FALCON POWERS – A 428-year-old secret file has revealed Queen Elizabeth I’s spy network, shedding light on what can be considered the “first properly organized secret service” in Britain.
According to the British newspaper The Guardian, the list of names compiled by politician Robert Cecil provides a insightful look into the origins of the country’s secret service.
For over a century, this document remained untouched in the National Archives, titled “Names of Intelligence Men.”
The document reveals how Cecil established a secret espionage network and used it to spy on European monarchs on behalf of the English crown. Historian Stephen Alford, who tried to compile the names of the informants, said Cecil began writing it in 1596, in a “miscellaneous” volume by Victorian archivists.
Alford added: “The Victorians had a habit, if they came across papers that seemed to them to be meaningless, or rather obscure and couldn’t be filed in a nice, tidy way, they would put them in a volume and ignore them. And this is where historians find really quite fascinating things.” Alford said that “most spies in the 16th century were working for courtiers, and they tended to be a rather seedy bunch, the intelligence men in this list are different, these were serious individuals, many of them international merchants.”
Previously, researchers believed Cecil had only a few spies, but Alford’s research suggests he had an organized network of more than 20 agents, in places like Lisbon, Calais, Brussels, Seville, Rome, Amsterdam, Scotland, Sweden, and unspecified locations elsewhere.
Alford said: “The merchants were chosen because they travel, can read and write, speak European languages, and have their own networks.”
In 1588, when the Catholic King Philip II of Spain attempted to invade Protestant England and overthrow Elizabeth, Cecil was concerned about the possibility of a second Spanish naval attack in the 1590s.
Alford said: “There was one team of spies, two brothers monitoring the Atlantic coast, to find out if there were any Spanish ships sailing in a new armada or undertaking military and naval preparations. They pretended to be shipping prohibited goods between France and Spain, but in reality they were going to the ports and preparing reports on naval activity, counting the ships.”
The line in the various files indicates that Cecil relied on “a small, trusted group of individuals” to assist him in managing his secret operation.
