Stephen Alford: The Watchers - A Secret History Of The Reign Of Elizabeth I (Allen Lane)

Saturday 6 October 2012

Elizabethan England was not a forerunner of the modern police state, despite what some hyperbolical historians may have told you.

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Review: Jonathan Wright

Tudor monarchs never came close to possessing the requisite personnel, technologies and networks of surveillance. It would be fair to say, however, that the Elizabethan regime did its level best to keep tabs on what its enemies (whether real or imagined) were up to, both at home and abroad.

A truly impressive roster of spies, informants and cipher-makers was established, loose talk in taverns and embassies was efficiently reported, and if you were on the regime's list of suspects there was always a chance your mail would be intercepted. It all sounds rather menacing, and so it must have been for those on the receiving end, but it was also perfectly understandable. Elizabeth I's government had many reasons to remain on high alert and to indulge in what Stephen Alford calls "the politics of raw survival".Elizabeth was one of the most vulnerable monarchs in Europe. She ruled over many disgruntled subjects (on both sides of the religious divide), was detested by some of the continent's major powers (not least Spain) and often struggled to balance the financial books. Most worryingly of all, she failed to resolve the problem of the succession.Elizabeth's refusal to marry is often regarded as an act of bravery and in some ways it was: she did an astonishing job of ruling as a single female monarch – not easy in 16th-century Europe. It also provoked one of the least welcome questions that any early-modern state could face: what would happen if the queen died or was dethroned? An alarming number of people were eager to provide an answer, and while some of the conspiracies and assassination plots were the fantastical inventions of a paranoid government, many others were all too real. It therefore made perfect sense to pass tough treason laws and gain mastery of the dark arts of espionage.Alford paints a vivid and staggeringly well-researched portrait of this sinister side of Elizabethan England. At the centre of it all were William Cecil and Francis Walsingham, a man with "absolute surety of purpose" who made no apology for deploying radical and often gruesome methods. All around them were the spies. Anthony Munday and Charles Sledd visited Rome and other haunts of English exiles, pretended to be Catholics and gathered what they claimed (not always honestly) to be reliable intelligence. William Parry seems to have worked for whomever provided him with the most money and flattery, and went from being a pro-Elizabeth informant to someone who conspired to assassinate the queen. It is quite the historical tapestry.There is no doubt that the Elizabethan authorities sometimes went much too far in their attempts to fend off disaster. There were certainly English-born Catholics who wanted the Spanish to invade their homeland and some of them helped set the Armada, the "worst kept secret in 16th-century Europe", in motion. The majority were perfectly loyal, however, and equating Catholic belief with potential treachery was unfair. Executing 116 of the 471 priests who did an evangelical tour of duty was, quite literally, overkill. That said, and as Alford stresses, the results were what counted to the regime and, against considerable odds, Elizabeth I managed to die, after an unexpectedly long reign, of natural causes.This is a spectacular book. It sheds new light on plots that most historians have ceased to explore and brings less famous conspiracies to the attention of the general reading public. The year 1594, it turns out, was particularly bad: three plots were hatched, one of them by the queen's Portuguese physician. The book's most valuable achievement is that it transforms our understanding of the Elizabethan age. We sometimes think of it as a safe, prosperous, culturally vibrant place – the quintessence of merry old England. The culture part is true: the rest is wide of the mark. Few countries in Western Europe were more dangerous, precarious or divided and, as Alford reveals, if one of Elizabeth's enemies had succeeded in his mission, things could have turned out very differently.The Watchers: A Secret History Of The Reign Of Elizabeth IStephen AlfordAllen Lane, £20

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Stephen Alford: The Watchers - A Secret History Of The Reign Of Elizabeth I (Allen Lane)

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