Gloriana: Elizabeth I and the Art of Queenship by Linda Collins & Siobhan Clarke

Author:Linda Collins & Siobhan Clarke [Collins, Linda & Clarke, Siobhan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Royalty, Art, History, Renaissance, Political Science, Propaganda, Europe, Great Britain, General
ISBN: 9781803990927
Google: BOVdEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2022-06-16T20:30:09+00:00

THE FIRST SECRET SERVICE

It is unsurprising that the Rainbow Portrait of Elizabeth I hangs at Hatfield House, the home of Robert Cecil. The mantle worn by the Queen represents a cloak of secrecy, whose eyes and ears protect her body and Protestant England. Father and son William and Robert Cecil used an intelligence network to hunt down Catholic threats and appointed Francis Walsingham to run the first state-backed secret service. Their ‘eyes and ears’ stretched inside the Catholic underground and all over Europe.

Walsingham was a Puritan with a deep loathing for Catholicism, Mary, Queen of Scots, and the agents of Philip of Spain. Elizabeth playfully called him her ‘Moor’, because of his black clothing, and his life’s work was to protect her and to destroy the Scottish queen. His agents were called ‘Watchers’ and were the forerunners of today’s MI5 (the domestic intelligence agency of the United Kingdom). The methods they used – intercepting correspondence, deciphering codes, double agents or ‘moles’ in the enemy camp and entrapment plots – are techniques that have continued to be deployed in the modern age.

Walsingham set up a kind of ‘spy school’ to provide training for recruits, such as academics who could decode messages. They usually arrived from Oxford or Cambridge, with an understanding of Latin, European languages and mathematics. Others were merchants, who were accustomed to travelling in Europe and could supply him with information from foreign countries. But Walsingham needed agents from all walks of life to infiltrate Catholic circles at home and abroad, in ports, market towns, suspect households and even prisons. The web of espionage included couriers, agent-handlers, seal-forgers, code-breakers, mathematicians, priest-hunters and interrogators. The end justified the means and the use of torture to extract information from prisoners was routine, while anyone found guilty of treason would be executed.

Information could be conveyed in invisible ink, such as the citric acid of lemon juice, which remains colourless until heated and then turns brown. A hidden message could appear on an otherwise innocent letter when the paper was warmed over a candle. Breaking codes was incredibly time-consuming work which involved looking at the frequency and sequence of letters. Sometimes letters were substituted with numbers, symbols or signs of the zodiac and only once the key was worked out could a message be understood. Cyphers were crucial during the 1586 Babington Plot, when Walsingham’s agents decrypted letters to and from Mary, Queen of Scots. It would be this evidence that would finally prove to Elizabeth that Mary was conspiring to bring about her death. Queen Elizabeth failed to fund the network sufficiently so Walsingham was forced to spend his own money and he died in debt, just three years after Mary’s execution. Elizabeth never properly rewarded him, yet he had done everything in his power to ensure her personal safety and to preserve his Protestant country.

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