Licence to frill
Revealed, how the first 007 was a Tudor spy for Elizabeth I who used tennis to weed out Catholics
SErvIng for his Queen and country has always been important to James Bond.
And the original 007 may have been doing it quite literally – on the tennis court.
The first spy to use ‘007’ as a code was a Tudor man who pretended to be a tennis player so he could gather information for Elizabeth I, according to author Christian Howgill.
Mr Howgill told an audience at the Chalke valley History Festival, sponsored by the Daily Mail, that John Dee was a ‘special favourite’ of the queen. Intelligence services were important to her because she was a Protestant surrounded by Catholics, not just in her own country but all round Europe, and had a Catholic rival for the throne in Mary, Queen of Scots.
Mr Howgill said: ‘ Elizabeth I would send out spies masquerading as tennis players to secretly gather information for her. After games, tongues would get loose and they’d discover who was really Protestant and who was Catholic.’
Early forms of tennis were popular in that age and were often played for large wagers.
Mr Howgill, author of the book How Tennis Invented Everything, continued: ‘They thought they were playing for money but they were actually playing for their lives. There was one special favourite of hers, a man called John Dee.
‘Whenever he wrote to her he would use a secret code within his letters so she knew it was from him and not someone trying to feed her false information. The code was 007.
‘If he used the phrase 007 in the letter she knew it was genuine. This was something Ian Fleming knew and incorporated into his books.’ He added: ‘Unlikely as it sounds, tennis invented James Bond.’
Dr Dee studied at St John’s College, Cambridge, and was considered one of the most learned men of his generation. In the years after Elizabeth I ascended to the throne in 1558, she appointed him as her scientific and astrological adviser.
Supporters of the theory that he was a spy think the ‘00’ used in his letters to the queen could have symbolised his eyes or were a code meaning ‘ for your eyes only’.
The ‘ 7’ may have been a sacred or lucky number which Dr Dee – who was fascinated by numerology and the mystical property of numbers – might have regarded as a prudent addition.