Elizabeth I’s secret service

TODAY Britain’s intelligence services can draw upon anything from video surveillance and wire taps to satellites and drones. But it was very different in the 16th century. In those days candle flames were used to detect communications written in invisible ink made from milk or lemon juice and codebreakers laboured over ciphers.

The fascinating story of how the Tudor court established one of the world’s first secret service in order to protect Queen Elizabeth I from assassination, terror and treason for more than 40 years is told in a BBC documentary series that starts on Monday.

It was a period when the country was divided along religious lines, a tension that could easily have descended into a civil war. There were plots aplenty and the threats did not just come from internal sources but from malcontents abroad too.

The father and son team of William and Robert Cecil and later the ruthless Sir Francis Walsingham – also known as Elizabeth’s spymaster – were the men entrusted with the job of protecting Queen and country. The methods used – intercepting correspondence, deciphering codes, planting agents in the enemy camp and “entrapment” plots – are techniques that have been deployed by counterespionage agencies the world over ever since.

At the time Elizabeth acceded to the throne in 1558, following the death of her half-sister Mary, her kingdom was in an extremely restless mood. Mary had restored Roman Catholicism to the country but her rule was marked by persecution of Protestants.

William Cecil (later Lord Burghley), who was to act as the queen’s loyal adviser for the next four decades, and his son Robert gathered intelligence on those who were thought to pose a threat to the realm.

A new crisis emerged 10 years into Elizabeth’s reign when Mary, Queen of Scots, viewed by many Catholics as the legitimate monarch, crossed the border into England having been forced to abdicate in Scotland. William Cecil, who already had many other commitments, realised he would not have the time to give intelligence work its due and asked Sir Francis Walsingham to oversee Elizabeth’s embryonic secret service.

DESCRIBED by biographer Robert Hutchinson as “one of the great unknown heroes of English history”, Walsingham embraced his new role with great enthusiasm. A Puritan he had witnessed the Catholic’s St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of Protestants in France in 1552 and believed that similar events would take place in England were the Queen to be deposed.

For Walsingham the end justified the means – and the use of torture tool the rack to extract information from prisoners was routine while anyone found guilty of treason would be executed.

Walsingham presided over a secret service operation that was the forerunner of today’s MI5. “At his peak his espionage network is said to have numbered 53 spies and 18 agents in foreign writes Hutchinson.

Walsingham’s network of agents reached as far east as Turkey and as far south as North Africa. At home he employed a team of technical experts to help him snare his prey. Men such as the brilliant code breaker Thomas Phelippes and the nimble-fingered Arthur Gregory who could open letters and reseal them without any trace.

Walsingham’s workload increased after the Pope declared Elizabeth a heretic in 1570, a move that greatly increased the chances of her being assassinated.

To keep him aware of foreign plots he relied on his agents embedded in the enemy camp. One such spy was Charles Sledd, employed as a servant at the English College in Rome. “He provided many physical descriptions of those courts,” SPY GAMES: Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I. Inset above, Sir Francis Walsingham. Right, the Queen with Sir Francis pictured in 1586 priests and Jesuits who had secretly departed for England to facilitate their arrest,” says Hutchinson.

On the home front Walsingham set up a spy school to provide training for recruits – who like today – mainly came from Oxford and Cambridge.

In 1569 he foiled a northern rebellion led by Catholics with the aim of deposing Elizabeth and replacing her with Mary. Two years later there was another plot, this time to assassinate Elizabeth, planned by an international banker called Roberto Ridolfi.

Ridolfi believed that foreign intervention was needed and the plan involved an invasion from The Netherlands. But Walsingham’s men knew exactly what was going on and explorer John Hawkins pretended to be part of the conspiracy and sent back details of their plans. Ridolfi’s messenger was arrested at Dover and revealed everything under torture.

In 1573 the so-called Throckmorton plot was thwarted following information received by Henry Fagot, an agent of Walsingham’s inside the French embassy.

Over time Elizabeth’s spymaster became convinced that the intrigue would only end with Mary’s execution, a measure that his mistress opposed. So the wily Walsingham set out to trap Mary.

It took him many years but in the end he got what he wanted. In 1586 he discovered that Mary, then imprisoned in Staffordshire’s Chartley Castle, was corresponding with a group of Catholics headed by Anthony Babington. Walsingham knew Mary was wary of the means she used to communicate so he employed a Catholic deacon called Gilbert Gifford to act as a double agent.

AFTER gaining entry to the castle and winning Mary’s confidence Gifford persuaded a brewer who supplied the castle to help him send Mary’s encrypted letters to her supporters in the outside world. They would be concealed in the watertight casing inside the stoppers of empty beer barrels. Mary fell for the scheme and so Walsingham was able to read all her letters, which were in decipherable code.

What he needed most of all though was her to give consent to a Babington plot to kill Elizabeth. When she did just that Walsingham, having read the letter, then used the forgery skills of Thomas Phelippes to add a postscript asking for the names of the other plotters.

Babbington supplied them and the men were arrested. At last Walsingham had his smoking gun and Mary was arrested and put on trial for treason. She had, in the words of historian David Starkey, “signed her own death warrant”.

In court Mary was scathing about the methods used by Sir Francis to entrap her. “Spies are men of doubtful credit,” she said, “who make a show of one thing and speak another.”

She was in no doubt who had engineered her downfall, crying out: “All of this is the work of Monsieur de Walsingham for my destruction.” The ruthless Sir Francis had achieved his goal and on February 8 1587 Mary was executed. But the threat to the Crown did not end with her death.

Through his agent Antony Standen, who had made friends with the Tuscan ambassador to Madrid, Walsingham learnt about plans for a Spanish invasion. He immediately ordered the strengthening of England’s coastal defences and supported Sir Francis Drake’s raid on Cadiz. The Armada did set sail in 1588 but was defeated thanks in no small part to Walsingham’s efforts.

He died two years later but by then his work was done. His methods may have been controversial but thanks to Britain’s first spymaster, Elizabeth I avoided assassination, dying peacefully in 1603 at the age of 69 having spent 44 years on the throne.

The first episode of Elizabeth I’s Secret Agents is on BBC Two at 9pm on Monday.