Browne’s words seem to cast doubt upon her legitimate claim to her title, it is telling that she had temporarily dropped off the radar, even if Browne’s gossips assured him she had more ambitious goals: ‘I haue heard say she intends for Italy. When I can learne anythinge more particularly of hir, and where shee is, I shall acquaint your Honour’.³⁴ Elizabeth kept her intentions of coming to France close to her chest, however. In a next letter, Browne writes: ‘The Lady Talmidge Satterday last from Chartres came to this towne [that is, Paris] and here expects hir husbands company about three weekes hence. What shee then intends I haue not learnt’.³⁵ Browne does not take up the subject again, presumably because he had never been able to learn her intentions.³⁶ Elizabeth had, wittingly or unwittingly, outsmarted Hyde’s intelligencer, though, of course, Browne’s failure to find evidence of her acting against the interests of the crown may have been because there was none.

As was feared, Lockhart’s presence made Browne’s position as diplomat untenable and his letter of credence was eventually retracted in May 1657. He lingered in Paris, however, continuing to write Royalist intelligence reports, and it was in that very same month that the Royalists marked Elizabeth as traitor.³⁷ A report from one of Hyde’s agents, addressed directly to the king, started with the words ‘I am assurd by very good hands that besides others, these persons I now name are imployed in fflanders as Spyes, & give Intelligence hither of your affaires’. The very first names listed by this anonymous intelligencer were those of ‘S^r Lionel Talmuch & his Lady’. The agent gives no supporting evidence for his claim that the Tollemaches were spies other than that the information had reached him ‘by very good hands’: Charles Stuart was apparently to consider this sufficient.³⁸ It is not known whether the letter came to the king’s attention, but Hyde kept it among his papers, so he, if not the king, presumably believed the intelligence report had some merit. Perhaps Hyde had concluded, like Browne and this other anonymous intelligencer, that the suo jure Countess of Dysart was one of Cromwell’s spies employed to gather information on Charles Stuart’s movements on the continent.

Elizabeth Murray in Bed with Cromwell?

Hyde’s suspicion of Elizabeth appears to have been the result of unsubstantiated rumour mixed with his earlier suspicion of her father. He may well have taken the view that there is truly no smoke without fire, and the persistent rumour that she was Cromwell’s mistress was simply added kindling. After all, were she mistress to the Protector, she may well have spied on Royalists on behalf of her lover, but she could just as well have spied on him to serve her king.

Barring her later affair with Lauderdale, an affair that so shamed his sickly wife that she chose to exile herself to France, where she died two years later, there is no evidence of Elizabeth taking a lover outside of the marital bed. John Donne junior, son of the famous poet then living in Covent Garden,³⁹ a hotbed of Sealed Knot activity, might beg to differ, however. Presumably from the late 1650s (his letter is undated), when the Tollemaches had rented a house on the Great Piazza, Donne describes her interception of a letter addressed to him:

I received a letter from y[ou]r L[ordshi]p. [Conway] this weeke, but it was rauished from mee by a verie handsome Ladie, who after shee had taken the pleasure of readinge it, tore it and burnt it; a little more familiarity would haue giuen me a iust occasion to haue clept her breech, and then I must haue faught with Sir Lionell the husband, for it is now cominge into fashion.⁴⁰

Donne here writes of a sexually charged encounter, as the letter was ‘ravished’ rather than stolen, by a ‘verie handsome Ladie’ who takes ‘her pleasure in readinge’ it, the language calling to mind his father’s ‘Holy Sonnet 14; Batter my Heart’ and ‘Elegy 19; To his Mistress Going to Bed’. His statement that ‘a little more familiarity would haue giuen me iust occasion to haue clept her breech’ suggests a measure of familiarity already accomplished.⁴¹ Certainly, to consider what might give one reasonable cause for spanking a lady’s bottom does suggest that such behaviour was neither uncommon nor undesired by either party, and Donne’s throwaway mention of the duel that would inevitably follow with ‘the husband’ says as much about the respect with which he viewed Sir Lionel as it does about codes of honour acting as stronger forces than the law.⁴² Donne is plainly boasting as young men are wont to do, but perhaps, like Hyde, we may well read into this letter that Elizabeth was a lady with a reputation.

Her affair with Lauderdale may well have started before her husband’s death in 1669. There is an anonymous verse satire in the Mylne manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland, MS 20292, fo. 7r, entitled ‘Epithelamium for the Duke of Lauderdale and the W. [torn] Be [i.e. by] Way of Dialogue Betwixt Duke Lauderdale & Sir Lionel Tollemache’, which suggests as much. It is an imagined conversation between two deceased men, Sir Lionel Tollemache, Elizabeth’s first husband, and the Duke of Lauderdale, her second husband whom she married in 1672. In the poem, Lauderdale confesses to Sir Lionel that his sexual relations with Elizabeth began while they were still married. Lauderdale also notes that, unbeknownst to him, Elizabeth was taking other lovers, including Cromwell, behind his back:

And whill your wiffe Allace there I did Act

As myne what others did behind my Back

The traitor Cromwell Rothes & BraidAlban

Cane tell als well as Atholl & Strathallan

What Liff was Led by that Curst hated thing

Before & Since God did Restore our King.⁴³

Another satire ‘On the Duchess of Lauderdale’ identifies her as former mistress of ‘old Noll’, aka Cromwell, too, as well as that of parliamentarian soldier Charles Fleetwood, and Keeper of the Privy Seal of Scotland, John Murray, 1st Marquess of Atholl:

She is Besse of my heart, she was Besse of old Noll;

She was once Fleetwood’s Besse, now she’s Bess of Atholle;

She’s Besse of the Church, and Besse of the State, She plots with her tail, and her lord with his pate. With a head on one side, and a hand lifted hie, She kills us with frowning, and makes us to die. (ll. 7-12)

To read this satire as a straightforward damning portrait of Elizabeth would be too simplistic, however. The poem compares her to the mythical cockatrice, a dragon with a cock’s head who, as Shakespeare’s Juliet proclaims, with her ‘death-darting eye’ (Romeo and Juliet III.ii. 49), murders those upon whom she casts her looks. Its ambiguous language, however, also heightens the sexual pleasure she brings to her surroundings: she ‘makes us to die’ (l. 12) can denote that she kills but also that she brings men to orgasm. In the following stanzas, the poet notes that ‘All hearts feel excited wherever she comes, / And beat day and night, lyke Gilmour [the court’s hangman] his drums’ (ll. 17-18), that she outdoes the most famous mistresses of Charles II, ‘Cleveland, Portsmouth, young Fraizer and all’ (l. 20), and in the concluding couplet that the queen would surely have her hanged if she ever were to learn how all her courtiers enthused about this lady.⁴⁴

The earliest paintings of Elizabeth betray no hint of a rebellious nature, portraying her instead as a dutiful daughter and wife, in marked contrast to Van Dyck’s portrait of Lady Carlisle, for example, which revels in Lucy’s fabled mischievousness as she invites the viewer to join her in the darkness behind the curtain. The Dutch court painter Peter Lely twice portrayed Elizabeth Murray, one of his first and life-long patrons, as a young woman: in her early twenties, with a rosy pearl necklace matching the colour and shape of her braided knot;⁴⁵ and in her mid-twenties, as she was about to be married, this time wearing a v- shaped, gemmed belt with a large pendant pearl dangling in the middle and pointing at her womb and genitals, marking the promise of fertility (see Plate 6). In the later portrait there is a black pageboy, a sign of exoticism, riches, and the new world. He is an archetype often seen in Royalist portraits, appearing in portraits of Queen Henrietta Maria, the Princess Royal Mary Stuart, and the king’s nephew Prince Rupert, and as such serves as a reminder of the circles in which the young Elizabeth Murray moved. The servant looks up at her admiringly, offering her a flower arrangement; she delicately crowns a plump rose with her hand but looks at us as if we have disturbed their conversation. The promise of fertility was kept: she gave her first husband Sir Lionel Tollemache eleven children, five of whom survived infancy.⁴⁶

Yet her union with Sir Lionel Tollemache was an arranged marriage, which in itself was not unusual but customary aristocratic practice at the time. It is therefore conceivable that she may have struggled to live up to the ideal of the devoted wife that Lely painted. She may never have loved Sir Lionel, and might therefore have been susceptible to the charms of other men, as she was with Lauderdale. Tollemache was the inconspicuous, politically neutral, but unimaginably wealthy owner of the Helmingham Hall estate in Suffolk. The Murrays negotiated the marriage for their daughter and heiress Elizabeth to protect their own family estate Ham House from sequestration. The parliamentarians would not harass the rich Tollemache family or so they must have thought, and indeed, the incessant threats of sequestration that had started in 1643 ground to a halt in 1649, shortly after the solemnization of the marriage in 1648. Sir Lionel’s own feelings about this practical union are unknown, but he wrote a letter of advice to their eldest son on choosing and dealing with a future

wife:

love her intirely but let her not know it, for all wifes [sic] are but too apt to take advantage of the fondness [that is, foolishness, naiveté] of theire husband, and upon it to growe insolent and imperious, and inclined to pervert the laws of nature by indeavouringe a superiority over the husband, and if shee getts the reignes in her own hands, away shee will runn with it, you scar[c]e ever will stopp her in the whole course of her life.⁴⁷

If Sir Lionel’s advice were born of personal experience, stemming from reflection upon his own marriage and mistakes he may have made in dealing with Elizabeth, then they suggest that he had lost control of her. Indeed, this reading further reinforces the Elizabeth presented by Donne and the various libels over and above the Elizabeth pictured in Lely’s idealized portraits. But care must be taken when reading such sources. The verse satires, for example, were written when her second husband, the Duke of Lauderdale, was at the height of his power, labouring under accusations of despotism and corruption, and she herself was powerful and immersed in his politics. The woman portrayed as adulterous, regardless of whether or not she actually committed adultery, is also often the woman who is believed to be politically untrustworthy. There is no doubt that the Royalists questioned Elizabeth’s political loyalty, just as they had questioned that of her parents, and it is therefore likely that the slurs cast upon her sexual reputation say more about their distrust of her than about her bedtime activities.

At around the same time as the verse satires were in circulation, Sir John Reresby wrote on the scandalous topic of Elizabeth’s ‘affair’:

I went to visit the Duke and Duchesse of Lotherdale at their fine hous[e] at Ham. After dinner the Duchesse in her chamber entertained me with a long discours[e] of matters of state. She had been a be[a]utiful 48

woeman and the sopposed [sic] mistres of Oliver Crumwell.

The entry is dated 13 May 1677, almost two decades after Cromwell’s death, and while Reresby’s Memoirs are more reliable than was originally assumed by their first editor A. Browning,⁴⁹ the fragment pertaining to the affair captures hearsay, as Reresby himself indicates: he writes that she was Cromwell’s ‘supposed mistress’ [emphasis mine].

The most enduring evidence supposedly proving that she was the Protector’s lover derives, as has been mentioned, from Gilbert Burnet’s famous History of his Own Time (1683). While he is often treated as her exact contemporary, Gilbert was not even ten years old at the time of the alleged affair with Cromwell, but, more importantly, his historical objectivity as regards Elizabeth Murray is at best questionable. Not only had Burnet been infatuated with Elizabeth, as the folios of mediocre poetry he composed in her praise suggest, he had seriously fallen out with her second husband Lauderdale, who had been acting as his patron.⁵⁰ Taken in this light, his comments about her affair with Cromwell look rather more like the remarks of an embittered client and spurned suitor who casts aspersions on his former patron’s wife than those of an objective historian—after all, what better way to damn a Royalist than to suggest she shared a bed with the Protector? His description of her father as ‘well turned for a court—very insinuating, but very false’, may well add to our view of Burnet’s motives.

That Burnet’s historical account of Elizabeth Murray is rehearsed time and again, without so much as a mention of his mediocre elegiac verses and the souring of his relationship with her husband, is rather problematic. The bishop even goes so far as to suggest that her son Thomas from her first marriage was Cromwell’s bastard. What evidence could Burnet have had in hand to make such a claim? Burnet’s History tells us that after the Battle of Worcester in 1651, Elizabeth’s influence reached far enough to prevent the execution of Lauderdale, her future husband, as well as that of the Earl of Rothes. That she negotiated Rothes’s release in 1657 cannot be substantiated it seems, but Lauderdale thanked her for her mediation in his will, leaving her ‘fifteen hundred pounds stirlin in gold […] as a token of [his] gratitude for the paines and charges she was at in preserving [his] life when [he] was prisoner in the year 1651’.⁵¹ This snippet of information, coupled with a statement of a personal acquaintance of Burnet, Lord Dartmouth, that Thomas never denied being Cromwell’s bastard but wore the accusation as a badge of honour on his sleeve, apparently led Burnet to conclude that Elizabeth might have shared Cromwell’s bed in the period leading up to the battle.⁵² It seems that Burnet, like Hyde before him, falls into his own trap of reading everything as confirmation that Elizabeth was Cromwell’s mistress. While Elizabeth may have been involved in saving Lauderdale’s life, there were ways of effecting this without her being Cromwell’s mistress.

The Sealed Knot Unknots, Cromwell Dies, and Elizabeth Flees

Elizabeth’s own actions shortly before Cromwell’s death, and her own words shortly after his passing, might be more enlightening as to her relationship with him than any other sources, be they lampoons, hearsay, or Burnet’s arguably vindictive speculations. On 1 September 1658, her neighbour Judith Isham reported a sighting of Elizabeth to her father Sir Justinian, punning on Elizabeth’s relatively new title of Countess of Dysart:

The Lady Tolmach was in the countrey last weeke but staied not, coming to take her leave for she is going into France for a long time fearing a confusion she is now the Countes of Disere they call her my Lady Dessert she is soe takeing, expressing extraordinary sivility to every person.⁵³

Judith does not seem to hold Elizabeth in particularly high regard, unlike, presumably, ‘the Countess of Desire’ herself whose behaviour she finds either cloyingly sweet or that of a simple deserter.

On the one hand, the ‘confusion’ Elizabeth had been ‘fearing’ ‘for a long time’, as cryptically mentioned in Judith’s letter, might have been the possible effects the demise of the Sealed Knot would have on her family and herself. In the months preceding Judith’s letter announcing Elizabeth’s escape to the continent, the Sealed Knot unravelled following its betrayal by Sir Richard Willys, one of its six leaders and Elizabeth’s friend.⁵⁴ Willys’s defection, though covered up by Thurloe’s arresting him, affected the Murray family directly. After all, Elizabeth’s brother-in-law Sir William Compton, who married Sir Lionel Tollemache’s widowed sister Elizabeth, Lady Alington, in c.1651, was another of the Knot’s leaders.⁵⁵ He was arrested for his involvement in the Knot in April 1658, alongside Willys and John Russell. Elizabeth was not the only Murray sister who flew to the continent, showing that the other female members of the Murray clan clearly felt the heat, too: in mid-May 1658, Hyde’s intelligencer Browne noted that one of the Countess of Dysart’s sisters, presumably Margaret, whose future husband, the Presbyterian William, 2nd Baron Maynard, joined the Knot as associate in April 1656,⁵⁶ had arrived in Paris⁵⁷ (see Plate 7). The threat of execution was not carried through: Thurloe spared the lives of Compton, Russell, and Willys, but made it plain that any

‘future plotting’ would ‘cost them their lives’.⁵⁸ Elizabeth’s brother-in-law Compton was released from the Tower in July; he seems to have taken his custody as sufficient warning to give up further plotting.⁵⁹ Maynard, who her sister Margaret would marry in 1662, decided to lie low, too. Elizabeth’s flight to the continent may well indicate that she was not convinced by Thurloe’s clemency and felt that the danger was not yet fully averted. While Hyde thought her a parliamentarian spy, Elizabeth may well have feared being branded a Royalist one in the scramble, like several of her family members, and therefore decided to withdraw from the public eye.

On the other hand, the ‘confusion’ Elizabeth was dreading and which made her flee England might also partly have been caused by the imminent removal of protection: Oliver Cromwell was on his deathbed. Royalist friendships with Cromwell were not uncommon: the Royalist conspirator the Countess of Devonshire attended the wedding of Cromwell’s daughter Frances with great jollity in 1657.⁶⁰ Elizabeth, likewise, might have used her ‘suspicious friendship’,⁶¹ a mutual relationship of respect with the Protector, as a protective shield for her family members who were involved in the Sealed Knot and might have met at her house to spin out their plots. As soon as Cromwell was dying, she seems to have feared his son and successor Richard would not regard as innocuous any such gatherings of Sealed Knot members at her estates. The prospect of a Cromwellian regime without Cromwell scared Elizabeth. As she admitted some months after the Protector’s death:

certainly had the old one liv’d [that is, had Cromwell lived], ther was none that could say so much, or expect the last of reality, I can only say I did know him, & I hope I shall neuer know his fellow [that is, Cromwell’s son, Richard] I desire to settle settell in Suffolke perhaps for my life.⁶²

The letter is tantalizing, as it might be read as a confession that she had been Cromwell’s mistress: in that reading, she ‘did know’ him in the biblical sense. More literally, and more likely, she indicates here that she was on familiar terms with Cromwell (remember that Nicholas also had noted in 1653 in the sense that she was ‘a very powerful favourite with Cromwell’), but that she had no such congenial relations with his son Richard who now assumed power.

Her biographer Cripps mistakenly believes that Richard Cromwell’s rule truly made Lady Dysart consider retiring to Suffolk, where the Tollemaches’ seat Helmingham was located.⁶³ It seems a reasonable assumption: Framsden Hall, also in Suffolk, was given to Elizabeth as jointure—hence, if she were ever to be widowed, there would be no reason to leave that county. In other words, she could indeed ‘settle there for life’. However, her not settling in England but fleeing to the continent instead, in combination with some of her other letters, make it apparent that ‘Suffolk’ is code, presumably for a country or region, quite possibly Holland,⁶⁴ just as the partial cipher key she used at the time of writing reveals that ‘Surrey’ stands for Zeeland and ‘Burgundy’ for England. In her will, Elizabeth’s mother Catherine had left ‘the goods and Estate in Holland and Zeeland’ to her four daughters (the Tollemaches had no surviving sons).⁶⁵ Owning property in Holland and Zeeland gave the Murray daughters pretext to travel.

In the 1640s, Elizabeth’s mother Catherine was accused of spying for the Royalists. In the 1650s, Sir Edward Hyde so distrusted her father William, the 1st Earl of Dysart, that he kept him under observation on account of imagining him to be a double agent, suspicions and activities he eventually extended to his daughter. That the Stuart resident in France, Sir Richard Browne, kept tabs on her, and recorded her movements for Hyde, shows that she had become, in the eyes of the exiled government, a security risk. Her travels to Chartres, possibly Italy, and Paris, where she associated with Cromwell’s ambassador Lockhart whose wife Robina was Cromwell’s niece, were watched with wariness by the Royalists. Soon after, one of Hyde’s shadowy intelligencers listed Elizabeth and her husband Sir Lionel amongst the more dubious characters of society, ‘spies spotted in Flanders’. The rumour that she had been Cromwell’s mistress was tenacious and made Hyde, who harboured suspicions anyway, all the more watchful. The verses that taint her as adulteress, however, may reveal less about her affairs with Lauderdale and Cromwell than they do about how she was perceived as a political actor: a woman thought to be of questionable political loyalty, playing both sides, is likely to be portrayed as sexually promiscuous. While the Royalists marked her as a spy for parliament, Elizabeth was afraid parliament would arrest her as a spy for the Royalists: she fled to the continent, desperate to escape both the uncertainty of a new regime and the possibility that the taint of the Sealed Knot, populated with family members and so recently dismembered by Thurloe, might rub off on her. The Lord Protector died on 13 September 1658; Elizabeth did not waste time in fleeing England, reaching Paris before the end of the month in the wake of one of her sisters, presumably Margaret. The received wisdom concerning Lady Dysart is based almost entirely on myth, misreading, and misapprehension. Having dismembered these myths, Chapter 4.2 will take another path, uncovering where her own words have been

stored, and ignored, revealing a very different narrative.

1      Florike Egmond, ‘Execution, Dissection, Pain and Infamy’, in Florike Egmond and Robert Zwijnenberg (eds), Bodily Extremities (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 92-127 at 101.

2                 Egmond, ‘Execution, Dissection, Pain and Infamy’, 102.

3           

[Gilbert Burnet], Bishop Burnet’s History of his own time, new edn, G. Burnet, T. Burnet, et al. (eds), 4 vols (London: Nunn, 1818), i. 272-3.

4       Harry Graham, A Group of Scottish Women (London: Methuen, 1908), 59. Graham’s own chapter on Elizabeth Murray glosses over her married life with Sir Lionel Tollemache, the period in which most she- intelligencing activities would have taken place, and concentrates mostly on her political career in support of Lauderdale.

5       [Burnet], Bishop Burnet’s History, i. 273. It is perhaps instructive that the new ODNB entry on Lauderdale follows Burnet almost slavishly: ‘During 1671 he [Lauderdale] turned upon his partners Tweeddale and Moray, and treated them so badly that they withdrew from the government’s affairs. They themselves were bewildered by his change, and historians can supply no certain reason for it, but it is difficult to ignore the contemporary whispers that Elizabeth had disliked them and poisoned her lover’s mind against them. She was certainly a proud and greedy woman, who loved to intervene in politics, and may have encouraged Lauderdale’s unmistakable tendency to growing arrogance and ruthlessness at this time’. It seems quite astonishing that Elizabeth can be thus dismissed without the provision of any credible evidence whatsoever.

6           

⁶       [Francis Bacon], The Oxford Francis Bacon, Graham Rees (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), xi. 87.

⁷        David Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy in England 1649-1660 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1960), 317; Antonia Fraser, Cromwell Our Chief of Men (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973), 479.

⁸          

Fiona Reynoldson and David Taylor, The Making of the United Kingdom (s.l.: Heinemann, 1998), 66-7.

⁹            

See Christopher Rowell, ‘Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Dysart and Duchess of Lauderdale (1626­1698), As a Collector and Patron’, in Susan Bracken, Andrea M. Gáldy, and Bra Andrea Turpin (eds), Women Patrons and Collectors (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012), 35-65. The chapter is revised by the author as ‘The Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale as Collectors and Patrons’, in Christopher Rowell (ed.), Ham House (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 116-35.

¹⁰         

Geoffrey Smith, Royalist Agents, Conspirators and Spies (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 245.

¹¹         

Doreen Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot (Kineton: Roundwood Press, 1975), 3.

¹²      ‘M^ris Murrayes Desires Concerninge her lands and goods in Surrey’, addressed ‘to the Officers of the Armie’ (c.1644), BL, Add. MS 23113, fo. 13r, in which she tries to protect Ham from sequestration by parliamentarians, also requesting them ‘to forbeare, or offer, any violence to her person’. Catherine spent most of her childhood in Holland, possibly in The Hague, her father presumably serving in the Scottish regiments of the Dutch army. This might explain why Frederick V, sometime King of Bohemia, had a portrait of her in his cabinet in his summer palace in Rhenen: see Willem Jan Hoogsteder, ‘Die Gemaldesammlung von Friedrich V. und Elizabeth im Konigshaus in Rhe ne n/Nie derlande ,, in Peter Wolf, Michael Henker, Evamaria Brockhoff et al. (eds), Der Winterkonig (Augsburg: Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte, 2003), 188-206 at 190 (inventory no. 59).

¹³       Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 2, 5, 9.

¹⁴       Register House, Edinburgh, MS RH 2/2/15/55, as quoted in Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 15.

¹⁵       Register House, Edinburgh, MS RH 2/2/15/55, as quoted in Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 15.

¹⁶        Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 16, refers to ‘the Earle of Warwicks passe for my M.^ris Murray to returne from Holland to London’, 2 Apr. 1645, NLS, MS 3922, no. 76.

¹⁷       Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 9, refers to 19 Mar. 1643, NLS, MS 3922, no. 65.

¹⁸ Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 10, refers to NLS, MS 3922, no. 67.

19

Jane and Frances Cavendish to Fairfax, 17 Apr. 1645, in Robert Bell (ed.), Memorials of the Civil War (London: Richard Bentley, 1849), i. 193-5. Jane and Frances thank Fairfax for 'noble favours'； in a postscript they write that their sister Elizabeth is grateful for ‘his protection’.

20

Katie Whitaker identifies Jane Cavendish as intelligencer: see Whitaker, Mad Madge (London: Chatto & Windus, 2003), 86. James Knowles suggests all the Cavendish sisters, Jane, Frances, and Elizabeth, acted as such, but without providing evidence other than their letter addressed to Fairfax: see Knowles, ‘ “War Is All the World About” ’, in Ben van Beneden and Nora de Poorter (eds), Royalist Refugees (Schoten: BAI, 2006), 21-36 at 29.

21

‘Cases before the Committee: September 1650’, Calendar, Committee for Compounding, Mary Anne Everett Green (ed.) (London: HMSO, 1892), iv. 2553 (entry date: 23 Jan. 1651).

²²        Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 11, refers to NLS, MS 3922, no. 73.

²³         

Calendar, Committee for the Advance of Money, Mary Anne Everett Green (ed.) (London: HMSO, 1888), iii. 1261 (entry date 7 Aug. 1650).

²⁴        Calendar, Committee for the Advance of Money, iii. 1261 (entry date 7 Jan. 1652).

²⁵        R. Malcolm Smuts, ‘Murray, William’, ODNB； Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 21-3.

²⁶       Charles I to Henrietta Maria, 7 Sept. 1646, Newcastle, [Charles I], Charles I in 1646, J. Bruce (ed.) (London: Camden Society, 1856), 63-5 at 63.

²⁷        Smuts, ‘Murray, William’, ODNB； Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 7.

²⁸        [Burnet], Bishop Burnet’s History, i. 272.

²⁹         

Elizabeth Hanson, ‘Torture and Truth in Renaissance England’, Representations 34 (1991): 53-84 at 63, citing William Lambarde, Eirenarchia (1581), 220.

³⁰        Nicholas to Hyde, 3/13 Mar. 1653, BL, Add. MS 4180 (copies by Birch), fo. 86r； see also Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 42.

³¹       Timothy Venning, ‘Lockhart, William’, ODNB； C. H. Firth, ‘Cromwell’s Instructions to Colonel Lockhart in 1656’, English Historical Review 21, no. 84 (1906): 742-6.

³²        Gary M. Bell, A Handlist of British Diplomatic Representatives 1509-1688 (London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1990), entry F223. Browne is often labelled ambassador in secondary literature, but his instructions and letters of credence, identified by Bell, make it clear that he was appointed as agent. In those documents, Charles I also emphasized that Browne was ‘vn des Gentilhommes de nostre Chambre priuée’, which allowed Browne to serve in a less formal capacity: see TNA, SP 78/11, fos. 61-2； and BL, Add. MS 15856, fos. 9-10.

³³        Sir Richard Browne to Nicholas, 3 Nov. 1656, Paris, NP, iii. 286 (fo. 107).

³⁴        Sir Richard Browne to Nicholas, 17 Nov. 1656, Paris, NP, iii. 287 (fo. 114).

³⁵        Sir Richard Browne to Nicholas, 24 Nov. 1656, Paris, NP, iii. 291 (fo. 118)； see also Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 49.

³⁶       BL, Add. MS 78192 are Hyde’s letters to Browne dated 1653-60 but these do not take up the subject of Lady Dysart.

37

J. T. Peacey, ‘Browne, Sir Richard’, ODNB. On Browne’s newsletters see also Noel Malcolm, ‘An Unknown Policy Proposal by Thomas Hobbes’，The Historical Journal 55, no. 1 (2012): 145-60.

³⁸        Bod., Clarendon MS 54, fo. 287. The document is anonymous but dated May 1657.

³⁹       Daniel Starza Smith, ‘Busy Young Fool, Unruly Son?’, Review of English Studies 62, no. 256 (2011): 538-61, specifically 549.

⁴⁰       Starza Smith, ‘Busy Young Fool’, 561, appendix, letter no. 6. The transcription of the undated letter was taken from a Puttick & Simpson auction catalogue (19 Dec. 1855, lot. 36); its current location is unknown.

⁴¹       ‘Clept’, though not attested in the OED, is presumably the past tense of the verb ‘to clap’, meaning to ‘strike’, and ‘breech’ is the now obsolete noun of either a ‘garment covering the loins and thighs’ (OED noun 1a) or the ‘part of the body covered by this garment’, the buttocks (OED noun 4a). Thus, ‘clept her breech’ means, at the very least, spanked her arse.

⁴²       Cromwell had acted to ban the ‘courtly vice’ of duelling in 1651, 1654, and 1656, following which any survivors could be sentenced to death, even if the duel had taken place overseas, but duelling amongst Royalists in exile would reach a peak in 1658/9, not long after Donne junior’s letter was most likely written, leading Charles Stuart to ban duellists from his court as punishment: see Roger B. Manning, Swordsmen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 226, and Smith, The Cavaliers in Exile, 124.

⁴³       James Maidment (ed.), A Book of Scotish [sic] Pasquils, 1568-1715 (Edinburgh: William Paterson, 1868), prints ll. 19-24 at 244-5 as well, but with many transcription errors, even replacing the possessive pronoun ‘my’ in l. 20 with ‘your’ and thereby unwittingly distorting the meaning of the stanza.

⁴⁴        ‘On the Duchess of Lauderdale’, as printed in Maidment (ed.), A Book of Scotish [sic] Pasquils, 241.

⁴⁵       In Painted Ladies, Catharine MacLeod and Julia Marciari Alexander (eds) (London: NPG Publications, in association with Yale Center for British Art, 2001), this portrait is given as Fig. 40 and described as follows: Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Dysart; Sir Peter Lely, c.1650; Oil on canvas, 1222 x 1010 mm; Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Ham House). They thus tentatively date the portrait shortly after her marriage, a dating presumably based on the visual detail of costume, hairstyle, etc., rather than on documentary evidence.

⁴⁶        See Elizabeth Murray’s genealogy in Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, p. x.

⁴⁷        E. D. H. Tollemache, The Tollemaches of Helmingham and Ham (Ipswich: W. S. Cowell, 1949), 63.

48

[John Reresby], Memoirs of Sir John Reresby, Andrew Browning (ed.), 2nd edn rev. by Mary K. Geiter and W. A. Speck (London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1991), 121.

49

The discovery of the Mexborough manuscripts, c.2,500 letters and further documents preserved in the West Yorkshire Record Office, made it possible to gain insights into Reresby’s compilation methods: see Mary K. Geiter and W. A. Speck, ‘The Reliability of Sir John Reresby’s “Memoirs” and His Account of the Oxford Parliament of 1681’, Historical Research 62 (1989): 104-12.

⁵⁰       One poem of seventy-two lines, entitled ‘Copy of verses made by Dr Gilbert Burnet, anno 1677, on Duchess Lauderdale, written and presented to her out of his own hand’, is printed in Rev. Lawrence Charteris, Catalogues of Scottish Writers (Edinburgh: Thomas Stevenson, 1833), 56-9. Maidment, who printed an excerpt of that same poem, even argues that Burnet ‘appears to have entertained not an entirely Platonic passion’ for his subject: see Maidment (ed.), A Book of Scotish [sic] Pasquils, 237.

⁵¹       NLS, MS 578, fo. 100 (fo. 100 is crossed out and in pencil fo. 30 is added), also quoted in Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 41.

⁵²       The 1823 edition of Burnet’s History of his Own Time, iv. 228, makes the claim in a footnote giving the private communication of Lord Dartmouth as a source. (See also Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 36.) Fraser takes a different stance, however, concluding that Thomas could not have been the Protector’s child, on the grounds that ‘the dates hardly fitted, due to Cromwell’s prolonged absences abroad at this period’. She considers the later assumption that Elizabeth had influence over Cromwell, however, to the countess’s own manipulation of her image, paraphrasing Burnet: ‘It was after the Restoration, when Bess’s fortunes took a different turn, that it became important to her to improve the story beyond all measure. As mistress and later wife of the first Duke of Lauderdale, she was anxious to maintain that it was her influence with Cromwell that had saved him from death back in 1651 after Worcester, although there is no evidence for it’ (Fraser, Cromwell, 479). That Fraser appears to ignore the evidence of Lauderdale’s will in favour of Burnet’s apparent character assassination is perhaps indicative of how history as a discipline deals with its female subjects: when not simply ignoring them it all too often accepts the worst and most scurrilous of rumours without question.

53

Northamptonshire Record Office, Isham Papers, I.C. no. 470, as quoted in Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, p. xvii.

⁵⁴        It is Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, at 270, who counts Willys among Elizabeth’s friends.

⁵⁵       Incidentally, Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 80, suggests that one of the reasons Compton was chosen as one of the Knot’s leaders was because he was ‘brother-in-law to the influential Countess of Dysart’. However, Elizabeth was not elevated to the title of countess until 1655, long after the Knot was founded, and seems not to have been particularly influential before that time.

⁵⁶        Stephen K. Roberts, ‘Sealed Knot’, ODNB.

⁵⁷        Sir Richard Browne to Nicholas, 17 May 1658, New Style, Paris, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 141r.

⁵⁸       Roberts, ‘Sealed Knot’, ODNB.

⁵⁹         

Thompson Cooper, reviser Martyn Bennett, ‘Compton, Sir William’, ODNB.

⁶⁰        Paul H. Hardacre, The Royalists during the Puritan Revolution (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1956), 121.

61

⁶¹       Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 269.

⁶²       Copy of [Elizabeth] to ‘Guillaume Jonas’, aka Inchiquin, ‘taken’ [that is, intercepted], 15 May 1659, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 249r.

63

⁶³        Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, p. xix.

⁶⁴       See for instance, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 251r: ‘if M^r Laurence’s [Colonel Tuke’s] buisinesse does not require his presence where he is, my thinks he should Imediatly retire to Suffolk’; and TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 257r: ‘If this occasion doe not Inuite M^r Laurence [Colonel Tuke] to goe dwell in Suffolk, I beleeue he will neither com himselfe nor permitt M^r Dent [the Duke of York] to com thither at all.’

⁶⁵        Catherine Murray to the Earl of Elgin, 18 July 1649, NLS, MS 3922, no. 97, also quoted in Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 31.

4.2

Elizabeth Murray’s Continental Foray Incompetence, Invisible Inks, and Internal Wrangling

Sir Edward Hyde’s surveillance of Lady Dysart, which had begun in 1655 with Sir Richard Browne’s reports on her movements, was soon to intensify. Elizabeth’s biographer Doreen Cripps assumes that it was the Commonwealth’s intelligence bureau that intercepted all of Lady Dysart’s encrypted correspondence in the year 1659.¹ The endorsements on the copies of Dysart’s letters, as well as the location of their archival storage, however, suggests a far more interesting story: it was not the Commonwealth’s secret service, but an official in the French post office,² Anthony Demarces, a Royalist agent, who was intercepting and duplicating epistolary traffic.³ Copies of all of the letters that Demarces intercepted were then sent to Sir Edward Nicholas, who as Secretary of State was accountable for gathering intelligence, and a further selection would be forwarded to Hyde. (It appears, therefore, that Nicholas was in possession of a fuller picture than was the Lord Chancellor Hyde.) It is not plain who had decided the grounds on which letters were deemed worthy of Hyde’s attention, but it appears that Demarces was the filter. The copies found in The National Archives in Kew amongst the Secretaries of State Papers bear endorsements that read ‘Sent my L^d Chancellour’, ‘Not Sent but shewed’, and ‘Not Sent at all’. Copies of letters in Demarces’ hand are to be found among Hyde’s papers preserved in the Bodleian Library.⁴ These copies, and the references to their ultimate destination, make it abundantly clear that neither John Thurloe, who at this time was suffering from several illnesses, nor Thomas Scott, who was supposed to be covering for the debilitated spymaster,⁵ ever read them. Furthermore, it is in Nicholas’s papers, and not in Thurloe’s archive, that a copy of the cipher key is to be found. Because Demarces copied the letters, we may presume that the originals were released back into the designated postal channels, as was usual practice (though the originals are either lost or destroyed). It is interesting to note that the endorsements on Nicholas’s copies of these letters also record the date at which another copy was forwarded to Hyde, and that this was always on a Saturday. The fact that a letter originally sent on a Wednesday, for instance, was forwarded not on the following Saturday but a week later demonstrates not only that this process took time, but also gives an idea of the delay that the original letter might encounter via this process.⁶ If time were of the essence for the Royalist plots of Lady Dysart’s circle, or indeed for Hyde’s reactions to them, then this delay might have had disastrous consequences. What is more, if the goal of Nicholas and Hyde was to uncover the exact nature of Lady Dysart and her comrades’ plans, then they must have failed. Since Demarces had unknowingly not completed his Black Chamber task, the copies Nicholas and Hyde received were only half-done: the copyist had diligently copied out the innocuous part, but had inadvertently overlooked the conspiratorial part. This is because the secrets were written in an invisible ink that was never detected and made visible by Demarces. The true contents were literally never revealed in his French Black Chamber, and are thus forever lost since Lady Dysart’s spy ring burnt letters on receipt. They managed to trick the interceptors, thereby ensuring their exclusive access to their circle’s secrets hidden in invisible ink and then revealed using heat or a reagent before destruction. Hence, unknown to Nicholas and Hyde, the partial copies made in France were in effect useless to the Royalist secret service (and equally to modern readers): they do show that Lady Dysart’s spy ring had an interest in another Royalist rising, but without revealing the nature of their plots or how they hoped to assist it. This possibility notwithstanding, the very existence of these partial copies reveal just how Royalist factions distrusted each other and how, wittingly or unwittingly, they undermined each other’s efforts.

Lady Dysart and the Earl of Inchiquin, Both Shunned Royalists

As we have seen, Hyde never trusted Lady Dysart; if her association with Cromwell was not enough grounds to distrust her, then her parents’ past certainly provided a pretext to watch her with a wary eye. His suspicions of Lady Dysart were rekindled when he received a letter from John Cosin in October 1658, noting that she had left Paris the previous month, and with a companion: ‘Lord Inchiquin went, a month since, with the Lady Dysart, whose great servant he is, towards Dieppe, and is not yet returned’.⁷ It is not certain when Lady Dysart and the Irish army officer Murrough O’Brien, 6th Baron and since May 1654 1st Earl of Inchiquin, parted ways, but it is certain that she kept in touch with him in Paris, as they exchanged coded letters. It also appears that the earl exercised no little influence over her as she returned to England having joined a Royalist faction, but it was one that Hyde often directly opposed: like Inchiquin, Elizabeth was now a Louvrian.

Hyde must have thought Inchiquin a particularly odd choice of travelling companion and confidant for Elizabeth, as the Irish earl had fallen out of favour with Charles Stuart. While appointed to the governorship of Catalonia by the French, where Inchiquin was often to be found in residence between 1654 and 1658/9, he had harboured ambitions of obtaining an Irish regiment in French service, ambitions thwarted by Cardinal Mazarin in 1653 and 1654. It appears that the Irish in France never trusted him on account of atrocities he had committed in Ireland over the period 1644-8, which was possibly why Mazarin had refused him a regiment. He had prosecuted and slaughtered his own countrymen in Cashel in the name of parliament and religion, on account of his abhorrence of Catholics, and had become known as ‘Murrough of the Burnings’ (Murchadh na dTóiteán). Having switched allegiance from parliament to king in 1648, he was admitted to Charles Stuart’s council-in-exile in May 1652, but lost Hyde’s respect in the summer of 1657 when, to the surprise of everyone including his staunchly Protestant wife, he declared his conversion to Catholicism following a bout of illness. While his conversion did not help to re­establish trust in French/Irish military quarters, it did facilitate his becoming part of Queen Henrietta Maria’s Louvre faction in Paris. But again any ambitions for advancement at court were to be dashed—his embracing of Catholicism had aligned him with the wrong Royalists, as the influence of the Louvre faction was diminishing, not least because of Hyde’s dislike of them.⁸ By September 1658, therefore, when he was travelling with the Countess of Dysart, Inchinquin noted that not only Hyde, but others on the king’s council too, such as James Butler, Marquess of Ormond, treated him with ‘contempt’ and ‘distrust’.⁹

Lady Dysart’s epistolary exchange with Inchiquin, an exchange that also involved her unmarried sisters Katherine and Anne and several of her female neighbours in London, took place between the May and August of 1659. At its end, Inchiquin wrote a coded letter to a man or woman who used the pseudonym John Jackson: ‘I am fallen into noe litle Inconuenience [,] shee [that is, Lady Dysart] being noe body else that can doe my buisines, which will be my ruin if it goe against mee’.¹⁰ Over these few months, Inchiquin, isolated from the king’s inner councils, had become completely reliant on the Countess of Dysart: it was through her and her alone that he might hope to be included in Royalist plots and so regain royal, and possibly military, favour.

It should be questioned whether Lady Dysart was truly in a position to act as patron and help him to re-establish the trust of the Royalists. While Inchiquin was dependent on Lady Dysart, she relied on him just as much for access to news. The key Royalists did not trust her, and the parliamentarians had presumably ceased feeding her any gossip now that the Protector was dead. In one of the first letters she wrote to Inchiquin, she speaks of her ‘retirement’: other letters reveal that was in London. Using code, she complains that her allies no longer trusted her:

I neuer heare a word of ne newes, tho I am ^Aame^A neighbor to Berry [undeciphered code name], the place ^Athe placeA of dextrious Inuentions, but as poore Lord Percy vsed to admire the […]curiosity of my nature, 11

so really I grow dayly more satisfide with hearing nothing.

Her feeling of sorrow for Henry Percy, Baron Percy of Alnwick, the Royalist army officer who died a bachelor in exile in France on 26 March 1659, five weeks previously, is a good indication that her sympathies lay with the queen’s faction: ‘Poor Percy’ had been a prominent Louvrian courtier. Even though none of the cipher keys list the code word ‘Berry’, labelled as ‘the place of dextrious Inuentions’, it appears to be the address of Sir Edward Ford. Ford’s house, which his daughter Mrs Catherine Grey used as a delivery address for secret letters, was fittingly described as a place of ‘inventions’, because Ford was not only a Royalist army officer but also an inventor of waterworks: he held the only patent granted under the Protectorate for the invention of a pumping station that was erected near Somerset House, which helped to ensure London’s water supply.¹² Ford rented nos. 13-14 in the Great Piazza of Covent Garden, the Tollemaches nos. 6-7,¹³ so when in London Lady Dysart was indeed 'neighbor to Berry’. When Lady Dysart continues, ‘I haue bine violent in procuring my selfe a friend, but I find Ingratitude the most raining thing in nature […] which to a nature so well as myne, is of all things most painfull’, she sounds despondent and disappointed with her confederates.¹⁴ It can be inferred from her writing that she deemed she had been falsely accused, quite likely of betraying the Royalists. She ends her letter assertively and seemingly in resignation of her fate: 'I am sure if Innocence be a pleasure I haue itt, for I can say confidently I neuer did wish, nor act to the hurt of any, & it is a great content not to haue malice, nor couett others, but to find quiett within’.¹⁵ Lady Dysart and Inchiquin were kindred spirits: both had fallen out of favour in certain Royalist circles but remained faithful to the Royalist cause, and both had aligned themselves with the Louvre faction. But Lady Dysart’s association with the duplicitous Louvrian Inchiquin must have confirmed Hyde’s suspicions that she was not to be trusted: the decision was taken to intercept and copy all their correspondence.

The correspondence between Inchinquin and Elizabeth, which is partially in code and of which Hyde received a copy, is the only evidence that she was involved in conspiracies or engaged in practices associated with espionage. Even though Cripps entitled her biography Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, there is not a shred of legitimate evidence that she was herself actively engaged in the Knot, merely that some of her family were members or associates. The evidence we have suggests that Lady Dysart only became embroiled in spy circles when the Sealed Knot crumbled and was gradually replaced by the Great Trust in 1659, though the two secret organizations continued to exist alongside each other at first. Certainly, the fact that in 1659, both Lady Dysart’s correspondence with Inchiquin and the Great Trust were focused on one thing, promoting Sir George Booth’s rising, can be taken as another sign that she associated not with the Sealed Knot but with the Great Trust.

The Presbyterian military commander Sir George Booth, who in 1654 took his seat for Cheshire in the first Protectorate parliament, was not an obvious supporter of the king, and therefore not all Royalists trusted him. A member of a prominent landowning family in Cheshire, Booth had fought for parliament in the First Civil War (1642-6), but was one of many socially and politically conservative Presbyterians who from 1648 began to change sides. They had clung to the hope of reaching a negotiated settlement with the king and so opposed his trial and execution, while also being horrified by the rise to influence in both the army and parliament of the Independents and other even more radical Puritan sects. Booth, who was one of the MPs excluded in ‘Pride’s Purge’ on the eve of the king’s trial, from then onwards moved slowly and cautiously towards Royalism, though he did not openly commit himself to Presbyterian Royalism until his hand was forced. He was again excluded from the parliament of 1656, because his name became associated with Penruddock’s rising of 1655, even though accusations of his involvement were unsubstantiated. It was when he was denied the opportunity to retake a seat in parliament in 1659, in spite of Richard Cromwell’s promises to the contrary, that any scruples preventing Booth from putting his skills to use in plotting a Royalist rising vanished. The Royalists granted him the recognition and respect the Protectorate parliament denied him: Charles Stuart signed a commission for him to act as commander in Lancashire, Cheshire, and North Wales. By embracing Booth, the Royalists embraced a Presbyterian alliance encouraged by the Great Trust and its leader John Mordaunt in particular, which in itself was not uncontroversial.

As David Underdown reminds us, referring to risings by the name of a single man can give the wrong impression, as if the risings concentrated themselves locally in one county, but ‘Booth’s appearance at Chester, like Penruddock’s at Salisbury, was only part of a wider plan, in which the Rump was to be assaulted by Royalist assemblies from Tunbridge Wells to Warrington, from Sherwood to Stonehenge’.¹⁶ While Penruddock’s failed rising had been conceived under the rather negatively minded Sealed Knot, Booth’s rising was organized by the Royalist’s new secret society, the Great Trust, led by John Mordaunt. While the Sealed Knot had been to all intents and purposes neutralized following its betrayal by Sir Richard Willys, those of its members not dissuaded from active duty by a sojourn in prison at John Thurloe’s pleasure still lingered in the shadows. The Knot, now merely comprising a loose association of old Cavaliers, was effectively sidelined and powerless as the organization of a new rising was entrusted completely to Mordaunt and the Great Trust by Charles Stuart and Hyde. The Great Trust had sought to incorporate the members of the Knot along with new blood determined to effect active rebellion. With the exception of the Presbyterian and fairly inactive Lord Willoughby of Parham, however, none of the Knot was willing to join the Trust. They constantly sniped personally at Mordaunt, as did some other Royalists, alienated by Mordaunt’s arrogance, brusqueness, impatience, and lack of military experience. A cohort of prominent Knot associates fundamentally opposed the Trust’s desire for action, a source of internal strife between Royalist factions that was to prove disastrous. In July 1659, Sir Henry Felton and others frequently visited Lady Dysart’s estate at Helmingham Hall where they would discuss their wary objections to Booth’s rising.¹⁷

Lady Dysart, however, appears to have been in favour of the rising, even though her family members had belonged to the Knot. With the intention of joining in with Booth’s rising, her hitherto neutral husband Tollemache ‘spent 28s. 8d. on saddles and other [military] equipment’ in July.¹⁸ Her letters with Inchiquin discussed various plots to assist Booth and also the Franco-Spanish peace negotiations at Fuenterrabia, where Charles Stuart was to be in attendance. After Penruddock’s failed uprising of March 1655, the realization had sunk in that a restoration of Charles Stuart would probably only be achieved with the help of foreign aid, of which the Sealed Knot, and Hyde in particular, had never been exactly keen supporters. If France and Spain were to conclude peace, then they could assist the Royalists.¹⁹ Inchiquin’s letters kept her informed of Charles Stuart’s movements on the continent and his preparations to return to England with a military force to join the rising and reclaim his crown.

The correspondence between Lady Dysart and Inchiquin was not merely one of mutual dependency born of Royalist distrust, but was also of a personal nature. Having said this, the personal may have been a mere guise to discuss the political as is so often the case in intelligence letters. Elizabeth gave birth to a daughter and namesake in July, but the health of one of her other daughters, Margaret, was feeble: she had brought the child to Paris and entrusted her to Inchiquin in order to find a cure for what would prove to be a fatal ailment. Back in London, she was convinced that many letters did not reach their destination: ‘all are vndoubtely opened’. As if suddenly realizing that receiving updates of her child’s well-being or whereabouts was going to prove difficult, she anxiously sent off a flurry of letters to Inchiquin: ‘till I know how my child is disposed of I shall p repeat your ^Ayour what^A I writt weekely’.²⁰ At the end of May, Inchiquin wrote that Ambassador Lockhart ‘and his Lady haue been very oblidgeing in shewes of kindenesse’ to the child. It appears that an arrangement was facilitated through the Lockharts’ diplomatic intervention: Margaret was left in the care of a Mrs Roberts, who hired several other nurses. All was to be taken out of Lady Dysart’s hands for a mere £340 per annum. Inchiquin assured her that this was ‘not thought deare’, considering how much ‘cloathes’ the child would need.²¹ It is at this point that the suspicion arises that the letters are not merely discussing a child’s well-being: £340pa was enough to pay for board, lodging, several nurses, and still leave enough for a preposterous amount of clothing. Perhaps the discourse of ailment in these letters is comparable to the Sealed Knot’s mercantile discourse: ‘illness’ may have stood for ‘conspiracy’, for instance, just like ‘trade’ meant ‘intelligence’ for Susan Hyde. In early August, Inchiquin reassured Lady Dysart’s sister Katherine that her niece was doing well and resided in the country; he would receive weekly updates from her nurses.²² One can only imagine how distressing it must have been to read in a postscript a week thereafter, without further explanation, that the child’s chief caretaker Mrs Roberts had died.²³ Had the head nurse suddenly succumbed to an infectious disease? Whether a coincidence or not, the only care the nurses provided was palliative: little Margaret Tollemache died in December 1659.²⁴

Dysart and Inchiquin’s correspondence came to a halt soon after Mrs Roberts’s death, in August 1659, even though the child was still living. The death of Mrs Roberts, if she ever existed, also coincided with the failure of Booth’s rising, the main concern of Lady Dysart’s spy ring. It may be that with the rising’s failure, the correspondence was no longer necessary, or equally it could be that Demarces simply stopped copying their correspondence on the grounds that they were being watched because of Lady Dysart’s meddling in Booth’s rising, and its failure meant there was no need to continue their surveillance.

The Mechanics and Social Networks of a Cipher Key

All of the letters exchanged between Dysart and Inchiquin are in a cipher code designed by the latter. On 14 May 1659, he sent the cipher key to her enclosed in his letter of that date from Paris: ‘I send you this Inclosed wherein the fain’d [that is, feigned] names are written alphabettically as the true ones are in the other, and you may add M.^r or M.^rs to euery one, according as you shall thinke it most pertinent’.²⁵ Inchiquin’s instruction mentions another cipher key, indicating that they had exchanged coded letters before. Occasionally, they use a code word that is not be found in the key, such as ‘Berry’ cited in an example on p. 139; it must have been hard to drop a faked name once memorized. Also, some names might not have been incorporated in the new key and writers might have fallen back on old keys. Inchiquin’s instruction makes it apparent how gender could be alternated to create an additional layer of protection. In the new key, for example, Lady Dysart is both Mr and Mrs Legg.

The enclosed cipher key mentioned by Inchiquin, or rather a copy made by the interceptor, is to be found amongst the bundle of cipher keys of the Secretaries of State in The National Archives, Kew (see Figure 4.1).²⁶ With the key to the coded correspondence in hand, it becomes possible not only to look for letters exchanged between Inchiquin and Dysart, but also for other letter writers who were privy to the key but not necessarily part of this conversation. Users of this key formed, perhaps unsurprisingly, a close-knit network. Inchiquin exchanged letters with Lady Dysart’s unmarried sisters Katherine and Anne Murray, Mrs Catherine Grey, a Mrs Hoskinson, a John Jackson, and possibly Lady Carlisle (one letter writer signs off with ‘CC’, Lady Carlisle’s cipher that she used in her letters to Lauderdale).²⁷ What is more, examination of the network shows that it was not Lady Dysart but Mrs Catherine Grey who seems to have been Inchiquin’s most important correspondent: instructions upon which other correspondents were to act came from her (see Plate 8). She was the daughter of Sir Edward Ford of Harting, whose house was in all likelihood the ‘place of dexterous inventions’, widow of Alexander Culpeper of Greenway Court, and wife to Ralph Grey. Back in May 1658, when the Sealed Knot unravelled, Mrs Grey and her husband had enabled the flight to Paris of one of the Countess of Dysart’s sisters, presumably Margaret, as referred to in the

previous chapter and recorded by Browne as follows:

Figure 4.1. Manuscript, cipher key shared between Inchiquin and Lady Dysart. Hand: unknown. TNA, SP 106/6, fo. 49 (no. 18a). Reproduced with permission of The National Archives, Kew

The key Inchiquin shared with Dysart consisted of a nomenclature only, presumably because bitter experience had taught him that it was not safe to use a numerical cipher alphabet. Using this nomenclature, which substituted ordinary names for those of their contemporaries rather than, for instance, names disguised as hieroglyphics or other symbols, or a cipher alphabet, made it easier to hide the fact that they were writing in code. In this manner, their messages became purely steganographic. For instance, when using this key that consists only of a nomenclature, the sentence ‘Inchiquin is suspected by Thurloe’ can be converted to ‘Mrs Steers is suspected by Mr Cooke’. When using the key Inchiquin shared with his estranged wife, for example, the same sentence can be changed to ‘Mr Iwell is 49.9.20.15.39.32.15.4. by Mr Tuif’ (‘Inchiquin Cypher with his Lady’, TNA, SP 106/6, no. 18a (fo. 49), for an exact copy see BL, Add. MS 4166 (Thurloe Papers), fos. 126-7). In the latter instance, several other transliterations are also possible: the letter ‘a’ is not only ‘5.’ but also ‘25.’, ‘b’ is not only ‘47.’ but also ‘70.’ etc. Even though the former coding system has more limitations, it has an additional safety feature in that it conceals the fact that the letter writer has something to hide: with steganography, of which the Sealed Knot’s use of mercantile discourse is another instance, messages are hidden in plain sight. Indeed, in this instance, the logic of using only plain names in order not to attract attention seems to have worked: the nomenclature Inchiquin and Lady Dysart shared only surfaces in Royalist archives. The numerical cipher alphabet Inchiquin and his wife shared, in contrast, is not only to be found among the bundle of ciphers of the Royalists, but also amongst Thurloe’s papers, showing those numbers had attracted the attention of the cryptanalysts of the Commonwealth’s Secret Service.

A sonne of the Lord Gray* >*Lord Gray of Wicke his second sonne, who married the widow of Mr Culpeper Mrs Ford< is lately come hither with his wife: and, with them a crooked sister of the Countesse of Diserts.²⁸

Incidentally, Browne does not use the adjective ‘crooked’ in the Miltonic sense, suggesting that the sister was ‘Crooked by nature’ and thus had evil intentions; rather, his words should be taken literally, as all three of Elizabeth’s biological sisters were suffering from some type of spinal deformity.²⁹ Mrs Grey and her husband travelling in the company of one of Lady Dysart’s sisters suggests that networks of conspiratorial kinship were formed before the correspondence started. Coded letters can, of course, cause problems for later investigators as much as for contemporary ones, not least as correspondents did not always use the code names as allocated. Sometimes, for example, Mrs Grey signed her own name or was referred to by name in a letter. Scholars have thus far taken Grey to be another code name ‘adopted’ by Lady Dysart, instead of realizing that Mrs Grey was a real person, and thus credit Elizabeth with rather more influence than she actually had.³⁰

The nomenclature of a cipher key also reveals which persons were seen as important in the network. Women who had their own spy name included not only the correspondents Lady Dysart (who was to be known as Mr or Mrs Legg, see Figure 4.1), Lady Anne Murray, Rachel, Lady Newport, and Mrs Catherine Grey, but also striking names such as Thomas Wentworth, Lord Strafford’s widow Elizabeth, née Rodes and their daughter Lady Margaret Wentworth, and, most impressively perhaps, that master contriver the Countess of Devonshire. Other women included in the nomenclature were, like Inchiquin, active in France, such as the Earl of Denbigh’s daughter, Elizabeth Feilding Boyle, Lady Kinalmeaky (widow of Lewis Boyle, Viscount Kinalmeaky; an important figure at Queen Henrietta Maria’s exiled court and friend of Ambassador Lockhart),³¹ Lady Strangford, and Lady Pye (born Catherine Lucas, sister to Margaret Cavendish and wife to Sir Edmund Pye, 1st Baronet). The latter two travelled to France in June 1658. Once again we find Lady Dysart connected to Louvrian sympathizers.

Once letter writers are identified, and members noted who figure in the key, one can unpack the network still further by looking at the cover addresses used —a cover address was another layer of obfuscation. The letters for Mrs Grey were delivered to her father's address: nos. 13-14 in the Great Piazza of Covent Garden.³² Since the one letter to Mrs Hoskinson was also delivered to that address,³³ it seems plausible that ‘Mrs Hoskinson’ was a code name for Mrs Grey. It also seems likely that the three Murray sisters shared a house when in London, and thus could easily share their correspondence, but their letters reached them from three different directions. First, Lady Dysart’s letters were delivered to Mr Octavian Pulleyn at the Sign of the Rose, at St Paul’s Churchyard.³⁴ Unsurprisingly, considering St Paul’s Churchyard was the centre of the book trade, Pulleyn was a bookseller, and not a tavern owner as Cripps assumes,³⁵ and was tenant of the Rose in the period 1639-66, initially in partnership with George Thomason, stationer and collector of Civil War tracts.³⁶ Second, letters to Anne Murray were simply instructed to go ‘à Londres’. Third, Katherine Murray’s letters were delivered to Lady Newport’s house, no. 45, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.³⁷ Lady Newport was Rachel, née Leveson, widow of Royalist army officer Sir Richard Newport and mother to the unmarried Andrew Newport, Royalist conspirator.³⁸ A relation of Lady Newport, possibly her daughter, a Mrs Christian Newport, was to deliver the letters to Katherine Murray.³⁹

While ‘The Sign of the Rose’, bookseller Pulleyn’s address, might have been wisely chosen, Rachel, Lady Newport’s was not. Cover addresses were designed to hoodwink interceptors by shielding the true destination, but Lady Newport’s address had been compromised and as such no longer provided such security. Several years before, on 25 January 1655 to be precise, Charles Lyttelton had identified Lady Newport’s house as a meeting place while under interrogation:

he [Charles Lyttelton][…]had several ^Atymes^A mett with the said Maior [Henry] Norwood […]and particularly 4 or 5 tymes at the Earl ALadyA Newports ^Ain Lincolns Inn ffeildsA, where there haue been in her Company as he remembers (besides those of her family) one Mr Beuerly & one Mr Browne a kinsman of the Lord Harberts A& some others whom he remembers notA.⁴⁰

It seems likely that the Commonwealth’s secret service would have had the house under observation since Lyttelton’s confession. Indeed, in July 1659, Colonel Matthew Alured was ordered to search Lady Newport, and her son Andrew, an official member of the Great Trust, was committed to the Tower.⁴¹

Invisible Inks, Invisible Plots

Still, the spy ring probably had more to fear from Inchiquin’s ineptitude than from any counter-intelligence activities, as several letters testify to his inability to comprehend the simplest of instructions, his mislaying of letters, and other blunders. In the beginning, Inchiquin was offended that Lady Pye had written to Katherine Murray that he publicized their acquaintance: as he writes, ‘I confess to you M^r Baker [Mrs Pye] has angred mee [persuading you and your sisters], […]I had not being been circumspect Inough in speaking of you publiquely’. Lady Pye’s concerns were not without foundation: she was in France, like Inchiquin, and the fact that she had learned of the Murray sisters’ correspondence with him of course proves that he had not kept it a total secret. He feared Lady Pye had managed to persuade the Murray sisters not to engage with him, also because Katherine Murray’s letters were so brief. As he concludes his letter to her, 'if you be not kinder to mee in other things then then in Contracting the matter of your letters to soe few words, I shall thinke M^r Baker [Mrs Pye] has gain’d his ends’.⁴² Lady Pye also had an address in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and might thus have briefed her neighbour Rachel, Lady Newport, to whose address Katherine’s letters were delivered, that Inchiquin was untrustworthy.

A week later, Inchiquin received a letter from an exasperated Lady Dysart, who noted that he had been confusing his superscriptions, an error that presumably resulted in letters being delivered to the wrong address. In reply, Inchiquin washed his hands of his ‘mistakes or negligence’, suggesting that a certain Mrs Norman was surely to blame for giving him incorrect instructions, ‘for other Errors in my letter that may might occasion an inconuenience [,] I am as wanting in skill to finde them out now as I was then to auoyde them, but I shall haue such care as is recommended to mee, according to the best of my vnderstanding’.⁴³

On reading his next letter to Mrs Grey, one fears that ‘the best of [Inchiquin’s] vnderstanding’ fell somewhat short. Inchiquin had been trusted to receive expensive ingredients to make invisible ink, but he had clumsily burnt the instructions on how to prepare the concoction in his attempt to rid himself of incriminating documents: ‘being my Custom to burn burn Letters, as soone as I haue answered them, I hapen’d by mistake to burn the letter wherein the direction for the vse of it was’.⁴⁴ One cannot help wonder how many letters that were believed to be miscarried were not accidentally burnt by Inchiquin instead. His own amateur experimenting to create a mixture without the recipe was also regrettable because he later discovered that the ingredients to produce the ink were highly expensive: to be precise, mixing a useable amount of this liquid cost at least £60.⁴⁵ He asked for the recipe to be sent to him again. Exasperated, Lady Dysart, or possibly Mrs Grey as the letter is not signed, urged him to have more care: ‘innosence is no security without prudence’. She felt he had dropped the ball once too often: ‘so many past thinges are now cum in to my head it I could say a great deale on this acasion but […] I will say nothing till I see you’.⁴⁶

Ink which had as its basis citrus fruits, milk, vinegar, vegetable juice, or urine was common enough for Ben Jonson to ridicule its use by ‘Ripe statesmen’ in his epigram ‘The New Cry’ (1616): ‘[…] They’ve found the sleight / With juice of lemons, onions, piss, to write’.⁴⁷ These transparent liquids worked to alter the fibres of the paper so that, upon the application of heat, these areas would burn more rapidly than the un-inked areas, revealing the letter-forms in brown scorch marks. The artichoke solution Hyde and his sister were likely to have used acted in the same manner. More sophisticated formulas that relied on a reagent to act on the ink itself rather than burning the paper were also developed, however (see Figure 4.2). In December 1657, Ormond’s circle, for instance, carefully followed the instructions they had received from John Ogilby, creating an ink which careful testing had shown could pass unnoticed by the Cromwellian regime: ‘the secret that I. Ogleby gaue (namely the powder of gall in water, to be washd ouer with the powder of calcined copperas) is not discouered, but may be safely used’.⁴⁸ The powder of gall nuts in water, which was mixed with gum arabic and ferrous sulphate to make normal ink, when used on its own made a transparent ink revealed only when the recipient brushed it with a rag soaked in copper (II) sulphate, which would turn it a light brownish colour. In effect, this method was mixing the ink when some of it was already on the paper.⁴⁹

Figure 4.2. Manuscript letter written in invisible ink, made legible by ultraviolet light, of Anna Leveson to Mr Grin, 26 Dec. 1655, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 21, p. 428. Hand: Anna Leveson. Reproduced with permission of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

Invisible ink would usually be used interlineally, or above or below a plain ink message, presumably because sending an entirely blank letter would look suspicious and suggest that invisible ink was being used. The Gunpowder plotters found a way to deliver entire sheets written in orange juice by using ‘blank’ sheets as a protective wrapping for reading glasses, for instance, thus deflecting suspicion from the otherwise suspiciously empty page. Hence Henry Garnett wrote this, in normal ink, on the verso (out)side of his invisible ink letter: ‘lett these Spectacles be set in leather & with a leather case’ (TNA, SP 14/216/2, no. 241). Anne Vaux used the same cloak for a secret letter, writing on the verso (out)side of her citric fruit letter in plain ink: ‘I pray you prove whether the Spectacles doe fytt your sight’ (TNA, SP 14/216/2, no. 208; I thank Sam Kaislaniemi and Pete Langman for figuring out this trick). Some fifty years later it appears that the interceptors also knew that oranges were not the only ink, as we can see in the case of Anna Leveson’s letter. Here, her letter in plain ink, which accompanied some sheets in invisible ink, is made visible with ultraviolet light photography because it is no longer visible to the naked eye. It appears

to have been scorched, the method of exposing citrus fruit inks, but the plain ink has been largely washed away. This suggests that either the recipient or an interceptor tried different methods in order to make the writing visible—some invisible inks needed a liquid reagent to make them reveal their secrets. The letter’s author is perhaps the ‘Mistress Leveston’ or ‘Levingston’ (the sources are not consistent in the spelling of her name) who was ‘said to be a constant convayer of dangerous Intelligence betwixt Oxford and London’, ‘guilty of high treason’, and in whose private chamber ‘many papers and letters of consequence’ were discovered in September 1644 (A Diary or Exact Journal 20, 19-26 Sept. 1644, p. 139; also cited in Marcuss Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture of Revolutionary England, 1640-1660 (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2006), 104. The ODNB entry for ‘Maguire, Connor’ by Brian Mac Cuarta gives the name of the woman who assisted the men’s escape from the Tower as Leviston or Levinsteyn and mentions that she was a Flemish Catholic). When the Irish insurgents Lord Connor Maguire and Hugh Oge Mac Mahon were recaptured at a house in Drury Lane, it appears that they may have betrayed her part in their original escape from the Tower, as her room in the Strand was immediately searched and she was arrested. It appears that the French envoy’s lodging at her house was enough to save her, however, as ‘a declaration was drawn up to give his most divine majesty [that is, the French king] satisfaction’ (John Rusworth, Historical Collections of Private Passages of State (London: Browne, 1721), v. 730).

From Inchiquin’s panicked reaction at having lost the letter with the formula for sympathetic ink, and from the extraordinary expense of the ingredients, one can safely infer that Lady Dysart’s circle was using a more sophisticated potion than plain fruit juice. The instructions for its preparation further suggest that the ink itself was made from a powder dissolved in water, and that another powder, one not only white but poisonous, was used to make up the reagent:

Sayeth to make vse of the poweder with discretion and that it stand not too long in the water, because ^Athat^A it should Acomes not^A too deepe in colour. because it should be too stronge and for the witt powder alsoe to haue care that nobody taste of it.⁵⁰

The formulation of the expensive white and poisonous powder is difficult to identify, but one possible candidate is silver nitrate, which is white, very expensive, and poisonous. If applied to a letter with script written in copper or sodium salt, for example, it would feasibly cause the invisible writing to appear, as well as darken and deteriorate the paper with time—silver nitrate is the chemical in photographic paper that turns black on exposure to light.⁵¹ This tantalizing possibility would also explain why no holograph letters have survived.

Inchiquin and his correspondents pretended the white powder had medicinal value, but it was all subterfuge, unless, that is, the entire circle suffered from the same ailment and were taking the same medicine, which might be pushing coincidence a little too far. In employing medical language, they hoped to mislead possible interceptors of their letters, not alerting them to the possibility that the circle was concocting secret ink. After making ‘an Experiment’, Inchiquin ‘found, that it was discernable, it did the boy good, but it did not clearly produce that effect I expected’.⁵² By ‘discernable’ he presumably meant to say that it was legible, but he pretended that he had cured a youth with a medical ointment: ‘it did the boy good’. When writing to Mrs Grey about the ‘powder’ next, Inchiquin writes that he believes she ‘may likely haue equall benefit by it’, but that he will test it first, hoping ‘it will doe [him] more good then any thing that euer [he] tooke’. The fact that he addresses Mrs Grey by her code name ‘Mr Hardin’ in the letter suggests that he was trying to hide the real purpose of his writing, that he might have been suggesting that they should both use invisible ink.⁵³ In an earlier letter to Anne Murray, Inchiquin let on that he was not convinced of the potion’s effectiveness: ‘I am of oppinion that you should not make vse of it, findeing by Doct.r Daking that the a little of the water can not be made good, vnder three score pounds charge’.⁵⁴ It had either become apparent the ingredients were too expensive or that the invisible ink was not working properly, but he pretended she should follow a doctor’s prescription. Finally, some months later, he deems the time is ripe:

I am exceedingly glad you are soe well and fatt, for I apprehended much that the greate cloudes of seacoale smoake would render that ayre preiudiciall to you, howeuer I pray neglect not now to vse vse the poweder it being the season for it & apply it, as ^Aas^A well betweene the Ribbs as belowe.55

Giving Mrs Grey, his correspondent, whose health is well, instructions to apply the powder ‘betweene the Ribbs as belowe’, he was presumably suggesting that she was to write in invisible ink between the lines written in normal ink, interlineally in other words, as he himself had done in his letter. Whether he had truly done so can no longer be tested because only the copy of his letter is extant. Still, his letter certainly described the most common way invisible ink was applied in the period. A day later Lady Dysart also wrote a letter to Inchiquin, confirming that Mrs Grey agreed the time to use the powder had come: ‘She writt to make vse of the powder this weeke’.⁵⁶

On 5 August 1659, Booth was no doubt feeling triumphant, having seized Chester with an army of 4,000, and while Sir Thomas Myddelton headed for South Wales, Booth proceeded towards York. Both commanders, however, were oblivious to the fact that the large-scale risings planned for other parts of the country had either petered out or simply not begun. Ironically, this was largely due to a highly successful campaign carried out by former members of the Sealed Knot, who had decided to veto an uprising they believed too dangerous and doomed to failure, and accordingly sent out messengers to dissuade people from rebellion.⁵⁷ Booth thus found himself alone; his forces were crushed by John Lambert’s army at Northwich on 19 August. He fled, only to be caught five days later at Newport Pagnell sporting a disguise consisting of woman’s clothing. He would be committed to the Tower until February 1660. The moment the circle used the white powder to produce invisible ink coincided with Booth’s defeat, suggesting that it was probably used to warn Charles Stuart not to embark for England or to organize Booth’s escape. But it appears that Lady Dysart’s circle had been unable to help either his rising or him, possibly because Hyde’s and Nicholas’s agent Demarces had all this time delayed their letters.

Surprisingly, perhaps, the punishments following Booth’s rebellion were not severe. In September 1659, Lady Newport, for instance, was denied a pass to travel to France with her servants,⁵⁸ but in October it seems she and her son Andrew were cleared of charges because a sergeant was ordered to ‘returne those papers and writeings, brought to the Councell by their Order and for their perusall from the House of the Lady Nieuport, to the said Lady Nieuport, or Mr Andrew Nieuport’.⁵⁹ Andrew Newport was released from the Tower in November 1659.⁶⁰ As for Inchiquin, he decided to try his luck elsewhere. In September 1659, the former Irish army officer set sail to Portugal to accept a command that had been offered him in July, but he was never to reach his destination. An Algerian corsair overtook his ship, capturing both him and his son, the latter losing an eye in the scuffle. Charles II’s intervention negotiated his release from an Algerian cell in the summer of 1660 and that of his son in November of the same year.⁶¹

Lady Dysart withdrew herself from the murky underground: following the Restoration the need for conspiracy abated and the Great Trust became superfluous. Nevertheless, espionage appears to have taken root in her being and spilled over into her day-to-day activities. In c.1670, when she wrote to Lady Jean Scott, Countess of Tweeddale, she resorted to spy tricks: this time she did so not to overthrow the government but to settle domestic squabbles. Tweeddale, daughter of the 1st Earl of Buccleuch and a friend of hers, was to prevent the sanctimonious Seymours from spreading a rumour—a rumour that was incidentally an accurate assessment of the situation—about Lady Dysart having started an affair with Lauderdale while his wife was still living. Lady Dysart gave Tweeddale detailed instructions:

As to that horrid wench An[n] Ceamer [that is, Seymour] & hir Aunt, Alas; I ever knew they were the ill instruments, itt is but the usual custom of thos Holey Sisters: which I hope now you see you will prevent. I would not have you discorege the correspondence, but rather intercept the letters & write answers which you may easily doe iff you chuse a certen hand, seeing you know hir Lady [that is, the Countess of 62

Lauderdale] can write none.⁶²

Lady Dysart instructed her friend to use a ‘certain hand’, that is, secretary hand rather than italic script, to craft a fake letter because the countess could not write and therefore always made use of a secretary instead. This in itself was not uncommon: many women from the upper classes could read but not write.⁶³ The letter’s contents point towards a domestic issue—the cover-up of her adulterous affair with Lauderdale—but the tactics proposed to create misinformation reveal how a former she-intelligencer thought to manipulate correspondence: through interception of letters and the forging of handwriting. Ironically, considering that one of the reasons women’s letters were ignored was the assumption that they contained merely domestic tittle-tattle, in this instance they were to be intercepted because of the tittle-tattle contained within.

Tricks of the trade were never forgotten, but passed on from generation to generation. In 1688, Lady Dysart’s daughter-in-law also squeezes some lemons to enable Jacobites to communicate stealthily with James II in France:

Madam Menzies Receaued a book from The Countess of Lauderdale, & part of it being printed poems and the rest as clean paper two leaves about or the by, on which clean paper the answers of the Lds Letters that come to England were wryttin with Lemond Juice, or some other thing that it did appear to be clean paper, till it was held before the fire.⁶⁴

However, the observer presumes it was ‘Lemond Juice’, but, as he himself admits, it might have been ‘some other thing’. It does not seem far-fetched to speculate that she used a recipe handed down by her mother-in-law. She even seems to have used the same cover address as her mother-in-law back in the late 1650s, that of the Fords in Covent Garden, nos. 13-14 in the Great Piazza.⁶⁵

The Age of Suspicion

It is nearly impossible to come to any concrete conclusions about Elizabeth Murray and her intelligencing activities because what evidence remains is composed primarily of lacunae and invisible ink, though of course this is exactly what you would expect from a good spy. In a letter to her future husband Sir William Temple, Dorothy Osborne, whose rapturous epistolary style was praised by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own (1929), describes the pleasure she finds from listening to storyteller Lady Tollemache. The letter deserves to be quoted at some length because Osborne gives us such a vivid character description of the intellectual, philosophical, and witty Elizabeth:

my Lady Talmach [Tollemache], that [sic] say’s she can doe whatsoever she will […] tis not unpleasant mee thinks to hear her talke how at such a Time she was sick and the Phisitians tolde her she would have the small Poxe and shewed her where they were comeing out upon her but she bethought her self that it was not at all convenient for her to have them at that time; some buisnesse she had that required her goeing abroade [my italics], and soe shee resolved shee would not bee sick; nor was not, twenty such storry’s as these she tell’s and then fall’s into discourses of the streng[t]h of reason, and the power of Philosophy till she confound’s her self and all that hear her; You have noe such Lady’s in Ireland.⁶⁶ If Lady Tollemache managed to ward off the dreaded smallpox by sheer willpower, then her ‘business’ must have been pressing. Of course one can speculate that the ‘business [Lady Tollemache] had that required her going abroad’, presumably deliberately vaguely specified as ‘some’, was related to secret activities, especially because the Sealed Knot was founded around the date of Osborne’s letter, but there is no evidence to suggest that she was involved in any conspiracy around this time. Nevertheless, even though Osborne does not connect Elizabeth to espionage activities in her letter, at least not explicitly, she is somehow triggered to take up the topic of plots next: ‘My Poore Lady Vavasor is carryed to the Tower,’ Osborne continues:

& her great belly could not Excuse her because she was acquainted by somebody that there was a plott against the Prottector and did not discover it, she has tolde now all that was tolde her but vow’s she will never say from whence she had it; wee shall see whither her resolutions are as unalterable as those of my Lady

Talmach.⁶⁷

Osborne never returns to Ursula Giffard of Staffordshire, wife of Sir Thomas Vavasour, but from her examination it becomes clear that this pregnant lady was quick to give up her source when facing imprisonment: she heard it from a Lady Fauconberg. She assured Thurloe that he should not worry about it too much, however, being adamant ‘it would come to nothinge, conceauing it as sleight, being come to the Knowledge & discourse of women’.⁶⁸ It is worth noting that Osborne contrasts Lady Vavasour to Lady Tollemache: she sees the former as a potential ‘snitch’ and the latter as steadfast. The latter certainly does not easily give up her sources. Correspondences such as those between the Countess of Dysart and Inchiquin reveal how difficult it is to reveal the exact nature of a plot.

If she had been part of the Sealed Knot, like some of her family members, there is not a shred of evidence left to prove it: that she was the grand dame of the Sealed Knot is pure speculation. Use of cipher code and being privy to invisible ink recipes indeed suggests that she was enmeshed in the thick of espionage, but the dates of the evidence that does survive indicate that she came late to the party: she was active for the Great Trust but there is no evidence that she started with the Sealed Knot. What is more, considering the male members of the Great Trust referred to themselves as ‘wary men’,⁶⁹ Mrs Catherine Grey and Rachel, Lady Newport rather than Lady Dysart were the main ‘wary women’. The assumption that Mrs Grey was an alias of Dysart’s rather than an independent woman has led to the latter being granted rather more agency than she actually possessed. Like so many women, Elizabeth was a lesser agent, not the grand dame that historiography is likely to assume based on her status.

While Thurloe’s increasingly effective intelligence agency recruited more and more double agents, rounding up plotters and exposing their plans left, right, and centre, the Royalists turned on each other. Hyde’s belief that Lady Dysart was Cromwell’s spy epitomizes the Royalists’ distrust of each other. The Royalists undermined their own efforts: at one time even Hyde himself was accused of being Cromwell’s spy.⁷⁰ The correspondence between Lady Dysart and Inchiquin, and their other female allies, was not intercepted by the Commonwealth’s secret service as was assumed by Lady Dysart’s biographer. Instead, it was the Royalists who spied on Lady Dysart, partly because her parents’ loyalty was questionable. She and her sisters were second-generation spies and too close to Cromwell for comfort. Their association with the slippery Inchiquin made them all the more suspect. The endorsement of the letters, of which only copies are still extant, indicate that many of them were delayed, being copied and often forwarded to Hyde before being sent on their way. Still, even Hyde did not discover all Lady Dysart’s secrets: his agent Demarces copied the messages written out in normal ink but never made the invisible ink appear. While the originals were sent on and have not turned up in an archive (presumably because they were burnt after reading), only the intended recipient read the messages which had been written out in a transparent fluid subsequently made visible by another concoction which was highly expensive and possibly poisonous. Perhaps Hyde, still fond of his brainchild, the cautious Sealed Knot, and highly ambivalent about Booth’s rising as organized by the audacious Great Trust, had not even been interested in their content but had only deliberately delayed her letters to make them ineffective. Booth’s rising shows how the remains of one Royalist organization, the discredited and officially disbanded Sealed Knot, failed to be incorporated into another, the Great Trust, effectively neutralizing them both. In the end, the Stuart Crown showed its appreciation of Lady Dysart’s loyalty, however, indicating that she either had regained trust or that her plotting had been truly effective despite the fact that Booth’s rising, the ‘glorious pretext of a free Parliament and the subjects’ liberty, [was] all ended under a wench’s petticoat’.⁷¹ She was rewarded for her services after the Restoration: on 22 May 1662, Nicholas signed a warrant that she was to receive a pension of £800 per annum out of the Exchequer for life.⁷² Whether Catherine Grey, the true head of the spy ring, also received a pension is not known.

1    Doreen Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot (Kineton: Roundwood Press, 1975), 47, 58-9.

2    LBM, 84 n. 4.

3        

Demarces was also identified as the interceptor of the letters between Inchiquin and the Countess of Dysart by F. J. Routledge in his 'Preface’ to the ClSP, Vol. IV, 1657-1660 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1932), p. ix. Karen Britland’s essay, which focuses on gendered discourses of deception and invisible inks, appeared after this monograph was submitted for publication. It touches on the Murray sisters and also spots that it was the Royalist ‘French post office official’ Demarces who intercepted the letters for Hyde, but does not explore the implications of this deceit. Terming this interception by Royalists in France ‘[s]omewhat hilarious’, Britland later, confusingly, reverts back to the accepted but mistaken narrative that the letters were intercepted by a ‘Parliamentarian agent’ in ‘the English post office’. See Britland, ‘ “What I Write I Do Not See” ’, in Katherine Ellison and Susan Kim (eds), A Material History of Medieval and Early Modern Ciphers (New York: Routledge, 2018), 208-22 at 212-13.

4     See ClSP, iv. 193, 195, 199, 318-19.

5    Timothy Venning, ‘Thurloe, John’, ODNB.

6        

6   For instance, the copy of the letter by John Laughton, aka Inchiquin, to Mrs Hoskinson, is dated [4/]14 May 1659, Paris, and endorsed by Demarces as ‘Send My L.^d Chancellour May 24^th’ (TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 244v); that of Inchiquin to Lady Anne Murray, dated [8/]18 May 1659, Paris, as ‘Send My L.^d Chancellour May 24^th ‘59’ (TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 251v). If Demarces used the Gregorian calendar, then copies of these letters were made and sent on ten and six days later respectively. However, if he employed the Julian calendar, then he took as long as twenty and sixteen days.

7       John Cosin to Hyde, 18 Oct. 1658, The Works of the Right Reverend Father in God, John Cosin, miscellaneous works (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1851), iv. 465.

8           

John A. Murphy, ‘Inchiquin’s Changes of Religion’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society 72, no. 215 (1967): 58-68, esp. 62, 64. See also Geoffrey Smith, The Cavaliers in Exile, 1640-1660 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 44.

9                ClSP, iii. 414.

10        

John Laughton, aka the Earl of Inchiquin, to John Jackson in London, 17 Aug. 1659, Paris, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 316r.

11            [Dysart] to Guillaume Jonas, aka Inchiquin, ‘taken’ 15 May 1659, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 249r.

12        

See Rhys Jenkins, ‘A Chapter in the History of the Water Supply of London’, Transactions of the Newcomen Society 9, no. 1 (1928): 43-51.

13            Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 46.

14            [Dysart] to Guillaume Jonas, aka Inchiquin, ‘taken’ 15 May 1659, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 249v.

15            [Dysart] to Guillaume Jonas, aka Inchiquin, ‘taken’ 15 May 1659, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 249v.

16        

¹⁶      David Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy in England 1649-1660 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), 254.

¹⁷            Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 269-70.

¹⁸         

Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 270.

¹⁹             Geoffrey Smith, Royalist Agents, Conspirators and Spies (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 228-31.

²⁰             [Dysart] to Guillaume Jonas, aka Inchiquin, ‘taken’ 15 May 1659, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 249r.

²¹      [Unsigned] to the Countess of Dysart, 27 May 1659, Paris, TNA, SP 77/32, fo. 258r. See also Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 44-5, 53.

²²             William Jonas, aka Inchiquin, to Katherine Murray, 10 Aug. 1659, Paris, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 332r.

²³             Inchiquin to Mrs Grey, 17 Aug. 1659, Paris, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 315r.

²⁴             Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 60.

²⁵             John Laughton, aka Inchiquin, to Mrs Hoskinson, 14 May 1659, Paris, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 244r.

²⁶             TNA, SP 106/6, no. 49.

²⁷      See ‘CC’ to Mr Laughton, aka Inchiquin, 9/19 May 1659, London, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 253. Lady Carlisle would certainly have been interested in the Great Trust’s plans, considering the foundation of Booth’s rising was a Presbyterian-Royalist alliance that she herself had always promoted. For her cipher see Plate 3.

²⁸             Sir Richard Browne to Nicholas, 17 May 1658, New Style, Paris, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 141r.

²⁹      See John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 10, l. 885, Barbara K. Lewalski (ed.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 277. That Elizabeth’s sisters were physically misshapen becomes apparent from an early letter of Thomas Knyvett. On the look out for a match for his son, Knyvett wrote a letter to his wife, contrasting Elizabeth with her sisters: she ‘is the jewel, & indeed a pretty one […] The other 3 sisters are pitifull crooked things’ ([Thomas Knyvett], The Knyvett Letters, 1620-1644, Bertram Schofield (ed.) (London: Constable, 1949), 152, as quoted in Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 12).

³⁰ Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 47. Britland, ‘ “What I Write I Do Not See” ’, 213, infers from reading Catherine Grey’s correspondence, in which Dysart is never mentioned, that ‘Dysart was the driving force behind Inchiquin’s adoption of invisible ink’.

31

About this lady, see Patrick Little, Lord Broghill and the Cromwellian Union with Ireland and Scotland (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004), 195.

32

Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 46-7. Cripps identifies many of these addresses. F. H. W. Sheppard (ed.) also publishes all of them in Survey of London, vol. 36 (London: London County Council, 1970).

33      See John Laughton, aka Inchiquin, to Mrs Hoskinson, 14 May 1659, Paris, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 244r.

34             Inchiquin to Lady Dysart, 11 May 1659, Paris, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 241r.

35             Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 47.

36        

³⁶       In the seventeenth century, St Paul’s Churchyard was ‘an oblong of 1,000 feet from east to west and 600 from north to south’ with six entrances to the enclosure: Pulleyn’s shop could be reached through ‘the great north door’, that is, the gate ‘at Canon Alley leading from Paternoster Row’: see Henry B. Wheatley, ‘Signs of Booksellers in St. Paul’s Churchyard’, Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 9 (1907): 67­106 at 68-9, 99.

³⁷       TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 246. Rachel, Lady Newport’s exact address and full name is given in E. Beresford Chancellor, The Romance of Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Its Neighbourhood (London: The Richards Press, 1930), 74.

³⁸       C. H. Firth, reviser Sean Kelsey, ‘Newport, Andrew’, ODNB; Stephen Wright, ‘Newport, Richard’, ODNB. Rachel, Lady Newport is not to be confused with Ann Boteler, wife to Mountjoy Blount, 1st Earl of Newport. The Countess of Newport was also involved in surreptitious activities for the Sealed Knot, possibly acting as a courier between her husband in England and Hyde on the continent in 1655 (David L. Smith, ‘Blount, Mountjoy,’ ODNB). Like Rachel, Lady Newport’s sons, Andrew and Francis, who were ‘apprehended on suspicion of plotting to stir up forces against government’ (‘Day’s proceedings’, 9 June 1655, TNA, SP 25/112, fo. 165), her husband Mountjoy found himself in the Tower in June 1655 (Smith, ‘Blount, Mountjoy’, ODNB). The countess might have seen this coming after the failure of the Penruddock rising: she had ensured a pass to travel ‘with 5 maids and 3 men, beyond seas’ some weeks previously (‘Day’s proceedings’, 5 May 1655, TNA, SP 25/76, fo. 63). At some point she returned to England, however, possibly continuing her task of couriering messages: he was temporarily released on bail following reports that she had fallen dangerously ill (‘Day’s proceedings’, 2 Nov. 1655, TNA, SP 25/76, fo. 362), but not so ill that she was denied visitation rights during his subsequent incarceration a month later (‘Day’s proceedings’, 30 Nov. 1655, TNA, SP 25/76, fo. 402 (entry 21)). In June 1657, Joseph Bampfield advised Lockhart to interrogate her (Bod., Clarendon MS 55, fo. 48r).

³⁹         

According to the delivery instructions of Wm Jones, aka Inchiquin, to Lady Katherine Murray, 14 May 1659, Paris, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 246v: ‘for my Lady Catherin Morray. Leaue this with Mrs. Christian Newport at the Lady Newports house in Lincoln’s inn fields Londres’.

⁴⁰              Charles Lyttelton’s examination, 15 Jan. 1654, Bod., Rawl. MS A. 22, p. 378.

⁴¹       CSPDI, xiii, July 1659, index entry 19 July. For Newport’s appointment as Great Trust member see LBM, 3 (no. 7).

⁴²              Wm Jones, aka Inchiquin, to Lady Katherine Murray, 14 May 1659, Paris, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 246r.

⁴³      Inchiquin to Mr Dent, aka the Duke of York, who was to forward the letter to Lady Dysart, 21 May 1659, Paris, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 257r.

⁴⁴              Inchiquin to Mrs Grey, 10 Aug. 1659, Paris, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 331r.

⁴⁵              Inchiquin? [that is, unsigned] to Anne Murray, 25 May 1659, Paris, TNA, SP 77/32, fo. 259r.

⁴⁶       Lady Dysart? [that is, unsigned] to Laughton, aka Inchiquin, 8/18 Aug. 1659, London, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 325r-v.

⁴⁷              Ben Jonson, Epigrams (1616), no. 92, ll. 3, 27-8, Colin Burrow (ed.), v. 158-9.

⁴⁸              George Holles to Ormond, 3 Dec. 1657, Rotterdam, Bod., Clarendon MS 56, fo. 271r.

⁴⁹        For an explanation of the ingredients in, and demonstration of, Ogilby’s invisible ink see Jana Dambrogio and Nadine Akkerman, ‘Gall Invisible Ink (reveal: Copper II Sulfate or Iron II Sulfate)’, Letterlocking Instructional Video. Filmed: May 2015. <https://vimeo.com/channels/secretwritingtechs>.

⁵⁰              Lady Dysart to Inchiquin, 15/25 Aug. 1659, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 342r.

51

Thanks to Will Scott for his chemical know-how and to Laura Bergemann for testing it at MIT.

⁵²              Inchiquin to Mrs Grey, 10 Aug. 1659, Paris, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 331r.

⁵³       Inchiquin to Mrs Grey, 17 Aug. 1659, Paris, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 315r. ‘Mr Hardin’ literally transliterates as ‘you’. Britland, ‘ “What I Write I Do Not See” ’, endnote 21, gives an incorrect reference to this letter and suggests that ‘Mr Hardin’ is a code name. She points out that it cannot refer to Richard Harding who died without relations in 1657, but not having found the cipher key (Figure 4.1), however, she is unable to decode it.

⁵⁴       Inchiquin? [that is, unsigned] to Anne Murray, 25 Aug. 1659, Paris, TNA, SP 77/32, fo. 259r. For Dr Daking see Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 76.

⁵⁵              John Laughton, aka Inchiquin, to Mrs Grey, 31 Aug. 1659, Paris, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 346r.

⁵⁶        Lady Dysart to Laughton, aka Inchiquin, 22 Aug./1 Sept. 1659, London, TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 349r. Britland, ‘ “What I Write I Do Not See” ’, 213-14, arrives at the same conclusion as I do when considering these letters, namely that maybe ‘medicinal terms’ were used as a way of ‘couching’ secret communications.

⁵⁷              Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 257, 259-60, 264, and 269-70.

⁵⁸              ‘Day’s proceedings’, 14 Sept. 1659, TNA, SP 25/79, fo. 255.

⁵⁹              ‘Day’s proceedings’, 14 Oct. 1659, TNA, SP 25/79, fo. 254v.

⁶⁰              LBM, no. 7 n. 3.

⁶¹              Patrick Little, ‘O’Brien, Murrough’, ODNB.

62

⁶²        The letter is also quoted in Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 88-9, who mistakenly reads ‘cover hand’ for ‘certen hand’. Since Cripps’s publication the Tweeddale Papers have been recatalogued: the letter’s reference is now NLS, MS 14406, fo. 231r.

63

⁶³              See also the case of Elizabeth Alkin in Chapter 2, this volume.

⁶⁴              James McGill’s declaration, NRS, GD 112/43/17, no. 10.

⁶⁵              Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot, 46-7. Cf. TNA, SP 78/114, fo. 315r, and McGill’s declaration.

66

⁶⁶       Osborne to Temple, 15 June 1654, letter no. 67, in [Dorothy Osborne], Dorothy Osborne, Kenneth Parker (ed.) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 201. Osborne admired Lady Carlisle, too, as she writes to Temple: ‘I should bee pleased too to see som[e]thing of my Lady Carlisles writeing because she is soe Extreordinary [sic] a Person’ ([Osborne], 148, Saturday 15 or Sunday 16 Oct. 1653, letter no. 45).

⁶⁷              [Osborne], Dorothy Osborne, 201-2, letter no. 67.

68

‘Lady Vauasour her Examination’ (the printed Thurloe papers erroneously read ‘flight’ for ‘sleight’), Bod., Rawl. MS A. 14, pp. 558-61. I thank Alan Marshall for drawing my attention to this reference.

⁶⁹        LBM, no. 12.

⁷⁰       Alan Marshall, ‘ “Woeful Knight” ’, in Daniel Szechi (ed.), The Dangerous Trade (Dundee: University of Dundee Press, 2010), 66-92 at 85.

⁷¹       Moore to Hyde, 2 Sept. 1659, ClSP, iv. 355, quoted in Geoffrey Smith, The Cavaliers in Exile, 1640­1660 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 161.

⁷²       TNA, SP 44/7 (Sir Edward Nicholas’s warrants), p. 53.

5

Elizabeth Carey, Lady Mordaunt The ‘Enigma’ of the Great Trust

On 12 March 1660, when Elizabeth Carey, Lady Mordaunt, read a printed declaration that parliament had spared Sir George Booth’s life, released him from the Tower without even sequestering his estate, and forgave all associated with the design, she opened her devotional diary in remembrance of her promise to God, addressing the Lord in the second person:

I did promas and voue to thee, Vpon the defete and taking of S^r Gorge Bouthe, that If in thy mercy thou wouldest preserue his Life, and the Life of all thos that wer ingaged in that bisnes, for the Chorch [sic] and King, that I would upon the day I should, upon the day I should reseue the sertanety of so greate a blesing (which would be ^Aa^A greter comfort to me then any, becas my deare Husband, had so greate a Hand in that bisnes) reseue the Blesed Sacrement, and dedecat to the seruis of my God 5. pound sterling in Gould.

Now that her prayers had been answered, and the lives of not only Booth but ‘all thos that were ingaged in that designe, (Hoping it was for the Kinge, Chorch [sic], and nations good)’ were spared, she promised God she would not only keep her vow but also say a weekly prayer of thanks each Friday, ‘this grete mercy being publesed on that day’. Her promise was not merely altruistic, nor was it simply dutiful, but it served her personal interest, too. She was giving thanks that her husband John Mordaunt, who as leader of the Great Trust, the Royalist secret society that muscled aside the Sealed Knot, ‘had so greate a Hand in that bisnes’, had avoided meeting his expected fate at the end of the executioner’s axe.¹

This was not Lord Mordaunt’s first lucky escape, as in June 1658 he became the first prisoner ever to be acquitted by the High Court of Justice, where he had stood trial for high treason. Mordaunt had been roused from his bed in the middle of the night to be personally interrogated by Oliver Cromwell, following the discovery by Cromwell’s spies that the leader of the Great Trust had received a commission from Charles Stuart to raise a troop of horse in support of a Spanish invasion, an overambitious plot that also involved Sir John Stapley and Dr John Hewitt.² Lady Mordaunt bribed some of the judges to get information on how they would conduct the trial. She received intelligence that when Captain Henry Mallory, who had acted as an intermediary between Stapley and her husband, was found out by Thurloe, he had been promised indemnity if he were to testify against her husband. The promise of indemnity was false, however, as Thurloe had every intention of prosecuting the man. With this information at hand, she persuaded Mallory, who was the key witness against her husband, to make his escape.³ The Mordaunts’ maid kindly passed him a disguise and some money to smooth his passage.⁴ With Mallory gone and Stapley’s testimony an incomprehensible rambling of nonsense,⁵ the prosecution could not prevent Mordaunt’s release, even though the court only found in favour of the defendant by the slimmest of margins: twenty votes to nineteen. (The fact that the fortieth vote was not cast, as its holder was taken ill and had to remove himself from the court was surely coincidental.) It seems Mordaunt’s jailors had been right not to trust his wife when she chose to share John’s imprisonment before the trial, as was her right. As with Lady Mary Cave, and in a manner that suggests that Lady d’Aubigny’s cunning placement of a royal commission in her hair had been rumoured abroad, Lady Mordaunt was ‘stript and search’d by women sworn to that purpose; and her hair pull’d about her ears to find Papers. As himself likewise afterward, and his Servants, had all their Clothes cut and opened’.⁶ She was not the only one to share his cell in the Tower, however, as he ‘had constantly an Officer and a Souldier by his Bed­side’, which an anonymous source considered beyond the pale: ‘His Ladie’s being with him made this unheard-of Cruelty unsupportable’.⁷ While Elizabeth managed to free her husband in time for him to fulfil his duty as leader of the Great Trust and organize, albeit in vain, Booth’s rising, Mallory failed to make good his escape and was apprehended after the trial and imprisoned for the rest of Cromwell’s reign.

In his History of the Rebellion, Sir Edward Hyde describes how Elizabeth was instrumental to Mordaunt’s functioning:

There was a young gentleman, John Morda[u]nt, the younger son, and brother, of the earl of Peterborough, who, having been too young to be engaged in the late war [the First Civil War], during which time he had his education in France and Italy, was now [during the Second Civil War] of age, of parts, and great vigour of mind, and newly married to a young beautiful lady, of a very loyal spirit, and notable vivacity of wit and humour, who concurred with him in all honourable dedication of himself. He resolved to embrace all

8 opportunities to serve the King [Charles II].

Shortly before the Restoration and hoping for advancement, John had a volume of copied documents prepared, mostly letters, which showed his unwavering commitment to the Royalist cause: for posterity he had recorded that when he received Charles Stuart’s commission to become the leader of the Great Trust, he had signed his courteous letter of acceptance with the initials ‘J. E. M.’—John [and] Elizabeth Mordaunt—it was a spy partnership, ‘the joint royalist adventure that was J.E.M.’.⁹ After the failure of Booth’s rising, the Mordaunts fled England separately, and it is telling that while Hyde and Sir Edward Nicholas had instructed him to go to seek Charles Stuart in Spain immediately, John lingered in Calais. As he explained his refusal to leave France to Hyde, ‘I expected both my wife and money; without the last I could not stirr, without set[t]ling the first I should have carried only a body without a soule. I should not have been very capable of businesse’.¹⁰ He simply wished to know that the woman he had married in May 1657, the year before his trial, and with whom he had descended into the murky underworld of conspiracy was safe. Unlike Lady Dysart, who operated on the periphery of Royalist espionage circles, was widely distrusted, and only in communication with marginal, dubious figures hiding in the shadows such as Lord Inchiquin, Lady Mordaunt was the spider in the Great Trust’s intelligence web, trusted by all and in direct epistolary communication with its leaders, not least Charles Stuart. While John returned to England after being reunited with her, disobeying Hyde’s and Nicholas’s order to see the king in Spain, she remained in Calais to keep lines of communication open and to operate as a postmistress for Hyde’s Royalist faction in general and her husband in particular.

The Friendship of John Evelyn and Elizabeth Carey

Elizabeth Carey, the daughter of Thomas Carey, the second son of Robert, 1st Earl of Monmouth, is mostly known as a writer of a spiritual diary, though as we will see that diary is still largely misunderstood. Her friendship with John Evelyn, the second-most important diarist of the era after Samuel Pepys, is less well known. Evelyn, who secretly read Elizabeth’s diary, kept copies of the letters that he had sent her, one in conspiratorial code, and also wrote a short autobiographical literary text in which she figures prominently. Whereas her unmarried life only hints at conspiracies, knowledge of it through Evelyn’s lens is useful as a backdrop to her later success as she-intelligencer, not least because it contrasts so sharply with the picture of piety she herself records.

Throughout his life, Evelyn had a string of friendships with women who were considerably younger than himself: the twenty-year-old Margaret Blagge was thirty-two years his junior when he initiated a friendship with her in 1672,¹¹ as was the twelve-year-old Anne Howard, later Lady Sylvius. His wife Mary Browne was at thirteen a mere fifteen years younger than Evelyn on their wedding day. As Cedric C. Brown has argued: ‘In a modern perspective, the power differential is uncomfortable, and the whole pattern of behaviour might suggest fear of sexuality’.¹² In this respect, Evelyn’s relationship with Elizabeth Carey, who was twelve or thirteen years his junior when she met him in Paris at the age of fifteen or sixteen,¹³ fits into this pattern of nourishing didactic teacher-pupil relationships.

In one of his first surviving epistolary addresses to Elizabeth, written some five years after their first chance meeting, Evelyn describes her as a grandmaĩtresse, a lady presiding over a literary salon with admirers.¹⁴ He, too, wishes to serve her, but he tries to set himself apart from all other salon-goers. He wishes to decipher her, or, as he put it to her:

I may interpert [sic] the Enigma [that is Elizabeth] and let your Ladyship real[l]y see, that amongst all those who court you for advantages of their owne, I alone desire to serve you without designe, or other reward then a memory of my fidelity […] for I would accompanie you in the groves, and whisper to you by the 15 fountaines, and discourse to you of the prospect [that is, a marriage proposal Evelyn was supporting]; gathering somthing from all that were faire and perfect to describe your excellent selfe; for though I am a bad Poet, yet the effects of such influences may worke miracles, and I have found greate assistances in the 16

society of fayre Ladys heretofore.¹⁶

In his unfinished literary text ‘The Legend of Philaretes and the Pearle’ (c.1673), in which Elizabeth is the romance character Penthea, Evelyn looks back on his life and reiterates the above letter almost verbatim, showing that his wish was granted:

I did use to accompany Penthea in the Groues, & Whisper to her by the Fountaines, & discourse of the Prospect I would reade to her upon the banke of Masse, and discourse of the Prospect, & gather something from all that was faire to describe my Penthea by: For though I was an ill Poet; Yet she had sometimes 17 influenc’d me, and I found greate Assistances from her[.]

The epistolary text was amended in one respect: whereas in his original letter to Elizabeth, he admits to ‘have found greate assistances in the society of fayre Ladys heretofore’, in his literary composition these ‘greate assistances’ come no longer from several ladies, but from Elizabeth only. He introduces her as his only true muse, ‘for she had wit, & was sententious, & had read Books, & was of an excellent judgement discernement’.¹⁸ His literary manuscript was not a spontaneous composition, even though all its cancellations and alterations might suggest as much, but carefully lifted from his earlier letters of which he kept copies.¹⁹

The literary diction of prose romance adopted by Evelyn fitted salon culture and Royalist politics like a glove.²⁰ Queen Henrietta Maria had probably been personally introduced to the rules of conduct of the most famous literary salon in France, the Hôtel de Rambouillet led by Catherine de Vivonne, and when she married Charles brought such interest and knowledge with her to England in 1625. Key to Rambouillet was Honoré d’Urfé’s L’Astrée, a prose romance which functioned as a guide to moral conduct, comparable to Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier (1528, English translation 1561) in the previous century. In pastoral settings, courtiers re-enacted the romance plots from L’Astrée, intermingling them with lived experiences.²¹ Although prose romances transported the reader to a world full of heroic knights, damsels in distress, witches, dragons, and other supernatural creatures, they were not written to encourage indulgence in daydreaming, but ‘prove to be resilient re­engagements with contemporary political affairs’.²² In England, certainly, romances formed ‘the most detailed, sustained and interesting attempts by Royalist writers to engage with the political upheaval from 1639 to1660’.²³ Hence Evelyn’s idiosyncratic attempt at writing a literary text lifting names from prose romances fitted into a wider political tradition that was decisively Royalist.

His use of the name Penthea for Elizabeth might be seen as a courtesy to her life as a Royalist she-intelligencer in the decades immediately preceding his text, which was written in 1673, not least because Penthea was the spy name he had assigned to her in those earlier days to communicate with her about secrets, which were either gossipy or fiercely political in nature. Spy names were appropriated from literary texts, but also entered other literary texts as a gesture to a spy’s past life: for instance, Aphra Behn was assigned the name of D’Urfé’s eponymous heroine and twice used ‘Astrea’ as her literary pseudonym.²⁴

Evelyn had been contemplating writing a literary work on Elizabeth as early as 1662. In January that year, he sent her his poem ‘On Sir Charles Littleton’s Carrying his Lady [Katherine Fairfax] to Jamaica: 1662’. In his accompanying letter he expressed the hope that he ‘may one day adventure on a higher flight, and draw the Picture of my Lady Mordaunt; if at least the forces of the Artist had any hope of attaining to the dignity of so sublime a Subject’.²⁵ In the text he started to compose approximately a decade later, Evelyn amuses his readers with his observations on Elizabeth’s, aka Penthea’s, salon in which he is critical of her haughty, youthful character:

Penthea, was a fine built creature; and was (though not by me) est esteem'd Aso greateA a ^Akilling^A Beauty, as I haue seene the Whole Towne lye at her feete, at upon those Evenings when she would sit AoutA in the drawing-roome, and realy she was of a pleasant humor, if not a little affected; ffor there was something in her behauior mind which show'd that she AspokeA as if she were a little glad of her selfe, and Athat sheA did 26

not dislike the World should thinke she had Apossess'dA something of Extraordinary]]²⁶

It was a critical stance built up to contrast with the piety of her more private self, as if he was trying to juxtapose the public persona of the disdainful lady presiding over a literary salon with the private reality of the god-fearing woman known only to intimates.

Evelyn wrote ‘The Legend of Philaretes and the Pearle' and dedicated it to Margaret Blagge ‘his Orientall' to justify his close friendships with women other than herself, of whom Elizabeth was one. Possibly, Blagge felt insecure she was not his only spiritual, female muse. (Incidentally, how Evelyn's own wife might have felt is impossible to determine, though she was one of Elizabeth's best friends.) Evelyn professes that his wife had given him explicit ‘permission' to ‘Converse with other Ladys & to make vertuous friendships with the sex'. Funnily enough, as if he finds it difficult to determine how many other women with whom he had shared such a special, conversant relationship, Evelyn's draft in manuscript betrays marks of hesitation: he tinkers with the text, changing ‘Two’ to ‘Two or Three’ and softening that confession by self-consciously adding in the margin ‘at most’.²⁷ He aimed to situate those other relationships —‘two or three at most’—in the innocuous, neutral realm of friendship. Evelyn’s suggestion, then, that he was the only man who did not ‘esteem’ Elizabeth so ‘killing a Beauty’ must not be taken at face value, but regarded as evidence put forward to emphasize the platonic nature of their relationship. Whereas other men were physically attracted to Elizabeth, his concern was her spirituality—or so he asserts.

Evelyn set the stage for presenting his own lofty motivations for her company by first ridiculing the ‘Young Gallants’ flocking to Elizabeth’s salon so captivated by her indescribable physical beauty:

It were not possible to describe the Languishing I haue obseru’d in some of the Young Gallants, who for being persons of vn-spotted honor, & well known, were vsd to be admitted: To behold the servile Posture they would sometimes approch her in, the silence of One, the Loquacity & Eloquence & the fine things which were said by another! One would bring his Luite, another his Guitarr, a third his Composures: It was really, for an houre or two, a kind of Academy of innocent passe time, or rather, a certaine agreable trifling ^Ato^A which I cannot giue a name. Penthea would entertaine them all, & was so full of a thousand pretty impertinences to keepe vp the conversation, that when it was time to retire, there would be a Damp, & a sadnes as AamongA the company, as if the sun meridean sun were descending into a cloud, darker than ^Athe^A night.²⁸

Having described the suffering youths who thrived in her company and perished in her absence, Evelyn reveals his own motivations for craving her attention: he became one of her secret admirers the moment he, without her knowledge, read the devotional diary that she was keeping at the time. He had picked up the private manuscript after she had absentmindedly left it on a table: Elizabeth was a friend of Evelyn’s wife, and he thus moved in her orbit.²⁹ He described it as ‘a piece of solemn Deuotion’ which she followed to the letter:

yet that which most deepely engag,d my peculiar AvenerationA esteeme AesteemeA, was a piece of solemn Deuotion of >she< had compos,d by her for the Regulation of her owne Life, w hi ch AthatA I found by chance vpon her Cabin table, & w hi ch vn-heeded by her, I had read Apervs,dA； I knew it to be of her own compose framing, by sundry marks &I but I neuer told her what it was which so indeard her to me, & she 30

seemd to I perceiu,d she liv,d vp to it exactly[.]

Apparently, not wanting to come clean by admitting that his admiration for her was the result of his having spied upon her innermost thoughts, he sought an excuse to strike up a correspondence: this he did in a role of marriage broker, clumsily attempting to accomplish a union between one Edward Hales and herself to prevent the marriage her mother was planning for her with a Dutch man whom she detested.

In his first letters, he swears ‘perpetual Servitude’, because he interprets her answering a letter in her own hand as a sign of favour, that she was ‘pleased to distinguish [him] from the many’ others of her ‘Academy of innocent passe time’, and calls her his ‘Mistris’;³¹ she, reversing the poetic gender roles of platonic courtship, insists on calling him ‘Master’, professing she ‘will not resig^An^Ae that tytel' and subscribing as his 'Humble Servant’.³² Evelyn is highly apologetic following Hales’s marriage proposal of August 1655, which was not received positively. Evelyn termed it 'the greatest disaster of [his] life’, wronging both him and her, failing to realize that she had already fallen victim to the courtship of John Mordaunt instead; he asked her to put Hales, the poor sot, out of his misery, writing 'it shall be an act of greate gallantry in you Madame, to put an end to his Sufferings’.³³ While the proposal of a match with Hales proved to be a poorly chosen way to initiate a correspondence, Elizabeth did not break off epistolary relations. Through the exchange of letters and personal visits they developed a long-lasting friendship, in which Evelyn even became the executor of her will.³⁴

Even though he might have been drawn to Elizabeth’s spiritual side, Evelyn had difficulty covering up that he, like the gallants he so mocked, was also physically attracted to her. In the pastoral ideal of 'The Legend,’ Evelyn recalls a stroll with Elizabeth in the Tuileries in Paris, a time when they passed an aviary. She was startled by a caged eagle who dived down as soon as he spied her, as if she was his prey, upon which Evelyn supposedly started a poetic hypothesis:

Fair Penthea do you wonder why

This royal bird presumes so nigh He finds in this imprisond place No other sun to proue his race Thogh you haue heard how once he sped When he trust up fair Ganymede, Think you he has commission now or like desire to seize on you should the bad bird the Wyres escape Or thinke to purpos at this rape

Though he bear lightning free from harme

Your bright Eyes will proue too warme.

To which she, in Evelyn’s recollection, replied:

Wert Thou the Off-spring of that bed That once did seize young Ganymed Thou couldst not so mistake mine Eyes For that which glistens in the skies Or say thou hadst that vile intent For which that towring bird was sent Whilst APentheaA Philaretes did my me loues >She< I would not change ^Ahim^A for thy Joves.

In the mythological narrative, Zeus quenches his erotic thirst for the incredibly handsome male youth Ganymede by abducting him in the guise of an eagle (or commanding an eagle to do so). Evelyn, playfully inverting genders, turns Elizabeth into the male Ganymede and confronts her with the question whether the heat of her ‘bright Eyes’ will be able to ward off this eagle who ‘purpos[ed] rape’. (His wording dismisses the Neoplatonic reading of the myth that is also valid, of Ganymede being abducted to Mount Olympus to serve as cupbearer to the gods, as a metaphor of the ascent to spiritual perfection.) To this she replied, according to Evelyn, that she would welcome ravishment, ‘that vile intent’, if it were to be done by him. Evelyn, who must have realized the inappropriateness of this poetic exchange, claims that ‘she blush’d as red as fire when this was out; because she was sensible that there was sound expression in them which might be perverted’. She rested assured, however, because she felt ‘safe’ with him. Evelyn feels he breaks a pact of secrecy by retelling the event: ‘I shold not haue recal’d them [that is, these lines], but to show what she could performe, wher she would be free, & brilliant: & I haue a thosand times admird how one who had […]′.³⁵ The manuscript ends here mid-sentence, Evelyn presumably suddenly recognizing he could never circulate it amongst his coterie of female friends. As Brown perceptively remarks, ‘[t]he manipulative Evelyn is recalling a moment charged with eroticism, and if [one of Evelyn’s other female friends] the sensitive and insecure Margaret [Blagge] was the intended reader, the text had not taken a wise turn’.³⁶ While the text was to justify his relationship with other women as friendships, Evelyn is unable to subdue his passion for Elizabeth and ties himself in knots. It perhaps explains why the text is left unfinished.

Evelyn might never have been totally convinced that the platonic ideal of relationships propagated in literary salons was sustainable, because he was adamant that his own wife not collect ‘gallants’ around her. She was to heed the:

kind of Conversation being disguised vnder the title of P[l]atonique Loue, they nourish now more then euer they did, to the dishonour of the whole sex: Every Lady has her Gallant (as they call them) before whome if shee can jeere her husband, and lay open his imperfections, she onely goes for a witt amongst them; and a 37

strumpet with honest men: and therefore a modest Wife should be carefull to avoid such occasions.

Evelyn here applies a predictable set of double standards. While he could attend salons, his wife should not preside over one of them, as according to him, having one’s reputation reduced to being ‘a witt’, or worse ‘a strumpet’, was clearly not to be desired for a woman. For a woman, Evelyn saw modesty as a virtue; wit and intelligence as a vice.

However, in not wanting to see his wife becoming a salonnière, Evelyn might simply have wanted to keep her away from treasonous conspiracy, too. As Julie Sanders notes, presiding over a salon ‘was […] a highly convenient means of developing a powerful court faction and the semi-emotional, semi-intellectual structures of such a movement should not blind us to the political intrigues and manipulations they enabled and facilitated’.³⁸ Indeed, in 1644, Lady Carlisle’s reputation as a salonnière was used as pretext for Royalist plotters to gather at her London residence, Little Salisbury House. It was ‘the perfect cover for organizing “secret cabals” ’.³⁹ As a member of the House of Commons, Denzil Holles was forbidden to meet with foreign representatives. Yet Holles had conferences with Melchior, Sieur de Sabran, the French agent in England from 1644 to 1645, at Lady Carlisle’s, together with Sir Philip Stapleton and Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland, under the guise of participating in a literary salon. Instead of composing poetry or music, however, they discussed the advantages of Charles I embracing a Presbyterian settlement in exchange for Scottish military support, and afterwards, when this plan had not come to fruition, for him to conform to the compromises that parliament proposed. In 1647, eleven men, Holles and Stapleton amongst them, faced charges ‘for meeting together at the Lady Carlisles Lodgings in Whitehall; and other places, with other disaffected persons’.⁴⁰ They testified:

that within the time there limited for those meetings to have bin, and at no time before or since, they have at all bin at her Ladiships lodgings: only Mr. Holles, Sir William Lewis, and Sir Philip Stapleton do acknowledg, that by her Ladiships favour, they have many times waited upon her both at her own Lodgings in Whitehall, and elsewhere, yet never to any such [foul] intent […] but only to pay unto her Ladiship that respect which is due unto her (a person of so great honor and desert) from them, and in truth from all others who are wel wishers to the welfare of this Kingdom.⁴¹

In other words, the men claimed that instead of committing treason, they had only paid homage to a respected salonnière; they had only been members of the ‘Academy of innocent passe time’, to use Evelyn’s words to describe a salon, or so they proffered. The argument seems to have been convincing enough for the army not to pursue the charges. There is not enough evidence to compare Elizabeth’s salon to that of Lady Carlisle in London, or indeed to that of Lady Dysart’s in Suffolk. When Elizabeth had her salon in Paris, she was a mere teenager, and in her case those gatherings were thus more likely to have been the fancies of youth and pastimes of exile.

Romance as Code

In May 1656, Evelyn introduced Electra, daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra, as a code name for Elizabeth in one of his letters. Sophocles’ eponymous tragedy must have been a familiar one in the Evelyn household as it had been translated into English by Christopher Wase, cousin to Evelyn’s wife.⁴² At first Evelyn must have thought Electra a particularly suitable coded adornment for Elizabeth, but once she married he reassigned the code name Electra to Margaret Blagge and rechristened Elizabeth as Penthea.⁴³ On the one hand, the change could point to the subdued rivalry between Margaret and Elizabeth for Evelyn’s attention. On the other hand, once Elizabeth married, Evelyn might have thought of George Pettie’s sixteenth-century reworking of the Pygmalion myth, in which the romance character Penthea is a flirtatious but married woman, cruelly uncaring of the effect she has on men.⁴⁴ In Evelyn’s copy of the first coded letter to Elizabeth, which he took down because he did not want to lose what he had written, he therefore later cancelled Electra, overwriting the name with Penthea.

To use names from romances as code, as Evelyn did in his letter, was a typically Royalist trick. As early as 1643, Jane Bingley and her husband corresponded with their daughter Susan, who had made the crossing to France just as Elizabeth Carey would later do, in the exact same manner. Their letters concerned negotiations of Susan’s father with Lord Wentworth in Oxford Royalist headquarters and the retaking of Arundel Castle by parliamentary forces.⁴⁵ In the epistolary exchange, Jane was Fidelia, her husband Melidora, and Susan was either addressed as Philitia or Amorella. They further obscured their messages by writing words backwards: for instance, ‘Pendenes Castell’ (Pendennis Castle in Cornwall) becomes ‘senednep. lletsac.’.⁴⁶ At least one of their letters was intercepted and while their efforts failed to fool the uninvited parliamentarian reader entirely, it at least appears to have slowed down their eventual unmasking. The Black Chamber operative initially assumed it to be an exclusively feminine trick, forwarding the letter with the accompanying remarks: ‘Letters intercepted from his Ma.^tys ministers abroad, 1644/3’, ‘Fidelia to Amorella. Note! Some Court Ladies at Oxford took Names out Some Romancys’.⁴⁷ Apparently, he could not imagine a man, like Jane Bingley’s husband or indeed Evelyn, to be so fanciful as to use romance names. For all this presumption, however, the letter was eventually decoded, meaning that while the use of romance names did not guarantee anonymity, it at least put some temporal space between the conspirator and their potential capture.

Lois Potter tends towards the belief that the codes used in these letters were primarily for amusement, if her comments on the letter of Fidelia to Philitia of 18 January 1644 is anything to go by:

The annotators of this letter obviously took it seriously as a cipher: they suggest that Silvander is Charles I and Polimuse the Duke of Hamilton. The message might have been a coded one; on the other hand, it might have been the work of real people using romance names for their own amusement, as the French précieux 48

did. It is sometimes hard to tell the difference.

Potter’s apparent refusal to come to a decision regarding the nature of these codes is, perhaps, a function of her merely looking at a single letter rather than considering the Bingley letters as a whole, as there are three more letters located in other manuscripts.⁴⁹ While the use of cryptology served to strengthen social bonds in the period,⁵⁰ that is not to say that it was for amusement only: after all, the subject taken up by the Bingley letters, Hamilton’s incarceration in Pendennis Castle while charged with treason, was hardly a matter of levity. It was precisely the fact that the adoption of romance names was a social custom in salons that rendered letters that mirrored such conventions deceptively innocuous. It is a matter of context whether we consider it more likely that a letter from Evelyn to Elizabeth thus coded is merely a continuation of their habitual salon interaction or something more meaningful. That Evelyn’s letter to Elizabeth when she was in The Hague was coded in ‘salon terms’, so to speak, but was also sent not directly but via merchant John Shaw in Antwerp, as Elizabeth had instructed, might also give us reasonable cause for thinking its contents less than innocuous.⁵¹ The letter itself was an answer to one of Elizabeth’s that had arrived from Holland, where she was ostensibly visiting her ill mother. The literary code he used can be decoded in two radically different ways:

Dear Electra APentheaA [Elizabeth] I exceedingly congratulat the effect of your Voyage, and your safe arrival; […] As for Intelligenc[e], here is no alteration at all amongst the Gallants, […], when that blessed opportunity shall come, of which I have so little reason to dispaire, that I will onely wish for the presence of Electra APentheaA.[…]In short Melestris [Melistris, 'trice-sweet / honey-trice'，thus, possibly, John Mordaunt] is building a stately Palac[e] in the Country [that is, possibly, Mordaunt is ‘fomenting a Royalist insurrection in Sussex’], and therefore often absent from Lycopolis [that is, ‘literally, “the city of wolves”: London’]:⁵² but he sent word to my Sister [note that Evelyn had no living sister at this time; either an affectionate term for a female friend or, possibly, code for Charles Stuart], that in good earnest, he would never marry [or, if code, possibly, rise] without her approbation. Of all the Servants of the rich Hermodes, Mithradata [Mithridate, antidote for poisoning], Hermodes, ’tis believed, is most in her graces and some affirme it is concluded. Something too I could discover concerning the beloved Pyrander, and the unfortunat[e] adventure of his letters, which fell into the hands of Clara by accident, and extreamely incensd her, but this I reserve: The Letters of your Aulis domae Calama [if Greek ‘stalk / reed,, if Latin 'pen'] I here inclose.

On the one hand, names from prose romances could and were used to veil innocent gossip, so Evelyn could merely be acquainting Elizabeth with the latest flirtations and marriages that loomed on the horizon: romance standing for romance. On the other hand, however, such names were also used as code to cloak genuine political messages, as in the Bingley letters. There is, of course, a second layer of possible meanings to consider here: discourses of intimacy and matrimony were in themselves used to communicate political discourse, as we have seen with the Sealed Knot in general and Susan Hyde in particular. The substitution of romance names in letters, therefore, may allow for a second layer of coding to be employed within epistolary discourse. It would not be the first time that Charles Stuart figured in a letter as a woman: the king was for some time known as Mrs Brown amongst conspirators in the 1650s.⁵³ Elizabeth’s instruction that Evelyn direct his letters via Shaw might in itself appear innocent caution, were his address not used as a cover by she-intelligencer Susan Hyde and other Royalists who conspired against Cromwell at this time; mention of Shaw might have served as encouragement for Evelyn to act with caution. The final sentence of his letter indicates that he was returning letters written in Elizabeth’s hand back to her. In this scenario, presumably fearing the package addressed to Shaw could still be intercepted, the cautious and amateur salon poet Evelyn built in an extra layer of protection: the veiled language of literary diction. In short, he might have used names from prose romances as code to protect a pile of secret letters and to acquaint her with conspiratorial movements in England. Of course, the fact that it is impossible to determine whether the names protect gossip or political secrets is what makes it, or may have made it, such an effective veil.

Escape to France after the Letdown of Booth’s Rising

Elizabeth’s first year of marriage was no honeymoon, consisting as it did of a failed plot, a lucky trial, and a disastrous plot. There was no doubt that John Mordaunt and his followers blamed the remnants of the Sealed Knot for the disaster that was Booth’s rising. Captain Titus, for instance, assured Lord Mordaunt that no one blamed him for the catastrophe, rather the disbanded Knot instead, writing to Mordaunt shortly after the latter had made his escape to France that ‘could curses send the whole Sealed Knot to the devill, he [that is, the devil] would not be long without his own [finding his evil brothers in the Knot]’.⁵⁴ From the moment the Great Trust had been formed, Lord Mordaunt had warned Charles Stuart that it had caused a ‘Division among royalists; men [are] uncertain whether to obey [me] and [my] fellow-commissioners [that is, the Great Trust] or the “wary men” [that is, those who had formerly formed the Sealed Knot]’.⁵⁵ He also warned Hyde that the remnants of the Knot opposed the Trust: ‘[t]he “wary gentlemen” differ from himself.’⁵⁶ At first he remained hopeful that by drawing former Sealed Knot members such as Lady Dysart’s brother-in-law Sir William Compton into the Trust, his new secret society would eventually thrive.⁵⁷ In July 1659, however, after his imprisonment and trial, Mordaunt again wrote to the king, this time that he ‘[f]ound the Knot had discouraged all when he returned’.⁵⁸ Nevertheless, Lord Mordaunt attempted a rising in Surrey, with thirty others including his own cousin Thomas and James Howard as well as the Earl of Lichfield, but abandoned the plan when it became apparent there was no backing. The split of the Royalist factions caused too much confusion and had immobilized any real rebellion. The men of parliamentary general John Lambert soon started chasing the instigators, and on 28 July 1659, before Mordaunt had even begun the rising in Surrey, his arrest was ordered.⁵⁹

Instead of surrendering, Mordaunt fled to France, arriving there on 7 September and his wife followed his example a month or so later: Lambert’s agents were hunting her, too. According to Nicholas in Brussels, ‘she intended to escape, being much sought for by the rebels in England’.⁶⁰ Mordaunt admitted to Hyde that he was ‘anxious for the safety of his wife’, but she arrived unscathed in Calais in the first week of October.⁶¹ One of the first things she did on her arrival was write a letter to the king in which she embraced the life of a she- intelligencer: ‘I […] assure your Majestie of my willing submission to all the hazzards my deare husband exposes himself to in your Majesties service. […] And that I may follow his example in it’.⁶² Her cousin Lady Elizabeth Carey, daughter of Henry, 2nd Earl of Monmouth, was aware that her cousin took nothing but ‘pleasure of doing [her] dutie’ in serving king and country and thus apologized for the fact that she expressed any concern for her, but nevertheless asked to be forgiven for it, claiming ‘it is impossible we should heare so excellent a person threatened with punishment and death, if fallen into the power of the barbarous people here [in England] without unexpressable [sic] fears’. This same cousin also expressed her incredulity that the accusations against Lady Mordaunt would hold up, as if a lady of great renown could not play a true part in any conspiracy, writing ‘your friends parts in it must have been greater then your own’.⁶³ It was as if she reiterated the thoughts of Sir Lewis Dyve that women were ‘vessels too weake for the retention of strong liquor’. Lady Mordaunt’s uncle Monmouth also expressed a desire to serve his niece but also wrote to her that there could be no mistake, as if wanting to make sure that she did not underestimate the danger she found herself in: her actions were ‘termed’ ‘delinquency’ in England.⁶⁴

Elizabeth had evaded capture and the possible death penalty that accompanied it, but rejoiced in the adventure of her new life, which came with responsibility and privileged status: her husband had chosen her to act as the epistolary channel between himself and Charles Stuart, so she wrote most letters to the king. Even before Elizabeth’s arrival in Calais, Lord Mordaunt informed the king that he was going to go against the advice of both Nicholas and Hyde: instead of visiting him personally in Spain, he would travel back to England to organize a new uprising. In doing so, he answered, as he put it to Nicholas, ‘many pressing invitations from the most considerable men in England, to return and give life to a second attempt’.⁶⁵ While he arranged yet another Royalist rebellion from a base in London, in fact a resuscitation of Booth’s rising, he would leave his wife in Calais. In France she would be relatively safe, but could also act as postmistress for himself, the king, Hyde, and others. As he wrote to the king from Calais, ‘Sir, I have my wife here [in ten days’ time], who will convey all your Majesties commands to mee’.⁶⁶ Moreover, she would not merely serve as intermediary, but as his proxy in charge of securing French military support for an invasion.

Lady Mordaunt was well connected and could quickly set up postal channels that she deemed reliable. For instance, that she had reached out to the exiled aunt of the king, Elizabeth Stuart, sometime Queen of Bohemia, the moment she set foot in France, can be inferred from the deposed queen’s reply to a letter from Lady Mordaunt that is now lost:

As I was in no small paine to heare of yours and your Lord’s safetie, so I am extreame glad to heare from your self of it: I assure you that the miscariage of your worthie designe in England did not trouble me a little. I hope yet that God will restore the King, and punish all traytors, and that I may see you, where you wish to see me [that is, post-Restoration, out of exile, in England].

The queen also expressed the hope that she would visit her court in exile in The Hague:

I hope in the meane time [while we are waiting for Charles Stuart to be restored to the throne] now you are on this side [of] the sea, you will resolve to see your friends here, where I assure you, you shall be very welcome. I pray you tell your worthy Lord the same. I wonder your ears do not tingle for you are both often talked of here, not at all to your disadvantage. […] I need not tell you where the King is, you know it as well as I.

The letter does not bear the queen’s signature, but her monogram cipher instead,⁶⁷ signalling that Lady Mordaunt belonged to the queen’s inner circle, those who knew her hand and secretive mark. Indeed, she made use of the trust and tapped into the Queen of Bohemia’s close-knit network. It is no coincidence that it was Frederick Herman de Schomberg, later the Duke of Schomberg, who acted as intermediary between Turenne and the Mordaunts, sharing a cipher key with Lady Mordaunt to communicate his intelligence secretly.⁶⁸ He was the son of Hans Meinhard de Schomberg, the King of Bohemia’s master of the household, and the Queen of Bohemia’s First Lady-in-waiting at the time, Anne Dudley, who had died giving birth to him. His lineage ensured that he always maintained close ties with the Queen of Bohemia’s circle of supporters. Frederick Herman seems to have bribed the governor of Nieuport, whose name is not known, to put aside Lady Mordaunt’s packages from Calais. Once they arrived at his port, they would be passed on to private messengers who would then deliver them to Royalists awaiting a new rising, though Hyde remained cautious: ‘I am not sure all is well settled yet at Nieuport with that governour’.⁶⁹ Lady Mordaunt, however, seems to have put her trust in this route, knowing it was Schomberg and ultimately the Queen of Bohemia who ensured its reliability.⁷⁰

Those serving in the army of Flanders or the French forces accepted Elizabeth’s position and communicated with her directly, albeit with a feeling of discomfort as they communicated military secrets to a woman: ‘Madame, I would not have presumed to trouble your ladyship had I not received my Lord Mordaunt’s favour of the 28th instant, which hath obliged me to returne him through your ladyships hands’, as a French lieutenant-colonel admitted to her.⁷¹ Sir Herbert Lunsford’s letter, which communicated Marshall Turenne’s readiness to militarily assist the Duke of York with a landing in England, reads similarly: ‘Madame, Had I not received commands from my noble lord your husband I should not have taken the presumption thus to importune your ladyship’.⁷²

Most of the English figureheads, however, wrote to Lady Mordaunt only when they knew she could either put a letter immediately into her husband’s hands or at worst within a matter of days. Writing from Brussels, Hyde knew Lord Mordaunt was to return from London to Calais on 11 November and that Elizabeth could thus easily pass on a letter. Therefore, he enclosed a letter meant for her husband in a letter addressed to her, though as a safety measure he did not mention Lord Mordaunt by name:

I […] doe beseech your ladyship to transmitt the enclosed to your best friend, whom I hope God will preserve from all sortes of enemies and that you will long enjoy each other, with a comfortable and a pleasant remembrance of the killing feares, apprehentions and separations you have passed through, and 73 even mastered by an unexampled courage, in which your ladyships particular part hath been verie noble.

Hyde seems to be well aware Elizabeth found danger thrilling, as he believed his wish for her to cherish ‘the killing feares’ in the years to come would be welcome. This aspect of Elizabeth’s personality is also confirmed by one of Elizabeth’s cousins, Lady Mary Carey. In a letter penned ten days after Hyde’s, she refused to feel sorry for the danger Elizabeth had been in after the failure of Booth’s rising:

since you have scaped the danger, cannot say I am very sorrie you have been in some, for in the age we live, tis not easie to sever suffering from the honour of doing one’s dutie; And I know you prefere that so much before the lazy quiet most here place their happinesse in.⁷⁴

Those who knew Elizabeth well realized she thrived in dangerous circumstances and loved adventure, and was therefore not to be pitied for the predicament in which she found herself. When Ormond wrote to Elizabeth, again near to a time her husband was to arrive in Calais, we might be forgiven for questioning, therefore, whether he purposefully exaggerated the nature of the letter he enclosed:

You will be pleased Madame to cause the adjoyned, to my lord your husband, to be sent him when you light upon a safe conveyance, and not before, because it is directed to him and subscribed by me, then which it 75 cannot have a more dangerous quality to the person that shall be the bearer.

Ormond’s letter discussed his conference with Cardinal Mazarin about French support for an invasion, and was thus indeed sensitive. On the one hand, he trusted her with secret intelligence. On the other hand, placing a letter directly into her husband’s possession can hardly have been a dangerous exercise. It seems the use of her name on the wrapper served both Hyde and Ormond as the perfect cover through which to convey a letter not directly, but also not entirely indirectly, to Lord Mordaunt.

Lord Mordaunt’s plans did not come to fruition, but his wife was not to blame. Initially, Turenne had been willing to support the Duke of York’s schemes for a Royalist invasion of England, but after Booth’s defeat the marshal never again believed it realistic to continue to pursue such plans.⁷⁶ Lord Mordaunt also lost influence over the Presbyterians as they insisted on following the old Treaty of Newport to the letter, thereby making a restoration conditional on a religious settlement. A Royalist rising supported by a Presbyterian-French alliance was no longer on the cards, though Charles Stuart’s council as well as Marshal Turenne kept the lines of communication open with Lady Mordaunt.

Spies, such as Nicholas Armorer, believed Lady Mordaunt the stronger of the couple: tellingly perhaps, he referred to Lord Mordaunt as her ‘child’, ostensibly to obscure the latter’s identity but possibly to emphasize her superiority in intelligence matters.⁷⁷ After a few months working autonomously as an intelligencer in Calais, while he was in England or chasing the king in Flanders or Spain, she was plainly in charge. One letter in which she give him instructions regarding which generals he ought write to, using particular ciphers keys that she designed, is demonstrative of her authority over her husband:

This inclosed is from 848.492. [possibly, the Duke of York] I have not tyme, this boat going away on a sudden, to put it in cipher. Pray will you write very discreetly to Monsieur Schomberg, and give him an account of all businesse and how the state of government stands. And all you addresse to Marshal Turaine let it be by him, for he is an other kinde of person then Sir H. [that is, Sir Herbert Lunsford] though he be very honest, and you must write to him and seeme to relye as much as you did.

To Monsieur Schomberg make use alwayes of the secretaries cypher, for I have sent it you, and I have spoken with him since, and finde you make what interest you please with Marshal Turaine by his means if you be discreet. For if that be true the Queen writes of the 37. [possibly, the Sealed Knot] having no full power, it remains with you; But Lord Berk[e]ley writt the last weeke, word to H: B. [that is, Hartgill Baron] that 37 had full power from the King to act in his absence, which letter I keep, and so I doe all, for at your returne I hope to give you a good account of all that passes through my hands, for I have some reason to doe 78

it, for tis verie much to see how the strangers trust me.

The letter shows how well connected she was: she realized the best way to reach Turenne was via Schomberg and not Lunsford; she was in possession of a copy of Schomberg’s cipher key; Queen Henrietta Maria wrote letters to her; and she had also obtained a copy of John Berkeley’s letter to Hartgill Baron. Even though a second rising never occurred, Lady Mordaunt had proven her competence as intelligencer.

Hyde, as Earl of Clarendon after the Restoration, remained on good terms with the Mordaunts. The friendship survived the disastrous year of 1667 that saw the impeachments of both Mordaunt and Clarendon. Mordaunt, well known as a friend of the Chancellor, was charged with misconduct in his role of governor of Windsor Castle, while, after a bitter struggle between his enemies and his loyal friends both at court and in parliament, Clarendon was forced to surrender his offices and, in fear of imprisonment or worse, fled into his final exile in December.

By July 1669, the exile’s wanderings in France had brought him to Montpellier, where for health reasons was living Lady Mordaunt, in Clarendon’s eyes ‘a lady of eminent virtue and merit’.⁷⁹ Clarendon both enjoyed and was grateful for Elizabeth Mordaunt’s friendship, and when Lord Mordaunt also arrived in Montpellier, he expressed his ‘great respect for her and her husband’.⁸⁰ Yet these were friends who saw the need to put their letters in cipher and who still attracted the suspicious surveillance of Charles’s government, with the famous cryptographer John Wallis being employed to break the cipher and decode their letters. Wallis, who was originally parliament’s cryptanalyst but had stayed on to serve the restored monarch, broke the cipher Lady Mordaunt shared with Clarendon and decoded their letters in 1669⁸¹ (see Figure 5.1). If Clarendon found this out, it should not have surprised him, as four years previously he hired Wallis to decipher some letters, and had reportedly flattered him by stating that to his ‘Industrie & Sagacity the most accurate Cifres ly as open as a common Alphabet’.⁸² It is possible that the king might have acquainted Wallis with the kind of cipher keys Elizabeth designed in the past, which might have assisted the cryptanalyst to break the key she shared with Clarendon. Indeed, they may have been using the same pre-Restoration ciphers they were familiar with, but which

Wallis had already broken when some of the Trust’s letters were intercepted.⁸³

\ *遥狗城很个史叱受”金Í 一 £"疝負G.g海― M产”屏声J： 必［「K応亂/ $y如6 "X''力 白 涂3 < 中、 菽品 ..g［嬴:产鼠叶队?:2y,y三.r. I ♦釁t帚縊毎3岁警,茄¥沙 j濟經产曰『樂，"/彦&"翠:；。『；"紀？

，争.£；；宓;;窸/%7懑至*? I扌X* ' g |' j "二 3 + rt 喚 I    」在 w『/ . J"V

4Hq篆:&金为［“z尸T战F；〃，夕Z"［匕” ,「餌¹ E ZÌL 4；丄工工二叱* i产 上. .：士」；「也 ・ 登广7-券移，J."/tjQ反/*/ir遥4M ■ 3获还•萝;Ề3:逛i您Í 粒 北/靖F二济，痴h诙，4 — —— 力场善,， 遂/，我7, 3 jÍỈ/一1*"?』"疔屮?』步#号j*^戸Ặ_1,2'城盘沁L^ 2L ¥*5 ［k^^Lí-G，,点 厶」f 田卜个 %也；冷:工 召―,：£•匸-02•~y3 「j K邦也对J 4骂..川；一侬母,0 ¹ I.厂ỷ £     港重行嚥令鼐尹讓

门一忐jK与r心『，"'舛I/『,« M *胃I— -e.«.ị-〜 f rw~i_ £ 波工 云% B* 餘？ 意《。：总.吊.屋 3 ’殍耳7也■ 4 運負 2具 斗3'/东一炉rU工晶丄-二心 q—1方知扌艮£匕 昌琉喀.岳承當—步；

Figure 5.1 Manuscript, decoded letter of Clarendon to Lady Mordaunt, by John Wallis. Hand: John Wallis. BL, Add. MS 32499, fo. 22r. ^© The British Library Board

Lady Mordaunt’s ‘Spiritual’ Diary

Hitherto the diary has been Lady Mordaunt’s sole claim to fame. It was edited and printed in the nineteenth century by her descendant Robert Jocelyn, 3rd Earl of Roden, and the original manuscript has been presumed lost.⁸⁴ And so it was, until Lotte Fikkers and I tracked it down: it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, in the possession of Robert Jocelyn, 10th Earl of Roden, of Doon House, Cashel, County Galway, Ireland. It has ‘a silver lock’, as the first editor also noted, but why the editor was moved to declare such ‘difficulty of deciphering the writing’, other than as an empty topos to pretend his effort more grand, is incomprehensible: it is in Lady Mordaunt’s beautiful italic hand.⁸⁵ Indeed, the nineteenth-century edition is a perfect transcript, apart from the fact that some passages were left out, and for no discernible reason.

The diary is not ordered chronologically, and it is therefore likely that the manuscript is a fair copy of a selection of entries taken out of multiple, messier volumes of diaries that Lady Mordaunt kept over the years, one of which helped her to acquire Evelyn as an admirer. Such assemblage of multiple volumes into one was common practice—Anne Clifford’s seemingly spontaneous diary was composed in the same way, for instance—and the constant copying of devotional diary entries, prayers, biblical quotations, and the reassembling of such material was in itself a religious exercise.⁸⁶ The physical act of writing was seen as penance, as a devotion transcending oral confession. By recording her sins in her book, Lady Mordaunt asked for the Lord to cross them out in His: ‘for my many ofences; as thay ar reten in this booke, so blote them out of thine’ (fo. 7r).⁸⁷ The earliest entries date from the time that she was just married, when she struggled with one of the institution’s more debatable benefits, the gaining of a mother-in­law. She records numerous arguments with Lady Peterborough, seeking God’s advice on how to improve their relationship. Most notably, she kept a ledger, one which betrays the genre’s origin in account-keeping, what Adam Smyth has called ‘Mordaunt’s double-entry spiritual record’.⁸⁸ In one column she returned thanks, in another she asked pardon. In 1657, for instance, she returned thanks for not having ‘tould any untruthe’, and, clearly struggling with her new status of being a wife, asked pardon for her flirtatious character, for which her mother-in­law had reprimanded her: ‘by looking uppon a man, when my harte tould me, it might renue his passion againe for me which being marryed was unlawfull’ (fo. 5r).

Since Lady Mordaunt’s spiritual account-keeping also alternates with prayers and devotional verse, and her life as intelligencer has hitherto not been looked at in depth, literary critics have been blind to the secular events that caused her to turn to God: the diary is indeed a spiritual record, but one that was first and foremost kept by a spy who was struggling with the moral implications of her ‘profession’. Her struggle with intelligencing is not immediately noticeable: the diary only offers the reader glimpses of the dangerous life of a she-intelligencer; these enticing windows onto a life that we know from other sources was filled with espionage are typically frustratingly brief. For instance, on a Saturday, she ‘humblely returne[d] thanks for’ to have passed that day ‘without any grete perel’ (fo. 5v), leaving the reader to speculate which great perils she was relieved to have avoided that day. However, and typically, the she-intelligencer quickly hides her head again three days later in underlining the averageness of her life, too, by asking forgiveness for having ‘offended by’ ‘spending more of [her] time, in reading a foulish play’ than in devotion (fo. 6r) (note that the word ‘foulish’ wittily merges the notions of ‘foolish’ and ‘foul’). The pattern repeats itself, with mundane sins alternated with possible self-endangerments: for instance, on Tuesday she seeks forgiveness for ‘deferring bisnes for to play at cards’ (fo. 11r); there is no record for the Wednesday, but on the Thursday she returns thanks for ‘granting [her] a saue returne home’ (fo. 11r)—one cannot help wonder where she was on the Wednesday. The recordings that possibly relate to dangerous liaisons are short, they raise questions instead of providing answers, they offer no explanations but draw attention to lacunae, pieces of a puzzle that have to be found elsewhere, such as in Evelyn’s prose romance or her intelligence letters.

Naturally, a diary kept by a spy would be as much a document of concealment as of revelation, and Elizabeth, being a proper she-intelligencer, kept her secrets close to her chest. Elizabeth freed herself from the domestic struggles with her mother-in-law Lady Peterborough when the failure of Booth’s rising led to her becoming postmistress in Calais. She appears to have increasingly used her diary to come to terms with the sinful life she led as a she- intelligencer. She did not make her secret dealings explicit, however. There was no need: God knew her heart. In simply recording secrets as sinful without giving any details about what those secrets pertained, she paid her dues to the Lord her saviour, while keeping any uninvited readers such as Evelyn, or us modern readers, in the dark.

She kept a diary for self-examination: ‘we must uppon no termes sufer any action to pase without so strickt exsaminnation; of what>which< we may geue an account as wel of the aperanc as of the intention of theme […] my aduis is, to my selfe, that I Lete no day pas, without taking suche a reuew of my Life’ (fo. 3r). However, she often asks pardon for not performing this task daily: ‘perden my neglect of this way of exsamining my selfe’ (fo. 12r). She starts off by laying down some guide rules how to ‘examen [her] selfe’ (fo. 3v) and one of those seems to be relevant to the activities of any she-intelligencer, namely ‘How to discouer the senserety of [her] words’:

1: whether the senserety and truthe of them be so grete, as that no feare of being disprouued, should make me desire the consealment of them; 2: Whether there were nothing in them tending to any persens prejudice, ether out of a pertecoler malis, to them, or out of uane Glory, to be thought beter then thay, my selfe; (a sade princepel to Laye the foundation of my fame uppon the distrucktion of an outhers, that may be More diseruing than my selfe; from which pray God to preserue me)[.] (fo. 3v)

Elizabeth, having been forced to tell so many lies as a she-intelligencer, can no longer discover the truth of her own words. Moreover, during times of war, it was sometimes difficult to determine which individuals were telling the truth, on either side of the conflict.

Keeping a spiritual diary was one way to counter and get to grips with an immoral life, the life that a spy by necessity led. Lying, for instance, though sinful was second nature to a spy and a vital survival mechanism. This given caused problems in interpersonal relationships: both between themselves as well as before their possible captors, spies had to strive hard to prove their virtuous intentions, and credibility was not easily won. Moral dearth even led to self­doubt at times, as is demonstrated by Lady Mordaunt seeking forgiveness for turning into a compulsive liar. Dissembling versus honesty, truth versus untruth, and hiding the truth—that is, secrecy—are key themes in her diary. She asks the Lord forgiveness for ‘secret and past sins’ (fo. 6v); ‘forgeue my knowne and secret sins, I feare I tould a Lye this day’ (fo. 8r); ‘I am Gilty Lorde klens me, I haue this day desembeled if not Lyed’ (fo. 8v); ‘I haue ofended my God this day […] by telling an untruthe’ (fo. 8v); ‘forgeue […] my speking untruthe’ (fo. 8v); forgeue me my secret faults’ (fo. 10r). The dishonesties are clustered together, following one another in quick succession, as if once started with the telling she gets entangled in their web, but this web was of her own making. In addition, possibly because of her own inability to be truthful, she finds it hard to trust others. To solve this predicament she also seeks religious guidance: ‘O my God acsept of my thanksgeuing, and derect me in this strayt whou to beleue and what to dow’ (fo. 9r). Interestingly, she also counts the writing of letters, possibly intelligence letters, amongst her offences: ‘I haue right [i.e. writ] many Letters to day and I feare offended in words’ (fo. 8v); ‘if in the Letters I haue sayd any thing in exkus that was not exact truthe Lord forgeue’ (fo. 9v). The latter remarks are a reminder that letters are not straightforward communications of truth-telling but were sometimes sent to create misinformation; her diary entries as a whole remind us that a spy was necessarily sinful and two-faced. Spies might have struggled with the immorality of their own behaviour that was often unavoidable and thus sought spiritual guidance and above all forgiveness. Lady Mordaunt’s resignation to God’s will is prevalent in her diary.⁸⁹ She attributed her husband’s acquittal by the secular High Court of Justice in 1658 to God’s intervention rather than her own—‘thy Hand, and the Helpe of thy mercy’ (fo. 16v). Such resignation possibly let her sleep at night, just as it also justified her unwomanly acts of intelligencing thereafter.

Elizabeth’s friendship with the Evelyns lasted a lifetime, possibly because they respected her abilities as a she-intelligencer and even paid homage to that part of her life without ever suggesting it made her less pious. The Evelyns’ oval garden at Sayes-Court was modelled after Pierre Morin’s garden in Paris, which Evelyn visited twice, in 1644 and 1654.⁹⁰ After Elizabeth had stayed some time at Sayes-Court in 1657, the garden had been enriched with a cabinet, best described as a temple, shrine, or altar of remembrance in honour of Elizabeth, then still Ms Carey.⁹¹ As Mary wrote to her ‘Dear Sister’ Elizabeth, it ‘is finished and embellished with Emblemes of you and your journey’.⁹² Mary Evelyn had requested another portrait of her friend, with which she might further decorate the cabinet. While both Mary and Elizabeth were amateur artists, it was the Queen of Bohemia’s daughter, Louise Hollandine, a pupil of Gerard van Honthorst, who painted the portrait in February 1657.⁹³ Mary styles her retreats into ‘Caryes cabinet in the Garden’ almost in devotional terms to Elizabeth, as if it were a site of pilgrimage: ‘it is a place I often visit, not without wishing you with me, and for want of so agreeable a Companion, I entertain my self with Cassandra; yet fancy your life well written would make a better Romance’.⁹⁴ (La Calprenède’s Cassandre had been translated by Sir Charles Cotterell, the Queen of Bohemia’s master of the household, and was Mary’s favourite prose romance.) During the first years of her marriage, Elizabeth’s life had resembled a prose romance even more than her friend Mary could have fathomed. Elizabeth, always the adventuress, had embraced the excitement of being married to the leader of the Great Trust, but her diary also shows that she struggled spiritually with the life of a she-intelligencer. While she had shown great capability as intelligencer, the Restoration brought with it little or no reward for the Mordaunts, and it is telling that the fair copy of her spiritual ‘diary’, itself an artificial assemblage of diaries she had kept over the years, puts so much emphasis on the sinfulness of espionage. In accentuating the lies she had to tell as a she-intelligencer and presenting them as acts for which she needed to seek forgiveness, Lady Mordaunt differentiates the behaviour of her sex from that of her husband’s. She reminds the reader, ironically, of why women made such good intelligencers, as she explains how far removed from her sensibilities was her behaviour. Elizabeth was not the only woman to note the dissonance between behaviour and expectation, as we shall see in the diary of Anne, Lady Halkett.

1

Lady Mordaunt’s Diary, entry dated 2 Mar. 1659, fo. 24r. Throughout I cite the manuscript that Lotte Fikkers and I discovered in a private collection, as discussed on pp. 176-7, and not the printed edition.

²     J. T. Peacey, ‘Hewitt [Hewytt, Hewett], John’, ODNB.

³          

Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England begun in the Year 1641, 6 vols, W. D. Macray (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon, 1888; repr. Oxford University Press, 1958), vi. 61-2/Book xi, Sections 96-7.

⁴     According to an anonymous account of one ‘T. W.’: see The Triall of Mr Mordaunt, Second Son to John Earl of Peterburgh, at the Pretended High Court of Justice in Westminster-Hall, the First and Second of June 1658 (London: Printed by James Flesher, 1661), dedicated to Elizabeth’s mother-in-law the Dowager Countess of Peterborough, 5, Wing no. 2158:08. This is confirmed by Mallory’s letter to Thurloe, 22 June 1658, TSP, vii. 194.

⁵     Bertha Porter, reviser J. T. Peacey, ‘Stapley, Anthony’, ODNB.

⁶     [T. W.], The Triall of Mr Mordaunt, 2. See also [William Cobbett], Cobbett’s Complete Collection of State Trials (London: R. Bagshaw, 1810), v. 907-35, no. 204, ‘The Trial of John Morda[u]nt, esq. before the High Court of Justice, for High Treason, A.D. 1658’.

⁷     [T. W.], The Triall of Mr Mordaunt, 2.

⁸     Hyde, The History of the Rebellion, vi. 58-9/Book xv, Section 93.

⁹          

I am grateful to Cedric C. Brown for allowing me to read his unpublished article on what is commonly known as ‘The Mordaunt Letter-Book’, to which I refer to as LBM throughout. The manuscript was edited by Mary Coate for the Royal Historical Society in 1945, but she did not pick up on the fact that it did not simply contain copies of letters kept for administrative purposes. Instead, as Brown demonstrates, the volume was especially prepared to memorialize the Mordaunts’ Royalist activities: see Brown, ‘Manuscript Book Rylands GB 133 Eng MS 55’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 94, no. 2 (2018), forthcoming.

¹⁰       Lord Mordaunt to Hyde, 2/12 Oct. 1659, LBM, 57 (no. 86).

¹¹       W. Calvin Dickinson, ‘Godolphin [née Blagge], Margaret’, ODNB.

¹²         

Brown, Friendship, 40. Cedric C. Brown revised and expanded his chapter on Lady Mordaunt, ‘John Evelyn, Elizabeth Carey, and the Trials of Pious Friendship’, which was published in James Daybell and Andrew Gordon (eds), Women and Epistolary Agency in Early Modern Culture, 1450-1690 (Farnham: Routledge, 2016), 110-27, in his own book: Friendship and its Discourses in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). I cite the latter version.

¹³         

Evelyn resided in Paris from Dec. 1649 to Jan. 1652: see [John Evelyn], The Letterbooks of John Evelyn, Douglas D. C. Chambers and David Galbraith (eds) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), i. 6-7. In his prose text ‘The Legend’, discussed later, he recalls one of his meetings with Elizabeth in the Parisian gardens.

¹⁴        [Evelyn], Letterbooks only renders one side of Evelyn’s epistolary relationships: Chambers and Galbraith print Evelyn’s letters but not those of his correspondents; neither do they systematically record to which letters his are answers nor which answers his inspired. I am immensely thankful to Cedric Brown for first drawing my attention to the letters of Elizabeth Carey addressed to Evelyn in the British Library, and even generously sharing all his transcriptions with me.

¹⁵         

[Evelyn], Letterbooks, i. 148, the editors’ notes.

¹⁶       Evelyn to Elizabeth, 15 July 1655, Sayes-Court, [Evelyn], Letterbooks, i. 148 (no. 73).

¹⁷       BL, Add. MS 78392, fo. 136v.

¹⁸ BL, Add. MS 78392, fo. 136v.

19

See also Brown, Friendship, 46.

20

The following paragraph is heavily based on my Courtly Rivals in The Hague (Venlo: VanSpijk/Rekafa Publishers in conjunction with Haags Historisch Museum, 2014), 43.

21

Erica Veevers, Images of Love and Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 14-16.

22

N. H. Keeble, ‘Introduction’, The Cambridge Companion to the Writing of the Revolution, N. H. Keeble (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 1-12 at 4.

²³       Paul Salzman, ‘Royalist Epic and Romance’, in Keeble (ed.), The Cambridge Companion, 215-30 at 228.

²⁴       The pseudonym Astrea did not figure on the title page, but in paratextual, dedicatory material preceding The Young King (1679) and ‘Seneca Unmasked’ (1685): see Mary Ann O’Donnell, Aphra Behn (Ashgate: Aldershot, 1986; reference to 2nd edn, 2004), 2.

²⁵       Evelyn to Elizabeth, 1 Jan. 1661/2, London, [Evelyn], Letterbooks, i. 308 (no. 181). The editors identify BL, Add. MS 78357, fo. 25r, as the poem.

²⁶              BL, Add. MS 78392, fo. 136r.

²⁷              BL, Add. MS 78392, fo. 135v.

²⁸              BL, Add. MS 78392, fo. 136r.

²⁹         

For the circulation of female devotional texts in the household and amongst expanding circles of friends, see Helen Wilcox, ‘ “My Hart is Full, My Soul Dos Ouer Flow” ’, Huntington Library Quarterly 63, no. 4 (2000): 447-66 at 458-9.

³⁰       BL, Add. MS 78392, fo. 136r. See also Frances Harris, Transformations of Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 79.

³¹              Evelyn to Elizabeth, 12 Sept. 1655, Sayes-Court, [Evelyn], Letterbooks, i. 150 (no. 76).

³²              Elizabeth to Evelyn, [after 12 Sept.] 1655, BL, Add. MS 78309, fo. 11.

³³              Evelyn to Elizabeth, 3 Feb. 1655[/6], Sayes-Court, [Evelyn], Letterbooks, i. 153 (no. 79).

³⁴       ‘An abstract or Breif of the last will: and Testament of the Right Honourable the Lady Viscountess Mordaunt’，BL, Add. MS 17018, fos. 129-30.

³⁵              BL, Add. MS 78392, fo. 136v.

³⁶ Brown, Friendship, 45.

37

‘Oeconomique Instructions’, 1648, BL, Add. MS 78430, fo. 23r; see also Harris, Transformations, 78.

38

Julie Sanders, ‘Caroline Salon Culture and Female Agency’, Theatre Journal 52, no. 4 (2000): 449­64 at 453-4.

39

Nadine Akkerman, ‘A Triptych of Dorothy Percy Sidney (1598-1659), Countess of Leicester, Lucy Percy Hay (1599-1660), Countess of Carlisle, and Dorothy Sidney Spencer (1617-1684), Countess of Sunderland’, in Margaret P. Hannay, Michael G. Brennan, and Mary Ellen Lamb (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to the Sidneys, 1500-1700 (vol. I: Lives) (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 133-50 at 146; the words ‘secret cabals’ are those of Lita-Rose Betcherman, Court Lady and Country Wife (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 263.

⁴⁰       William Prynne, A Full Vindication and Ansvver of the XI. Accused Members (London: s.n., 1647), Thomason Tract, E. 398 (17), p. 8.

⁴¹       Prynne, A Full Vindication, 8. I also discuss these gatherings in my chapter ‘A Triptych’ based on Prynne’s pamphlet. See also P. Crawford, Denzil Holles, 1598-1680 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), 109.

⁴²       The translation was published in The Hague in 1649 and dedicated to Charles I’s daughter Princess Elizabeth; see Harris, Transformations, 154.

⁴³              Harris, Transformations, 154.

⁴⁴              George Pettie, A Petite Palace of Pettie His Pleasure (London: Chatto & Windus, 1908), 108-34.

⁴⁵       Jane Bingley might have been the wife of William Brabazon, 1st Earl of Meath. In 1644, he, together with Sir Henry Tichborne and Sir James Ware, was sent by Ormond to negotiate with Charles I at Oxford. Meath was taken prisoner by a parliament ship when he and his companions left Oxford. Ware managed to throw Charles I’s letters to Ormond in the sea, committing them to water rather than to enemy hands. Meath was imprisoned for eleven months in the Tower; whether Jane’s death in Dec. that year was related to parliament’s prosecution of her husband is unknown. See John Lodge, revised by Mervyn Archdall, The Peerage of Ireland (Dublin: J. Moore, 1789), i. 277.

⁴⁶              Fidelia to Philitia, 8 Jan. 1643/4, TNA, SP 16/539/2, fo. 123.

⁴⁷       Amorella to Fidelia (and not vice versa as the interceptor noted down), 8 Jan. 1643/4, TNA, SP 16/506, fo. 8 (p. 236).

⁴⁸              Lois Potter, Secret Rites and Secret Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 72.

⁴⁹       The full sequence is as follows: Jane Bingley to Susan Bingley, 4 Jan. 1643, TNA, SP 16/500, fo. 5; Melidora to [Jane], 8 Jan. 1643, TNA, SP 16/500, fo. 6; Fidelia to Philitia, 8 Jan. 1643/4, TNA, SP 16/539/2, fo. 123, and Amorella to Fidelia, 8 Jan. 1643/4, TNA, SP 16/506, fo. 8 (p. 236).

⁵⁰       For the social use of cryptology see Nadine Akkerman ‘Enigmatic Cultures of Cryptology’, in James Daybell and Andrew Gordon (eds), Cultures of Correspondence in Early Modern Britain (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 69-84 (notes at 266-71), throughout.

⁵¹              Elizabeth’s instructions to Evelyn, 11 Apr. 1656, BL, Add. MS 78309, fo. 7v.

52

Up to this point the deciphered words are absent in the manuscript and taken from the printed edition 一Evelyn to Elizabeth, 19 May 1656, [Evelyn], Letterbooks, i. 173-4 (no. 92); the rest is my own.

⁵³       Potter, Secret Rites, 40.

⁵⁴        Titus to Lord Mordaunt, 20/30 Sept. 1659, LBM, 46 (no. 75).

⁵⁵       Lord Mordaunt to the king, 10 Apr. 1659, LBM, 6 (no. 12).

⁵⁶        Lord Mordaunt to the Lord Chanchellor, 6 June 1659, LBM, 16 (no. 26).

⁵⁷       Lord Mordaunt to Hartgill Baron, 2 July 1659, LBM, 23-4 (no. 37); Lord Mordaunt to the king, 10 July 1659, 25 (no. 41).

⁵⁸       Lord Mordaunt to the king, 7 July 1659, LBM, 25 (no. 39).

⁵⁹       LBM, ‘Introduction’, p. xiii.

⁶⁰        Nicholas to Ormond, 1/11 Oct. 1659, Brussels, CSPDI, xiii. 234.

⁶¹       Lord Mordaunt to the Lord Chancellor, 23 Sept./3 Oct. 1659, LBM, 51 (no. 79).

⁶²        Lady Mordaunt to the king, 25 Sept./5 Oct. 1659, Calais, LBM, 51 (no. 80).

⁶³        Lady Elizabeth Carey to Lady Mordaunt, 20 Nov. 1659, LBM, 107 (no. 144).

⁶⁴        Monmouth to Lady Mordaunt, 20 Nov. 1659, LBM, 107 (no. 143).

⁶⁵        Lord Mordaunt to Nicholas, 26 Sept./6 Oct. 1659, LBM, 53 (no. 81).

⁶⁶        Lord Mordaunt to the king, 18/28 Sept. 1659, LBM, 43 (no. 71).

⁶⁷        Queen of Bohemia to Lady Mordaunt, 20/30 Oct. 1659, The Hague, copy, John Rylands Library, Manchester, English MSS. 55, Spencer 19140, ante 1669, as printed in LBM, 35 (no. 59). Since the MS is a copy, of which the original has not been traced, there is no complete certainty that the queen signed with her monogram cipher instead of her full name, however-we have the seventeenth-century copyist to trust. Still, it was the queen’s habit when writing to her inner circle. As she explained to Montrose, ‘because letters may be taken, I shall not putt all my name to them but this 3e cipher, (The Correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart, Nadine Akkerman (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming), iii, Rhenen, 2 Sept. 1649, Old Style).

⁶⁸        Schomberg to Lady Mordaunt, 12/22 Nov. 1659, LBM, 109 (no. 146).

⁶⁹        Hyde to Lady Mordaunt, 14/24 Nov. 1659, LBM, 109 (no. 147).

70

The Queen of Bohemia often trusted in the wrong postal channels, however: see Nadine Akkerman, ‘The Postmistress, The Diplomat, and a Black Chamber?’, in Robyn Adams and Rosanna Cox (eds), Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 172-88.

⁷¹       Jammot to Lady Mordaunt, 30 Aug./9 Sept. 1659, LBM, 35-6 (no. 60).

⁷²       Lunsford to Lady Mordaunt, 19/29 Oct. 1659, LBM, 79 (no. 111).

⁷³       Hyde to Lady Mordaunt, 5/15 Nov. 1659, Brussels, LBM, 100-1 (no. 136). Presumably, Hyde enclosed a letter of the same date meant for Lord Mordaunt, LBM, 101-2 (no. 137).

⁷⁴        Lady Mary Carey to Lady Mordaunt, 15 Nov. 1659, LBM, 100 (no. 135).

⁷⁵       Marquess of Ormond to Lady Mordaunt, 3/13 Nov. 1659, LBM, 99 (no. 132).

⁷⁶        LBM, 37 n. 4, and 79 n. 7.

⁷⁷        Armorer to Lady Mordaunt, 25 Oct./4 Nov. 1659, Bordeaux, LBM, 92 (no. 123).

⁷⁸       Lady Mordaunt to Lord Mordaunt, 25 Oct./4 Nov. 1659, Calais, LBM, 92-3 (no. 124). Deciphered by Coate, LBM’s editor.

⁷⁹       Edward Hyde, The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon (Oxford: s.n., 1857), ii. 1237.

⁸⁰        Hyde, The Life, ii. 1230.

⁸¹         

For the cipher key Lady Mordaunt shared with Clarendon and several others, as reconstructed by Wallis, see BL, Add. MS 32499 (Wallis’s letter book), fo. 30v. Evidence of the cipher’s wider use is to be found in the following letters: [Edwin] Stede to Monsr. Pashe en France, 16 July 1669, fo. 18; Clarendon to his Aunt Michel, 27 July 1669, fos. 18r-19; Stede to Clarendon, not dated, fo. 20, and Clarendon to Stede, vnder the name of Collins, 31 Aug. 1669, fos. 20V-21.

⁸²        Matthew Wren to [Wallis], 30 May 1665, BL, Add MS 32499, fo. 15r.

⁸³       David Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy in England 1649-1660 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, I960), 295-6.

⁸⁴         

Effie Botonaki, Seventeenth-Century English Women’s Autobiographical Writings (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2004), 3.

⁸⁵       [Lady Mordaunt], The Private Diarie of Elizabeth,Viscountess Mordaunt (1856) (Printed at Duncairn, 1816), 1-2.

⁸⁶         

Adam Smyth, Autobiography in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 87-8.

⁸⁷        See also Diary MS fo. 10r and fo. 11r.

⁸⁸         

Smyth, Autobiography in Early Modern England, 117. On spiritual account-keeping see also Avra Kouffman, ‘Women’s Diaries of Late Stuart England’, in Dan Doll and Jessica Munns (eds), Recording and Reordering (Cranbury: Associated University Presses, 2006), 65-101 at 70-2.

⁸⁹        Wilcox, ‘ “My Hart is Full” ’, 454.

⁹⁰       Prudence Leith-Ross, ‘A Seventeenth-Century Paris Garden’, Garden History 21, no. 2 (1993): 150­57.

⁹¹         

Brown, Friendship, 48.

⁹²        [Mary Evelyn] to her ‘Dear Sister’, [before Feb. 1657], BL, Add. MS 78439, fo. 17.

⁹³         

For Elizabeth as a painter see her diary fo. 12r. On 3 Mar. 1657, Elizabeth wrote to John Evelyn that she had received a painting for Mary by Princess Louise Hollandine’s hand and that she would send it to her soon (BL, Add. MS 78309, fo. 3, endorsed ‘From M^rs Carey 21 Feb. 1656’). Mary had requested the portrait, as her undated letter to Elizabeth reads: ‘I can,t forbear puting you in mind of the fo^Ar^Amer promise’ (BL, Add. MS 78439, fo. 17r; see also Brown, Friendship, 48). On 21 May 1657, the painting had apparently arrived at the Evelyn home, as John Evelyn wrote Elizabeth that the portrait did her justice: ‘because it reppresents so much of a Saint, and so much of your faire selfe’ (Evelyn to Elizabeth, 11 May 1657, Sayes-Court, [Evelyn], Letterbooks, i. 206 (no. 112)). At the end of June 1657, he wrote to his father­in-law Sir Richard Browne, mentioning Elizabeth’s marriage to Mordaunt and the painting in the same letter: ‘Mrs Eliz: Carey is lately married to Mr Jo: Morda[u]nt […] She [Elizabeth] bestowd on her [Mary] the other day her owne pictur drawn in oyle by the Princesse Louise, which is very rarely done, & hangs in our Closet’ (BL, Add. MS, 78221, fo. 70v, also quoted in Brown, Friendship, 49). Evelyn also mentions the portrait in De Vita Propria, a text printed in The Diary of John Evelyn, 6 vols, E. S. de Beer (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon, 1955), i. 26; furthermore, it is also listed in an inventory of Sayes-Court of Dec. 1683 as ‘of my Lady Mordaunt by Princesse Louise’, hanging in ‘The Best Closet’ (Bl, Add. MS 78404, fo. 14v).

⁹⁴       [Mary Evelyn] to her ‘Dear Sister’, [before Feb. 1657], BL, Add. MS 78439, fo. 17v; see also Harris, Transformations, 79.

6

Anne, Lady Halkett’s ‘True Accountt’

A Married Woman is Never to Blame

As a pious widow in her fifties, Anne, Lady Halkett busied herself with the act of devotional writing, interspersing religious meditations with family affairs in several volumes of manuscript, much in the manner of Lady Mordaunt. In September 1677, however, she broke off from this task to write a very different work, now often considered her ‘autobiography’. The text might seem like a confession, but is perhaps more truly a vindication, a defence against censure, the action she asserts moved her to write: ‘Seueare Censure of mee occationed an interruption to the Conclusion of this booke [of devotional writing], to relate a True accountt of my life’.¹ It is not clear for what or by whom she was so severely censured, but we do know her sixty-one folio autograph account was written in the privacy of the domestic sphere of her own volition rather than under pressure from government interrogators.

Anne Halkett was the daughter of Thomas Murray and Jane Drummond. Uncle to William Murray, the later Earl of Dysart and tutor to Prince Charles, the future Charles I, Thomas served as a provost of Eton College from 1622 and died of a kidney stone when Anne was but one year old, in 1623.² Jane was governess to Mary, the Princess Royal, and Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and if Anne did serve as lady-in-waiting to Queen Henrietta Maria in and after 1642, as one primary source suggests,³ then it would have been through these inner circle, courtly connections that the position would have been arranged. In England, in 1647, Anne met and fell in love with Royalist army officer and spy Colonel Joseph Bampfield, and together they successfully contrived the escape of James Stuart, Duke of York and later James II and VII, to the Dutch Republic in 1648. Bampfield and Anne might have married in 1648 or 1649 in the Netherlands, as she writes: ‘I had beene puplickely Maried to him & avouedly Liued with him as his wife’ (131). The evidence is inconclusive,⁴ but their affair lasted from 1648 to March 1653, when Anne could no longer deny that the man was at the very least an adulterer and if he had married her, a bigamist: Bampfield’s first wife Catherine Sydenham, whom he had married around February 1643, had shown up in London.⁵ Less than a year later, the Royalists accused Bampfield of being a double agent, as he betrayed their cause by informing Oliver Cromwell of the Glencairn rising. Bampfield fled and his name appeared shortly thereafter on Thurloe’s official payroll (and in Aphra Behn’s letters); Anne picked up her life and married Sir James Halkett, a loyal Royalist intriguer and respectable widower with two sons and two daughters. They wed in March 1656, the month in which he became Laird of Pitfirrane.

Her sophisticated writing skills have seen critics place her alongside the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century novelists, but this leads to interpretive difficulties. Her elegant way with words, her attention to detail and dialogue, and her use of direct speech have given her autobiographical narrative true literary quality. Halkett’s modern writing style convinces; she seemingly portrays herself as an Elizabeth Bennet and her lovers as Byronic heroes. Her modern style, however, has obscured the seventeenth-century rhetorical mechanics at work in her text. It is now almost obligatory to compare Anne’s text to a nineteenth­century romance, ever since Donald A. Stauffer compared her work to that of Charlotte Bronte, but this parallel has got the better of us: since 1930 her work has been compared to the novels of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Walter Scott, and Jane Austen.⁶ Such comparisons initially served their purpose in drawing attention to a neglected female author, but should now be set aside as they hamper analysis. The result of the comparison is that criticism tends to focus on her romantic attachment to the already-married Colonel Joseph Bampfield, emphasizing Anne’s self-figuration as the heroine in her own romance who reclaims her sexual honour. Anne presents herself as being rewarded for her virtuous behaviour with a true husband, Sir James Halkett, in the denouement. But this is to read her text anachronistically: Elizabeth Bennet had not yet seen the light of day when Lady Halkett wrote, nor is she an avatar of Lady Halkett. Halkett is more traditional than most scholars have wished her to be, but no less inventive: rather than being ahead of her time and constructing an eighteenth-century or nineteenth-century romance, she tested her skills as a writer of early modern prose romance, an altogether different genre revived by Royalists in particular to discuss politics under a cloak.⁷ In writing a retrospective account of her life, Halkett confronts and struggles with her activism of the years 1648 to 1653, albeit in a veiled literary way.

Critics have too often treated Anne’s life-writing text as an unmediated, factual account of her life, without considering the fictional devices also present. Anne, reversing gender roles, writes a prose romance in which her younger self, a heroine akin to Spenser’s Redcrosse knight, falls in love with the Duessa-like Bampfield. The Una in this scenario, Sir James Halkett, breaks the spell, ultimately revealing Duessa’s ugly nature, winning her love, and marrying her. Indeed, Anne’s relationship with Bampfield is eagerly wrought as literary device in order to turn her life-story into this kind of prose romance: Mary Ellen Lamb has discerned ‘erroneous reports of affairs and even marriages’ as one of the key generic conventions of contemporary prose romance, a description which fits Halkett’s narrative like a glove.⁸ Anne’s childhood sweetheart, Thomas Howard, who also figures in her text, foreshadows her younger self’s interaction with the Duke of York: she helps him escape to France, but he betrays her by returning to England as a Catholic. Her narrative is a struggle to come to terms with the events she set in motion. Without her intervention, so she believes, perhaps arrogantly or self-deludingly, the Duke of York’s escape would have been impossible: by the same logic, without her the country would not have faced the threat of Catholicism represented by the duke, a known Roman Catholic and heir to the throne. It is perhaps no coincidence that her retrospective account was written between mid-September 1677 and mid-April 1678, during the Exclusion Crisis.⁹

By no longer viewing Halkett as Austenite, but more appropriately Spenserian, her political engagement comes to the fore and it becomes apparent that this account of her life is not only a vindication, but one of her activities as a she-intelligencer rather than of her sexual transgressions. In order to see these mechanics at work, the manuscript needs to be placed under scrutiny.

The Manuscript of Anne’s ‘True accountt’

In the nineteenth century, Lady Halkett’s account of her life was bequeathed to the British Library, and practically all our knowledge of her stems from it. In perhaps typical fashion, however, the manuscript itself, Add. MS 32376, lacks the definitive assertion of genre that enables a text to be most easily interpreted by scholars. Early modern life-writing was still a young enough genre that such texts were more likely to construct conventions than adhere to them, and Halkett’s manuscript, lacking a title page, slides easily between genres.

Halkett’s text was first edited by John Gough Nichols for the Camden Society, and was published in 1875 with the title ‘Halkett, Autobiography’. Subsequently, Nichols’s edition was revised by John Loftis in 1979: he edited the text for Oxford’s Clarendon Press, which printed it, alongside a work of Ann, Lady Fanshawe, as The Memoirs of Anne, Lady Halkett and Ann, Lady Fanshawe.¹⁰ Since then, scholars have almost invariably and uncritically echoed Halkett’s first editors, referring to her text as either her ‘autobiography’ or her ‘memoirs’. In 2007, Suzanne Trill pointed out that Halkett herself termed the manuscript ‘a True accountt of my life’,¹¹ though without exploring the ramifications of such a description and still entitling her edition of the manuscript as 'The Autobiography of Anne, Lady Halkett, 1677-78'.¹² By putting emphasis on the veracity of her account, Lady Halkett signals that she wants to be believed.¹³ In the same source, however, she states that ‘What effects it may produce I leaue to him to whom I resigne the intire disposall of all that concernes mee’.¹⁴ Halkett’s story is, ultimately, for God to judge.

Having interrupted her devotional meditations in what appears to have been a sudden compulsion to write her account, she then kept it close to her chest for a period of sixteen years. Indeed, it is uncertain who, if anyone, read it following its composition somewhere between September 1677 and April 1678, and the year 1693, when she finally distributed it to secure a posthumous readership. That this readership was carefully selected is clear from the fact that its distribution was occasioned by the death of her only surviving child, Robert, following which she gave her numerous manuscripts one by one to her Episcopalian ministers Simon Couper, James Graeme, and Thomas Marshall, writing, 'For since my Deare Childs Death xx none butt themselues could I thinke fitt to Com[m]unicate itt to’.¹⁵ From this line we might reasonably surmise that the ‘accountt’ was to have been part of her estate and thus intended for her son to read following her death. As such, Anne may well have intended her ‘accountt’ to be read as parental advice, a relatively common genre and one which, as we will see, she was in the habit of writing.

Anne stored her manuscripts in a chest. When Couper visited her, she had ‘offered to send the Trunke to him with as many of them as <itt> would hold. [B]utt hee was against that; only desired one Booke att a time And promising Secresy’. Notably, the first text she sent him was the account of her life, ‘The Parchment booke with Pincke & Ashe riban where the most considerable of my troubles are registred’.¹⁶ Although her ministers were initially to vouchsafe secrecy, Anne made it clear that they were also to consider whether the manuscripts were fit for posthumous publication: ‘if affter I was dead[,] if they thought fitt then to make them knowne perhaps itt might excite [that is, rouse, awaken; OED verb 2] some to haue Charity to my Memory. And others of greater capacity imploy them to the honor of God’.¹⁷ In other manuscripts, too, she records her desire for a wider posthumous readership.¹⁸ But as the first of the texts handed to Couper in anticipation of his judgement, and in her clear belief in it as a text able to inspire service to God, she apparently considered the ‘accountt’ the most important. Couper ensured four of her devotional meditations were printed posthumously. He also tried to honour her by writing her biography, publishing his hagiographical The Life of the Lady Halket in 1701, but did not select the she-spy’s ‘True accountt’ of her life, written in her own hand, for publication. Perhaps her minister Couper saw too much of a spy’s fragmented self to have her account printed posthumously as a religious text. After all, she attempts to show remorse for her unsavoury she-intelligencing activities, but fails to fully shed the spy’s cloak: she replaces names with coded letters, for instance, and clearly takes pride in having been trusted with intelligencing tasks by Charles I.

We can only guess at how the missing title page might originally have framed Halkett’s manuscript, if, indeed, such a page existed. Some editors think it likely that it did: ‘The dark colour of particularly the first folio suggests that it was the top page for many years, stored uncovered and unbound, and thus became damaged. The first (now missing) leaf probably separated from the manuscript due to these conditions of storage’.¹⁹ The same might have happened to the final page or pages, as the manuscript now ends mid-sentence: ‘I had his Lo^d promise to haue’ (143). While these lacunae are most likely accidental, two others most definitely are not: two pages, namely 24-5 (that is, between folios 11 and 12) and 101-2 (between folios 49 and 50) have been deliberately cut out. Not only gaps in content, but also Halkett’s own pagination indicate this is the case.²⁰ Furthermore, these missing pages are at crucial stages of the narrative: the first cut-out pages must have described her very first encounter with Bampfield, while the second set of cut-out pages probably detail her discovery that his first wife was still living, even though Anne was at that point engaged or even married to him. The narrative disruptions have led to much speculation as to the precise nature of her amorous relationship with this turncoat spy and to questions relating to (self-) censorship.

Loftis considers that the probable appearance of Bampfield in the missing pages suggests their removal ‘by Lady Halkett or some member of her family, for reasons of privacy’.²¹ While it is uncertain what her family might have done, it seems highly unlikely that Halkett herself tore out precisely those pages that addressed her supposedly most wicked moments. After all, she started her narrative in 1644, ignoring her first twenty-one years, because ‘What my Childish actions were I thinke I need nott giue accountt of here, for I hope none will thinke they Could bee either vicious or Scandalous’ (55). Not only ought we view this as her setting out a clear agenda, namely to discuss those ‘vicious or Scandalous’ deeds her life encompassed, but also as ruling out this supposed act of self-censorship.

A more likely explanation might lie in the bibliographical description of the manuscript: it ‘was bound (or rebound) in the nineteenth century, at which time the gatherings were cut apart and tipped onto guards, erasing vital information about collation and about excised leaves’.²² This description allows for the possibility that it might have been William Johnston Stuart, who donated the manuscript to the British Library in 1884, or any one of the previous owners, who cut out those particular pages out of prudishness.²³ Such interventions were not uncommon. Indeed, William Knowler, the eighteenth-century editor of the Earl of Strafford’s correspondence, silently deleted entire paragraphs of the earl’s letters. This is an editorial decision which many historians have yet to notice, though Julia Merritt is an honourable exception:

letters which appear to be printed in full by Knowler are in fact reproduced with entire paragraphs removed […] the passages omitted reflect badly on Wentworth or offended eighteenth[-]century standards of decency.²⁴

Certainly, this might explain why Knowler chose not to include any of Lady Carlisle’s letters to Strafford in his edition, even though they are part of the same collection in Sheffield City Libraries from which Knowler prints all other letters. Knowler presumably deemed either them or her too salacious for contemporary standards. If the torn-out pages of Halkett’s manuscript reflect a similar intervention from the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, then it was as misguided as it was unfortunate. After all, the author had two reasons for presenting her manuscript, namely the ‘Seueare Censure’ she had received and to give an account of the ‘vicious or Scandalous’ activities of her life. Since its discovery, Lady Halkett’s manuscript has been read as an account of a love affair, considering her liaison with Bampfield to be one of the ‘vicious or Scandalous’ activities of her life for which she craved absolution. It appears, however, that she wanted rather to document the liaison with Bampfield to neutralize any attempt at such censure and considered the real ‘vicious or Scandalous’ aspect of her life to be her activities as a she-spy.

Halkett’s Life as a She-Intelligencer

A career path of Royalist intrigue and she-intelligencing was not unheard of for a child born into the Murray family. Her education was apparently typical for a woman of her class, with the undesirable female passions subdued with lessons on how to ‘Writte, Speake French[,] play [further the] Lute <&> virginalls & dance, and […] all kinds of Needleworke’ (55). However, when delving deeper into her lineage, her true education was evidently a courtly one and it seems possible she might have learned the intelligence trade from those closest to her. Certainly espionage techniques were passed on from generation to generation,²⁵ and Anne’s mother, Jane Drummond-Murray, was cousin to Jane Drummond- Ker, from 1614 Countess of Roxburghe, who served as servant and confidante to Queen Anna and as spy to the Spanish.²⁶ In 1631, Roxburghe was appointed governess to Princess Elizabeth: ‘the ladie Roxbrucht hes gottin the upbringing of the kingis [i. e. Charles I’s] young dochter so that now in hir old dayies scho most becum ane new curtier’, as Archibald Campbell remarked.²⁷ By 1641, she was also governess to Henry, Duke of Gloucester. When Roxburghe accompanied Queen Henrietta Maria and Mary, the Princess Royal, to Holland in 1642, the year following the Princess Royal’s marriage to William, son of the Prince of Orange, it seems Anne Murray’s mother temporarily took over the care of Henry and Elizabeth. In this way Anne may have gained herself a position as lady-in-waiting to Queen Henrietta Maria around 1642; if so, she might have accompanied her aunt to the court in The Hague. It is tempting to speculate how, if this were the case, Roxburghe might have instructed her in the art of espionage: for instance, how code names are best employed to disguise identity (in the 1650s Anne, by then a Royalist she-intelligencer, travelled to London and ‘tooke a borowed name’ (134)). Roxburghe had herself been assigned the code name Amadis, from the popular prose romance Amadis de Gaul, to receive payment for intelligencing for the Spanish.²⁸ Neither was Roxburghe the only one in Anne’s family who played the spy, as when Anne was orphaned it was her spy brother William who introduced her to Bampfield. The Murrays were, it seems, almost habitual spies.

There are problems with Halkett’s ‘accountt’, not least with regard to the intelligencer’s stock-in-trade, and Mary Beth Rose has convincingly argued that ‘the story of one woman’s war-time romance […] gradually expands in significance to encompass the larger theme of the impossibility of knowing’.²⁹ The narrative is gripping, a literary masterwork, but it is also on one level grotesquely ridiculous. Anne Murray, as intelligencer wannabe spy, is utterly incapable of establishing even the most basic of facts: is her lover an honest widower or adulterous cheat, is the wife of ‘C. B.’ (as Colonel Bampfield is called by Halkett) still living or not? Yet we might give her some credit here: as Rose points out, ‘the sheer difficulty of obtaining reliable information during the chaos of the Civil War, particularly when one is on the losing side, makes the obstacles to her knowing the truth entirely credible’.³⁰

What is clear, though, is that Anne played a key part in the Duke of York’s escape from his detention in St James’s Palace. During a game of hide-and-seek, Bampfield handed the duke ‘a cloake & periwig’ (71) and the young duke simply tiptoed out of the palace gardens undetected. He proceeded to a boat house where Anne dressed him in a set of woman’s clothes she had had made for him. He then made the crossing to Holland undetected, having been rendered effectively invisible by his change of clothing. The general assumption is that Bampfield had recruited Anne for the king’s party due to a romantic interest, but there is another, more plausible explanation, one which relates to her late mother’s employment as governess to the royal children.³¹ Bampfield was suspected by all and had little social credit in London since the capital had been taken over by the Roundheads, as Halkett recognized:

[F]or hee beeing Generally knowne as one whose beeing <stay> att London was in order to Serue the King, few of those who were intrusted by the Parleamentt in puplicke Concerns durst owne Conuerse or hardly [express] Ciuility to him, lest they should haue beene Suspect by there party. [W]^ch made itt deficult for him to gett accese to y^e Duke. (69-70)

In her account, Anne seems to cut to the chase, revealing that Bampfield had gained access to the Duke of York, ‘(to bee short) hauing Comunicated y^e designe to a Gentleman attending His Highnese’ (70). Yet Anne’s parenthesis indicates that she is not telling all. Anne’s mother had been in attendance on Prince Henry, following the death of her cousin, the Countess of Roxburghe, in 1643. At the time of the escape, both James and Henry were staying at St James’s Palace under the guardianship of Lady Carlisle’s brother, the Earl of Northumberland.³² It is plain from Anne’s description of her part in the duke’s escape not only that he was at ease with her, but that they were particularly well

acquainted:

y^e first that Came in was the Duke who[,] with much ioy[,] I tooke in my armes […] His Highnese called[,] quickely[,] quickely drese mee and putting of his cloaths I dressed him in the weemens habit that was prepared; w^ch fitted his Highnese very well & was very pritty in itt. […] hauing Sentt for a Woodstreet Cake (w^ch I knew hee Loued) to take in the Barge. (71)

The loving embrace, the duke’s comfort with changing into women’s clothing the moment he sees her, and her motherly care (especially the knowledge of his favourite cakes) suggest a more than passing acquaintance with the duke, whose brother had been in Anne’s mother’s charge. What we see is more like the behaviour of a governess than a conspirator, making it seem all the more perverse to suggest that Bampfield chose Anne on account of a possible romantic interest rather than on more professional grounds. Those who suggest this as the reason ignore Anne’s rather more relevant credentials, not least her knowledge of the duke and her ability to dress him as a woman quickly and convincingly.

In her version of events, Anne takes pride in her role as Master or rather Mistress of Disguise, detailing the colour and fabric of the cross-dressing costume she ordered from a tailor—‘Itt was a Mixt Mohaire of a light haire Couler & blacke & y^e vnder petticoate was scarlett’—who, when given the measurements of the waistcoat and petticoat, casually remarked ‘hee had neuer Seene any woman of so Low a stature haue so big a Wast’ (70). She does not fail to note that when Bampfield requested that she arrange female apparel for the duke ‘the King [Charles I] aproued of his choice of mee to intrust with itt’ (69), perhaps thereby asserting official employment as Royalist agent or even governess.

Interestingly, Anne’s intervention in organizing the duke’s escape remains unrecorded by contemporaries. This contrasts with Anne’s own claim that she was quickly found out. Isabella Twysden, wife of the antiquary and imprisoned intelligencer Sir Roger, records the duke’s escape in her diary, but does not mention any names:

the 21 of aprill 1648 the duke of york went a waye from St Jameses [Palace] about 9 o’clock at night, none going from thence with him, nor knowing of it, nor missing of him in 2 owers after, then there was much sending all wayes about for him, but could not be heard where he was, nor whether he went, nor who went with him.

33 the 8 maye or there abouts it was knowne the duke of yorke was in holland.

Anne’s part in the duke’s escape also goes unrecorded in an anonymous eyewitness letter which describes how Colonel Bampfield disguised the duke as a woman, adorning the young lad with ‘a Periwig & black patches’, fashionable, self-adhesive beauty spots, attracting the suspicion of the boatman when ‘tying the Dukes garter’.³⁴ Nor does Bampfield’s own 1685 printed Apology make mention of a female accomplice. Further, Charles Stuart needed to be informed by one of Anne’s friends in the 1650s of the part she played in his brother’s escape, again showing that her role was not generally known. Or, of course, she may simply have invented the entire episode, though this seems unlikely as she had already petitioned the crown for compensation for carrying out this task.

Anne writes that she was first officially put to work as a spy immediately after the Duke of York’s successful escape on 30 April, when Bampfield received his next assignment: ‘the Prince [of Wales, the future Charles II] imployed him and Commanded him backe againe to London’ (73) to liberate Charles I. In London, however, Bampfield’s face was a familiar one. He was recognized by all as serving the king, and thus had little freedom of movement. Needing an agent to do the legwork for him, he sent for Anne, so that he could hide under her skirts:

As soone as CB Landed beyond y^e Tower he writt to desire I would doe him the fauer as to Come to him […] I wentt where hee was. [W]ho giuing mee a short information of what hee was imployed aboutt and how much Secresy was to bee vsed both as to y^e Kings interest and his owne Security, itt is nott to bee doupted butt I Contributed what I could to both. (73)

The word ‘information’ is here used in the now obsolete sense of ‘a teaching’ or ‘an instruction’ (OED noun 1b); Anne is briefed on the intelligence task at hand. She became his eyes and ears: ‘[F]or what euer might relate to itt [that is, their secret mission] y^t came within my knowledge I gaue him accountt of and hee made Such vse of itt as might Most aduance his designe’ (73). In all likelihood, since nobody but Anne seems to have had contact with Bampfield or knew his whereabouts, she became a courier; it seems the only way to account for how the stationary Bampfield managed to have a frequent correspondence with Charles I. As Anne writes, ‘As Long as there was any posibility of Conueying Letters Secrettly to the King hee frequently writt & receaued very kind letters from his Ma^tie with Seuerall instructions and letters to persons of honour and Loyalty’ (73). In his own memoir, An Apology, Bampfield published some of these

missives.³⁵

Anne later realized that by visiting Bampfield frequently alone, without a chaperone, as secrecy necessitated, she had jeopardized her reputation:

The earnest desire I had to Serue the King made mee omitt noe opertunity wherin I could bee vsefull and the zeale I had for his Ma^ts made mee not See what <inconueniencys> I exposed my Selfe to, for my intentions beeing Iust & inocentt made mee nott reflect what Conclusions might bee made for the priuate visitts which I could nott butt nesesarily make to <CB> him in order to the Kings Seruice. (73)

In the rest of her narrative, Anne consistently asserts the company of a female servant whenever she is on the move. This creates the effect of simultaneously showing how her behaviour was habitually proper as well as emphasizing how risky the situation was in London. After the regicide, Bampfield encouraged Anne to flee.

Rumours quickly arose that the duke’s escape had been organized as a scheme to have Charles replaced by his younger brother. Suspicion of treason was enough for Anne’s brother William, also involved in the plot, to be shunned by the Royalists. He died shortly thereafter of pneumonia, around 10 September 1649. Encouraged by Bampfield, Anne prepared to flee. She seems to have been estranged from her only surviving brother Henry, former Groom of the Bedchamber of Charles I, and elder sister Elizabeth, possibly because they believed she ‘was abused in beleeuing his [Bampfield’s] wife was dead for she was aliue’ (120). It is perhaps more likely that they feared the loss of royal favour that might result in any association with such a persona non grata, one allegedly involved in a treasonous plot to assassinate the king. Now lacking the protection of a male relative, Anne took flight to Scotland. She no longer felt safe in London:

itt began to bee discoursed of amongst many Parliament Men that I had beene instrumentall in the Dukes escape &[,] knowing that Seuerall weemen were Secured vpon Lese ground[,] I thought it best to retire for a time outt of the Noise of itt. (78)

A year later, when her benefactors Sir Charles Howard and his lady, who had given her refuge in Naworth Castle, were on the verge of turning her away— they believed the malicious gossip of their chaplain, who claimed Anne was a sexual enchantress out to seduce Sir Charles—she continued to feel trapped: ‘To London I durst nott Goe for feare of beeing Secured vpon the accountt of the Dukes escape’ (88).

Her paranoid belief that her role in the escape had been discovered plunged Anne into poverty. Her absence from London prevented her from laying claim to her portion of her mother’s estate. She lost £2,400 ‘left her by her Mother which was due out of the Excequer’, as well as an additional £4,944, that is, the worth of a twelve-year lease to Berkhamsted Manor and Park in Hertfordshire, ‘which shee neuer made benefitt of because shee durst not stay long in England after the Duke of Yorks escape, and soe was putt out of possession, and came not here [in England] [in] time enough to shew her Tenant right till [King Charles II] had otherwaies diposed of it’.³⁶ After the Restoration, when she petitioned Charles II for compensation in the form of the lease of ‘the Estate of Nicholas Loue lying in the County of Southampton’, which was forfeited to the crown for treason, she was disappointed.³⁷ In her account Anne describes an intimate exchange with the king in Dunfermline in the 1650s. With a near erotic gesture, placing his hand upon her breast, he tried to make amends for not realizing earlier that she had saved his brother. She forgave this oversight with a kiss: ‘the King Laid his hand vpon both mine as they Lay vpon my breast. I humbly bowed downe and kist hes Ma^ties hand’ (103). Charles II, possibly remembering this encounter with Anne in Scotland, aimed to silence her post-Restoration petitioning by granting her a pittance of £500.

Anne laments her lack of compensation in one of her devotional meditations entitled ‘Vpon the many disapointments I haue mett with in my busyness at Court’:

The Court next heauen is the greatest place for all beggars to resort to & there amongst others I haue giuen many pettitions & requests butt all I receaue is Ciuilittys that could incourage mee to hope […] when itt 38

Comes to the triall, itt is butt a handsome refusall.

Only when the Duke of York acceded to the throne as James II did she receive a yearly pension of £100, and even then not immediately; she possibly had to wait another four years until William III came to power.³⁹ It is remarkable that Anne only mentions her role in the escape of the Duke of York when she requests compensation from the crown. Why would she remain utterly silent about her other espionage activities she undertook to the king’s benefit? Her ‘True accountt’ juxtaposes confession and concealment, as she felt remorse for her acts of espionage that followed the Duke of York’s escape.

While Anne had successfully fled to Scotland following the Duke of York’s flight, in December 1649 Bampfield was arrested for his part in it. She prayed for his escape from prison: she took comfort in ‘Psa[lm] 102 vers 19.20, for hee hath Looked downe <from y^e height of his sanctuary>[,] from heauen did the Lord behold the earth To heare the groaning of the prisoner to Loose those that are apointed to death’. The biblical passage, significantly the only verses she cites in her life-writing text apart from those on the first surviving pages, gave her such comfort that ‘in a Maner itt ouercame all [her] feares’ (81). Her faith was rewarded because within days letters reached Naworth Castle ‘y^t C:B had made his escape outt of the Gate howse Iust the Night before hee was to haue beene brought to his Tryall’ some time around January 1650 (81). It is intriguing to note that earlier in the ‘True accountt’ she warns readers to be sparing with prayers, as prayers might be heard. She uses the example of her maid Miriam who wished Thomas Howard’s wife a miscarriage. Miriam’s prayers were answered, Halkett reveals, subsequently writing that she hopes that the episode will ‘teach people to Gouerne there wishes & there toung that neither may act to the preiudice of any Lest it bee placed on there account att the day of reckoning’ (68). It is almost as if she is chastising herself for her own prayers, which had set Bampfield, a double-dealing spy, loose upon the world. If this were true, she presumably also regretted financing him after his escape: while she relied on the charity of the Howards, Bampfield was in possession of goods she had inherited from her mother, presumably jewellery, which ‘hee had taken for Security with him when hee wentt first to Holland affter his escape outt of prison’ (137). If they were married, of course, he had simply taken what was legally his. She notes that he returned those items to her after she broke off all ties with him in 1654 (137), a move perhaps symbolic of her belief in their marriage’s legitimacy: now that it had proven illegal, the goods returned to her.

She spent the next two years with Charles Seton, 2nd Earl of Dunfermline and his wife at their castle in Fyvie, persuading Bampfield ‘to keepe a due distance’ (107), before moving to Edinburgh to manage her lawsuits better on advice of her advocates Sir John Baird of Newbyth, Lord of the Session, later Lord Newbyth, and his father James Baird of Byth in Aberdeenshire. Around this time her past as Royalist intriguer seems to catch up with her. First, she is confronted by Cromwellian soldiers who attempt to provoke her by asking if she ‘were the English whore that came to meett the King’ (109) (she had visited Charles II in Dunfermline where, through the intercession of Henry Seymour, she had been rewarded with the perhaps desultory sum of fifty gold pieces in acknowledgement of her role in his brother’s escape).⁴⁰ Second, in June 1652, within days of her arrival in Edinburgh, her lodging was raided by soldiers who were convinced she had been holding a cabal and had helped the plotters escape through a backroom, one of the chambers inhabited by her lodger, an ‘old Gentlewoman’ (114). Anne was no longer anonymous nor was she capable of moving freely and unsuspected in Scotland.

Lacking evidence, the soldiers had no choice but to let her go, and she complained about the intrusion to the local authorities. However, her indignation was feigned. Within days of her arrival in Edinburgh, she had been invited into a spy ring by a fellow Royalist intriguer of the Earl of Dunfermline, Sir Robert Moray, with whom her cousin Elizabeth Murray, later Countess of Dysart, was also in contact:

S^r Robery [sic] Moray and his Lady Came to towne who[,] Lying att the Neither Bow[,] perswaded mee to take a Chamber neere them which was an aduantage nott to bee refused […]. The Lodging they chused for mee was vp the staires by Iohn Meenes shop belonging to a discreet old Gentlewoman who had a backe way vp to the roomes she vsed her Selfe. (114)

After the raid, she changed her lodgings, claiming she no longer felt safe with ‘None in y^e howse butt Weemen’ (115), but perhaps because an opportunity presented itself to be even closer to those whispers of the Scottish Presbyterian underground movement. Lord Tweeddale⁴¹ offered her the use of his house and porter during his absence from Edinburgh; Lady Balcarres, Sir Robert Moray’s sister-in-law, furnished it for her. Tweeddale’s house was not just any house; instead, ‘that howse was the rende[z]uous of the best & most Loyall when they Came to towne’ (120). Anne had physically placed herself at the heart of the Scottish underground movement through familial connections, and so her spying for Bampfield started:

While hee [Bampfield] Continued in the North of England I heard frequently from him & still gaue him account of what hopes or feares there was of acting some<any>thing for ye King which I had the more opportunity to doe because my Chamber was the place where S^r Robert M most Commonly mett with Such persons as were designing to Serve the King. (119-20)

She wrote Bampfield what were undoubtedly love letters that doubled up as intelligence reports, revealing all, not least that Sir James Halkett, Moray’s first cousin, frequented the cabal and took an interest in her.

Bampfield, for his part, had not found favour at the exiled court. There was a rumour circulating that he, like Anne’s late brother William, had only laboured for the Duke of York’s escape with the intention of putting him on the throne in Scotland to supplant Charles. Sir James Halkett’s increasing infatuation with Anne allowed Bampfield to use her as a reference: she persuaded the doting Sir

James into inviting Bampfield into their midst, even though most Royalists distrusted him:

Some time affter this I was aduised to writte to C:B to Come to Ed[in]b[urgh] which hee did as soone as was posible affter the receit of my letter[,] and had a Lodging <prouided> for him & his Man in a priuate howse neere my Lord^s Tweedales howse where hee might Come withoutt beeing Seene vpon the Street. [E]uery night in the close of the euening hee Came in and that was the time apointed where those persons mett with him who were Contriuing some meanes to asert there Loyalty and free there Country from Continuing inslaued. (121)

It had worked: Bampfield was brought ‘into there Caball’ (121) through manipulation of Sir James’s interest in Anne. Suddenly, Bampfield was privy to gatherings at Tweeddale’s house, meeting with Dunfermline, Alexander Lindsay, 1st Earl of Balcarres, Sir George Mackenzie of Tarbat, and of course Sir Robert Moray and Sir James Halkett. Bampfield both mocked and rejoiced in Sir James’s devotion, as revealed by Anne writing that her bigamist lover ‘would offten tell mee if any thing should ariue to depriue him of me[,] hee thought in gratitude I was oblieged to Marry S^r I: H.’ (122).

Although Anne presents herself as an innocent onlooker to the events that unravelled, she was in fact privy to the cabal’s most secret information. She reveals how the cabal used invisible ink to communicate with Charles Stuart: ‘the Materiall part whereof [of the messages] was writt in white inck & what was writt in ordinary incke was only to Conuey the other withoutt Suspition’ (121). They soon discovered how crude their methods of secret ink were: what they thought was a most secret recipe was all too public, as Mackenzie had discovered by chance when, on picking up a book in a Scottish stationer’s shop he found the recipe staring back at him from the printed page. Moray’s response was perhaps rather naive: ‘the only hopes hee had was, that if that booke Came into there〈English〉hands they would nott beleeue any thing so Common as to bee in print would bee made vse of in any busynese of Consequence’ (121-2). Before Mackenzie and Bampfield started their journey, presumably with the intention of meeting up with William Cunningham, 8th Earl of Glencairn, to discuss how to lead a rising of those in the Highlands against the English, Anne received instructions from the Earl of Dunfermline on how to continue secret correspondence across the border: ‘[V]pon Monday 7 of february 1652/3[,] Sir G M [that is, George Mackenzie] & C. B began there Iourny from Ed[inburgh][. T]he night before the E[arl] of Dunfermeline Supt with him & mee att my Chamber & then ordered the way of keeping Corespondence’ (123). It seems she would only have to learn how to correspond secretly if she actually wrote secret letters herself.

Bampfield had left Edinburgh just in time, since eighteen days later the king wrote the following warning:

Whereas we are informed that Col. Bampfield hath transported himself out of Holland into our kingdom of Scotland, and is now with you, pretending much affection to our service, and alleging that he is sent to you by us, we have thought fit hereby to signify unto you, that we were in no degree privy to his journey, nor are satisfied of his good affection to us, but on the contrary look on him as a person trusted and employed by our enemies, or by those of whose integrity we have no assurance, and therefore we advise and require you to look on him as such, and strictly to examine him by whom he was sent, and with whom he corresponds, and if in truth he hath informed you that he was sent and intrusted by us, you have the more reason to conclude his purposes are not honest, and to proceed with him according to his merit; however, put no trust in him, nor let him be at liberty amongst you. And so we bid you farewell.⁴²

This, the king’s letter, was presumably inspired by Sir Edward Nicholas’s distrust of Bampfield. Nicholas wrote a letter to Hyde a week later, saying he was convinced Bampfield ‘gives intelligence to [Archibald Campbell, Marquess of] Argyle of all the Highlanders’ motions, strength, and designs’.⁴³ There was a leak, too: from ‘February 1653 Argyle supplied Colonel Lilburne, commander of the Commonwealth’s forces in Scotland, with intelligence about the Royalists in the Highlands’. Nicholas attributed the leak to Bampfield.⁴⁴

Nicholas’s assumption that Argyll got his intelligence from Bampfield was a logical one; in the final months of 1650, shortly after his escape from the gatehouse, Bampfield acted as a loyal Royalist agent, took orders from Argyll, and acted as go-between between English and Scottish Presbyterians, aiming to convince the first to finance the military efforts of the second. In February 1651, he even travelled to France to request Queen Henrietta Maria’s permission for Argyll’s daughter, Anne Campbell, to marry Charles.⁴⁵ That Bampfield had previously acted as Argyll's agent in 1650-1, when the latter still supported Charles II, meant the two were closely acquainted. If Bampfield was a double agent, as Nicholas thus assumed, who better for Bampfield to offer up his intelligence to than to Argyll, his former employer who now acted against the king?

The Royalist distrust of Bampfield was not without foundation. The Rump’s spymaster Thomas Scott, who gained employment after the regicide until the month of April 1653, later confessed that ‘towards the later part of the time of my Employment I had some things of a General nature out of the Highlands & y^e Royal Presbytereans from Coll: Bampfield’.⁴⁶ The Glencairn rising, named after the commander-in-chief the 8th Earl of Glencairn, whom Charles Stuart had officially appointed in March 1653, came to nothing, primarily because of arguments amongst those in the highest ranks; in September 1654, Glencairn and his men surrendered to George Monck at Dumbarton.⁴⁷ Still, Bampfield might have undermined the efforts of the Highlanders, not only by supplying the Cromwellian regime with intelligence but also by creating unrest. In December 1653, further reports began to circulate that it was indeed Bampfield who had spiked the Glencairn rising, causing confusion among the Highlanders through the means of forged letters, feeding them misinformation and misdirection: ‘I am told that Bampfield hath been the Parliament’s good friend in counterfeiting the king’s hand and seal, and getting the secrets of the lords’ designs in the Highlands,’ read an anonymous letter.⁴⁸

It was at around this point, the point at which the cabal failed, that Anne received confirmation that Bampfield’s wife was still living. There is no mention of either occurrence in her ‘accountt’, but whether this is because she simply left them out or they were torn out (the logical point to include them would have been the second excised page) is unknown. The king’s party arrested Sir Robert Moray because Sir Richard Page’s wife, whose first name and maiden name are unknown, had forged a letter that had pretended he was as guilty of betrayal as Bampfield, if not more so. The Royalists eventually concluded that Bampfield could not be trusted but that Moray was innocent upon receipt of one of Hyde’s letters to General Myddelton, one of the commanders of the Glencairn rising, which unmasked Lady Page as a deceitful she-intelligencer. The Earl of Dysart had figured out that she had requested Moray’s assistance as secretary, feigning not to be able to write a letter herself, and so got hold of a sample of his hand to counterfeit.⁴⁹ While critics have lamented that Anne’s reaction to the discovery of Bampfield’s wife is no longer extant, they have not noticed her silence about the cabal’s fragmentation. Whatever the reason for the text’s silence on these matters, it remains that it is silent on the subject of Bampfield, but also on the fate of her fellow plotters.

Most leaders of the rising fled to the exiled court, as did Bampfield.⁵⁰ That the Royalists also deemed the evidence of Bampfield’s betrayal inconclusive is shown by the fact that they neither imprisoned him when he appeared before them, nor did they execute him as they would do with traitor Henry Manning.⁵¹ Some Royalists stuck by Bampfield, despite the suspicion surrounding him. Henry Jermyn, with whom Bampfield corresponded in the years 1647-9, defended him. Charles Stuart, however, made it clear that he had fallen out of favour. Bampfield felt cornered, as if he had no choice but to turn. As he explained to the king in person during an audience in Antwerp, ‘It is impossible for me to live thus any longer. If your majesty will absolutely abandon me, I can have no other refuge than to endeavor to return into England and seek my bread amongst your enemies, who I have hitherto opposed with all the vigor and industry I could’.⁵² Thurloe saw an opportunity to recruit him, when his handler Dorislaus wrote that Bampfield visited the king but ‘is looked upon as a knave, and so hath no countenance, nor at all trusted’.⁵³ The official appearance of Bampfield’s name on Thurloe’s payroll coincides with Anne informing him of her marriage with Halkett, on 10 December 1654: deprived of Bampfield by his treachery, she had done as he had suggested she must and married her admirer.

Deflecting Blame

Halkett’s text describes these acts of hers, these dealings of a she-spy, and yet lacking a title page, Add. MS 32376 begins in such a way as to frame the text as a devotional one: ‘there is noe Sin that ever I have been guilty of in my whole Life butt I repent with as much Sincearity as I seeke pardon’ (52), Halkett writes. This prefatory sentence sits uncomfortably with most readings of Halkett’s text. For Kim Walker, this ‘brief devotional introduction’ clashes with an autobiographical narrative in which ‘the importance of religion to the writing subject does not loom large’.⁵⁴ For Mary Ellen Lamb, conversely, this single sentence of spiritual repentance encourages a reading that—to echo the title of her influential article—blends the secular with the spiritual:

Halkett employed a form of spiritual analysis that shapes her Memoirs in terms of a contemporary devotional genre […] to discover the sins for which she required absolution […]. Halkett’s practice of self-examination prepared her not only for the eucharist, but ultimately for the moment of her death.⁵⁵

Regarding Halkett’s ‘True accountt’ as a devotional text ties in with the religious nature of all her other writings and her handing over the manuscript to her ministers in the hope it would teach others how to lead a religious life. It also requires a coherent idea of the sins for which Halkett sought absolution, something on which literary critics have collective tunnel vision. The assumption has always been that Halkett must have looked for forgiveness for having compromised her virtue, for having allowed a childhood suitor to kiss her, and later having ‘beene puplickely Maried to’ Bampfield the bigamist and ‘avouedly Liued with him as his wife’ (131). Unfortunately for this reading, Halkett shows little if any remorse regarding her sexual conduct, as Lamb acknowledges, registering her surprise at the apparent inconsistency of Halkett’s moral or sexual compass: ‘nowhere in this text does Halkett, writing from the perspective of her pious widowhood, register regret or the least contrition for these kisses’, ‘Halkett’s selection of actions for which she does, and more strikingly, for which she does not require absolution is sometimes startling’.⁵⁶ Lamb concludes that as Halkett not only fails to regret but actually asserts her sexual conduct as being beyond reproach, the ‘sins she actually repents’, such as the telling of some white lies, ‘are nearly insignificant’.⁵⁷ Anne’s response to the discovery of Bampfield’s living wife is to show how she was not at fault but acted in good faith: ‘Since what I did was Suposing C B a free person; hee nott prouing So[,] though I had beene puplickely Maried to him & avouedly Liued with him as his wife yett the ground of itt failing[,] I was as free as if I had neuer Seene him’ (131). In fact, she shows more remorse over lying to Bampfield about her marriage to Halkett than she does over any sexual misdemeanour. Lamb misreads the importance of dissimulation for Lady Halkett, just as she ignores the first sin to which Anne confesses her guilt, disobedience. In their rush to focus on the salacious, critics have so far been blind to Anne’s true regret: rebellion against God.

In other words, Anne indeed vindicates her honour, but her crime of having allowed herself to be courted by a married man is of secondary importance to her. Unlike her modern readers, Halkett is not at all obsessed with her lovers and, again unlike her modern readers, glosses over her younger self’s stolen embraces, sins which in her eyes pale in comparison to the sins for which she seeks forgiveness. She is instead fixated on a crime for which she struggles to find absolution from God: espionage, an activity that is occasionally mentioned but hitherto never looked at in depth.⁵⁸ She was not ashamed of her sexual flirtations per se, but for the fact that her belief in her lover had given him, a double spy, free rein. Bampfield’s infiltration of the Scottish spy ring had only been possible because she was part of it. She sought absolution for her lust for adventure and her espionage activities that went against God’s divine plan.

Halkett’s text ends at the same point as her activities as a she-spy, with the defection of Bampfield and her marriage to Halkett in 1656, but she picked up the narrative thread elsewhere. Despite the fact that nearly all of Halkett scholarship focuses on her autobiography, she wrote voluminously. She dedicated five hours daily to devotion,⁵⁹ the larger part of which was presumably taken up by composing devotional texts. She wrote a total of ‘6,000 manuscript pages’⁶⁰—in addition to her ‘True accountt’ deposited in the British Library, there are fourteen manuscripts of devotional writings extant in the National Library of Scotland (and also made digitally available by Perdita Manuscripts, 1500-1700), ranging in date from 1651 to 1699—plus another four works printed posthumously by her minister Couper. These nineteen works comprise a small part of what there once was: in his Life of the Lady Halket, Couper numbers another seven volumes of biblical meditations plus ‘about thirty stitched Books, some in Folio, some in 4to. most of them of 10 or 12 sheets, all containing occasional Meditations’.⁶¹ Her first ‘Mother’s Advice Tract’, one of these other texts, can explain her ‘True accountt’.

Nineteen weeks into her marriage with Sir James and while pregnant, she wrote a tract which fills in the gap left by the unfinished state of her ‘True accountt’. The still unborn dedicatee of ‘The Mothers Will to her vnborne child’, a daughter named Elizabeth (Betty), would die aged three, and so never benefited from her mother’s words of wisdom, but it tells us much about Halkett’s state of mind.⁶² In ‘The Mothers Will’, Halkett is quick to reveal herself as a true Royalist, instructing her child to pray for Charles Stuart’s restoration to the throne of the Three Kingdoms. Her next narrative move, however, is startling. Even though she urges her unborn child to pray for Charles II and his queen, she also instructs the infant to honour and obey the Cromwellian regime or ‘liue humbly vnder any other gouernment that god only suffers for a scourge to punish vs for our transgressions [my emphasis]’.⁶³ As Jennifer Heller argues, as the first to draw attention to this passage, this is a most ‘striking claim from a woman with a history of espionage’.⁶⁴ Halkett explains to her unborn child that the ‘duty, loue & respect’ that is owed to a parent should extend ‘to such Ministers as god hath apointed to bee dispencer of his word & sacrement’.⁶⁵ She admits that this will not be a challenge when a ‘good king’ is restored to the throne, as she hopes will occur. However, meanwhile:

supose they [that is, those in government] should inioyne things contrary to thy owne sence & what perhaps thou thinkest vnfitt in thy Judgment yett remember what the Lord by his prophet Samuell hath said hee loues obedience better then sacrifice.

and therfore to try thy obedience hath suffred them which are ouer there (may bee) to stretch there power to the vttmost extent of what they may doe, only to try what is within thy hart.

butt that will bee a fault they must bee accountable for, nott thee who are only to answeare for thy owne transgressions and great peace will that bring to thy owne hart when itt cannott charge thee with a guilt of disobedience towards thy superiors.⁶⁶

If the reign of the Protectorate is a punishment that must be endured, since it is God’s righteous vengeance on humankind for straying from the path and an ultimate test of obedience, then it follows that one should not resist it and certainly not, as she has done, attempt to overthrow it through yet another sin, lying, the stock-in-trade of the intelligencer.

Anne felt restless when she handed over the manuscript of her life-writing text to her ministers: ‘The desorder I was in att the giuen itt [that is, at giving them the manuscript]. [A]nd what disquiett of mind I had aboutt itt for seuerall howres affter itt; had any knowne, They would haue freed mee from thinking that Vanity had any preualency in itt. For I hate Vaine thoughts’.⁶⁷ As a staunch Royalist, her religious affiliations leaned towards Laudianism in that she had an ‘unwavering belief in the saving grace of Christ’.⁶⁸ She wanted to be forgiven for her spying activities, which had only endangered the king. Her husband Sir James was forced to become Cromwell’s Justice of the Peace; the Cromwellian regime had to be endured, as God’s punishment, and not to be undermined by intelligencing. Though she had already explained this to her daughter Betty, she repeated herself, though this time rather more clearly, in a piece she wrote for her son Robert, somewhere between September 1667 and 2 January 1671: submitt your selfes to euery ordinance of man for the Lord sake whether itt bee to the King as supreame, or vnto Gouernors as to them that are sentt by him & for so is the will of God.

I hope my Deare Child you are so well inclined to Loyalty & obedience to the King that I need noe further argument then this Last. for since itt is the will of God that is enough and more then that cannott bee said and the Lord Pardon them who hath beene rebellious & yett pretended to haue his warrantt for what they did butt the holy Spiritt in his word tells vs that rebellion is as the Sin of Witchcraft & there was an expresse command nott to suffer a Witch to Liue therfore come ^Anott^A then into their Secrett; into there asembly bee nott thou vnited for the way of truth they haue nott knowne & there is noe feare of God before there eyes, butt ^Ao^A Lord Keepe him & preserue him from this Generation for euer.⁶⁹

Halkett saw ‘rebellion’, against ‘Gouernors’ sent by God, as unnatural, comparing it to the ‘Sin of Witchcraft’. She hopes that God will pardon those who ‘pretended to haue his warrant for what they did’, as Bampfield pretended to have a warrant from the king but had been acting without authorization in Scotland. Blinded by love and acting as a dutiful wife, she had facilitated Bampfield’s malicious plots, which may have endangered the safety of the king more than once: first, the Duke of York’s escape might have been part of her brother William’s and Bampfield’s plan to assassinate Charles and put the duke on the throne; second, her prayers had ensured that Bampfield escaped his imprisonment and death sentence, or so she believed; finally, she enabled this double agent’s infiltration of a key Scottish spy ring, and therefore contributed, if unwittingly, to the preventing of the Glencairn rising.

Anne had been enveloped in the legal system for years, which perhaps influenced how she deflected the blame for her she-intelligencing actions. She had filed several lawsuits against the 3rd Earl of Kinnoull, and subsequently against his heirs, in order to obtain a bond of £2,000 that had been signed over to her by her mother, but the case dragged on for years (117). Her account is permeated with legal terminology: ‘would nott haue them accesory what euer fault might bee in the prosecution of itt’ (58); ‘I did nott thinke you would haue ingaged mee to bee a wittnese’ (59); ‘did Solem[n]ly vow’ (60); ‘Wittnese’ (60); ‘hee had sworne’ (61), to lift but a few phrases from the first pages. Apparently, the legal system and its discourse had invaded her consciousness,⁷⁰ and her manner of referring to it suggests she constructed her account with the aim of proving, first and foremost, that she was a trustworthy plaintiff. Not coincidentally, she started her retrospective account as Sir James Halkett’s widow, in 1677-8, reflecting on a time when she was not yet Lady Halkett. Her husband’s death might have spurred her writing, not because she could confess more easily knowing that he would not be there to disapprove, but because as a widow she once again lacked the legal protection provided by marriage. No longer a feme covert, but a feme sole, she would be forced to defend herself from any censure, whether in the courts or not, rather than any accusation against her name being effectively and legally directed at her husband. In her eyes though, during the years 1649-53, she had never been Ms Murray but Mrs Bampfield instead.

Anne, in stating that rebellion against the government is wrong, accentuates the fact that within her ‘marriage’ she committed no sin. Anne absolved herself of responsibility for living with Bampfield as if his wife (possibly as his wife) while he was already married because she was lied to. She could also, in this manner, absolve herself from her intelligencing activities, first by relating her ‘True accountt’, and secondly by asserting within it that these activities were carried out on behalf of and under the direction of the man whom she considered to be her husband. Her ‘True accountt’ is, therefore, less of a confession than a vindication, less a plea for absolution than an assertion of innocence. Bampfield fills all the pages of her ‘accountt’, but not because she is ashamed of her attachment to him and wants to absolve herself from sexual sins. Quite the opposite, she stresses her connection to him because it is that which vindicates her honour: she has committed every she-intelligencing act as Bampfield’s proxy, his dutiful wife, believing she was married to him. She is not to blame for rebellion, acts against God, for she acted as a feme covert—Bampfield is her perfect cover.

¹      Lady Halkett, ‘Meditations’, NLS, MS 6494, ‘Monday the 22 of Aprill 1678’, p. 294; see also Suzanne Trill (ed.), Lady Anne Halkett (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), ‘Introduction’, p. xxxvi.

2

Most biographical dictionaries record Anne’s birth as 1623, but as Trill has pointed out, her devotions make clear that it was 4 Jan. 1621/2: see Trill (ed.), Lady Anne Halkett, ‘Introduction’, p. xix (n. 9), referring to Lady Halkett, ‘Meditations, 1686/7-88;，NLS, MS 6497, pp. 34213.

3

The source is a non-authorial endorsement on the manuscript of her life-writing text—‘This Manuscript [is] written by Anne, dau: of Mr. Tho.s Murray […]一she was Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Henrietta Maria, & married, Sir Ja.^s Halkett’. It is the only available source that describes Anne as holding an office in the queen’s household: Lady Halkett, ‘Autobiography’, in Trill (ed.), Lady Anne Halkett, 51-143, at 52. Subsequent page numbers in the text within parenthesis are to this edition.

4      The register of marriages of the English Church in Middelburg, which covers the period 1624-1810, does not include their names. They might have been married in the [Nederduits] Church in Middelburg, but those records were destroyed by fire on 17 May 1940. Mary Ellen Lamb discusses several alternative ways in which they could have been married outside the Church of England; see Lamb, ‘Merging the Secular and the Spiritual in Lady Anne Halkett’s Memoirs’, in Michelle M. Dowd and Julie A. Eckerle (eds), Genre and Women’s Life Writing in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 81-96 at 91-2.

5               Alan Marshall, ‘Bampfield, Joseph’, ODNB.

6           

⁶      See Donald A. Stauffer, English Biography before 1700 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930), 214. Halkett’s text has been compared to the novels of Daniel Defoe (Rippl 23; Seelig 124); to those of Samuel Richardson (Loftis pp. x, xiv; Delany 162; Sutherland 263); and Walter Scott (Delany 162); and Jane Austen (Bottral 149, 153; Rippl 191; Stevenson 206; Rose 80; Seelig 117; Loftis pp. x, xiv). Margaret Bottrall, Every Man a Phoenix (London: John Murray, 1958); Paul Delany, British Autobiography in the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969); John Loftis (ed.), The Memoirs of Anne, Lady Halkett and Ann, Lady Fanshawe (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979); Gabriele Rippl, ‘ “The Conflict Betwixt Love and Honor” ’, in Susanne Fendler (ed.), Feminist Contributions to the Literary Canon (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1997), 7-29; Mary Beth Rose, Gender and Heroism in Early Modern English Literature (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Sharon Cadman Seelig, Autobiography and Gender in Early Modern Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); David Stevenson, ‘A Lady and Her Lovers’, in David Stevenson (ed.), King or Covenant? (East Linton: Tuckwell, 1996), 189-206; James Sutherland, English Literature of the Late Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969).

⁷            

See Chapter 5 of this volume. See also Lois Potter, Secret Rites and Secret Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 108.

⁸            

See Lamb, ‘Merging’, 90, where Lamb compares Halkett’s text to Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Lady Mary Wroth’s Countess of Montgomery’s Urania.

⁹                Trill (ed.), Lady Anne Halkett, ‘Introduction’, p. xxxvi (n. 96).

¹⁰     For Ann Fanshawe’s covert activities see Geoffrey Smith, ‘Surviving the Cavalier Winter’, Parergon 32, no. 3 (2015): 99-121.

¹¹         

Trill (ed.), Lady Anne Halkett, ‘Introduction’, p. xxxvi. For the source of this quote see this chapter, n. 1.

¹²       There are thus three editions of Halkett’s ‘True accountt of [her] life’: Nichols (ed.), 1875; Loftis (ed.), 1979, and Trill (ed.), 2007. As stated before, references throughout this volume are to Trill.

¹³         

It was something of a commonplace to present a text as ‘true’: see Frances E. Dolan, True Relations (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).

¹⁴       Lady Halkett, ‘Meditations’, NLS, MS 6494, ‘Monday the 22 of Aprill 1678’, p. 294; see also Trill (ed.), Lady Anne Halkett, ‘Introduction’, p. xxxvi.

¹⁵       Lady Halkett, ‘Select and Occationall Meditiations, 1697/8-99’，NLS, MS 6502, p. 264, in Trill (ed.), Lady Anne Halkett, 189.

¹⁶        Lady Halkett, ‘Select and Occationall Meditiations’, NLS, MS 6502, pp. 265-6, in Trill (ed.), Lady Anne Halkett, 189.

¹⁷        Lady Halkett, ‘Select and Occationall Meditiations’, NLS, MS 6502, p. 263, in Trill (ed.), Lady Anne Halkett, 188.

¹⁸       Victoria E. Burke, ‘ “My Poor Returns” ’, Parergon 29, no. 2 (2012): 47-68 at 62 (n. 60), refers to the example in Lady Halkett, ‘To my son Robert Halket’, NLS, MS 6492, pp. 306-7: Anne ‘writes that while she never intended her manuscripts to be printed, if God “sees that the publishing these bookes & papers I haue writt may increase Piety in any . . . if (I say) the Lord thinke fitt hee will then bring these to light” ’. For other examples see the introduction to Halkett, ‘The Mothers Will to her vnborne child’ (1656), NLS, MS 6489, in Perdita Manuscripts, 1500-1700, Elizabeth Clarke, Jill Millman, Vicki Burke et al. (eds), <http://www.perditamanuscripts.amdigital.co.uk> (Marlborough, Wiltshire: Adam Matthew Digital, 2008); and Trill’s discussion of Halkett, ‘Meditations’, NLS, MS 6494, p. 294, in her edn Lady Anne Halkett, p. xxxvi. For a full discussion of Halkett’s wish for posthumous publication see Margaret J. M. Ezell, ‘Ann Halkett’s Morning Devotions’, in Arthur F. Marotti and Michael D. Bristol (eds), Print, Manuscript, & Performance (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2000), 215-31.

¹⁹         

Perdita Manuscripts, bibliographic data.

²⁰         

Perdita Manuscripts, bibliographic data.

²¹             Loftis (ed.), The Memoirs of Anne, 3.

²²         

Perdita Manuscripts, bibliographic data.

²³         

The provenance is given in the BL catalogue.

²⁴             Julia Merritt (ed.), Crown Servants, Series One (Marlborough: Adam Matthew, 1994), 10.

²⁵         

Ian Arthurson, ‘Espionage and Intelligence from the Wars of the Roses to the Reformation’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 35 (1991): 134-54 at 142; Christopher Andrew, ‘The Nature of Military Intelligence’, in Keith Neilson and B. J. C. McKercher (eds), Go Spy the Land (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992), 1-16.

²⁶       For Roxburghe’s intelligence activities for the Spanish see Cynthia Fry, ‘Perceptions of Influence’, in Nadine Akkerman and Birgit Houben (eds), The Politics of Female Households (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 267­85 at 282-4. For their familial relation see [Halkett], ‘The Autobiography of Anne’, 54.

²⁷        NRS, GD 112/39/43/22, as quoted in Helen Payne, ‘Ker [Kerr; née Drummond], Jane [Jean]’, ODNB. Payne argues that the letter reveals that the Countess of Roxburghe was appointed governess to Princess Mary, the Princess Royal. However, since Archibald Campbell specifies ‘dochter’ as ‘young dochter’ [my emphasis], I take it to mean the king’s youngest daughter, that is, the Princess Elizabeth rather than the Princess Mary. This is confirmed in [Halkett], ‘The Autobiography of Anne’, 54.

²⁸             Fry, ‘Perceptions of Influence’, 285.

²⁹         

Mary Beth Rose, ‘Gender, Genre, and History’, in Mary Beth Rose (ed.), Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986), 245-78 at 271.

³⁰             Rose, ‘Gender, Genre, and History’, 271.

31

Anne’s mother acted as governess during 1642, possibly part of 1643, and June 1645 to Aug. 1647: see Loftis (ed.), The Memoirs of Anne, 193 (Loftis gives the date of Aug. 1657, but this clearly is a typo because Anne’s mother died in 1647 not 1657).

³²             W. A. Speck, ‘James II and VII’, ODNB.

33

[Isabella Twysden], ‘The Diary of Isabella, Wife of Sir Roger Twysden, Baronet, of Roydon Hall, East Peckham, 1645-1651’，F. W. Bennitt (ed.), Archaeologia Cantiana 51 (1939): 113-36 at 124.

³⁴       Anonymous to Hyde?, 1/11 May 1648, Honselersdijk [that is, a palace of the House of Orange], Bod., Clarendon MS 31, fo. 66r.

35

These letters are considered authentic by his editors. See [Joseph Bampfield], Colonel Joseph Bampfield’s Apology (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1993), ‘Introduction’ by John Loftis and Paul H. Hardacre, 28-30.

³⁶       Anne’s petition to Charles II, 17 June 1661, TNA, SP 29/37, fo. 125. See also another of Anne’s petitions, dated Oct.? 1660, TNA, SP 29/20, fo. 107, and notes in Loftis (ed.), The Memoirs of Anne, 199.

³⁷             TNA, SP 29/20, fo. 107.

³⁸             Lady Halkett, ‘Ocationall Meditations, 1660-3’, NLS, MS 6491, pp. 43-8 at p. 43 (no. 10).

³⁹             List of ‘additional pensions granted since the list of 1685’, dated 1689, TNA, SP 8/6, fo. 156.

⁴⁰             Ronald Hutton, Charles the Second (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), 50.

⁴¹       Either John Hay, from 1646 1st Earl of Tweeddale or his son John Hay, from 1653 2nd Earl of Tweeddale, as it is not clear whether Anne refers to the father or the son.

⁴²       Charles Stuart to ‘the principal officers who are at present in arms for us in the Highlands of Scotland,’ [25 Feb.] / 7 Mar. 1653, as quoted in John Loftis, Bampfield’s Later Career (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1993), 162. Loftis believes the letter to be a warrant for Bampfield’s arrest and expresses surprise that no action was taken upon it. However, that is presumably interpreting the concluding words ‘nor let him be at liberty’ too literally.

⁴³             Nicholas to Hyde, 3/13 Mar. 1653, NP, ii. 7, as quoted in Loftis, Bampfield’s Later Career, 162.

⁴⁴             Loftis, Bampfield’s Later Career, 162.

⁴⁵             Loftis, Bampfield’s Later Career, 158-9.

⁴⁶       [Thomas Scott], ‘Thomas Scot’s Account of His Actions as Intelligencer during the Commonwealth’, C. H. Firth (ed.), English Historical Review 12, no. 45 (1897): 116-26 at 119.

⁴⁷             David Stevenson, ‘Cunningham, William’, ODNB.

48

An anonymous letter ‘intercepted from London’ to an unnamed recipient, 11 [Dec. 1653], London, TSP, i. 630, as quoted by Loftis and Hardacre in [Bampfield], Colonel Joseph Bampfield’s Apology, 256 (n. 35).

49

Holograph copy by Sir Edward Hyde to Lieutenant-General Myddelton, printed in C. H. Firth, Scotland and the Protectorate (Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1899), 11-13. For more on the forgeries of handwriting by Lady Page see BL, Egerton MS 2534, fos. 142-3.

⁵⁰ One of Bampfield’s letters, which is dated 8 Jan. [1654/5], London, in TSP, iii. 87-8, is cited by Loftis and Hardacre (eds), in [Bampfield], Colonel Joseph Bampfield’s Apology, 172, to suggest that Anne continued to provide Bampfield a cover through which he seems to have kept in touch with Balcarres. As Bampfield writes, ‘if your lady directs your letter to mrs. Moray, to whome I thinke her ladyshipp has an address, she will send them me […] mrs Moray is at this tyme 3 or 4 miles off at her brother[-in-law] Newton’s.’ However, since the letter is addressed to Alexander Lindsay, and not to Balcarres, it seems likely that the letter predates Jan. 1651, when Lindsay was created 1st Earl of Balcarres.

51

[Bampfield], Colonel Joseph Bampfield’s Apology, ‘Introduction’ by Loftis and Hardacre, 23.

52

[Bampfield], Colonel Joseph Bampfield’s Apology, 82.

53

An anonymous ‘intercepted letter from Paris’ to ‘My dear friend,’ 14/24 Sept. 1653, enclosed in an undated letter from Dorislaus to Thurloe, TSP, i. 480.

54       Kim Walker, ‘ “Divine Chymistry” and Dramatic Character’, in Jo Wallwork and Paul Salzman (eds), Women Writing 1550-1750 (Bundoora: Meridian, 2001), 133-49 at 134. Walker analyses Halkett's text as inspired by theatre, a reading which is supported by Halkett’s youthful visits to London playhouses (Halkett writes she had ‘Loued well to See plays […] before itt [that is, women visiting the theatre] grew [that is, came to be regarded as] Something Scandalous’) at 55-6 and her mention of John Fletcher’s play The Humorous Lieutenant (1618) at 103.

55             Lamb, ‘Merging’, 84.

56             Lamb, ‘Merging’, 85, 86-7.

57             Lamb, ‘Merging’, 93.

58      Susan Wiseman’s essay, ‘ “The most considerable of my troubles” ’, in Wallwork and Salzman (eds), Women Writing 1550-1750, 25-45, argues in favour of seeing Halkett as political agent, conspirator, and spy. However, apart from mentioning Halkett’s assisting the Duke of York’s escape, Wiseman does not shed light on Halkett’s activities in those roles.

59      Burke, ‘ “My Poor Returns” ’, 58 (n. 41), referring to Couper, Life of the Lady Halket (Edinburgh: Andrew Symson and Henry Knox, 1701), 55, stating that ‘This was between the hours of 5-7am, 1-2pm, 6-7pm, and 9-10pm’. See also Trill (ed.), Lady Anne Halkett, ‘Introduction’, p. xxxiv.

60             Lamb, ‘Merging’, 84.

61        

61      Couper, Life of the Lady Halket, appendix ‘Books written by the Lady Halket’, sigs H2r-H4v at H4v. For the full extensive list see Burke, ‘ “My Poor Returns” ’, 48 n. 4.

62      Halkett, ‘The Mothers Will to her vnborne child’ (1656), NLS, MS 6489, pp. 198-256 (no. 9.1; paginated 1-59 by Halkett). Anne refers to the nineteen weeks at p. 199/p. 2 of her manuscript in the margin. See also Jennifer Heller, The Mother’s Legacy in Early Modern England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 1, 160.

63             Halkett, ‘The Mothers Will’, NLS, MS 6489, p. 204/p. 4; see also Heller, The Mother’s Legacy, 144.

64             Heller, The Mother’s Legacy, 144.

65             Halkett, ‘The Mothers Will’, NLS, MS 6489, p. 208/p. 11.

66             Halkett, ‘The Mothers Will’, NLS, MS 6489, p. 209/p. 12.

67      Lady Halkett, ‘Select and Occationall Meditiations, 1697/8-99’, NLS, MS 6502, p. 266, in Trill (ed.), Lady Anne Halkett, 189; also quoted in Wiseman, Conspiracy, 330.

68             Trill (ed.), Lady Anne Halkett, ‘Introduction’, p. xxviii.

69      Halkett, ‘To my son Robert Halket’, NLS, MS 6492, pp. 244-308 (no. 42; paginated 104-68 by Halkett) at pp. 271-2/pp. 131-2.

70        

Also, if she incorporated disparate notebooks into one manuscript, as her minister Couper claims in Life of Lady Halket, 8-9, in a way comparable to how Anne Clifford’s seemingly spontaneous diary came into being for instance, then it is not unthinkable that the language of the court transferred itself onto the page.

7

Aphra Behn's Letters from Antwerp, July 1666-April 1667

Intelligence Reports or Epistolary Fiction?

Aphra Behn’s first works of fiction were autobiographical: her first invention was that she was a lady, her second that she was a spy. Behn’s letters of espionage were faithfully transcribed by W. J. Cameron in 1961,¹ and his edition must be the point of entry for any scholar investigating Behn’s time in Antwerp and career in espionage, but a printed text necessarily erases and distorts textual and material evidence such as handwriting and cipher codes—document authentication devices that spies were keen to manipulate. For historians, Behn’s espionage mission to the Low Countries, which took place between July 1666 and April 1667, is so well documented and so regularly rehearsed that to revisit these long months in Antwerp seems superfluous.² For literary scholars, too, Behn’s time in Flanders seems of little interest. After all, this period predates her career as a professional literary author, and even her first attempts at writing literary works, and can thus only be relevant as a biographical backstory. However, in relying on Cameron’s immaculate transcriptions in print we may have missed the significance of one clue that seems crucial to contextualizing her spying adventure as well as her literary career: all except one of the documents is in Behn’s own hand. It is possible—indeed, on sifting through all the evidence, it appears highly likely—that in order to earn a living as a spy she fabricated answers to letters that she neither sent nor received. In other words, she may have fooled us all: perhaps the documents she wrote in Antwerp and which were kept by Sir Henry Bennet, Baron Arlington, and are now among the State Papers are not the work of a female spy, but rather of a writer of fiction.

Worlds Colliding

In order to arrive at the genesis of Behn the author it is necessary to begin with a recapitulation of the extra-literary events in Antwerp and a fuller description of the interconnected actors in her life. With a small world, a small pot of information, and an even smaller pot of money, it was inevitable that the lives and missions of intelligencers would clash and overlap in time. One such example sheds new light on the activities of Aphra Behn as, during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, she found herself in fierce competition with Thomas Corney over a certain William Scott: both gathered secrets for the same intelligence bureau in Whitehall, Lord Arlington’s office, and both had a personal and professional interest in Scott.

William Scott was the son of regicide Thomas Scott, the Council of State’s leading spymaster during the period 1649-53 and the Rump Parliament's chief of intelligence from around May 1659 to April 1660.³ He was a fellow of All Souls, Oxford, and after spending six years at Cambridge studying human literature and civil law, he gained a Bachelor of Civil Law in August 1648 and was a barrister at law at the Inner Temple by 1653.⁴ His father employed him in the Post Office, no doubt instructing him how to break into letters surreptitiously, but things did not go to plan, as his wife Joanna was soon petitioning Cromwell for relief of herself and her child. As she wrote the Protector, my husband ‘by your Highness fauour had an Office […] which through his default hee hath deseruedly lost’.⁵ He had been accused of serving Charles Stuart by George Monck, an accusation taken seriously enough to have him removed from his father’s Post Office in 1657.⁶ He presumably escaped imprisonment with a large fine, because he had ‘contracted great debts vpon his estate (for the securinge [of] his person)’. These debts incurred had left his wife ‘vtterly destitute of any future subsistance’.⁷ Joanna’s petition was favourably received: Cromwell granted her £20 per annum for life. However, since the Protector’s decision postdated her petition by half a year, one cannot but wonder how Joanna and her child had meanwhile survived.⁸ Scott’s exact movements after his dismissal from office are unclear, though in 1663 he resurfaces as deputy governor of the colony of Suriname, just as Behn was there collecting materials for Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave (1688),⁹ and some two and a half years later was to be found in The Hague as a resourceful English spy working for the Dutch.

There, in Holland, William Scott was active as an agent of Colonel Bampfield, Lady Halkett’s rejected lover who—disillusioned by Royalist distrust of him—had allied himself with the other side in the service of Johan de Witt, the Grand Pensionary of the States of Holland (and thus in effect leader of the Dutch Republic). Scott feared his master, believing he held a grudge against him. His fear was not without foundation, however, as his father Thomas had betrayed Bampfield, vainly hoping to prevent his own execution by giving the names of all his informers in a written confession in 1660.¹⁰ This betrayal had destroyed Bampfield’s character: Thomas Scott’s revelation that Bampfield had betrayed the Glencairn rising led to the Royalists, whose trust he had never fully gained, ostracizing him. This act had led to Bampfield being unable to prevent Anne Murray marrying Sir James Halkett, and he was forced to flee into the Low Countries, wanting to escape such a fate as that of Henry Manning (the latter was executed by the Royalists when they had unmasked him as a mole). Taking up residence in Middelburg, Zeeland, in 1661, he continued offering intelligence to Charles II for a number of years, encouraged as he was by Royalists Sir Allen Apsley and Lord Arlington. He had been keen to please the restored king, hoping to ingratiate himself back into favour so that he could return home. He failed, and in this failure the Dutch saw an opportunity. Despite warnings that Bampfield was not trustworthy, de Witt thought him a valuable instrument, considering his turncoat character and his ‘very thorough knowledge of the Court of England and of our present disturbances’ of much potential use to the Dutch government.¹¹ Bampfield was successfully recruited by de Witt in March 1665, and he soon built up a reputation as a cut-throat spymaster, farming out intelligence tasks to his own undercover confederates—Scott was one of them. Scott, who also served as cavalryman in Bampfield’s English regiment in the Dutch army, was committing treason: he was fighting against his own countrymen.

Behn was hired as a spy in order to recruit Scott as a double agent, authorized to offer both a reward (or bribe) and a pardon for treason in return. Her instructions are drawn up in a document labelled ‘The Memorialls for M^rs Affora’, of which a copy is extant in the hand of Joseph Williamson, keeper of the king’s library at Whitehall and Arlington’s second-in-command.¹² Behn was handpicked by spy and playwright Thomas Killigrew.¹³ It is thought that

Killigrew knew Behn as a professional copyist of literary manuscripts, though the evidence that she might have taken up such a role stems from twenty years later:¹⁴ she had a remarkably good hand, which he must have deemed expedient to generating intelligence reports. Scott was seen as an easy target because there were plenty of incentives to encourage him to turn. If his dread of Bampfield was not enough to make Scott willing to change sides, in April 1666, Charles II’s Proclamation Requiring Some of His Majesties Subjects in Parts beyond the Seas, to Return into England gave a number of dissidents, Scott amongst them, an ultimatum: return to their native country or to be charged with high treason.¹⁵

Personally, Aphra Behn, then still Mlle Johnson if Johnson was her maiden name, may have been Scott’s mistress in Suriname in 1663/4. This assertion, first made in Harrison Gray Platt Jr.’s influential 1934 article and repeated ever since, was based on a letter from the deputy governor William Byam to plantation owner Sir Robert Harley dated March 1664:

I need not enlarge But to advise you of the sympatheticall passion of y^e Grand Sheapheard Celadon who is fled after Astrea, being resolvd to espouse all distresse or felicities of fortunes w^th her. But the more Certaine cause of his flight (waveing the Arrowe [i.e. not taking Cupid’s dart into consideration] & services he had for the Lodger [i.e. the amorous affection he had for the female lodger at the plantation]) was […] 16

the number of 1000 of pounds sterlin drawne up against him.¹⁶

Byam’s letter coincides with Scott’s desertion of his office only months after Behn’s departure, and makes accurate mention of his debts, which had originally led to his travelling to Suriname, catching up with him in the colony. Moreover, the names Celadon and Astrea from Honoré d’Urfé’s popular early modern French romance L’Astrée (published between 1607 and 1627) were the code names that Scott and Behn respectively were to employ in their intelligence reports written in 1666/7. Behn was also to use ‘Astrea’ twice as her literary nom de plume.¹⁷ Hence Byam’s letter in combination with their both being in Suriname at the same time allows for the possibility that William Scott, aka Celadon, had an affair with Astrea, aka Aphra Johnson, and that he had used their relationship as a pretext to flee the colony to escape from the clutches of his creditors. If all of this were true, then Behn might perhaps have been expected to exploit their former romantic attachment. The men in Lord Arlington’s office might even have calculated that she had a better chance of success than any of their experienced male employees because she could ensnare Scott through their shared sexual history. This in itself might explain why her instructions do not mention her married name and simply call her ‘M^rs Affora’.¹⁸ But Scott was devious.

Professionally, a year prior to Behn’s arrival in the Low Countries, the English merchant and Amsterdam-based spy Thomas Corney had been betrayed by Scott feeding him misinformation. In 1665, Corney had jumped at the opportunity to turn intelligencer for William Swann, one of Arlington’s contacts. Corney had thereafter struck up a friendship with William Scott, mistakenly believing ‘thereby to haue a discouery of all action of the discontented party here [in Holland], & soe consequently in England.’ Scott realized he was being strung along, however, and did not tell Corney anything useful, but instead ‘filld him with vntruths’, untruths that Corney transmitted to Lord Arlington’s office in England as fact.¹⁹ Of course, it was only a matter of time before Arlington either discovered that Corney was naively buying into the lies Scott was feeding him, and therefore deemed him an incompetent intelligencer or, worse, acted upon this false information with Corney receiving the blame for what followed.

However, Scott’s plan proved to be darker: while Corney had not been able to communicate anything useful to Arlington via Swann, his sending of dubious intelligence reports allowed Scott to expose him as a spy to the Dutch authorities. Records show that Scott was merely acting on the orders of his superior Colonel Bampfield who, in turn, worked for de Witt: ‘the cheefe that sett Scotte a worke was Colonel Bamfeild […] all Corneys Letters was privey to Scotte & Scotte gaue an account of them to de Whit Aby bamfeildA’.²⁰ The Dutch, however, did not know Corney by sight, and so Scott identified the man they were to follow and arrest by tapping him on the shoulder as he walked by. That same evening Corney’s house was searched and all his papers confiscated. Subsequently, ‘they tooke him downe into the paine Chamber’ to get a full confession.²¹ The same fate befell Nicholas Oudart, former secretary of the Princess Royal Mary Stuart, who travelled constantly between England and the Low Countries so that he might settle his late mistress’s estate, and to whom Corney had addressed his intelligence reports.²² It turned out both men were ‘involved in Arlington’s plans for a coup against the Dutch government to replace it with an Orange one’.²³ Williamson, Lord Arlington’s secretary, received an account of these events. His informer compared the tap on Corney’s shoulder to the kiss of Judas that identified Christ to the Romans, stating that ‘Corney will not die but Oudard[,] I sepose[,] will—Corneys life was promised to that Judas [that is, Scott]’.²⁴ Both men were racked, but were eventually released after half a year’s imprisonment, however. Corney was banished and lost his estate in Holland; Oudart was exchanged for an imprisoned member of the Dutch diplomatic corps in London.²⁵

Personally, therefore, Corney had sufficient reason to hate Scott. The misinformation Scott fed him had not only made him look like a fool, damaging his credibility as intelligencer, but it had also ruined his other, mercantile trade. Not only was his estate seized, but he had spent £500 just to maintain himself while in prison. To add to his misfortune, he had incurred another loss, this one amounting to £1,200, following the destruction of ships which ought to have been carrying his merchandise to Hamburg and Leipzig, by a fire ship belonging to Prince Rupert just off the coast of Vlieland, one of the Dutch West Frisian islands.²⁶ All these reasons for developing an all-consuming enmity perhaps paled into insignificance when counted alongside the six months of torture and imprisonment he had endured thanks to Scott. Corney fled to Flanders, figuratively and possibly literally a broken man. Destitute and uncertain whether Arlington would trust him again, he set his sights on revenge.

Behn’s mission was plainly a hazardous one. She was set on recruiting the glib Scott as double agent, as Corney had been set before her, a mission that had nearly cost him his life. Corney, of course, had acted on his own initiative where Behn had been hired specifically for the job: like Corney, however, she would fail, if recruiting Scott were a measurement of success. She thrived in other areas, however, as by taking on the espionage mission, Behn, a woman of humble origins, daughter of a barber and a wet nurse to be precise, began a process of fabricating a social identity as lady and ‘shee-spy’.

Most spies embellished their intelligence reports to accentuate their own importance, as spymasters must have realized. They pretended, for instance, that they were in the thick of things, close to the fountain of information, when they were invariably at the periphery, mopping up droplets of knowledge that they had gained second-or third-hand. Behn simply took such confection to the next level. In opposition to Corney, and seeking to please a patron, she tried her hand at epistolary fiction. Her success in forging intelligence reports was palpable, as she created an illusion so compelling that it was impossible for her readers— even those of the twenty-first century—to distinguish the facts from her fiction.

Competition in Flanders

When Corney settled in Flanders, Arlington was quick to employ him as intelligencer once again, but the war with the Dutch was costing the Stuart government dear and payments trickled in slowly, if at all. We can only imagine Corney's feelings as he wrote to Oudart about this new arrival, ‘a faire Lady whose name is Affera Beene accompained with her brother one M^r Cheney and a Mayd’ who was, unlike him, receiving payment upfront from Arlington’s office.²⁷ The ‘faire Lady’ was the widowed Aphra Behn who had arrived in the Spanish Netherlands in July 1666, in the midst of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, as a ‘shee spy’, a term with which the tavern-goers of the Antwerp inn the Rosa Noble mockingly adorned her.²⁸ By reporting on her arrival Corney undermined her credentials as a spy: the implicit suggestion was that this pretty wench was quite incapable of moving unobtrusively and that Arlington should not waste further money on her but instead pay him. As Corney concluded his report on Behn, and this after another year of faithful but unpaid service to Arlington’s office, ‘a little Oyle would now doe well, or else the lampe will out’.²⁹ Arlington must have valued the tip-off, as Corney’s next letter reads: ‘giue mee leaue to thanke you for your care you take in supplying mee with Oyle for my lampe’.³⁰

That Corney’s spying upon Behn met with such encouragement from England could in itself have been reason enough for his continuing to trail her. But he was also drawn to her because he had learned the primary aim of her mission: to contact Scott. Corney was of course keen to have a word or two with Scott himself, being the man who had not only caused him to be racked but by whom he had suffered financially too. How did Corney come to know of Behn’s mission almost immediately upon her arrival on the continent? Initially, it was one of Behn’s travelling companions, Lord Stafford, who had informed Corney of Behn’s operation. Corney had accordingly hastened from Brussels to Antwerp, regretting that he had just missed Scott, and that what could not but be a deadly confrontation had to be postponed: ‘I heard that Scott was in this Towne, which though I had noe power to seize him, yett hee or I would neuer haue gone AfledA out of this Towne any more ^Aaliue^A.^，31 Still, that Sunday he tracked down Behn and managed to win her trust in the sanctity of a church.³² She instantly showed him Arlington’s pass, even though her instructions stipulated that she had ‘to use all secresy imaginable’,³³ demonstrating to him what he had suspected: they may have had the same employer, but Behn was extremely indiscreet. He did not let her out of his sight—Behn, neither liking nor trusting him, wrote about her dissembling stalker: ‘he coms w^th y^e ffairest face in the world to see me euery day’ [emphasis mine].³⁴ Perhaps she had already learned that Corney had called her a ‘faire lady’ [emphasis mine], not meaning to pay her a compliment; if so, here she might have paid him back in his own coin, echoing the same gendered adjective to criticize his ineffective dissembling as a spy.

As well as receiving intelligence from other sources, it seems likely that Behn and Corney could access each other’s letters if they so chose. Certainly the content of some letters suggests that at the very least Behn was aware of the reports Corney was sending back to Arlington. She had access to vital underground postal channels, which might have given her opportunity to tap into Corney’s letters, having established contact with Sir Anthony Demarces, a kind of postmaster who had earned his stripes and a knighthood by opening up underground postal channels for the Royalists during the Interregnum, also intercepting and copying letters for Sir Edward Nicholas and Sir Edward Hyde, while his wife moonlighted as a cryptanalyst in 1658/9.³⁵ Behn had sailed to Ostend on the same ship as Demarces. Behn’s instructions to Killigrew as to how to direct letters from London to Antwerp reveals that she was using the services of Demarces’s agent and courier, Hieronymus or Jerome Nipho:

M^r nepho who is the man I gett to put my letters to m^r williamsons paquett [i.e. Nipho is the one who sends my letters to Arlington’s secretary, Williamson] & he to whome I would desire you to write to me by: I meane derect y^r letters only to M^rs Behn: & put a Couert ouer A Monsieur Nipho A Anuers [i.e. hiding it in 36

an outer wrapper addressed to Mr Nipho at Antwerp].³⁶

Since Corney and Behn shared Arlington as an employer, it seems likely that Corney, too, used Nipho’s postal services. It is in any case certain that Nipho warned Behn that Corney ‘has writ into Holland to euery creature he knows’ with an account of her activities in Antwerp.³⁷ Nipho might also have given her Corney’s letters to read: it is striking just how closely the contents of Behn’s letter match those of Corney’s. For instance, on 31 August 1666, the exact same day that Corney sent his first letter about Behn into England, a letter which reported a sighting of her and thus demonstrated her indiscreet behaviour, she sent a letter condemning him in the same way:

this M^r Corney is a straing kind of prating ffellow: if you imploy him as he talks, full big off I feare his tongue will Undo all his will would perfforme: he maks as if he weare his Majestys right hand but I feare he is not to be imployd, because of that talking quallity: so that I neuer heard such a Rodamantad [i.e. a 38

rodomontade, a ‘boaster, a braggart’; OED noun 2] in all my life.

Something similar occurs when Corney tried to encourage his employers to extricate Behn:

I thinke this lady doeth still intend for holland [to visit Scott], which if shee doth, I will warrant her shee returnes noe more in hast, which I am sorrey for because I would not haue them thinke, the Kings Officers can bee soe indiscreed as to send such people about a business they soe little vnderstand, which will rebound much to the dishonnour of his Ma:^tie although: I must confess the woman hath a great deele of witt and yett shee vnderstands not this affaire, for shee hath been wind bound 3 weekes at the Roose Noble in Antwerp for want of money, a place where all the Hollanders come euery day; and beleue knowes her busines as well as her selfe. I am sure this is fitting to acquaint my lord Arlington with, but hee may doe 39

therein as hee pleases.

Corney’s letter may portray Behn as naive, as if she did not realize she was lodging in a den of iniquity, surrounded by the enemy, ‘the Hollanders’. Yet, in a letter to Killigrew, dated a mere three days later, Behn wrote of the necessity for her to move out of the Rosa Noble as soon as possible and get a ‘priuatt Lodging’ instead, ‘for heare coms all the Rogues out of Holland’. It was ‘only want [of] money’ that prevented her from leaving the inn.⁴⁰ Had she read Corney’s letter? If she had, it would have been all the more reason for continuing her trickle of damning character descriptions of Corney into England:

this prating ffellow would spoyle all […] I am uery confident he will ruen [i.e. ruin] all if he be trusted for you neuer heard on[e] talke so in y^r life. […] if S^r William Temple [Stuart resident ambassador in Brussels] do trust any buseness to his hands: theare shall not be a man in Holland but shall know it: [. . . .] he is so insufferable a scandalous Lying prating ffellow: […] if som speedy cheek [i.e. check] be not giuen to his tongue he will not only ruen all he has to do: but all others y^t haue any, in these parts […] he was uery like to bee killd last weeke for his prating.⁴¹

Corney wanted Behn removed, Behn wanted Corney told he had crossed a line. In Corney’s opinion, whereas he was experienced and had useful intelligence to offer—and, besides, deserved to be recompensed for his time in prison—she was an inexperienced lady on a pointless mission. She held similar views about him.

As well as competing for Scott, they were competing for credibility and money. Corney knew that Behn’s usefulness for Arlington was directly connected to Scott’s usefulness as an informant. To recruit his arch-enemy Scott as double agent was ludicrous in his eyes, for it was clear to Corney that Scott was incapable of gaining any intelligence whatsoever. Corney listed four reasons for Scott’s impotence (and thus, by implication, that of Behn): first, following Scott’s betrayal of himself and Oudart to the Dutch republicans, he was no longer trusted by the English ‘fannatticque party’ residing in Holland; secondly, being much in debt, Scott did not dare to show his face in the cities where news circulated, neither in Amsterdam, Leiden, The Hague, Rotterdam, nor Dordrecht; thirdly, he was a pariah and hated by all; fourthly, he could not speak three words of Dutch, so could not pick up any news in the taverns or coffee houses. This final point was all the more regrettable because eavesdropping was by inference the only way left for Scott to glean any intelligence whatsoever. Grand Pensionary de Witt would sooner ‘intrust the Diuell as him in any business of concerne’, according to Corney. For these reasons, Corney warned Oudart, who was back in England in Arlington’s office. He suspected foul play: the ‘faire Lady, and her companions 'pretending they can doe much with him [Scott] & hee [Scott] can doe much for the King and all is but a Cheate’.⁴² Corney suggested that Behn and Scott were in league together, keeping Arlington on a string and over-inflating their own importance in order to reap the biggest rewards.⁴³

The Holograph Letters

Was Corney right? Was it a swindle? Presumably so, but not in the way Corney imagined. Scott and Behn do not seem to have schemed together to fool Arlington. Behn accomplished that on her own. Of course, evidence suggests they knew each other from a past life: ‘The speed and apparent ease with which Mrs. Behn made contact with Scot[t] suggest previous acquaintance if not a pre­arranged plan’.⁴⁴ However, the sources do not reveal much about the exact nature of their relationship. Certainly, Scott must have had a weak spot for Behn: it seems unlikely he would otherwise have been persuaded so readily to meeting her in Antwerp, a town which was, after all, hostile territory. For Arlington to employ Behn, however, he must have been convinced that any feelings she might have had for Scott in the past were over. As Janet Todd explains: ‘[t]hey indicated a flirtation rather than a fully blown sexual affair. If it had been a matter of love, Killigrew and Arlington might have feared that Behn would put Scot[t]’s welfare before her duty’.⁴⁵ Behn might have exploited any feelings Scott still cherished for her, but she was her own agent.

Upon her arrival in Flanders, Behn dispatched an express messenger to the Dutch army garrisoned in ’s-Hertogenbosch, in which Scott was serving, to invite him to Antwerp. He arrived immediately, but as Behn briefed James Halsall, cupbearer to Charles II and go-between for her and Arlington: ‘I was forcd to get a coach & go a days jorney w^th him’. This expensive coach ride was intended to keep their meeting unobserved, Scott being fearful that his superior Bampfield would discover his movements. Bampfield was presumably not going to allow the son to betray him as the father had. According to Behn, ‘he [Scott] is so extreamly watch[ed] by BAMPFIELD, that he is not sufferd to go out of his sight […] & as he is y^e most closly cuning ffellow in the world: he would doubtless do him a mischiff’.⁴⁶ Possibly, the coach ride did not go unnoticed. Corney had either spotted the pair riding off into the night or, and this seems more likely, he had intercepted Behn’s first intelligence report in Nipho’s post office. Post-dating Behn’s letter by a fortnight, Corney’s report to one of Arlington's secretaries states that Scott 'durst not stay in Antwerp many houres for feare of mee, soe they tooke Coach & went out of the Towne with him, and stayed out all night and returned againe the next morninge’.⁴⁷ Exaggerating his own importance, Corney reinterpreted the facts as presented by Behn when he suggested that Scott feared him rather than Bampfield. What is more, he made it crystal clear that Behn had spent the night with Scott, thereby calling her sexual honour into question.

Fear soon immobilized the conspirators. Scott agreed to only one further meeting. He refused to go again into Flanders, while she refused to go into Holland out of fear ‘to be hanged’. First, she tried to keep Arlington satisfied without delivering anything: ‘I shall soone settle a way of corispondance w^th you & him: but I must waite aday too or three, Vnless being to[o] hasty spoyle[s] all’.⁴⁸ The situation reached deadlock. Communicating by letters was only a short-term solution, as she herself admitted, because she was not affluent enough to pay private letter bearers: ‘all the letters w^ch he sends: he is forced to send a perticuler mesenger: the like I am forcd to do: so it coms not to a little money’.⁴⁹ Hard-pressed as she was, she might have realized she had to be creative to receive Arlington’s next payments. If need be, if Scott were to refuse or could not hand over intelligence, for example, then she could always create intelligence reports and state that they came from him. She used the threat of Corney, real or perceived, to make Scott’s refusal to travel to Antwerp seem reasonable: Corney ‘sweares he will kill him’, she writes.⁵⁰ Dread of Bampfield should further explain why ‘Cell[ado]n [that is, Scott] is afraide to haue any thing go in his owne ha[n]d: & thear fore will for the futer make me write all: whome I hope you may Confide in’.⁵¹

It was a stroke of tactical brilliance. She had set up her relationship with Scott in such a way as to validate her not sending on his holograph letters to Arlington’s office, but merely ‘copies’ of his letters in her own hand. Instead of admitting that she had failed and lost Scott as an informer, she might have decided to ensure Arlington’s continuing payment by becoming an informer herself, albeit an unofficial one.

Of course the evidence is inconclusive. Yet it seems difficult to account for such a foolhardy course of action as Behn transcribing each of Scott’s letters, a time-consuming and complicated set-up, in any other way. It just does not add up. It raises too many questions to which there are no logical answers. One, the implication of her transcribing his letters is that he did not use a scribe himself but penned his letters in his own hand. That part makes sense: despite the fact that secretaries were supposed to be keepers of secrets, you would not be inclined to use them if you were a spy. But would he have trusted her with those originals if his hand could incriminate him? Second, the packet boat between Holland and England had been cancelled because of the Anglo-Dutch War, meaning all post destined for England went through Flanders.⁵² Why would he have been comfortable sending letters in his hand from The Hague to Antwerp, but be extra cautious of that final league, Flanders-England? Would it not have been equally hazardous for Scott to send letters in his own hand from The Hague to Antwerp? Third, Behn must have sent her letters under a cover to The Hague because Bampfield knew her hand.⁵³ Why not trust another cover to be secure enough to carry his letters to England? Fourth, why would he write at all or consider turning if he were so afraid? Would Scott really take Behn’s word for it that he would get a pardon? Behn did not receive any confirmation from London to keep him onside—neither pardon nor money were forthcoming. He had answered all fourteen points of Behn’s first memorandum. Why would he start providing extra information before receiving confirmation the other side was to hold up their end of the bargain? What is more, Scott received £1,000 per annum from de Witt, possibly as a reward for his betrayal of Oudart and Corney. Why would he leave a well-paid military office to become a royal agent?⁵⁴

In the end, we only have Behn’s word for it that she corresponded with Scott and transcribed his letters; the question is whether this is the word of a spy or a literary author. All of the original letters, in both directions, have been lost.⁵⁵ Of course, in the scenario I am proposing those originals never existed. Scott might have given her the idea to invent a Scott-like persona: in the answer to her first ‘memorial’, he referred to himself both in the first as well as third person, possibly an indication of any spy’s fragmentary self, as Alan Marshall has argued.⁵⁶ What could have been easier for a playwright-to-be to draw his character and start writing epistolary fiction?

If Scott was not spoon-feeding her information, the question arises of how she came by the intelligence to fill her reports. In a recent article J. P. Vander Motten and René Vermeir reveal how Behn gathered materials for her play The Fair Jilt (1688), basing the plot on events which had occurred during her time in Antwerp.⁵⁷ Their argument leaves no doubt that Behn was extremely well connected, had her ear to the ground, and had a thorough command of Dutch: she used Dutch court cases, pamphlets, and manuscripts, and certainly had a continual access to information that did not appear in any English news pamphlets. Behn’s letters, as well as Corney’s, testify that the inn next to the market place where she was staying, the Rosa Noble, was rife with Hollanders: a bit of simple eavesdropping could easily have done the trick.

Behn, who before her arrival in Antwerp may have worked for Killigrew’s Men as literary copyist, might also have copied intelligence reports she happened to intercept with Nipho’s assistance. When Corney discovered that one of de Witt’s spies was in debtor’s prison in England, he was quick to inform Oudart. If Arlington were to torture the spy, Corney suggested, then he would soon discover Scott’s true nature: ‘a little of that Payne banke they would haue applyed to vs in the hage would make him tell a fyne storey of his Master de witt and his Comrogues Bamfield & Scott’.⁵⁸ Here Corney tried to indicate that Scott was unlikely to turn and work for the Stuart government (as Behn must also have realized). Behn also reported on the same spy’s imprisonment, but a fortnight later.⁵⁹ She might have acquired the information from Corney himself, from his report, or from any of the other intelligencers convening in the Rosa Noble: as Scott reminds us, Antwerp was filled with individuals who aspired to be spies.

Behn’s run as intelligencer ended when the Stuart government learned that Scott was imprisoned in The Hague. Corney believed that it was due to Behn that Scott had been arrested in Holland in October 1666. As he wrote to Oudart: that that Rogue Scott is catched at last; which could bee noe otherwayes for hee came 2 tymes to the Rosa Noble in Antwerpe to the shee spy as they call her thir, where thir is allwayes hollendars, besides the man of the house a great freind to holland; & hath affronted him seuerall tymes to gitt her out, but shee will not goe.⁶⁰

Without perhaps having realized it, she had played the role of the femme fatale— to use an anachronistic term.⁶¹ Certainly, she does justice to the archetype. The translation from the French—‘deadly woman’—applies: she had put Scott in a compromising, deadly situation. She had lured him to hostile territory, drawing attention to him, and creating opportunity for fellow spy and Scott’s sworn enemy, Thomas Corney, to work his evil ways. Corney had sworn to avenge himself on Scott by killing him: he may have succeeded, even though he did not physically get his hands on him. Scott disappears from the records soon after Behn left Antwerp. It is not inconceivable that Corney succeeded in his murderous intent by informing Dutch authorities of those coach rides in early August.⁶² The end of Scott presumably also marked the end of Behn because now that her informer had been found out and locked up, her value had plummeted. This would occur, of course, if her employer Arlington doubted her own ability to gain access to valuable information, presumably on account of her sex: such a viewpoint would both support and necessitate Behn’s ‘invention’ of Scott’s information. The information she passed on may well have been legitimate, merely originating from her own activities rather than those of her ‘invented’ Scott.

She was recalled and so was Corney. Perhaps Arlington realized Corney got his best information from Behn. Without Behn in Antwerp, Corney had lost his purpose too. Ben Jonson’s epigram 59, ‘On Spies’, seems fitting:

Spies, you are lights in state, but of base stuff, Who, when you’ve burnt yourselves down to the snuff, Stink, and are thrown away. End fair enough.⁶³

Arlington replaced the pair of them with another spy, Van Ruyben.⁶⁴

Literary scholars have rightly approached some printed familial letters relating to her time in Antwerp, reproduced by her first biographer but not extant, with healthy suspicion.⁶⁵ However, it appears that scholars must also not categorize intelligence reports, documents of which the manuscripts are still extant, as purely factual either. Rather than being straightforward communications of ‘truth’, spy reports draw upon common textual strategies and letter-writing conventions to maintain a healthy patron-client relationship (in which the spymaster is the patron; the spy the client), in an arena dripping with mistrust.⁶⁶ Germaine Greer used a manuscript metaphor to describe Behn, comparing her to ‘a palimpsest; she has scratched herself out’.⁶⁷ Behn had an excellent hand and sound literary judgement, and she inscribed a new, second narrative on the page when the first plot faltered.⁶⁸ When Scott’s letters and cooperation, on which her livelihood were dependent, came to a halt, she pretended that she continued to receive both, as it appears she did not need him at all: his name and masculine persona alone were enough to authorize intelligence she could gather from other sources. Like her employers in England, we have bought into the romantic notion that she was a spy, never having stopped to consider that the soon-to-be playwright and novelist might simply have been feeding her eager reader fictional intelligence, albeit fiction derived from factual sources. Having practised her hand at epistolary fiction during her spying mission, Behn later perfected her craft: her Love Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister, originally three separate volumes (1684; 1685; 1687), was the first epistolary novel in English. Like her literary works, both intelligence and intelligencer were perhaps simple confections, sweetening Behn’s reputation with cold, hard cash.

1      W. J. Cameron (ed.), New Light on Aphra Behn (Auckland: Wakefield Press, 1961). Hereafter NL.

2           

The Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts (CELM), the online adaptation and extension of Peter Beal,s Index of English Literary Manuscripts, 2 vols (London: Mansell, 1987; for Behn, see i. 1-6), lists additional sources to the ones edited by Cameron, mostly petitions post-dating the mission but relating to it: CELM’s entries BeA48, BeA49; BeA50, and BeA51. Janet Todd, The Secret Life of Aphra Behn (rev. edn, London: Pandora, 2000) gives the fullest account, and acknowledges her debts to Maureen Duffy, The Passionate Shepherdess (London: Jonathan Cape, 1977). Todd deserves credit for adding new documentation to a familiar narrative, namely Thomas Corney’s letters that describe Behn’s activities in Antwerp in colourful detail; see also the announcement of the discovery of Corney’s letters, Janet Todd and Francis McKee, ‘The “Shee Spy” ’, Times Literary Supplement no. 4719 (10 Sept. 1993): 4-5.

3      C. H. Firth, reviser Sean Kelsey, ‘Scott, Thomas’, ODNB.

4       ‘Scott, William’, in Joseph Foster (ed.), Alumni Oxonienses […]1500-1714 (Oxford: Parker, 1891).

5       ‘Petition of Joanna Scott to the Protector’, 20 Jan. 1656/7, TNA, SP 18/153, fo. 80. See also Duffy, The Passionate Shepherdess, 65-6.

6        Monck to Thurloe, 10 Nov. 1657, Dalkeith, TSP, vi. 605, urging that Scott’s lodgings be searched for incriminating letters.

7       ‘Petition of Joanna Scott to the Protector’, 20 Jan. 1656/7, TNA, SP 18/153, fo. 80.

8       ‘Day’s Proceedings’, 4 Aug. 1657, TNA, SP 25/78, p. 48.

9           

To disentangle truth from literary falsification see Katharine M. Rogers, ‘Fact and Fiction in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko’, Studies in the Novel 20 (1988): 1-15.

10        

[Thomas Scott], ‘Thomas Scot’s Account of his Actions as Intelligencer during the Commonwealth’, C. H. Firth (ed.), English Historical Review 12, no. 45 (1897): 116-26.

11        

Daniel Fannius’s and Henry Thibault’s Dutch letter of recommendation of Bampfield to Johan de Witt, 5 Feb. 1665, recatalogued in 2018 as Nationaal Archief, The Hague, de Witt papers, 3.01.17 / H., as translated to English in John Loftis, Bampfield’s Later Career (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1993), 192.

12     NL, 34-5, no. 1, TNA, SP 29/172, fo. 149; see Alan Marshall, ‘ “Memorialls for Mrs Affora” ’, Women’s Writing 22, no. 1 (2015): 13-33; Marshall’s endnote 6 identifies the hand.

13      Behn to Thomas Killigrew, 31 Aug. 1666, Antwerp, NL, no. 6.

14      See M. A. O’Donnell, ‘A Verse Miscellany of Aphra Behn’, English Manuscript Studies, 1100­1700, 2 (1990): 189-227. O’Donnell tentatively attributes the miscellany that can be dated between 1685 and 1689 and is entitled ‘Astrea’s Booke for Songs & Satyr’s’ to Behn, and opens up the possibility that Behn was part of a professional scriptorium.

15     Marshall, ‘ “Memorialls for Mrs Affora” ’, 23. NL, 23 n. 12, refers to CSPD Charles II, 1665-1666, Mary Anne Everett Green (ed.) (London: HMSO, 1864), clii. 318 (26 Mar. 1666; no. 24), cliii. 342 (9 Apr. 1666; nos. 57-9), and cliv. 358 (21 Apr. 1666; no. 22).

16      Harrison Gray Platt, Jr., ‘Astrea and Celadon’, PMLA 49, no. 2 (1934): 544-59 at 555 quotes the letter from Hakluyt Society Publications Series II, lvi. 191.

17       

See Chapter 5, n. 24, in this volume.

18      Todd, The Secret Life, 87.

19     An account of Corney’s arrest, Col. Dan. O’Brien to Williamson, 3 Aug. 1665, TNA, SP 29/128, no. 15.

20       An account of Corney’s arrest, TNA, SP 29/128, no. 15.

21      An account of Corney’s arrest, TNA, SP 29/128, no. 15.

22       An account of Corney’s arrest, TNA, SP 29/128, no. 15.

23       Marshall, ‘ “Memorialls for Mrs Affora” ’, 23.

24       An account of Corney’s arrest, TNA, SP 29/128, no. 15.

25       W. W. Wroth, reviser S. A. Baron, ‘Oudart, Nicholas’, ODNB.

26      Corney’s to Oudart, 31 Aug. 1666, TNA, SP 77/35, fo. 77B; and Corney’s petition, undated 1667, TNA, SP 29/229, fo. 164. See the pamphlet, A True and perfect narrative of the great and signal success of a part of His Majesties fleet under his Highness Prince Rupert, and His Grace the Duke of Albemarle (London: Printed by Tho. Newcomb […], 1666), 5, Wing no. T2532. See also Duffy, The Passionate Shepherdess, 75; NL, 20.

27       Corney’s letter to Oudart, 31 Aug. 1666, Antwerp, TNA, SP 77/35, fo. 77Br.

28      Corney to an unnamed recipient, presumably Oudart, 16 Oct. 1666, Brussels, TNA, SP 77/35, fo. 185v (also quoted in Todd, The Secret Life, 106).

29       Corney to Oudart, 31 Aug. 1666, TNA, SP 77/35, fo. 77Bv.

30       Corney to Oudart, 4 Sept. 1666, Antwerp, TNA, SP 77/35, fo. 91r.

31      Corney to Oudart, 31 Aug. 1666, TNA, SP 77/35, fo. 77Br.

32       Behn to James Halsall, 21 Sept. 1666, Antwerp, NL, 70, no. 12.

33       ‘Memorialls for M^rs Affora’, 27 July 1666, NL, 35, no. 1 (point no. 13).

34       Behn to Halsall, 21 Sept. 1666, Antwerp, NL, 71, no. 12.

35        

For Demarces intercepting letters for Nicholas and Hyde see Chapter 4.2, this volume. For Mrs Demarces see Doreen Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot (Kineton: Roundwood Press, 1975), 55.

36       Behn to Halsall, 21 Sept. 1666, Antwerp, NL, 71, no. 12. See also Behn to Halsall, 16 Aug. 1666, Antwerp, NL, 38, no. 2: ‘S^r Anthony has giuen me a derection w^ch you will find on all y^r letters for y^e ch

ffuter & by w^c he asurs me they will com more saffe then by any other way.’

37       Behn to Halsall, 21 Sept. 1666, Antwerp, NL, 70, no. 12.

38       Behn to Killigrew, 31 Aug. 1666, Antwerp, NL, 53-4, no. 6.

39       Corney to Oudart, 4 Sept. 1666, TNA, SP 77/35, fos. 91v-92r.

40       Behn to Killigrew, 17 Sept. 1666, Antwerp, NL, 64, no. 10.

41       Behn to Halsall, 21 Sept. 1666, Antwerp, NL, 70-1, no. 12.

42       Corney’s letter to Oudart, 31 Aug. 1666, TNA, SP 77/35, fo. 77Br-v.

43      Before Corney’s letters came to light, Platt had already suspected that Behn and Scott collaborated: ‘Mrs. Behn was not so much an agent of the English government as she was an agent of William Scot[t] in his bargain for a pardon’ (Platt, ‘Astrea and Celadon’, 557).

44       Platt, ‘Astrea and Celadon’, 557.

45       Todd, The Secret Life, 84.

46       Behn to Halsall, 16 Aug. 1666, Antwerp, NL, 37, no. 2.

47       Corney to Oudart, 31 Aug. 1666, TNA, SP 77/35, fo. 77Br.

48       Behn to Halsall, 27 Aug. 1666, Antwerp, NL, 41, no. 3.

49       Behn to Killigrew, 31 Aug. 1666, Antwerp, NL, 52, no. 6.

50      Behn to Killigrew, 31 Aug. 1666, Antwerp, NL, 53, no. 6.

51      Behn to Killigrew, 31 Aug. 1666, Antwerp, NL, 53, no. 6.

52      Todd, The Secret Life, 84 endnote 8.

53      Scott to Behn, 18 Sept. 1666, NL, 68, no. 11.

54       Todd, The Secret Life, 97.

55      NL, 68, 82.

56       Marshall, ‘ “Memorialls for Mrs Affora” ’, 22.

57      J. P. Vander Motten and René Vermeir, ‘ “Reality, and Matter of Fact” ’, Review of English Studies 66, no. 274 (2015): 280-99.

58      Corney to Oudart, 4 Sept. 1666, TNA, SP 77/35, fo. 91v.

59      Scott to Behn, 30 Sept. 1666, NL, 77-8, no. 15.

60       Corney to Oudart, 16 Oct. 1666, Brussels, TNA, SP 77/35, fo. 185v.

61        

62      The term is first attested in the nineteenth century.

63       Todd, The Secret Life, 115.

64       Ben Jonson, Epigrams (1616), no. 59, Colin Burrow (ed.), v. 141.

65       Duffy, The Passionate Shepherdess, 84.

66        

65      For the work of Behn’s first biographer, who only revealed herself as ‘One of the Fair Sex’, published in London in 1698 for Samuel Briscoe see ‘The History of the Life and Memoirs of Mrs. Behn’, in All the Histories and Novels written by the Late Ingenious Mrs Behn, Entire in One Volume, the third edition of Behn’s prose works. For a discussion that the documents this biographer gives in full should be treated with caution see Claudine van Hensbergen, ‘ “Why I Write Them, I Can Give No Account”: Aphra Behn and “Love-Letters to a Gentleman” (1696)’, Eighteenth-Century Life 35, no. 1 (2011): 65-82.

66              Marshall, ‘ “Memorialls for Mrs Affora” ’, throughout.

67        

67      Bernard Dhuiq, Maureen Duffy, Germaine Greer et al., ‘The Roundtable Discussion’, in Mary Ann O'Donnell, Bernard Dhuiq, and Guyonne Leduc (eds), Aphra Behn (1640-1689) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000), 277-93 at 282.

68        

Peter Beal’s Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology: 1450-2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008; paperback 2009), 279, defines ‘palimpsest’ as ‘a writing surface, usually parchment or vellum, that has been used more than once, the earlier writing having been erased or scraped away to allow the surface to be used for a fresh, second or even third, layer of writing’.

Epilogue

Invisibility and Blanck Marshall, the Nameless and

Genderless Agent— Spies are Best Disguised as

Women

Mere months before the Restoration, John Mordaunt commented, possibly to Sir Edward Hyde, on Lady Carlisle’s untrustworthiness:

Here are so many lyes every day made of me by the Lady Carlisle, & her friends, that it amazes me, but none but those that know me not beleeue any thing of them: ‘tis now very hot they haue taken my letters & decyphered them, but the letters were sent by an expresse & are safe, and all I send go the same way, though it be chargeable and ‘tis said ^Athat on^A Friday last they tooke all the lettres ^Athat^A were sent to the Post house, & aboue 40 in cypher Abut none of myne for I sent an expresse the same dayA. Whatever my Lady Carlisle heares she immediately tells her Nephews Lisle & Algernon, and is still Sempronia.—All her 1

intelligence comes from France.

Mordaunt’s letter shows how the Royalists splintered into different factions: here the Presbyterians (‘Lady Carlisle, & her friends’) are obstructing the workings of Mordaunt, the leader of the Great Trust, by intercepting and deciphering his letters, just as Hyde spied on the Countess of Dysart and her circle. It also shows that Mordaunt saw Lady Carlisle not as an intelligencer, his equal, but as a busybody, even though his own wife also acted the she-intelligencer. Mordaunt likens Lady Carlisle to Sempronia, who Sallust, in the Conspiracy of Catiline, described as a woman who acted like a man. Being a woman, however, she was seen, even by her fellow plotters, as a gossip who provided dubious information.

With the change from Interregnum to Restoration, something remarkable happened. During previous changes in regime, lessons were often forgotten, but not this time, because John Thurloe’s best men, such as cryptanalyst John Wallis, followed Black Chamber expert Samuel Morland in switching their loyalty to Charles II. Thurloe’s secret service had seen that one way to deflect suspicion was by the use of women. Charles II’s secret service followed suit in officially hiring Aphra Behn, though, of course, it was the king’s father who had first fully put his trust in a whole network of she-intelligencers. It is quite telling, however, that the most elaborate instructions for a spy in the period are those meant for Behn. Apparently, a woman was not to be trusted to act on her own, but needed to be told in detail how to act. Once back in power, even the Royalist party did not put their full trust in a woman.

It seems contemporaries were never fully at ease with she-intelligencers, and smoothed over their ragged narratives with more socially acceptable tales. In the British Library, there is a song set to music catalogued as ‘Cypher message in the form of a song, allegedly by Jane Lane […] to Charles II at Boscobel’; according to the catalogue, it is not in Jane Lane’s hand, but a nineteenth-century copy by one Ellen Lane, most likely a descendant, and as the catalogue explains when the music sheet is folded ‘longitudinally, the stems and fails of the notes form the words: “Conceal yourself your foes look for you” ’ (see Figures E.1a and E.1b). Though the enigma excites and endears mainly because of its alleged association with the famous, successful heroine Jane Lane, it is most likely a hoax. A woman who never signed but only sealed her letters with the imprint of a woman’s face to conceal her identity, as her surviving epistles to the Queen of Bohemia reveal,² would surely never have taken such an unnecessary risk to deliver the king a message with such utterly purposeless content: it is not as if Charles Stuart did not know his enemies were searching for him. The message would defeat its purpose: by having it delivered, the king’s whereabouts could have become known. Yet a part of us likes to imagine that it may have been upon receipt and deciphering of this very message that Charles hid himself in an oak tree, later to become known as the Royal Oak, in Boscobel Wood. We are apparently just as keen to regurgitate myths,³ and as reluctant to undermine them, as our predecessors. This book has reassessed the roles of some of the well-known female ‘figureheads’ of seventeenth-century espionage, as well as introducing many new female players. It appears that it is easier and more comfortable to sustain the myths that predominated in the seventeenth century than to process more complex and uglier realities.

 

Figures E.1a and E.1b. Musical cipher key allegedly shared between Jane Lane and Charles II (unfolded and folded). Hand: Ellen Lane. BL, Add. MS 45850, fo. 68. ^© The British Library Board

 

According to Susan Wiseman, ‘contemporary male writers tended to marginalize women’s participation’ in the world of conspiracies and plots.⁴ As Claire Walker also points out:

The various royalist conspiracies and risings were male groupings and actions. Thus the intrusion of women into these affairs was treated [by contemporaries] either as part of the great royalist mythology—for example, Jane Lane’s part in Charles’s escape after Worcester—or with dismissive derision—exemplified by criticism of Henrietta Maria’s efforts to assist her son in the early 1650s.⁵

While many women were involved in Charles’s escape, contemporaries glorified one, Jane Lane, and in doing so obliterated the involvement of the others. Royalists were not a unified party, and those criticizing Queen Henrietta Maria were not only criticizing her, and perhaps unjustifiably so, but the Louvre faction in general. Jane Lane’s female fellow plotters are still relatively anonymous and Charles’s queen still awaits further rehabilitation, because, and this is the second reason Wiseman identifies for the oversight of she-intelligencers, ‘as a field, Restoration history has accepted that the men-only terms in which contemporaries construed their political world correlated with “reality” ’.⁶

One of the myths that contemporaries were reluctant to compromise was from the same stable that rendered women free from suspicion; belief in their fundamental moral probity. While happily employing she-intelligencers such as Elizabeth Alkin and Susan Bowen, Thurloe still felt the need to protect both his and their reputation: he put them down in the records as nurses. Hyde concealed the death of his own sister Susan, who had lost her life in facilitating his communication with the Sealed Knot, quite possibly because he wanted to cover up that his own flesh and blood had mingled in a world of thugs. Unlike perfidious male spies, women spies were ladies. Marcus Nevitt sums up the challenge historians need to face: ‘Whilst it is gradually becoming evident that women were involved in the intelligence trade, the secretive nature of the work, and a hypocritical patriarchal attitude to female involvement in the public sphere has generally obscured or destroyed the records’.⁷ This is not a patriarchal conspiracy, however. Women, too, struggled with their own spying activities, as the life-writing texts of Lady Mordaunt and Anne, Lady Halkett, testify. The latter even tried to shift the accountability for her sinful behaviour onto her male lover, Colonel Joseph Bampfield.

While women’s records are simply less likely to survive than those of men, because they were deemed less valuable at the time,⁸ archives still overflow with women’s letters. Nevertheless, following a woman’s trail is likely to prove more challenging than a man’s, simply because she may well appear in the records under several different names and titles. Elizabeth Murray, for instance, was first Mistress Murray, after her first marriage became Lady Tollemache, as heiress to her father’s title she was suo jure Countess of Dysart, and then, after her second marriage, Duchess of Lauderdale. A man might also change his name, as did Elizabeth’s father William Murray on becoming the Earl of Dysart, for example, but women were far more likely to. Of course, if they adopted a spy name, they might disappear altogether from the records. If she signed with a mark, as Elizabeth Alkin did, databases or other catalogue systems will not find her. And if women are slippery creatures in the archives,⁹ then women spies are doubly so. After all, the successful spy is the one who leaves no trace: ‘spies and conspirators (at least in part) court invisibility’.¹⁰ It is for this reason that she- intelligencers are so difficult to pin down, and their records tend not to be the sort to be stumbled upon: they must be actively sought. The spymasters of the day operated much like the modern historian, and just as women spies operated successfully because they were not automatically under suspicion, their invisibility then accentuates their invisibility now: letters that were not considered suspicious then were not archived because they were not intercepted.¹¹

Blanck Marshall

The history of Royalist espionage is one of failure in the face of parliamentarian counter-espionage, with imploding plots and unsuccessful risings, while the Restoration was accomplished by Monck and his army with the spies mere onlookers, so it might not seem important to record it.¹² A spy’s success, however, was less dependent on their gathering secret information than with what his or indeed her master did with that information. In this respect, Jane Whorwood, in the guise of ‘Agent 409’, wrote a telling letter to William, Earl of Lanark. As summarized in the words of the cataloguer who assumed Jane / ‘409’ to be male: ‘That he has Lanerick’s letters to the King and will answer shortly. He doubts not, if his designs fail not, the King will make his escape and join his friends. The writer has ordered the business so well, none but the King himself can hinder it’.¹³ Some Royalists, not least the king, betrayed their own cause. Lady Dysart’s efforts, for instance, and those of her sisters, were betrayed by Hyde’s distrust. He believed her to be a double agent, just as Nicholas believed of Lady Carlisle. The Royalists’ paranoia did more damage to their efforts than the Council of State’s or Thurloe’s counter-espionage could ever accomplish. Were a woman caught in the act, as were Lady d’Aubigny and Lady Carlisle, they were mostly treated leniently, especially those who laid claim to being ladies. They might be sent to prison while their male co-conspirators would lose their heads, and they would invariably be released. The overall impression that women were not punished as brutally as the men may not accord entirely with reality, however. The pamphlets reveal a desire to make women spies invisible again once they had revealed themselves by submerging them under water. Apart from the sexual stigma concomitant with being unmasked as a she- intelligencer, that Apolin Hunt might have invented or emphasized her pregnancy indicates a very real fear of torture: Lady Carlisle was shown the rack and Susan Hyde might have been frightened to death. Jane Whorwood’s experience of incarceration when her abusive husband refused to pay for her necessities in goal, such as a bed and food, is nowhere reported.

Despite the dangers also involved for women, both sides of the conflict believed them to be invisible. One of Thurloe’s most active spies, who provided intelligence from Bruges concerning the state of Royalist troops and of a shipyard where vessels were being built to restore the monarchy, employed several aliases, and exploited the invisibility of women: palaeographical analysis of the hands used by John Williams, Jo Warde, Jo Harrison, and Margaret Smith suggest that they are one and the same individual. That Thurloe endorsed letters bearing these names with the words ‘Blanck Marshall’ is not merely the spymaster’s identification of an agent on his payroll, but his reference to that person by yet another protective code name: blank as in empty, marshal as in agent—the nameless agent.¹⁴

Eva Scott’s somewhat romantically themed study, The Travels of the King (1907), notes that Blanck Marshall was Michael Deane.¹⁵ Palaeographical analysis (assuming the hand was not forged) suggests that this is unlikely.¹⁶ The archivist or catalogue of the British Library, referring to a cipher key and a letter in the Thurloe papers, identifies Blanck Marshall as Captain Malcolm Smith.¹⁷ Palaeographical analysis, once again, suggests Smith is not a viable candidate.¹⁸ The printed Thurloe papers introduces another female name into the mix by indexing a letter of Margaret Smith as ‘Smith, Elizabeth, spy on the king’, but that might simply have been an indexer’s error rather than a methodical identification.¹⁹ Janet Todd, biographer of playwright and spy Aphra Behn, notices the male pseudonyms among the female ones but suggests that we should not rule out Margaret Smith as the espionage agent’s actual name.²⁰ The jury is still out.

If an actual woman, Blanck Marshall could possibly be Margaret Smith, who first married Thomas Carey, groom of Charles I’s Bedchamber, and second, in the late 1640s, Sir Edward Herbert, Lord Keeper of Charles Stuart’s Seal. Sir Edward was abandoned in exile when Charles relocated to Germany, forced to resign from office in 1654 because of friction over his objections to Hyde’s support of the Sealed Knot. In great poverty, he died a painful death from gangrene in December 1657.²¹ Margaret, his wife, later widow, might have felt enough pecuniary necessity coupled with resentment to spy on the Royalist party in 1657/8, the years in which Blanck Marshall corresponded with Thurloe. The hand on the petition certainly resembles Marshall’s, so unless it is her secretary’s, she is a prime candidate.²² But Margaret Smith was mother to Lady Mordaunt, which perhaps explains Thomas Burton’s assertion that one ‘cannot imagine the malice (in so high a degree) of the Lady Herbert against the good King. It is so great that it makes her unnatural’:²³ unnatural because she worked against her own daughter?’. In 1662, the Crown assigned her £500 per annum, a pension of her first husband, under her maiden name, showing she was still known as Margaret Smith.²⁴ Fate will have it that Van Dyck painted her in similar pose to Lady Carlisle; by accepting Margaret Smith’s invitation and tracing her steps, we again end up behind a curtain in darkness.

Blanck Marshall, it appears, used the name Margaret Smith as frequently as the male names. Why was this? It seems as if s/he at times preferred the female name because women were, in general, invisible. They were generally held to be incapable of rational thought, so their letters were less likely to be intercepted or opened: it was assumed their missives would be domestic, gossipy, vacant of political content, let alone treason. A woman was not taken too seriously, contemporaries possibly reasoning like Sir Lewis Dyve that ‘a woman has no stomach for such strong liquor’, that is, either a woman cannot keep a single secret, and would therefore not be a successful intelligencer, or is too fragile for such dangerous undertakings. It is no wonder Blanck Marshall signed himself/herself as a woman if it would give his/her letters a good chance of simply being ignored. Blanck Marshall assumed or manipulated the invisibility of a woman, a creature apparently unsuited to deception, politics, and plotting. It is these biased assumptions, as we have seen, that the she-intelligencers exploited as they went about their business.

If a woman, Blanck Marshall might have adopted the gender neutral code name and the male aliases because she worked for Thurloe, who was after all a man who hid the Council of State’s employment of she-intelligencers in the records by terming them nurses. It would be not surprising therefore that among Cromwell’s list of spies Blanck Marshall, if a woman, would not be mentioned under her own name. (Incidentally, the same list gives both the names of Blanck Marshall as well as Michael Deane, indicating that these were in all likelihood two separate individuals.)²⁵ In one instance, Blanck Marshall signs as ‘Mar. S.’ , the initials of Margaret Smith. By not writing out the female name in full, the benefit of female invisibility disappears of course. In that instance, the need for male credibility might have been more pressing than inconspicuousness. In other words, by using the code name Blanck Marshall, initials or abbreviations, gender was neutralized, and the intelligence gained the credibility of a male voice. By using a male alias, such as John Williams, a female spy assumed the benefit of male trustworthiness. In this instance, the case of Aphra Behn is comparable. Behn identified what it was that authenticated information and turned these features into tropes. Her intelligence letters were most likely her first works of fiction (later she also wrote plays for that exact same reason, pecuniary reward), and she did so as a woman mimicking the authority that only the voice of a man held. She appears to have created a fictionalized version of a real man to allow her to sell her information. Women spies were first employed in significant numbers by the Royalists when their male agents were either imprisoned or in exile, while women were both more mobile and less likely to arouse suspicion than their male colleagues. The parliamentarians were more wary of employing women, but the fact that one of Thurloe’s spies—Blanck Marshall—used, if a man, the guise of a woman, or if a woman, highlighted that persona, shows unmistakably that they, too, saw women’s full potential.

The women in the spying business were as different as they were numerous, but they have one thing in common: when they operated, they did so as de facto single women. Jane Whorwood became active when her husband left her; Lady d’Aubigny, Lady Carlisle, and Elizabeth Alkin operated primarily as widows; Susan Hyde appears to have been unmarried; Lady Dysart, assumed by historiography to be a true spy, was married but found herself on the periphery of a spy ring led by a recently remarried widow; Lady Mordaunt submerged herself in the intelligencing business with her husband on the move, when she was stranded at Calais alone; Anne Murray believed herself married to Bampfield but was not. As soon as any of them attached themselves to a man, they stopped intelligencing—women were only successful spies if independent.

Independent, invisible, apparently impossible to punish, it seems obvious with hindsight that women should make excellent spies: the only question that remains is why there were not more of them. The answer, of course, is surely that there were, we simply have not caught them yet. We probably never shall.

1

Copy of an unsigned letter found among Hartgill Baron’s papers, 7 Feb. 1659/60, Bod., Clarendon MS 69, fos. 191v-192r. Lita-Rose Betcherman attributes it to Mordaunt, but its lack of address makes its recipient less obvious (Betcherman, Court Lady and Country Wife (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 333- 4).

2     See for instance [Jane Lane]’s letters to the Queen of Bohemia of 3 Oct.[1660] and 11 Jan.[1661], BL, Add. MS 63744, fos. 6-7 and 34-5 respectively. They are to be published in Nadine Akkerman (ed.), The Correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming), iii.

3         

See also Alan Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage in the Reign of Charles II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; paperback edn 2002), 2.

4     Susan Wiseman, ‘ “The most considerable of my troubles” ’, in Jo Wallwork and Paul Salzman (eds), Women Writing 1550-1750 (Bundoora, Australia: Meridian, 2001), 25-45 at 27.

5    Claire Walker, ‘Prayer, Patronage, and Political Conspiracy’, The Historical Journal 43, no. 1 (2000): 1-23 at 2.

6                Wiseman, ‘ “The most considerable of my troubles” ’, 27.

7         

Marcus Nevitt, ‘Women in the Business of Revolutionary News: Elizabeth Alkin, “Parliament Joan,”