Female Spies
Among the correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, who came to The Hague in 1621, where she lived in exile for more than forty years, it was discovered that she used a female spy in Brussels to convey her mail to England so that the British Embassy would not intercept it. During her exile in Den Hague, Elizabeth's correspondence were filled with secret codes; the ones delivered through official postal channels contained either false or largely superficial information, while the letters sent via Brussels and Antwerp were filled with ciphers and even invisible ink.
Many women were involved in spying, far more than the one or two that history currently regards as exceptions. Some of them were members of the upper classes, but there were also some very ordinary women, like washerwomen, who were involved.
Great Britain is a logical choice research, as England offers a broader European perspective, because the civil wars brought many women to Brussels, Den Hague and Paris.
One unusual story is that of Susan Hyde, sister of Edward Hyde, an important minister in the 17th century and the first author on the history on the English Civil War. Tis odd that nobody had ever reported that Hyde had a sister, let alone that anyone knew he used her as a spy. Especially with the fact that Susan died under very mysterious circumstances in prison, at a time when women were hardly ever imprisoned.
How is it possible that so little is known about women spies, even those who, like Susan Hyde, moved in the highest political circles?
Women were simply not taken seriously, and often thought to be intellectually inferior to men. These women used the fact that they were overlooked to their advantage: what more could a spy want than to be invisible?
The people around them never dreamed that women could be spies. All the women's letters were treated as unimportant, and they did not even get published.
The working methods of men regarding women spies had the tendency is to think in terms of pillow talk and seductresses, but in actuality, they used just the same techniques as male spies at the time: eavesdropping, lies and deceit, sending letters in code or using invisible ink - these were all part of the repertoire of these women.
Female spies also used odd means to deliver their communications... a female spy wrote a letter to her brother in which she asked him to communicate with her via artichoke. The juice of globe artichokes was a viable as an invisible ink and revealed using a candle.
Another method women spies employed was to slip little messages into raw eggs. In preparation, the egg is soaked in vinegar to soften its shell. Once suitably soft, the egg is cut into with a knife, making a small slit. From there, a small slip of paper is able to be folded over and slipped into the egg, which is then placed in cold water to re-harden its shell. While the method is quite simple, the idea behind it is ingenious: who would think to inspect a basket of eggs?
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