After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - How To Be A Medieval Spy

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

Look closely at the Bayeux Tapestry and you will see a medieval spy.But far from the world of James Bond gadgetry, what was medieval spycraft like? Why were they referred to as 'little birds'? And why were women often used in medieval espionage?Joining Anthony and Maddy today is Professor of Medieval History at Cardiff University and expert in all things medieval spycraft, Jenny Benham.This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. Senior Producer is Freddy Chick.Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJaSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Listener, never fear tis I, Dr. Anthony Delaney from the After Dark podcast. And I am possessing your phone or your car radio or whoever it is that you listen to podcasts to ask you to vote for us in the Listeners' Choice Award at this year's British Podcast Awards. Ooh, it's that time of year again. You can vote for us while you're folding laundry or learning about mass poisonings or while you assemble furniture and contemplate mutiny, which I would mutiny if was assembling furniture, or while you're lost in a graveyard that you thought was going to be a shortcut, but now you find yourself in the bowels of hell.

Either way, you can simply go to www. Britishpodcastawards.com forward slash voting and search after dark. Okay, off you go and do that, and I promise we'll stop possessing your phone. Thank you, love you, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. It's 1066, and Norman Arrows have started to rain down on Kirsten. King Harold's army of Anglo-Saxons. But long before swords clashed on this October day, another battle had already been fought.

One of secret messages, shifting loyalties, and intelligence carried. Because behind every medieval battlefield lay another conflict, fought in the shadows. This is the story of the informants, double agents and unlikely intelligence networks that shaped the Middle Ages, long before the age of secret services. Welcome to After Dark. Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony.

And I'm Maddie. If you think of spies, then you probably picture hidden cameras, coded messages and shadowy intelligence agencies. But guess what? Medieval espionage was nothing like that. There was no secret services or professional agents per se. Instead, information travelled on horse. It was hidden in letters, carried by merchants, monks, queens and prisoners.

And who better to shed light on these shadowy pursuits then, Jenny, Ben and Professor of Medieval History at Cardiff University. Jenny, welcome to After Dark. Thank you ever so much for having me. We're so excited to talk to you. Now, as Anthony set out in that introduction, we have, I suppose, a sense of what a spy might be in our own modern world. I'm holding a sort of James Bond image in my head slightly.

But let's talk about medieval espionage. What exactly are we talking about? What is it? Well, it's a really tricky question actually to answer because the word espionage does of course not actually exist in the medieval period or in the sources that you would read from the medieval period. And also, like if you're looking for it, then they probably wouldn't have been very good at it either.

So I always say when people say, oh, how easy is it defined? Well, not very. And that's as it should be. But if we think about things like news, if we think about it more as kind of intelligence, as in political information, economic information, the people can use to be competitive in a medieval world that is extremely competitive. Personalised governments, kind of with, there are no nation states as such. And, you know, the king is competing with other kings, but also with like his noble. you know, bishops. And so government is very decentralized in lots of way.

Many, many kind of elite men and women have their own courts and so on. And in order to kind of have advantages in this kind of very competitive world, you must have access to information. So everyone is spying on everyone, basically. I mean, effectively, because I kind of think that if you don't do it, you're not going to survive. Do you think if it is distinct in some ways, is there still at the center of this medieval idea of intelligence secrecy, conceal reveal? Is that still there? Yes, absolutely. So this idea about secrecy is conceptualized slightly different. It's very often kind of, you can view it in two ways. I guess sort of secrecy that is kind of related to kind of religion. So this kind of idea that no secrets is. is actually secret from God, for example, and its representatives on us.

And of course, much of medieval Europe is a very Christian society. And so as a consequence, this is not something that you should do. So the church's teaching is that, you know, you shouldn't actually have any secrets. But then at the same time, there is this kind of secret. And even, you know, even in the Bible, there is a lot of espionage, right? There is a lot of spying going on. And it's kind of God sanctioning sort of secrets of a very practical kind of that you need to kind of have to get on with things. But secrecy generally is not seen as a good thing.

It's kind of linked to things like treason, betrayal. And in a society where people are thinking about, you know, loyalty, oesolity, the war ban, the people who are making war, they should be loyal. There is a real kind of emphasis on that. Communities are small. Everyone kind of knows everyone in your little communities. You know, their loyalties and truthfulness towards your neighbours is extremely important. So secrecy is seen with something extremely bad. Yeah, it sort of strikes me the medieval world as a very public world, I suppose, in that everything is performative. Your loyalty is performative. Your role is performative. To a certain extent, your religious belief is performative. You know, you have to show up and enact things for other people. to see so that you are shown to be taking part in your role in the world. And I suppose spying is the exact opposite of that's the sort of reality behind that performance, I suppose. Thinking about who the spies actually were then, Jenny, you know, we have a very strict hierarchy

in the medieval world, certainly across Europe. We think often about, you know, you've mentioned kings, nobleman. Are these the kinds of people who are spying or are there more improbable agents within this world as well. Yes, I would say that, you know, of course kings and nobles do do spying. But this is where it becomes really important that actually they should never be seen to be spying because of their kind of social status and they are kind of, you know, that they are meant to be so Christian leaders.

They are following that and there is no. secret to them apart from conspiracy against them, of course, which they should unearth. But they themselves should not be doing the spying, even though we know that they do, of course. And so that means that the kind of sources portray that those who are spies and those who are spying, that they are often of low status, foreigners, right? We can see these kinds of things to, you know, the relevance in some ways to what we get in the contemporary world about kind of stigmatization of people who are foreign, for example. People who are on the margins of society, perhaps religious non-conformist, people who are disabled, for example, or who look different.

Children, women also, to quite a large extent, slaves, in particular in the earlier medieval period, and so on. These are the kind of the people that they kind of portray them as being spies and they are often also the people who are spies. In some ways it's a way for them, I think one of the things about studying espionage and studying spies in this period is that when you look at the sources for espionage, you can see that these people that we very often or very frequently don't hear so much about in the medieval period, they actually have agency. But you have to really read the sources and read our material against the grain to think about that. Because of course, if you are spying, you are holding information that other people need. You are doing things. You know, you can change decision making for those people at the top. And that's actually quite important.

And that gives people agency as well in some ways. And I think that's quite a different way of viewing these people who kind of are. on the margins. I love that. That's so tantalizing, isn't it? It's this, again, this kind of ensemble of people that are otherwise marginalised, starting to come into view a little bit better, especially for this time period, where it's very difficult. When I was looking over the brief for this episode, we get sent, you know, the information a few days in advance. And one of the most striking things to me was the words, little birds. And I know you're working on a project and, you know, we know how hard writing books is and it'll happen when it happens.

But tell us about the little birds in the medieval era. Yeah. So the little birds, this kind of idea of a little bird tells me or a little bird told me. I mean, you know, this is an expression that we kind of, that was formed sort of in the 19th century or so. But, you know, even from the Bibles, we have notions of this idea. And in the medieval period, we very frequently get spice described. as little birds. So metaphorically speaking,

so we have the letters of Alquin, for example, in the sort of late 8th century, early 9th century. He talks about these little birds that he's sending out all across Europe. So he's actually, he's a churchman, he's an abbot, and he's also a teacher too at Charlemagne's course. Charlemagne is the most powerful king in medieval Europe at a time. And he's kind of, you know, close to the royal family teaching Charlemagne's children and numerous other people.

And so Alcun has this huge network. But he also has kind of access to young people because he's a teacher, right? What he does is he sends out all these people to basically spy to get information, to get intelligence in lots of ways. And one of the letters that he's got, he's actually describing this one incident dating from 799, where the Pope has turned up to Charlemagne's court in Paderborn, in what is now Germany. And the Pope is injured. He has basically been sort of his tongue has apparently been cut out.

his eyes has been gauged out supposedly I mean how on earth did he actually make it to Germany but this is this is what it describes right we'll go with a flow let's pretend yeah let's pretend that this happened he turns up at at Charlemagne's court and he basically says the Romans have booted me out of my seat

at the kind of imperial at the palace in Rome and you know I need your help effectively. And Alcuin has all these people that are circulating at this court and that are bringing him information about the negotiations between the Pope and the king at this court. And he's referring to these individuals. I mean, Alcun refers to himself as the sparrow. And the person that he has this kind of mingling among all these courtiers is referred as the blackbird. I like how specific it is.

Yeah, it's super interesting. So the sparrow, so just so that we are sort of clear about this, so the sparrow is a kind of ecclesiastical reference, this idea about kind of spreading the religious kind of word effectively. Because sparrow is a common bird. Yeah, everywhere. Exactly. And it's kind of meant to be symbolizing the kind of the soul and the spirit of the individual. So that's where Elkin refers to himself in that one. He also refers to the cockerel.

Now, the cockerel is an interesting character. This is actually Adelard, Abbott of Corby, who is kind of Charlemagne's, in many ways, he's kind of right-hand man, should we say. He's kind of chancellor. He's very high up. He's someone who's in charge of like Charlemagne's writing office, for example, you know, if you have access to incoming and outgoing. Yeah, absolutely. And so he's an interesting character. He's referred to as the cockerel because he's like the person who's sort of in charge of everyone, waking everyone up,

kind of, you know, making sure that everyone is kind of singing to the same kind of hymn sheet, you know, these kinds of things. And then there's the blackbird, right? But the blackbird, we don't know who it is. And that's the person who's the real, no. So it's the person who is the real spy. And it's really interesting that in Alcun's letters, we know he refers to these various. people in different ways in these kind of, you know, through these bird metaphors. And Adelhard, you know, can be identified very easily, Alko himself also, but the black bird,

we simply don't know who it is. And again, probably quite a common bird, you know, black, right, kind of melting into the background, kind of thinking about, you know, if someone is a blackbird, you wouldn't necessarily take much notice of that person, right? So this is someone that's kind of going amongst these courtsies, just kind of doing their thing and melting into the background. And that's where we can't identify. But that's the spy. And it's a really, really good metaphor because we find it again in loads of sources. We find it in visual sources.

So it appears on something like the Franks Casket, for example, where we have this image or Wayland, the Smith, which is a very well-known medieval legend. And Whalen is in captivity And he has these spies There are spying on him while he is in captivity And in order to get out of captivity He actually poisons these These kind of people who are spying on him

And on the Franks casket It is shown how he does Or he kills them, sorry I should say And they are birds They're depicted as birds So here we get that bird metaphor again Right It turns up in lots of kind of poet

poems and we get it in, I mean we get it in Saint's Lice for example, all sorts of things. And they tend to be very specific birds. So I've already said about the blackbirds. So that's one that comes again and again. Jackdor is probably the most common one. Because they talk a bit, don't they? Yes, exactly. This is exactly it.

So birds that are kind of talk, so starlings also. But jackdores, crows, that kind of things. Birds are quite intelligent magpies occasionally. I mean, but you don't get the chicken. Right? Sorry. Oh, that's not bad for the chicken now. I know.

No chickens or spice, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is quite interesting, right? So, but the thing about Jack Doe is that, again, so they are talkative, so there's this kind of idea about them kind of using their voice to kind of convey oral messages. But it's also very clever. So they can do lots of different things. And one of the ways in which I kind of came to this project was this, it is a Latin epic, which was written in the German kingdom in the 11th century.

So around the year 150, it's called the Roodlebe. And the Rudelebe is an epic about this exiled knight who ends up in a foreign court and he has these loads of adventures and then eventually he's going to kind of go back home. He kind of makes his fortune. He's allowed to come back home. And it's at this point we kind of introduced to Rudlebe's mother, who has a jackdor. And she asks this jackdor to go and sit in a tree and to basically tell her when Ruddib is returning. So to look out for him and tell her when Rudleyb is returning. And this jackdor is in a tree.

And while he's in this tree, he's competing with a servant boy who's. also in a tree kind of spying out, looking out for other travellers and so on. And they're competing together. But the jackbird, because it's so small, it manages to climb right to the top of this tree, the top of the branches. I mean, has anyone been climbing trees? I mean, I used to climb trees. I used to love climbing trees when I was a child, right? So the higher up you go, the thin of the branches go, right? And it's really this that kind of gives us this idea that that the jackdor is very clearly a child, right? Because only someone of that kind of light build would actually be able to make it up to the kind of the higher branches. And so eventually he then

wins his competition with the servant boy and he sees Rudlib and then he flies back to the mother and tells her that now Rudlib is coming back to you. The jackdor is then fed at the mother's table and kind of lives there and has quite a nice life. But this is clearly a metaphor for a child that is in the mother's household and effectively doing these kind of spying duties in return for food lodgings, the kind of sort of essence of what you need to live effectively. So from that, we can see there is a kind of exploitative, quite nasty kind of side to this. There is a darker side to this. Possibly this child might be a slave for all we know, right? It sort of sounds a little bit like that. But effectively, it's also a way for this particular young person to make themselves

useful, to effectively improve their life situation. And that's what I mean about. Actually, this is a way in to which we can see those people who don't often have a voice. And they don't write anything themselves. But here we can see that they do have some sort of agency. And they do have a very clear role in this society or they have very clear kind of things that they can contribute in terms of this political society, shall we say. There's something as well so powerful about the idea of birds as being omnipotent. And I suppose in the medieval world, it's something that we're maybe a little bit blind to today with. flying with, you know, sort of the sort of cityscape rooftops.

You know, we've lost the sense of birds in the sky as being the only things that are sort of moving around and that they can go to places quickly and travel in a way that would have been hard in the medieval world for people. They can climb to the top of a tree, albeit, you know, metaphor for a child. But they can, you know, that birds are, they are just everywhere in the background constantly and this sort of medieval imagination of, well, what if they're seeing things? what if they're remembering things? What if they're passing that on? Jenny, you talk about the sort of the broad spread of these references across medieval sources.

And I want to talk about a very famous medieval piece of embroidery. Yeah, not a tapestry. It's an embroidery, just to clarify for everyone. I mean, it takes to 1066, and we're talking about the Bayer tapestry. We're talking, of course, about the Battle of Hastings, which took place on the 14th of October 1066. The tapestry, now, I mean, is completely incredible. I think at the moment is it come to the British Museum. It's here right now, isn't it? Yeah.

It has a ride, right? Great excitement. I have a former student who is, she works at the British Museum. And I was actually texting her this morning. And I said, I'm about to go and do this podcast to talk about the spies on the Bay of tapestry. And I said, it must be a really exciting times at the British Museum at the moment. Yes, exactly. Yes.

It's in the headlines. Yeah, absolutely. It's in the headlines. So if you are in London, go and see that. But it means it's, you know, it's such. a, it's such an incredible piece of work in terms of the scale of it, in terms of the detail, in terms of the references, the layers of meaning, the messages that are in there. But along with all of these other aspects of the medieval world and the story it's telling,

there are depictions of spies in there. And I'd never known this before. I've looked at the Beir Tapestry at various points. I remember doing it as part of my masters. I did an Anglo-Saxon and a medieval module at York, which I loved so much. and just thinking about the Franz casket there as well. This sort of giving me slightly nervous flashbacks of that. But, you know, this was not a time period that I was particularly adept at covering. But talk to us then about these depictions because they're sort of birds, they're sort of people, they're in trees. It's a bit weird.

What's going on? Yeah. So is this a good moment to confess that I haven't actually looked at the birds on the Bayat tapestry, although I know that there are lots of them there. And that's why I haven't done it. So this is something that I'm actually planning on coming to. But what there are on the biotapestry is two very specific individuals that clearly are spies. And one of them is in a tree, right?

Yes. So this is very clear. I mean, I've already spoken about the bird that's climbing to the top of the tree. And here on this, we have this visual image of a spy in a tree. And it's actually in a sequence of the tapestry. This is actually when Harold Godwinson, who he's one of King Ever the Confessor of England, Harold is one of his kind of, you know, the biggest landowner and the biggest kind of nobleman in England at a time.

And he goes to the continent and he's kind of shipwrecked and captured by Guy who's counterponture. And, you know, Duke William of Normandy finds out about it. this and decides that actually he's going to kind of free Harold, you know, please don't capture this man because I know the English king and, you know, this is not a good idea. So this is describing on the tapestry the moment at which there is sort of negotiations between Duke William and Guy counterpointe for the release of Harold Godwinson. And the point at which the spy is in the tree is actually when the envoys are kind of returning into Duke William to say, yes, we have an agreement and, you know, Guy is going to release Harold to

you. And so this spy is in the tree and then kind of see the envoys coming back, runs back to William and kind of go, the envoys are coming. Do, do, do. And again, so this is clearly, and I just love this idea, partly because, as I said, I used to climb trees quite a bit when I was a child in the Arctic, there are lots of trees that you can climb. And it's just such a good way of seeing far, right? You get high up, you can see much further. And if we think in a period where, you know, you're not sending an email, so, you know, you're not lifting your, you know, your mobile phone or whatever,

you know, this is a very natural way of kind of being able to see far, right, to get up somewhere high. I mean, you say it's natural, Jenny, but as well, I'm thinking about, the, it's almost an inversion of the hierarchy of the medieval world, right, that literally the people at the bottom, sometimes enslaved children, for example, can go to the top and have that power because they suddenly have the omnipotence that they don't have at ground level. Absolutely. I love this idea. This is exactly what it is. And this is what I mean about this kind of the agency that it gives these people, kind of elevating them into something

that they don't sort of naturally have, shall we say, right? It's a complete inversion. And it really goes to the heart of this kind of idea about what conceptualization of secret. Like, this is not what it should be like, you know, we shouldn't be doing anything secret. We all know that it goes on. But if I kind of put it in this kind of image, it looks like it's something that is quite okay. And it's sort of selling it in a way that is kind of acceptable. And it's also portraying it in this kind of almost like a military diplomatic context. And of course if you do it like that, well then it's fine.

Totally. Right? This is absolutely fine. Well, I want to just touch on that because the other scene in the Bayer tapestry that has a spy. And I use that word in avertocomers because, you know, you mentioned earlier the word espionage doesn't exist in this moment. This is a scene in which a scout of King Harold is informing him that William's army has arrived in England, a really pivotal moment of the story. And we have a Latin word because of course the bear tapestry has Latin across the top of many of the scenes. And sometimes, you know, there's debate over the exact wording and which figure it's referring to and all of that.

But there's a Latin word nuntyant, which is a word for an informer, is that right? Or to inform? Yeah, to inform. And just thinking about, you know, kind of moving spying into that diplomatic context and giving it like sort of elevation. Do you think that's what's happening here in terms of labelling it with the Latin word and sort of giving it that legitimacy, I suppose? Yes, this is exactly it. And it's one of the things that we're seeing quite a lot of different sources.

So this is what I mean about the diplomatic sort of military context. Then they are using sort of words like that that kind of gives it a legitimacy, right? And here, of course, I mean, Harold is being cunning when he's doing this. So you're never going to say that he's kind of spying, for example, because, you know, actually that wouldn't be kind of the done thing. But here is kind of being presented as military reconnaissance, right? And so using this word nunziat, so kind of informing, gives it that legitimacy. We see it in lots of other sources. I mean, I think it's so interesting.

So the Encomium, Emma, for example, which is a source about actually Duke William's great aunt, who is the mother of Edward the Confessor, King of England. And she has a clerk who kind of writes a life of Emma. And it's commissioned by her, so it's quite an unusual source in a way. And it's written about 20 years, 25 years, before. 1066. But he has all this kind of notion of spying. And he's really Emma trying to like excuse herself for using spies and secret messengers.

And the cleric who writes it is really clever. So like when Emma's enemies is kind of sending messengers and kind of doing things that are a little bit secret, then he uses specific words that are kind of clearly meaning spying. and he says that they are treacherous and he says that they're doing it in secret. But when Emma does the same thing, very clearly the same thing, sending it in the night, for example. I mean, you know, but then it's saying it was an envoy, he was an ambassador, he was a messenger and she was merely bringing news and she was sending a letter to someone. Isn't this nice?

So it is about how you're kind of describing what is being done as to whether it's kind of legitimate or whether it's kind of that illegitimate. If you're doing the legitimate stuff, then you are clearly cunning now you're of an elite status and this is what you should do. But if you're doing that kind of undercover, the secret, the spying stuff, the treacherous, conspiratorial stuff, then you are of a low status and this is not what you should be doing. So yeah, the wording is actually is really important. If we look to other sources. So if we look to like once we get sort of governmental records or so on. So sometimes we do get words which we associate with with spying. So there is the Latin words explorator, for

example, which means scout or spy very frequently just used in a military contact. We have cursor, which also means sort of messenger or, you know, someone who's running effectively. like a fast spy effectively. But very often it's only the context that tells us that this is spying. And so it's one of the things about kind of looking or researching this topic is that you have to really kind of sort of pull together quite a lot of small pieces of evidence in order to understand and kind of have quite a lot of context to it. in order to kind of work out what it is that is actually happening. But also, I mean, I should say, you know, if we had sources that sort of says, here's the spy, right? They wouldn't be very good at it.

Shit spies. Yeah. Really, really rubbish. I mean, think about how we talk about, you know, I always say this about, you know, data analysts, for example, right? This is how a lot of kind of spying is described in the modern world that they are kind of analysts of data, right? Well, I'm also an analyst of data, right?

My historical records are clearly data, information, right? I'm definitely not a spy, and I do get asked that a lot when I get public lectures. But, I mean, so it's all about how you're kind of, you know, sort of describing and how you're trying to kind of get away from saying what you're actually doing. And it's really important. I'm pretty sure that anyone who works for my six, you know, on their, on their kind of kind of, you know, when they get their pay slip at the end of the month, it probably doesn't say

for spying services, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, just as accountant. Yeah. So what we're going to do now is we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we're going to talk about the role of women in this particular craft, because it may surprise some of our listeners.

So Jenny, you mentioned earlier about female spies or spy masters, mistresses. You also mentioned very briefly Emma of Normandy. Just tell us a little bit more about her and the sorts of spine networks that she was involved in, that she was overseeing. Yeah. So Emma is a very interesting character. As I said, she commissioned this work about her life as a kind of, you know, she was on the criticism at a time. And so this is about 1041, 1042, something like that. And, and, you know, she was on the criticism at a time. And so,

And her son, Edward the Confessor, has effectively been in exile in Normandy for quite a large part of his life. Because Emma of Normandy, she was initially married to King Etheret II or Etheret the Unready of England. And then when he died, kind of England ended up getting into the hands of Knut of Denmark. And Emma ended up marrying Knut, which wasn't particularly well liked by the Normans necessarily. but effectively her children from her first marriage, including Edward, ended up going into exile then in Normandy. So basically Emma's Norman family was kind of looking after them. But in the life of her, she writes about this one incident

that happens when her new husband Knut dies in 1035. And Knut also has a son from a previous marriage. And it's that person, Harold Harefoot, that actually becomes king. And so now Emma is kind of thinking to herself, oh, well, what shall I do? Right? And now she's in a bit of a tricky situation. Her own son with Knut is in Denmark.

He's actually a king of Denmark. So he's kind of residing there. Can't really help her out. And her other two sons are in exile in Normandy. And what happens is that we're not entirely sure exactly what happens. But one of the sons, Alfred, Alfred Etheling, comes to England in 1036 and he is killed through complete deceit. He comes over and he's captured and they basically gouch out his eyes. There's a lot of high gouging.

I know. No tongues. No tongues. Yeah, exactly. Right. And basically, because they did it with a knife, the sharp edge of it kind of got to his brain. And unfortunately That will happen

If you do Go out of the night It's not a good thing So he eventually dies being kind of torture I mean it's truly horrible horrific incident But what is really

interesting is that about six years later sort of Edward the Confessor is basically invited back to England to become king and now Emma finds herself in a bit of a tricker situation

because she clearly hasn't been helping her exiled sons and she commissions this work in which she basically says, I had nothing to do with the death of Alfred Etheling, even though there was a letter written to Alfred inviting him to come to England. And this is what that letter said, but it definitely wasn't from me. Yes, absolutely. Wow. It was from Harold and, you know, really actually Godwin, that is Harold Godwinson's father, of course, most powerful man in England.

It was really them who were kind of doing it. And they were very deceitful and they forged and they kind of said that this letter had come from me. But it wasn't actually from me and I had absolutely nothing to do with it. And it is in that sort of sequence that she shows that she is kind of sending. messengers between different individuals and she is portraying herself as like I'm doing the legitimate thing. I am sending envoys to negotiate with these people and to kind of talk to and communicate with these people. Whereas what King Harold, you know, Harold Harefoot was doing was being treacherous and he was luring my son into this trap together with the most powerful

man on the country and they are the ones who were kind of, they were doing spying things and sending out the spies who eventually captured my son and did this horrible thing to him. She protests a bit too much. Yeah, she's like, no, you don't need to look at any of the stuff that I've been doing secretly and that's absolutely fine and this is totally legitimate. Talk to me about then Alice Descent, am I saying that correctly? So this is, we're going forward in time a little bit here and she has another role to play. Yeah, so Alice Assent is a.

really interesting woman. So the period we're talking about now is sort of the reign of King John, who ruled 1199 to 1216. And Alice appears in the accounts of King John's household records, basically. So this is where kind of payments that the king is paying to various sort of individuals. And there we have, Alice of Sand, being described as a spy. I mean, that's unusual, isn't it, that she's named as such? Yeah, she actually comes as the kind of as the female equivalence. She says, exploratrix, which is like the female very... Oh, my God, I love that.

It's so much. Yes. It's a name of a book or something. Robert Harris, a very sounding book. Yeah. Absolutely. I love that idea. Yeah.

Robert, get writing. Yeah. Yeah. And so there are basically a few entries with her. They relate to two specific years. 1209 and 1212. And what we know about what is happening in King John's reign at the time is that King John has basically lost most of his kind of continental lands and he is sort of trying to recover it. And the only part that he holds is kind of what we think of as Gascany,

including where Sant is. And so Santis is kind of city that is in this kind of region that is very heavily contested between King John and the French king. So this is a place where King John would want to have some spies. So he knows things like which ones of the barons might be actually more on my side than on the French king's sides, for example. And so we don't know very much about Alice, apart from the fact that she is from Sand. But she appears in 1209. and we know that maybe she was merely reporting about what was happening in Pua Tu at the time in this French region of France, perhaps just telling John about kind of those who had loyalty to.

But there is another issue in 1209 and that is to do with John's relations with the church because England is under interdict, which means that no church services can be performed. So no weddings, no baptisms, no funerals, these kinds of things. So it's actually quite hard on the people in some way. John himself doesn't care, of course, but for the people is probably not so nice. And that is a big issue. And John is about to be excommunicated at this point. There are quite a lot of negotiations with the Pope.

And it is just possible that maybe her presence in England at a time is to do something. to do with that. In 1212, by contrast, it is very likely that it is the situation in Puerto. Because at the time, John has just been on the verge of kind of launching an invasion and to kind of recover his French lands. But his plans are halted by the fact that there is a rebellion in this part. And so it is quite likely that Alice's role is to. report on this rebellion to basically say who is loyal and who is not and sort of tell him about

when the situation is kind of more favorable effectively. Now, when I initially started looking at Alice, I actually thought that possibly she was someone who was attached to like a secular member to an ecclesiastic community. There is a bear or dam which is a kind of nunnery in sand. And I thought that maybe she was a member of that community, women can travel a little bit more freely. And if she was an ecclesiastic, it would also kind of explain because ecclesiastics also have diplomatic immunity, is less suspicious and so on and so forth. But actually, as my research has gone on, one of the things I've come to realize is that there are only two people in these household roles.

there are explicitly named as explorator X, Exploratrix. And so I think the second one is definitely to do with a military connection. And he's clearly a scout and he is described as a scout of someone else who's actually spying and bringing information to King John. And this makes me think that Alice is also a spy in a very military context. She is a scout effectively. And this tells us something about some of the roles over. women in a military context.

And so one of the things that we know about that is that there is this really interesting treaty from 1173 between Raymond, who is counter to Luz and one of the Iberian kings. And this treaty is basically says that Raymond is going to expel all the male and female military workers, Logadiras. in his kind of area. And this is so interesting that it specifically says also female ones, right? And this gives us this idea that women have very crucial roles, even in military context. And spying is absolutely one of those contexts. And of course, it would then be quite natural why Alice would be named as an exploratrix

because this is the legitimate side of espionage. that military context. Where it's needed. Do you know that's so unexpected because I thought, Jenny, that when talking about female spies, we'd be talking a lot about women having access to domestic spaces and being a little bit maybe invisible in their role and therefore able to move around.

But what you're saying is actually this woman is legitimately on the books and doing a role that her male counterparts are also doing and that she is visible. I mean, that's so unexpected. Yes, absolutely. And we know that by the time we get into the later Middle Ages, we have loads of women like that that are on the books across the whole of Europe, you know. And there is lots of evidence for that. And I have various colleagues who are kind of working on that side of things.

And I think we need to do a little bit more work on that for England in particular so that we get some of that also in England. But that that you talk about that kind of domestic space. we do have women that are in that role also. Yeah, inevitably. Yeah, inevitably. And I think that actually most of our evidence for espionage is exactly in that kind of role that you talk about. So in the household, I mean, you know, some of the things I've talked about today kind of gives the impression that perhaps most espionage happens in this military context. It's all about kind of winning battles and so on.

But actually, it's not true. because most of our evidence sits in things like the household, the court, for example. And no less dangerous. No less dangerous, absolutely. But that very domestic kind of context. And of course, there women have a real role as the kind of the head of the household. They are the people who are kind of in charge of the servants. And if you're in charge of the servants, well, it gives you access to people, right?

What is it that you need in order to be a spy master, access to people, right? So then they're sitting on top of that network potentially or giving them the position to do so. Another way to come across these people in the archive, I'm imagining Jenny, then, is when things go a bit wrong and when they are exposed or captured. What is the context of those histories when they present themselves in a medieval context? Yeah, do you know? So court records about this, in a particular about espionage, don't actually define it as espionage until we get into the very late medieval periods, from the kind of 14th, so late 13th and 14th century onwards. And then we get sort of trials against spies where they are specifically labeled as spies. But we do have instances of espionage in the earlier period, but they don't really appear in the court records as such.

So one of the nice, nice, I don't know why I'm saying, because it's a really good sequence. It also comes from England, I should say. England has very good records, I should say, for the medieval period. It comes from the reign of Henry II of England. So Henry II rules 1154 to 1189 And this is about midway through So 1173 to 1176 Something like this

And this is a man called Adam of Churchdown Very English name It is a very English name Yes absolutely Now it's actually Adam of Churchdown The Yorkshireman Oh wow I thought that would appeal to you

Yes yes So Adam has been placed by the English king into his son's household. Now his son, confusingly also called Henry. So I've referred to him as Henry the Young

King. So Adam has been placed into Henry the Young King's household as a spy to basically keep an eye on him because Henry the Young King he has a bit of a kind of problem in terms of rebelling against his father. He kind of feels that his father

should share his powers with him a little bit better. And, you know, Henry II is basically not so keen on that. And so he places this spy in his household. And Adam is in the kind of the writing office, the chancery of Henry the young king. And he sees all these people who are kind of coming and going and he is sort of intercepting some letters and so on. And he sends a letter to Henry the said back to Henry the second to basically say, yeah, he is doing conspiracy against you. But Henry the Young King, well, he's doing a bit of counter espionage himself. So his spies also in this writing of the intercepts this letter.

Oh my God. So Adam is caught. Absolutely red-handed. Wow. And Henry the Young King convenes this council and his counselor basically says he should be killed off for treason. Right. This is what he's done. This is treason very clearly.

However, what happens is that one of the bishops intervenes and basically says, no, you can't punish him. And at this point, Henry the Young King has already apparently kind of paraded Adam through a number of kind of French towns. So in the English king's kind of... It's really blown his cover. Yes, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So in the English king's kind of continental land, he's parading Adam, kind of whipping him. getting him to kind of, you know, all his clothes are off, he's in kind of, you know, sackcloth, you know, to show he's an absolute traitor, criminal kind of thing. But then the bishop or Poitier intervenes

and basically says, no, you can't punish him and you cannot kill him off. And the reason for that is because Adamo Churchdown is an ecclesiastic. He is basically a churchman. And the king does not have jurisdiction to punish the churchmen. Only the church can do this. So at that point, Adam is then collected by his master, Henry II, and put into the Abbey of Hyde just outside Winchester. And from there, you don't hear of Adam anymore. Now, what do we think Adam might have been doing in Hyde? Well, probably gone on his next mission. That's my feeling, right? Wow. So it's this kind of extraordinary story that really shows that actually, even if someone is caught spying, in particular if they are kind of churchmen or women also, it's quite difficult to punish them

because you don't always have the kind of legal mechanisms in order to do it. I mean, think about it in modern times. You know, we have that case quite recently where they decided that they couldn't actually kind of a class of that's kind of espionage because actually there wasn't the kind of, you know, it hadn't actually happened in a certain kind of circumstances in accordance with the English law. And this is exactly the same, right? It hasn't kind of been done in a particular way that kind of allows us to punish these people. And it's a really extraordinary thing.

So one of the reasons why you would use people who are like on the margins, women, slaves, you know, churchmen in particular like lower down churchmen so monks for example is because they can do they can spy with impunity yeah and it's it's super interesting and I think the reason why we know about this instance I said there are no court records but the reason we know about it is because it appears in this chronicle of Roger of Howden now Roger of Howden he's another Yorkman by the way and he is someone who himself is at Henry II's court. He is a kind of chronicler. He's a cleric.

He has been a kind of itinerant justice. So he knows quite a lot about the legal side of things. He's someone that works in the kind of chancery. He's someone that leads the king's kind of allies and enemies to the English king's course. So, for example, we know that he has been providing safe conduct for the Scottish king, for example, at one point. So this is someone who is a kind of diplomat come lots of other things. things, right? He's probably done some of these kind of missions himself. The reason why this particular story appears in the Chronicle of Roger of Haven is because this is one that is very

close to him. It's about the Yorkshireman. It's about someone that he possibly knew and someone that was probably doing pretty similar things to the things that Roger himself was doing at Henry II's court. So it's quite an interesting kind of insight into this. You've spoken about, Jenny, the fact that this is not a formalised system to begin with. When do we see that formalisation start, or do we indeed see that formalisation start to come into place? And if we do, what are the structures that are put around us? Yeah. So this is, it's quite a difficult question to answer, primarily because we can see formalisation at different times.

in the medieval period in different ways. So in the 8th and 9th century, in the Carolingian Empire, in particular around Charlemagne again, so I've talked about Alcuin already. And around that time, we have quite a lot of spy reports, we have a lot of letters. We also have like a track that is kind of called on the governance of the kingdom, which describes a setup for a, espionage. It talks about how informants should come to the court. It talks about the chancellor being the keeper of secrets, for example. So it's really setting up these things. And although we might

think that this is a kind of, you know, this is how he imagined or how he wanted it to work. Please note that this track, by the way, is written by Adelhard. You remember the cockerel from that letter? It's written by him. Okay. Right. So this is set up. up by a person that's clearly in the system. But it's a kind of, you know, this is how he imagined or perhaps how he wanted it to work. And then we get glimpses of it actually working in that way from things like Alcun's letters and from poetry and from other kind of letters and so on. But the Carolingian period, so this period in the kind of late 8th and 9th century around

the reign of Charlemagne and then his son, Lou, the Pius, the most powerful kings in Europe. Europe at the time. We see that this is like a big renaissance where we see lots of documents being written. Literacy is spread among the kind of elite in a kind of completely different way to want, you know, not only among churchmen but also among kind of noble elite. But then after that, there is a lack of kind of sources. And so we only get a few glimpses of kind are usually spies, but not that kind of institutional kind of setting, really, until we get to the 12th and 13th century. And then again, so now we get tracks like, so John Oswaldsbury, for example, he visualizes

how the king should rule and how he should kind of behave with his kingdom and so on. And again, he sets out that like the king should be at the top and he should have eyes and ears everywhere and his kind of the people, the nobles around his immediate advisors should act as his eyes and ears everywhere and bring this information back to the king effectively.

So it's again setting up that this is what the system should be. And then of course we start getting these governmental records which has records of so we get records like towns being fined for having communicated

with the enemy for example. We get individuals that are very clearly spies, Adam Churchdown is one of them, for example. And then by the time we get to John's reign, we then get this explosion of governmental sources. And now we can see really how the system operates at a kind of tiered level. So the spy at the kind of bottom, then a kind of middleman on top. top of that. So the middleman will be someone that has kind of access to, you know, lots of different people, kind of men of his own. And he is also someone that kind of, so he has these kind of lower status, quite large number of what we might think of as agents, messengers that can do

all sorts of things. But he also has connections to the top. And the next level is then the spy master. So he has a connection to like a spy master. Usually someone. that is kind of part of the king's household, like the higher up, someone who is an elite person, a baron of some sort, and then the king then right at the top of that, right? So this kind of four levels, but effectively three levels at the system of espionage with the king at the top. And so we get quite a lot of evidence for that. And by the time we get to 1221, we have this really excellent.

extraordinary first English spy report where we can see this functioning extremely well because it's a letter that is sent from this middormand to the spy master, Hubert Borough is a kind of high-status baron who started off in King John's household as he's kind of chamberlain. You know, the person who's kind of looking after John's very innermost kind of his spaces, shall we say. He controls access to the king. So this is a person that's very frequently, certainly in literature, said to be a spy master. And Hubert Abur clearly starts off that.

And then we can trace some of his activities and some of the things that he does, looking at the men that he's clearly employing in the early parts of John's reign. Hubert Abur himself is kind of acting as a spy. We know that at one point after King John wins the battle at Mirbeau, for example, in 1202, he captures more than 200 knights, including some of his most powerful enemies. And Hubert Aber is one of the people in charge of these enemies. And what he effectively does is that he makes sure that he's keeping these prisoners separate. He's making sure that they're not allowed to speak to each other.

and they devise this system for who can talk to them effectively. And it's a personalized system. So it's like they have like a code and only three people know. So if I send one of these three people to you, you will know that this is a person who can talk to this prisoner. So it's a very kind of, it's a coded way, quite a secure way of making sure. that information is kept to a very, very limited small amount of people. And Hubert the Burr is right at the centre of this at this particular point. And from there, Hubert of Burr, like he is clearly providing extremely good service to King John.

So he makes it right to the top. And by the time we get to 1221, Hubert Abur is effectively the region of King John's son, who's now the person on the throne, Henry III, who is a mum. minor at this time. And this is then why Hubert Baer clearly is the spy master. So the middleman writes off this spy report to Hubert the Burr at the top. And in it it says, I have a spy who's tracing a rebel. And this is what he was doing. He basically left in the middle of the night with the whole of his household. He took some fast horses and he traveled through these various places, making his way to Yorkshire.

have you noticed how Yorkshire turns out? All the time, yeah. Well, that's why I've moved there on a spy now. Charles III has engaged me on a secret diplomatic mission. So William the Force, who is the kind of rebel, is making his way towards his lands in Yorkshire, clearly on his way to the Scottish king to kind of ally with him. But, you know, that's another story. And, yeah, so the middleman is writing this report, basically saying.

And he was making his way up. but I have this spy who's kind of going with him. And the spy has reported back to me that this is what was happening. So he names all the places that they had passed through. So the spy has clearly been with William the Force, the rebel, the whole time as he went. And he says, this is where they are going. And he says, you know, while the spy was also with William the Force, he enacted sabotage and made sure that William couldn't travel too far.

far so that we could kind of counteract what he was doing. And he basically sabotages William's horses. Yeah. Wow. Make sure that they can't go on basically as quickly. And then he clearly sends a messenger to the middleman, who then sends this next messenger to Hubert the Burr. But the middleman, he also kind of sends out other messengers and other men.

So he sends one towards Scotland, a couple two kind of other castors to make sure that they are secure and kind of clearly warning them that this rebel is on his way there and we're going to intercept them. It's a great story. What course happens is that William the Force, he's eventually forced to kind of seek peace because this is a successful one. And it's clearly the reason why this particular letter has survived because it was a successful attempt to basically intercept him. And I think what is really interesting about this particular letter is that it really shows that three tears, so, you know, the spies of the bomb, the middleman, the has all these men, and the spy master at the top, is interesting also that it shows how many men the middleman

actually was, you know. Sure. So it was the guy in the rebels household, but then in order to send the message to the midderman, that man had to send another messenger because he can't post a letter, Right? This is a moment where let us travel with people, right? So here we have another person. And from that we can kind of work out that we're talking about at least four or five different spies in this particular incidence, which is quite interesting in itself. And so it is this kind of great story that just really gives us a really strong hint at how institutionalized it was at this particular point. in 1221. And I mean, this is not by accident, right?

Because in order for these people to kind of be able to act fast, to be able to know what to do and how to do it, they have to have kind of have some, you know, who do you report to, for example? You have to know that before. So there is clearly a system. It's just that this is the point at which we first see that system in this clear way. Jenny, you've absolutely blown my mind about, I suppose, you've often. a different way of visualising the medieval world, I think, and mapping it and understanding those, you know, the hierarchies that I thought were in place, or still in place, but there's a whole sort of exciting world bubbling away under the surface. And you've brought into the, into focus,

I think a lot of people who would be on the edge of that world as well. And given them back some agency, you're writing your book, Little Birds Now. When can people get it in the shops? Will it be available soon? Uh-oh. Yeah, this is the dreaded moment. I would say probably not too soon. Okay. Yeah, I think I'm...

That's what a spy would say. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Keep it vague. The suspense, right? But you can see the amount of material you're trying to work with, especially having spoken to you about it now. It's so exciting. The world is big.

The archive actually is. Yeah, absolutely. And it's, you know, when I first started, everyone said oh there won't be very much evidence and then as I started looking for it I kind of realized actually the evidence is huge

but we have to look for it in a different way like you know when I found the little birds for example you know this is not something that we would have thought about to look for initially but then when I started thinking about that I was like actually this absolutely makes sense and this is sort of what it is

so I guess that I don't know I'm not going to put it data Yeah, whenever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I am writing this book. It is coming, you know, peace boys, when it's like. Yeah, when you see a book called Little Birds, you know, that Jenny Rogers. Yeah.

Well, we're all about gaps in the archive and reading those gaps in those sciences on this podcast today. So thank you so much. If you've enjoyed listening to or indeed watching this episode on YouTube, you can leave us a five-star review wherever you get your podcast or join in the discussion in the comments. If you want to hear more spy stories, more medieval history, you can get in touch with us after dark at history hit. com.