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8:00

not want to detain that letter, but

8:02

you might want to keep the conspiracy

8:04

going until you gather enough evidence until

8:07

you know who is involved in the

8:09

conspiracy. So you might want

8:11

to keep the conversation going and therefore you need

8:13

to repair the letter you might have

8:15

just destroyed. You

8:18

might have shattered the seal because

8:20

a wax was made from a

8:22

very different material shellac, which was

8:24

quite brittle. So you needed to

8:26

have skills in handwriting, in

8:29

house mix invisible inks, house

8:31

mix normal inks, think about the color of

8:33

the different things and afford seals,

8:36

which was a time consuming process as

8:38

well. Oh,

8:40

such a clutch pickup Dave. I was worried

8:42

we'd bring back the same team. I met

8:44

those blackout motorized shades. blinds.com made it crazy

8:47

affordable to replace our old blinds. Hard to

8:49

install? No, it was easy. I installed these

8:51

and then got some for my mom too.

8:54

She talked to a design consultant for free

8:56

and scheduled a professional measure and install Hall

8:58

of Fame son. They're the number one online

9:00

retailer of custom window coverings in the world.

9:03

blinds.com is the go to blinds.com for up

9:06

to 45% off blinds.com rules and

9:08

restrictions may apply. And one

9:10

person in your book who's not shy about

9:12

promoting these skills is Peter Bales. I wonder

9:14

if Pete could we hear from you a

9:16

little bit more about Bales and his skills

9:18

in this world? Well,

9:20

Bales was a scrivener and he was

9:22

expert in handwriting and he was renowned

9:24

for the beauty of his handwriting. Some

9:26

even said that he could imitate printed

9:28

type, that he had so

9:30

much control over his quill. And he

9:34

earned money by copying things for people

9:36

and also by teaching people how to

9:38

how to actually write and ultimately how

9:40

to imitate other people's handwriting. And

9:43

the thing with Bales is that he was quite

9:46

elegant, I think it is safe to

9:48

say. And he was very excited with

9:50

his own skills and his own ability. And he

9:52

was very much a self promoter.

9:56

In 1575 he wrote

9:58

on the size of a small coin. weapons

12:01

and he was very good at faking handwriting.

12:03

He actually said that one of his masters

12:05

had actually seen him do what nobody else

12:07

had ever done before, which is imitate another's

12:10

hand, which is not quite true. But again,

12:12

he was sort of self-promoting in that respect.

12:14

But he was also very good at invisible

12:16

inks. He worked out a bunch of different

12:18

formulas to invisible ink and also was working

12:20

very hard on trying to fake a seal,

12:22

fake a seal quickly because one

12:25

of the problems with the usual simpler methods

12:27

of faking seals is that they

12:29

take quite a long time. And of course, if

12:31

you delay a letter when you're interrogating it, it

12:33

gets to the conspirators too late, they're going to

12:35

get a little bit worried, a little bit suspicious

12:37

and probably disband and the whole thing's going to

12:39

fall apart. But what he tends

12:41

to do is he will say in his letters to

12:44

people like Walsingham and Sessels,

12:46

he'll say, I can do this

12:48

thing, but he won't say how it's done. He

12:51

just says, I can do this. I'm marvelous at

12:53

this, but he won't give any actual information about

12:55

the process that he's using because he knows that

12:57

it's the process that the spymasters want. They don't

13:00

really care about him. They just want the ability

13:02

to do it. And if he tells everyone how

13:04

to do it, it'll all get stolen. And this

13:06

is still where he's looking for personal faith from

13:09

people. He does also relentlessly

13:11

ask them, he says, give me a

13:13

wage and give me an office. Because

13:16

then instead of working piecemeal, I'll

13:18

always be on site. And whenever I'm needed, I'll

13:20

be there. You won't have to suddenly find me

13:23

and I might be down the pub, whatever. It

13:25

says, give me a way to give me an

13:27

office, which he doesn't ever really get until he

13:29

retires and gets a wage and

13:31

is doing something incredibly different than anyway, down

13:33

in Poole where he resides. But

13:36

he is this man who keeps recurring. He's

13:38

in the Babinson plot. He does a little

13:40

bit of work there. He works

13:42

in the aftermath of the gunpowder plot. He's

13:44

brought out of retirement for that. And he

13:46

does all sorts of little things that people

13:49

don't think should have been done at the

13:51

time. Certainly what worked out until later. So

13:53

he's in effect, he's the only one in the queue.

16:00

refill it. It didn't really matter

16:02

whether you started with cold water and

16:04

then refilled with cobras or the other

16:06

way around. But if you then try

16:08

to refill, try to wrong

16:10

substance, you're ending up with an inky

16:13

smear and you have destroyed the entire

16:15

message before you could sort of read

16:17

it. Some of these volumes

16:19

disappear again, others stay forever visible, which

16:21

is of great, of course great for

16:23

the historian because then you can see

16:25

it in the archives. But

16:29

they knew that the correspondence they

16:31

tried to trace were using

16:33

invisible ink and they

16:35

were wanting to open their letters.

16:37

They of course had the problem because

16:40

if they wanted to forge the letter,

16:42

they also had to enforce invisible ink

16:44

writing. That was incredibly difficult. If you're

16:47

writing in invisible ink, you can't really

16:49

see your own handwriting, let alone if

16:51

you try to forge another's. So

16:54

they called in Arthur Gregory, who

16:56

invented what he calls a perspective

16:59

box, a little machine to copy

17:01

invisible ink writing. And we

17:03

don't know exactly how it worked, but we

17:05

have some vague idea. Oh, yes, we do.

17:08

Oh, no, we don't. Oh, yes, we do. It's

17:10

a difficult one in this because Gregory doesn't

17:12

explain his perspective box at all, but we

17:14

know exactly what he did with it. And

17:16

he says what he's done with it. And

17:19

we have evidence from Jim

17:22

Batiste de la Porta's 1558 book

17:25

Natural Magic, where he's explaining

17:28

how you can make letters appear in

17:31

places that they're not. And how you can make images

17:33

appear in places that they're not by

17:35

using lenses and by using mirrors. What

17:37

seems to have happened is that Gregory has

17:39

adapted this for use in

17:42

copying letters. He's adapted one of de la

17:44

Porta's machines for copying letters. And

17:46

so what he's able to do then is

17:49

he's able to effectively to trace the revealed

17:51

handwriting in his invisible ink

17:53

so that he's not doing

17:56

the whole thing blind. This is

17:58

also clever about what he does because there's no they

20:00

would then pass later on when they arrived at

20:02

the destination. We also have people

20:04

who explain how you can

20:06

put a message into an egg. There has to

20:08

be a very small message because it's very, get

20:10

it through the slice in the egg. So

20:13

all of these things that people using the

20:15

size of message to actually smuggle them through,

20:17

get them through enemy lines, if you like.

20:21

Your book is very tactile in terms

20:23

of the way it evokes wax seals

20:25

and the ways that things were smuggled.

20:27

And as historians, you were recreating some

20:29

of these techniques. Can you tell us

20:31

a little bit more about what that

20:33

was like? We did many

20:35

experiments and we also had help from

20:37

MIT libraries for the more complicated things.

20:40

But it's so much fun to sort of

20:42

figure out how you can put a message

20:44

in an egg. It turns out

20:46

you need a lot of vinegar to make

20:49

the shell soft. Then you take

20:51

a razor and you make a little slit in

20:53

the egg. You put in your message and then

20:55

you pop it into water and the shell gets

20:57

hardened again. It's very complicated. We

20:59

destroyed many, many eggs before we cut

21:02

it right. So it just

21:04

shows us how much skill there

21:06

is involved. And even with

21:08

faking a seal, you sort of quickly

21:10

realize if you use gypsum, which is

21:13

one of the things they recommended, how

21:16

long it takes for gypsum to dry

21:18

so that they would have a real

21:20

problem. You could sort of have

21:22

certain seals at the ready if you knew

21:24

there was one suspicious ambassador, you constantly want

21:27

to open his letters, you would have counted

21:29

seals ready. But if you come

21:31

across a letter which is also suspicious and

21:33

you want to cast the seal at that

21:35

particular moment, you need something that

21:37

dries more quickly. And

21:39

then we had these letters of

21:41

Gregory complaining that he was trying

21:44

to solve this riddle, how can I

21:46

find a molding putty that really dries

21:48

quickly? And it turns out that he

21:50

used a lot of toxic metals

21:53

like mercury, quicksilver and to

21:55

reuse the white paint that

21:57

Elizabeth I was supposedly

21:59

using. And he was getting

22:01

ill and he was noticing that he was

22:03

getting ill. He was complaining about an eye

22:06

sort of popping out of his socket. And

22:08

then there's almost this hilarious moment where he

22:10

said to Orsingham, I sort of recommend not

22:13

holding this molding potty in your hands. It's

22:15

not very good for you, my Lord. So

22:18

you can sort of see how dangerous

22:20

this trade is also going to be.

22:23

But I've said it, I mean, Gregory was trying

22:25

all these things. We found that with

22:27

the egg, for example, that if you

22:30

do it with a brown egg, then

22:33

the vinegar bleaches the egg.

22:35

So of course, the colour's wrong. So you can't

22:37

do it with duck eggs either. So

22:40

you have to do specific things that you need to use. Always

22:43

these, I mean, it's very good to survive the

22:45

August actual because that's really what we're trying to

22:47

achieve. It's all about the techniques, all

22:49

about what people do. Why

22:51

trying to do it yourself? You're noticing how

22:54

extremely difficult this is. And

22:57

you have these book of secrets, Delleporta,

22:59

which we mentioned earlier, which sort of

23:01

describes what you need to do. But

23:03

it doesn't, for instance, say you really

23:06

need to use a white egg. You need to

23:08

sort of discover that yourself. It also

23:10

sort of says a horse hair

23:13

is great for detaching seals.

23:15

But to actually make that

23:17

work yourself is still extremely

23:19

difficult. So you realize

23:22

how skilled these different individuals really

23:24

were. The recipes they give

23:26

on, very specific, like they are on the BBC

23:28

for making, you know, poetry or whatever. You

23:30

don't get exact measurements of all the different things. You have

23:33

to work it out yourself. So whoever's

23:35

doing these things has done a lot

23:37

of experimentation. It is kind of fun

23:39

to do this, this stuff at home. The other

23:41

thing it really does teach you is how long

23:43

these things take, how long it takes to

23:46

write out the coded message, you know, a cipher

23:48

message, and how difficult it is to do it

23:50

without making a mistake. And it

23:52

is practically impossible when you get over a certain amount

23:54

of letters not to make a mistake. And it makes

23:56

life very, very difficult. And we've also found

23:58

plenty of. encoded letters which have

24:01

got mistakes in them where people have either

24:03

lost concentration or they've used

24:05

one of the machines they've been using to help them

24:07

encode incorrectly and suddenly a few

24:10

letters go astray and you look at what you

24:12

decode and you just think that makes no sense

24:15

whatsoever and then you think well actually if

24:17

I look at it from this point of view oh no

24:19

that's that's what's happened they've they just got this backwards so

24:22

you realize that these things are

24:24

not constant it's

24:27

not the way that it's shown on TV you know it's not

24:29

like I want to do this and then I do this it

24:31

takes a lot of messing around it takes a lot of time

24:33

and error and so these people

24:35

people like Gregor especially were spending an awful

24:38

lot of time working on these techniques in

24:40

their little laboratories. If

24:43

you had books full of really

24:45

complicated cipher keys and codes they

24:47

tried it to find it a simpler way

24:49

because it still needs to be manageable and

24:51

you still need to be able to

24:53

write it yourself so

24:56

you need to find the perfect balance

24:58

of having a code that protected your

25:00

message on which was also still

25:02

usable in the field. I

25:04

think what you said about mistakes is

25:06

interesting because it's a reminder that there

25:08

were stakes in this game of spy

25:10

craft and intrigue and you know real

25:13

people could be affected by intelligence going

25:15

astray or falling into the wrong hands

25:17

and what you mentioned then Nadine about code played

25:20

such a big part in the Babington

25:22

plot I wonder could you remind listeners

25:24

perhaps if they're not familiar of what

25:26

was this plot and the role that

25:29

code and spy craft played. The Babington

25:31

plot was one of the many

25:33

plots that were designed to really

25:35

overthrow and eventually assassinate Elizabeth the

25:37

first and then put Mary Queen

25:39

of Scots on the throne. It's

25:42

probably the most well-known plot because

25:44

of course it ended with Mary

25:46

Queen of Scots being executed and

25:49

and we use it in a book to

25:51

look at these cipher keys and these codes

25:53

and by looking at them we realize

25:55

that the key players you think oh

25:57

that is is Walsingham and Mary

26:00

Queen of Scots and perhaps other

26:02

other spy chiefs. It turns out

26:04

that the most important players in

26:06

this plot were secretaries. You might

26:08

think of secretaries as mere copyists,

26:11

but in this period they were

26:13

the keeper of secrets. They

26:15

were the people who designed the

26:17

codes, who decoded all the letters. So

26:19

it turns out to be a battle

26:22

between secretaries. We have Thomas Vellipe's code

26:24

breaker on the one side and we

26:26

have three of Mary Queen of

26:28

Scots's secretaries on the other side. They

26:31

are in control of

26:33

the secret information. It

26:35

turns out that there are hardly

26:38

ever mentioned in the history books,

26:40

but Claude now and Gilbert Curl

26:42

turned out to be these key

26:44

players in the plot. It's

26:46

quite astonishing how many different cipher

26:48

keys they had. When they

26:51

intercepted the entire cabinet at the

26:53

end, they found 53 cipher keys.

26:57

But the key that was used with

26:59

Anthony Bamington, one of the plotters, there

27:01

were similar keys with about 20 other

27:04

people. So it must have been incredibly

27:06

hard for the secretaries to remember,

27:08

this is the key I'm using with

27:10

person Y and this is the key

27:12

I'm using with person X. And you

27:15

see the other side also being really

27:17

confused by that. They have

27:19

intercepted a cipher key, but they

27:21

cannot figure out whether this was

27:23

a lady furniture or whether this

27:25

was Bamington. They cross out all

27:27

these names until they found the

27:29

real person who was using the

27:31

key. This also highlights

27:33

how important record keeping was. One

27:36

of the reasons that spying or espionage

27:39

increasingly became a bureaucratic force because you

27:41

had to be in control of all

27:43

these different passages of information.

27:47

And one of the other things

27:49

that we found with this battle between the secretaries

27:51

is that you could see Philip Bez reveling

27:54

in his victory. He

27:56

was really excited that he had won. In

27:59

one letter he'd say, sends doors and he

28:01

says, I hope this is enough information for

28:04

now and curl to get behind. You

28:06

know, and of course, what happens is that now

28:08

and curl aren't hanged, they kind of

28:11

turn Queen's evidence, I suppose, get

28:14

witness protection in modern parlance, and

28:16

they can have brutal off quite happily,

28:18

whereas Mary Queen of Scots loses their head. So

28:21

a big reminder there of the importance of

28:23

many of these techniques in this world, how

28:25

they were used and what they meant for

28:28

real lives. And I wonder if we can

28:30

begin to sort of wrap this episode up

28:32

with a few thoughts from you both on,

28:34

again, that transformation of what your book tells

28:36

us about the evolution of these techniques in

28:38

this period. Perhaps Nadine could become to you

28:40

first on that. As at the

28:42

beginning of the period, you see people

28:45

like Arthur Gregory trying to

28:47

hide his secrets. And

28:49

at the end of the period, when you

28:51

have Oliver Crumble in charge, he sort of

28:53

realizes that it's all well and good to

28:55

have one expert. But if you have

28:57

to sort of locate in London to

29:00

fake a seal, but then take

29:02

that letter elsewhere to break a coat,

29:05

that's quite cumbersome. So Oliver Crumble

29:07

puts around about 10 men in

29:09

the same room, which becomes

29:11

known as a cabinet wire or a

29:14

black chamber later in the period, and

29:16

they each have their assorted tasks. One

29:19

can fake handwriting, one can refold

29:21

the letter, the other works and

29:23

codes, there are linguists that you

29:25

can translate certain messages, and

29:28

they work together and they learn from each

29:30

other, rather than protecting their

29:32

secrets. So their skills can be

29:34

passed on rather than be forgotten.

29:37

It's also important to remember this is

29:39

about control of information. It's all about

29:42

who controls the flow of information. And

29:45

it's no surprise that when

29:47

Cromwell inculcates what comes of

29:49

black chamber, he calls it the

29:51

general post office. So fundamentally,

29:54

the post office, which we all think about, well,

29:56

I mean, we used to, of course, not anymore,

29:58

but we think about it as a an

30:00

institution designed to deliver letters was

30:02

in fact originally an institution designed

30:04

to arrest them and to surveil

30:07

it was it was designed for

30:09

surveillance not for distribution of

30:11

letters. Yes, I always find

30:14

it extremely funny that

30:16

the post office was founded not

30:18

to deliver letters but to intercept

30:20

them and to read people's correspondences.

30:22

What I loved about focusing on

30:25

materiality, we decided to write

30:28

about well-known plots the

30:30

Babington plot and the Gunpowder plot

30:32

because we thought that gives us

30:34

more kind of leeway to truly focus

30:36

on the techniques which is what we

30:39

did. But by focusing on these techniques

30:41

the story slightly changes, becomes more

30:43

complex, more nuanced and different

30:46

actors, more invisible actors suddenly

30:48

come into focus. Absolutely

30:51

and just as a final point, could

30:53

I ask both of you, are there

30:55

any favored spycraft techniques? Either

30:57

of you that we haven't mentioned yet in this episode

30:59

to leave listeners with. Well, my

31:01

personal favorite should not be tried at home

31:04

and it's we find one individual explaining

31:06

how another

31:09

person of his acquaintance, I mean his boss

31:11

actually, has told

31:13

him how you can poison somebody using

31:15

a toad. So

31:17

he explains how you can basically make toad

31:19

salt that you then put on the person's

31:22

food which will then poison. I just think

31:24

that's a fantastic, well, it's pleasant

31:26

for the toad perhaps, but it's a fantastically

31:28

evocative thing. It's like toads are always going

31:30

to, they're always, they're all kind of warts

31:32

in associated with witchcraft. You can also use

31:35

them to poison people and

31:37

we discussed this with a friend of ours,

31:39

a toxicologist, who said yes,

31:41

actually it would work and just a

31:43

few weeks before this happened, somebody had

31:46

met their demise because they decided to

31:48

lick a toad. So don't lick toads

31:50

children, it's not good for you. One

31:53

of my favorite techniques would be

31:55

cross dressing. You have all these

31:57

men turning up in women's

31:59

clothes. to escape the Tower of London

32:01

or another prison, because women were kind

32:03

of unsuspected in this period. But some

32:05

of them were better at it than

32:07

others. One of them forgot to shave

32:09

his beard, for instance, and was caught.

32:13

That was Nadine Ackerman and Pete

32:15

Langman. Their book, Spycraft, Tricks and

32:17

Tools of the Dangerous Trade from

32:19

Elizabeth I to The Restoration, will

32:21

be published by Yale University Press

32:24

on the 25th of June. Thanks

32:26

for listening. This podcast was produced

32:28

by Jack Bateman.