Without A Trace:
The Ladies of Espionage
Susan Hyde held a letter up to a candle. The words written on the piece of paper were too faint to read. Thankfully, the heat of the candle’s flame had the desired effect, and soon the words darkened on the page. Like many other letters she received, this one was written in invisible ink. Susan read the words and immediately sat down to write her own letter. She had to send the news to her brother. As a member of the Sealed Knot, it was her job to make sure he got the information he needed from the other members.
The letter was dated 1656. It had been seven years since Charles I, the King of England, had been tried in court for treason and beheaded.
A man named Oliver Cromwell was now in charge. Cromwell was not a king, but instead the “Lord Protector” of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland. However, not everyone was happy with the new government. A group of people called the Royalists hoped to restore the monarchy and they wanted Charles I’s son, Charles Stuart, to be their future king.
Susan’s brother, Sir Edward Hyde, was one of Charles Stuart’s closest advisors. He and several other men formed the Sealed Knot, a secret group of Royalists that plotted to get Charles Stuart on the throne. Edward put his trust in his sister Susan and placed her at the center of the group’s communication. By this time, Charles Stuart had fled to Paris for his own safety. Susan’s task was to deliver and receive all letters between Charles Stuart in France and the other Royalists in England.
As Susan prepared her letter to Edward, she knew that what she was doing was dangerous. Oliver Cromwell had created a skilled intelligence service to spy on the activities of the Royalists and stomp out any future rebellions. His spymaster, John Thurloe, was the man she most feared. Thurloe was an exceptionally clever man who had a talent for catching spies and an even greater talent for getting them to confess. If she got caught, it would mean imprisonment or death.
Susan had to be careful with how she sent her letter. A year earlier, Cromwell made Thurloe the Postmaster General. Thurloe decided who was allowed to carry and deliver mail. At a time when private messages could only be sent through letters, Thurloe and his spies had a huge advantage. Susan’s letters, like so many others, were collected inside a private room in the Palace of Whitehall. Inside this Black Chamber, as it was called, Thurloe and his spies could read any letter sent through the post office.
Every night at around 11 p.m., the daily mail was spread out inside the office. If Thurloe’s men opened a letter, they would carefully reseal it so no one would know they’d opened it. One of Thurloe’s men, a Dutchman named Isacc Dorislaus, was so good at recognizing people’s handwriting, that he instantly knew who wrote each letter. The spy-catchers would stay in the office until around 3 or 4 a.m., combing through the mail. Skilled at cracking codes and ciphers, these men were quick to find a suspicious letter and bring it to Thurloe’s attention.
Susan was well aware of Thurloe’s ways and used every trick she knew to protect the secret information in her letters in case they were opened.
Some women, she heard, hid messages in their hair, sewed them into books, and even stuck them inside eggs! Susan had her own methods. She wrote in invisible ink, used code words, and signed her letters with her fake name, Mr. Gotherintone.
But when Susan didn’t get a reply to one of her messages, she realized that Thurloe and his spy-catchers were onto her. To stay one step ahead of Thurloe, she chose a man named Anthony Hinton to begin delivering her messages. Hinton worked as a traveling apothecarist and provided medicine to sick patients. He used his job as a cover while he secretly delivered messages to Royalists living in Europe. Susan’s days as a spy, however, were numbered. In 1656, Hinton was arrested and spilled his secrets to Thurloe. Not long after his confession, three officers burst into Susan’s bedroom, searched her pockets, and arrested her on the spot. Susan was put in prison where she mysteriously died.
After the death of his sister, Edward knew that the Sealed Knot was in trouble. Thurloe and his spies were too cunning—almost every plan for rebellion was discovered and destroyed. Edward began to grow suspicious of other Royalists. Was someone telling Thurloe their plans? In Susan’s last letter to Charles Stuart, she had warned him of a leak. Someone was a double agent.
Edward suspected one woman in particular: Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Dysart. Elizabeth had studied mathematics and history growing up and was better educated than most women at the time. After her father died in 1655, she inherited her beautiful family home, Ham House, and became a very wealthy woman.
Elizabeth was eager to join the Royalist cause. Espionage was in her blood, after all, as both her mother and father had been accused of being Royalist spies. But there was one thing that made Elizabeth seem suspicious. She was friends with Oliver Cromwell. Rumors of this friendship made Edward concerned.
While Elizabeth worked for the Royalists, Edward intercepted her letters and read them to make sure she wasn’t working for Cromwell. Edward was wrong, however, to suspect this clever female spy. Elizabeth’s friendship with the Lord Protector was a genius move. By gaining Cromwell’s trust, she was free to travel to Paris without raising Thurloe’s suspicion. Once in Paris, Elizabeth was able to deliver messages to Charles Stuart. Soon, she hoped, a Stuart king would be back on the throne.
But Elizabeth’s luck was about to change. On September 3, 1658, Oliver Cromwell died and Elizabeth was no longer protected. Oliver Cromwell’s son, Richard Cromwell, became the new ruler and he did not share his father’s affection for the Lady of Ham House. That year, Thurloe began arresting members of the Sealed Knot.
Elizabeth worried, what if Thurloe found out that she was a spy? Would she be sent to prison, or worse, put to death? Terrified, Elizabeth fled to France. The Sealed Knot was unraveling, but she was determined to continue her work. A new Royalist spy-ring was forming and Elizabeth was quick to join. They called themselves the Great Trust and they were plotting an uprising. They wanted Charles Stuart to return to England with an army waiting and ready to fight for their future king.
Elizabeth built a spy network of ladies to write and deliver secret letters about the Great Trust’s new plans. Her two sisters and other women wrote their messages using invisible ink and dozens of fake names. Normally, invisible inks could be made from lemon, orange, or artichoke juice. Elizabeth and her fellow spies were using something far more complex, a mixture of poisonous powder and water. Even today, historians don’t know the exact ingredients. A letter with the recipe was never found because Elizabeth’s spy-ring had one very important rule: if you received a letter, you had to burn it after reading.
Even with the Great Trust’s careful planning, the Royalist uprising failed.
The government’s talented spies knew it was coming and put an end to it. This was no fault of Elizabeth and her fellow secret agents. Their letters may have been intercepted by none other than Edward Hyde, Susan Hyde’s brother. He never trusted Elizabeth and still wondered if she was a double agent. If Elizabeth had tried to warn the Great Trust not to go ahead with the uprising, her letters would have been too late.
The Royalists, however, were about to have a change in their luck. Richard Cromwell turned out not to be a very good leader and many of the English people became unhappy with the situation. They wanted their king back. The government then did something quite unexpected. Less than a year after the Royalists’ failed uprising, they invited Charles Stuart back to England to reclaim the throne.
They were in desperate need of a stable ruler. Finally, in the spring of 1660, Charles Stuart left Europe and arrived in London as King Charles II. At last, the war was over.
Historians still don’t know just how much work female spies completed for the Royalists. Like all good spies, many of these women never left a trace. For years, they put their lives in danger by hiding messages in their hair, using invisible inks, and delivering their coded letters under the watchful eye of John Thurloe. Susan Hyde lost her life for the future king. Elizabeth Murray and her fearless spies were able to continue what Susan started.
In 1662, Elizabeth was awarded £800 a year for her service to the king. Charles Stuart’s return to England had been difficult, and he knew that he couldn’t have done it without his daring ladies of espionage.