Originally published on August 30, 2024 (Episode 373)
Introduction
In Early Modern Europe, spying was not really a profession but it certainly was a verb. From the suspicious twilight years of Henry VII’s reign to Cromwell’s Protectorate and the restoration of the Stuarts, espionage was a game everyone seemed to be playing.
In an age when rivals were always figuratively looking over their shoulders, they were also literally reading each other’s mail. But that had its challenges: how to unseal and reseal a letter so no one would know? And what to do when the letter was written in cipher? Spy vs. spy in the seventeenth century looked remarkably like today—minus the digital technology. But even that sometimes only replicates what was done in very analog ways.
About the Guests
Nadine Akkerman is Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture at Leiden University and author of Invisible Agents, a study of female spies in seventeenth-century Britain.
Pete Langman is an Oxford English Dictionary bibliographer, the author of Killing Beauties, and—when not deciphering history—a cricketer.
Together, they are the co-authors of Spycraft: Tricks and Tools of the Dangerous Trade from Elizabeth I to the Restoration (Yale, 2024).
For Further Investigation
Nadine Akkerman and Peter Langman, Spycraft: Tricks and Tools of the Dangerous Trade from Elizabeth I to the Restoration (Yale, 2024).
Nadine Akkerman, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Hearts (OUP, 2021)
—, Invisible Agents: Women and Espionage in Seventeenth Century Britain (OUP, 2018)
Related Episodes
“Cloak and Dagger and Gondola”: Ioanna Iordanou on the Secret Service of the Republic of Venice, and organizing intelligence in the Renaissance
Other Resources
The practice of letterlocking explained by Jana Dambrogio and team
“How to Open a Locked Letter Without Opening It” (MIT Libraries)
Listen & Discuss
Would you have made a good 17th-century spymaster—or would your wax seals and dodgy codes have given you away? Share your thoughts in the comments, and pass this episode along to the history buffs (or secret agents) in your circle.
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