In 1598, while translating the Italian words for ‘spy’ (spia) and ‘spying’ (spirare) for his English dictionary, John Florio defined the words in relation to specific actions: ‘to espy, to peer, to pry, to watch or scout with diligence, to ask or enquire for’.[1] As the closely related word ‘intelligencer’ suggests, the ‘spy’ was involved in the business of collecting valuable ‘intelligence’ or information, or of carefully observing the activities of others.[2] Given the connection between ‘spy’ and espie, or to observe with the eyes, ‘spy’ was often associated with travellers or observers of foreign lands. In The preachers proclamacion discoursing the vanity of all earthly things (1591), Henry Smith compared the wise biblical king, Solomon, to a traveler or ‘a spie sent into a strange Country, as if he were now come home from his pilgrimage; they gather about him to enquire, what he hath heard, and seene abroad, & what he thinks of the world’.[3] A spy could be a traveller or a merchant, therefore, as well as one who occupied a more official state position such as a diplomat, whose mobility and access to spheres of power made him a valued source of information. The ‘spy’ as observer is well illustrated by later English pamphlets and periodicals such as The London Spy (1698 – 1700).
In legal terms the spy was either someone who operated either to the benefit or detriment of the country. Those who worked on behalf of the state were often sanctioned to do so, employed either as professionals, volunteers or under duress to obtain information concerning the state’s enemies.[4] Those subjects who did so against the state were considered traitors. The Treason Act of 1351 stipulated that any individual who ‘be adherent to the King’s Enemies in his Realm, giving to them Aid and Comfort in the Realm, or elsewhere’ was to be considered a traitor and so should be punished as one.[5] This legal definition continued throughout the early modern period and those accused of spying for a foreign nation were considered to have committed treason and subsequently were traitors. During the interregnum civilian spies in Ireland were tried under martial law for treason in what were called High Courts of Justice.[6] Doing so allowed the government to seize all property of those convicted by the court.
In the Tudor era, the spy was primarily associated with individuals involved in secret activities related to political conspiracies and military operations. Thomas Styward, author of The pathwaie to martiall discipline (1582), recommended that ‘for the greater safety of the army’, a captain should send ‘faithfull spies, which shall discover the coast, and make true report of all they see, in such sort as he doth, which is sette in some promontorie, to watch and give warning, of whatsoever enemies hee shall see to appear by sea’.[7] While these functions seem to be describing the scout or watchman, Styward clearly associated spies with the clandestine activities of gathering sensitive, strategic information. He advocated as a ‘good policy to retain spies giving unto them great rewards that which by politique usage may be learned the state, the strength, the order, manners, & determination of the enemies: by which means with secret usage, thou maist many ways have due revenge’.[8] The ‘secret usage’ of spies was essential in enabling them, as Walter Haddon noted, to ‘smell out either of our courtly affairs, what the Prince doth, what her counsellors and courtiers do, what is done in the common weale’.[9]
The ability of spies to conceal their identity or intentions, and their functions as informers for different political agents or foreign powers, contributed to a widespread perception of spies as treacherous and morally corrupt. In 1583, Nicholas Berden, who presented himself as a ‘Spye’, found it necessary to explain that he had embraced an ‘odious though necessary’ profession motivated ‘nott for gayne, butt for the Saffetie of my Naty[ve] Countrie’.[10] Berden’s remark reveals a distinction between the patriotic individual who embraces espionage to protect his country, and the mercenary or professional spy who served different masters for his own benefit. The English Jesuit, Thomas Fitzherbert, accused of being involved in many secret Catholic conspiracies, condemned spies as ‘wicked instruments’ used by rulers ‘for the discovery of every man's intention, nourishing division amongst the greatest the counterpoise one with another’.[11] Referring to spies as ‘Macchiavels’ (sic), Fitzherbert saw such agents as destructive and untrustworthy, ‘never be so much bound’ to any one person but ‘cutting off by one means or other, al those whose power, courage, or wit, he may think dangerous to his state’.[12]
After the Reformation, many English authorities perceived Catholic recusants as potential spies at the service of foreign masters such as the pope or Philip II of Spain. The mounting tension between England and Spain that culminated in Philip II’s failed attempt to invade England with a fleet of 130 warships in 1588 generated a widespread suspicion of the allegiances and intentions of English Catholics. In 1583, William Cecil warned against recusants who contacted ‘disguized persons (called scholars or Priests)’ who followed the instructions ‘of the Capital enemie the Pope or his Legates, to be secret espialles & explorers in the Realme for the pope, to deliver by secret, Romish tokens…[and] poison the senses of the subjects, powring Into their hearts malicious and pestilent opinions against her Majesty’.[13] Wherever the ‘R[omish] religions is’, wrote the theologian Walter Travers, ‘every Priest is an intelligencer and a spy for the pope, who both by other means, & especially by their auricular confession come to understand the deepest secrets of every state’.[14] Fears of a second Spanish attempt to invade England in the aftermath of the Armada increased these suspicions. Flemish, Italian and Iberian subjects of the Spanish Habsburgs were often regarded by the English authorities as potential spies. On 24 September 1598, Thomas Middleton informed Robert Cecil of the presence of ‘three Spaniards here bound for Spain’ who included ‘a very parlous fellow, and was sent over from the Groyn of purpose, as may be feared, for a spy’.[15] The Elizabethan state generated its own spy network in response: Berden, mentioned above, was one of the many spies recruited by Elizabeth’s ‘spymaster’, Sir Francis Walsingham, to monitor the activities of English intelligence-gathers in contact with the Holy See and Catholic powers.
In the same way that Cecil and Travers feared the capacity of English Catholics to infiltrate Elizabethan society to work as spies, Catholic polities like Venice were aware that ‘the Queen of England, and the Princes of Germany had des Agens Secrets…and for these secret Employments Merchants have been thought to be the fittest Instruments, because under the cloak of Trading they may also hide Affairs of State’.[16] Such suspicions on both sides reveal a perception of spies as extremely mobile individuals who, thanks to their capacity to cross frontiers, could change their identities and act covertly. Those who were denounced or identified as spies often faced violent punishments. Richard Burligh and Thomas Wade were two English merchants who were accused by one John Brooke, who also travelled with them, of espionage after returning from the Netherlands in 1592. The two men were arrested and tortured. Burligh was executed, while Wade ‘was put in prison and died afterwards in the hospital’.[17] The fate of foreign spies often depended on their status and involvement in subversive activities. For example, Bernardino de Mendoza, Philip II’s ambassador to England between 1576 and 1584, was expelled from England after the discovery of activities of espionage following the Throckmorton plot.[18] Roderigo Lopez, the Portuguese physician of Elizabeth I, did not have the benefit of aristocratic status or diplomatic immunity. Accused of espionage and plotting against the queen, Lopez and his co-conspirators, Estevão da Gama Ferreira and Manuel Luís Tinoco, were tortured and executed in 1592.[19]
The religious uncertainties of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, and the rise of political discourse and rumour disseminated in popular print, contributed to a perception that the English public space was heavily surveilled by spies and intelligencers. In the playwright Francis Beaumont’s The Woman Hater (1607), Count Valore points out the ability of one of his spies to live ‘in Alehouses, and Taverns’ where he ‘perceives some worthy men in this land, with much labour & great expense, to have discovered things dangerously hanging over the State; hee thinks to discover as much out of the talk of drunkards in Taphouses: hee brings me informations, picked out of broken words, in men's common talk, which with his malicious misapplication, hee hopes will seeme dangerous, he doeth besides bring me the names of all the young Gentlemen in the Citie, that use Ordinaries, or Taverns’.[20] Valore’s description of the modus operandi of his spy also explores a perception that spies were a part of an underworld formed by those who frequented places like the chambers and shady back rooms of taverns and alehouses.[21] The traveller Fynes Moryson advised his readers to be aware of such places ‘since Thieves have their spies commonly in all Innes, to inquire after the condition of passengers’.[22] Throughout the seventeenth century, espionage was cynically portrayed as a role that could only be occupied by morally-dubious individuals who were ever ready to change sides or betray their masters.
Ambassadors were also associated with the moral corruption of espionage. States often presented their diplomats as honest spies, as foreign agents sent by a prince to facilitate communication and obtain relevant information about their host society. The host countries, however, often thought differently about the foreign visitors accessing the heart of the political realm. During negotiations for the Spanish Match, in which the Crown considered James’ son Charles as a potential suitor for the Spanish Infanta, the Puritan satirist Thomas Scot published an anonymous pamphlet that scathingly criticized the Spanish ambassador, Count Gondomar. Scot’s document pretended to be a secret report written by Gondomar himself, in which he enthusiastically described his spying activities: ‘I made that a cover for much intelligence, and a means to obtain whatsoever I desired, whilst the state of England longed after that marriage, hoping thereby, (though vainly) to settle peace, and fill the exchequer’.[23] As one witness testified in a report about a meeting between the Gunpowder Treason conspirators: ‘this Taylor said that all Princes Ambassadors were but Honorable Spies’, a statement that must have seemed an impossible juxtaposition in the wake of political intrigue and subversion. [24]
Women, too, were often associated both with espionage and the revelation of private information. On the one hand, books such as Joseph Swetnam’s The araignment of lewde, idle, forward, and unconstant women (1615) warned readers that women were unable to keep secrets: ‘if thou unfoldest any thing of secret to a woman, the more thou chargest her to keep it close, the more she will seem as it were to bee with child till she have revealed it amongst her gossips…for every woman hath one special gossip at the least, which she doth love & affect above all the rest, and unto her shee runneth with all the secrets she knoweth’.[25] Such misogynist words reflected a widespread perception that women were gossip-mongers and therefore ill-equipped to spy. On the other hand, that very perception may have allowed some women to move effectively within spaces barred to male intelligencers, obtaining confidential information that placed them within networks of state secrets and information-exchange.[26] In 1642, a parliamentarian pamphlet revealed the discovery of a conspiracy led by a female spy on the royalist payroll.[27] Her confession reveals how women could exploit prevalent views of women as chattering voices that delight in rumours, using that apparent inability to keep secrets to obtain and reveal confidential information. Indeed, after being captured, this alleged royalist spy confessed that her function was to ‘bring them news from his Excellencies Army what everyday she heard, which she had to them faithfully performed to the disadvantage of the Parliaments force, and that she had be often of late in the City of London to hear now and which way the People stood affected both to the King and Parliament’.[28] Certainly, on the other end of the spectrum from Swetnam’s denunciation, but equally misogynistic, were contemporary male views of women as seductive, manipulative and fond of rumours and ‘any thing secret,’ which made them easy targets for accusations of espionage and treason. In Ben Jonson’s Epicoene or the Silent Woman (performed 1609), Truewit tells Morose that Lady Haughty was able to teach ‘all the Misteries, of writing Letters, corrupting Servants, taming Spies’.[29]
Late twentieth-century scholarship related notions of gender, power, and the gaze and ‘espying,’ to acts of surveillance and control.[30] Scholars have cited Elizabeth’s ‘Rainbow Portrait’ (c. 1602), where the queen wears a dress covered in embroideries of eyes and ears, as exemplifying the watchful or politically-discerning eye of the late Elizabethan regime.[31] Although studies about the absolutist ideologies of late Tudor power have given way to assessments of the multifaceted forms of power at play in England, the presence of watchful eyes and ears in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature brought the ‘spy’ into the domestic realm of the household. In Ben Jonson’s The devil is an asse (first performed 1616), the foolish gentleman Fabian Fitzdottrel’s cloistered and heavily-monitored wife laments: ‘My husbands new groome, is a spie upon me, / I find already’.[32] The lively prologue of Aphra Behn’s The forc’d marriage (1671) sets the scene with women speaking back: they venture out ‘Not with design to Conquer, but to Scout… / The Poetess too, they say, has spyes abroad’.[33]
Throughout the English civil wars, spies were regarded both as strategically useful and morally destructive. Marchmond Nedham, who worked as a propagandist and spy for both royalists and parliamentarians, complained to Oliver Cromwell that ‘[i]f you set Spies upon the people, and deprive them of the liberty of hearing, speaking, easing and uttering their minds to each other, then they reckon they have lost all and so grow desperate’.[34] This capacity of spies, especially those embedded in a community, to circulate invisibly and sow dissent led Nedham to present spies as ‘pestiferous creatures’ and ‘mercenary varlets’ who ‘feed their Patrons with more frivolous matters and fopperies, than realities’.[35] George Monck, duke of Albemarle, shared Nedham’s negative views of spies. ‘Concerning Spies’, he wrote in Observations upon military & political affairs (1671), one should ‘be always suspicious of them; because as it is a dangerous task for him that undertaketh, so it is also for him that imployeth them… they should be examined severally, that by the agreement or disagreement of their advices, you may judge whether they be good’.[36] Due to the uncertain loyalty of spies, those who employed them should be ‘very liberal to them; for they are faithful to those who give them most’.[37] As Monck noted, the risks faced by spies and the value of the information they could obtain forced their masters to constantly negotiate or buy their loyalty to avoid the perils of losing access to relevant intelligence or being exposed.
Despite their involvement in espionage during the civil wars and the Restoration, Nedham and Monck’s comments shared a mistrust of spies that had deep roots in Elizabethan and Jacobean anxieties around the disturbing presence of Catholic spies and domestic agents. Through the tumults of war and dynastic upheaval, these anxieties and hatred of spies increased, especially during the brief and troubled reign of James II. The Catholic Stuart monarch relied on a vast spy network that forced his subjects to be ‘vigilant and careful’, for ‘Hell scarce has more Intelligence and Spies / Than this suspicious Court in every Corner’.[38] Spies were projected as both a cause and a consequence of the instability of early modern England in an age of religious and political turmoil. As forms of government changed or broke down, Protestant and Catholic monarchs took their thrones, and the rise of print and newspapers encouraged a wide network of intelligence-gathering, the ‘spy’ was a shadowy figure who navigated the in-between. ‘A Spy’, wrote Thomas Gipps in 1698, ‘when he is taken, [he] is always put to death, but an open Enemy is only made a Prisoner of War’.[39] Whether he or she acted for the perceived good of the realm, or their own private benefit, was difficult to verify or even always prise apart. By breaching their political or personal allegiances and disregarding moral norms of conduct, those who spied were consistently defined as a subversive presence that threatened order and flirted with treason.
