Invisible Agents: Women and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century Britain

370 Pages·2018·4.44 MB·English

by  Nadine Akkerman

Invisible Agents
Invisible Agents
Women and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century Britain
Nadine Akkerman
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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 double-
checking 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
4.1. Elizabeth Murray, Loyal Subject, Lover, or Double Agent?
Rumour, Hearsay, and the Sins of the Father
4.2. 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