How To Be A Medieval Spy

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/xhg6PJa Sign 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 surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. 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 https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  It's 10:66, and Norman arrows have started to rain down on 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.

• 2:20Speaker 00

  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.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Antony.

• 3:13Speaker 00

  And I'm Maddie.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  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 horseback. It was hidden in letters, carried by merchants, monks, queens, and prisoners.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  And who better to shed light on these shadowy pursuits than Jenny Ben, and Professor of Medieval History at Cardiff University? Jenny, welcome to After Dark.

• 3:48Speaker 05

  Thank you ever so much for having me.

• 3:50Speaker 00

  We're so excited to talk to you. Now, as Antony 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?

• 4:09Speaker 05

  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, 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 to find?" 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, that people can use to be competitive in a medieval world that is extremely competitive.

• 4:51Speaker 05

  Personalized governments, there are no nation-states as such. And, you know, the king is competing with other kings, but also with his nobles, bishops. And so governments is very decentralised in lots of ways. Many, many elite men and women have their own courts and so on. And in order to have advantages in this very competitive world, you must have access to information, right?

• 5:22Speaker 00

  So everyone is spying on everyone, basically?

• 5:25Speaker 05

  I mean, effectively, because I kind of think that if you don't do it, you're not going to survive.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Do you think it's... If it is distinct in some ways, is there still, at the centre of this medieval idea of intelligence, secrecy, conceal-reveal? Is that still there?

• 5:43Speaker 05

  Yes, absolutely. So this idea about secrecy is conceptualised slightly differently. It's very often, you can view it in two ways. I guess secrecy that is related to religion. So this idea that no secrets is actually a secret from God, for example, and his representatives on earth. 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 shouldn't actually have any secrets. But then at the same time, there is this kind of secret. And even in the Bible, there is a lot of espionage, right? There is a lot of spying going on.

• 6:27Speaker 05

  And it's God sanctioning secrets of a very practical kind that you need to have to get on with things. But secrecy generally is not seen as a good thing. It's linked to things like treason, betrayal. And in a society where people are thinking about loyalty, Oath of loyalty, the warband, the people who are making war, they should be loyal. There is a real emphasis on that. Communities are small. Everyone knows everyone in your little communities. There, loyalties and truthfulness towards your neighbours is extremely important. So secrecy is seen as something extremely bad.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, it strikes me, the medieval world is 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 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. It's the reality behind that performance, I suppose. Thinking about who the spies actually were, then, Jenny. We have a very strict hierarchy in the medieval world, certainly across Europe. We think often about, you've mentioned, kings, noblemen. Are these the kinds of people who are spying?

• 7:53Speaker 00

  Or are there more improbable agents within this world as well?

• 7:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I would say that, 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 social status. And they are meant to be Christian leaders that are following that, and there is no secret. There is a 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 sources portray

• 8:42Speaker 05

  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, the relevance, in some ways, to what we get in the contemporary world about stigmatisation of people who are foreign, for example. People who are on the margins of society, perhaps religious non-conformists, 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. So these are the people that...

• 9:28Speaker 05

  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, 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, 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.

• 10:13Speaker 05

  And that's actually quite important and that gives people agency as well in some ways. And I think that's quite a, a different way of viewing these people who kind of are on the margins.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  I love that. That's so tantalizing, isn't it? It's, it's this, again, this kind of ensemble of people that are otherwise marginalized, starting to come into view a little bit better, especially for this time period where it's, 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're, we're, we know how hard writing books is and it'll, it'll happen when it happens. But tell us about the little birds in the medieval era.

• 10:56Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, so the little birds, this kind of idea of a little bird tells me or a little bird told me. Uh, I mean, you know, this is an expression that we kind of, that, that was formed sort of in the 19th century or so. But, um, you know, even from, from the bibles, we have notions of this idea. And in the medieval period, we very frequently get spies described as little birds. So metaphorically speaking, so, uh, we have the letters of Alcine, for example, in the sort of late eighth century, uh, early ninth century. He talks about these little birds that he's sending out all across Europe.

• 11:41Speaker 05

  So he, he's actually, he's a, a churchman, he's a, an abbot and he's also a teacher to, at Charlemagne's court. Charlemagne is the most powerful king in medieval, uh, Europe at the time. And he's a kind of, you know, close to the royal family, teaching Charlemagne's children and numerous other people. Um, and so Alcine has this huge network, but he also has kind of access to young people because he's a teacher, right? What he does is that he sends out all these people to basically spy, to get information, to get intelligence

• 12:21Speaker 05

  in lots of ways. And one of the, the letters that he's got, he's actually describing this one instance dating from seven nine nine, where the pope has turned up to Charlemagne's court in Paderborn, in what is now Germany. And the pope is injured. He, he has, uh, he's basically been sort of, his tongue has apparently been cut out. Uh, you know, his eyes has been gouged out supposedly. I mean, how on earth did he actually make it to Germany?

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, true, actually, good point, yeah.

• 12:54Speaker 05

  But this is, this is what it describes, right? We'll, we'll, we'll go with the flow.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's pretend, yeah.

• 12:59Speaker 05

  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, at the kind of imperial, at the, um, the palace in Rome." And, uh, you know, "I need your help," effectively. And Alcine 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, Alcine refers to himself as the sparrow.

• 13:38Speaker 05

  And the person that he has as kind of mingling among all these courtiers is called, is referred as the blackbird.

• 13:46Speaker 00

  I like how specific it is as well.

• 13:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, it's super interesting. So the sparrow, so just so that we are sort of clear about this. So, um, the sparrow is a kind of ecclesiastical reference, this idea about kind of spreading the religious kind of word effectively.

• 14:04Speaker 00

  Because sparrow is a, a common bird, so they're everywhere.

• 14:07Speaker 05

  Exactly. And, uh, it's kind of meant to be symbolizing the kind of, the, the soul and the spirit of the individual. So that's why Alcine refers to himself in that one. He also refers to the cockerel. Now, the cockerel is an interesting character. This is actually Adelard, abbot of Corbi, who is kind of Charlemagne's, uh, in many ways, he's kind of right-hand man, shall 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 in coming and outgoing. Yeah, absolutely. And so, so he's an interesting character. He's referred to as the cockerel because he's like the, the person who's sort of in charge of everyone, waking everyone up, kind of, you know,

• 14:51Speaker 05

  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 Alcine's letters, we know, he, he refers to these various people in, in different ways in these kind of, you know, through these bird metaphors. And Adelhard, you know, can be identified very easily, Alcine himself also, but the blackbird, 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,

• 15:36Speaker 05

  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 courtiers, just kind of doing their thing, melting into the background. And that's why we can't identify it. 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 Frank's casket, for example, where we have this image of Wayland the smith, which is a very well-known medieval legend. And Wayland is in captivity and he has these spies that are spying on him while he is in captivity.

• 16:16Speaker 05

  And in order to get out of captivity, he actually poisons these, these kind of, um, people that are spying on him. And on the Frank's casket, uh, it is shown, um, how he does, or he, he kills them, sorry, I should say. Uh, and they are birds, they're depicted as birds. And so here we get that bird metaphor again, right? He turns up in lots of kind of poet, um, poems. Um, and we get it in, I mean, we get it in saints' lives, for example, all sorts of things. And they tend to be very specific birds. So I've already said about the blackbird, so that's one that comes again and again. Uh, Jackdaw is probably the most common one.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Because they talk a bit, don't they?

• 16:59Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly. This is exactly it. So birds that are kind of talk, so starlings also. But Jackdaws, crows, that kind of things, birds are quite intelligent, magpies occasionally. I mean, but you don't get the chicken, right? Sorry.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a good one for the chicken now.

• 17:18Speaker 05

  I know, no chickens for spies, right? Which is quite interesting, right? Um, so, um, but the thing about Jackdaw 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 they're also very clever, so they can do lots of different things. And one of the, um, ways in which I kind of came to, to this project was this, it is a, a Latin epic, which was written in the German kingdom in the 11th century, so around the year 1050. It's called the Rudleb. And the Rudleb is an epic about this exiled knight

• 17:59Speaker 05

  who ends up in a foreign court and he has these loads of adventures. And then eventually he's gonna kind of go back home. He kind of makes his fortune. He, he's allowed to come back home. And it's at this point, we kind of introduce the Rudleb's mother, who has a jackdaw. And she asks this jackdaw to go and sit in a tree and to basically tell her when Rudleb is returning. So to look out for him and tell her when Rudleb is returning. And this jackdaw 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 travelers and so on.

• 18:43Speaker 05

  And they're competing together. But the jackdaw, because it's so small, it manages to climb right to the top of this tree, the, the top of the branches. I mean, has anyone been climbing trees? I mean, I used to climb trees when I.

• 18:57Speaker 05

  I used to love climbing trees when I was a child, right? So the higher up you go, the thinner the branches go, right? And it's really this that kind of gives us this idea that the, that the, the jackdaw 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, the kind of the higher branches. And so eventually he then wins this competition with the servant boy. And he sees Rudleb and then he flies back to the mother and tells her that now Rudleb is coming back to you. The jackdaw is then fed at the mother's table and kind of lives there and has quite a nice life.

• 19:38Speaker 05

  But it, 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,

• 20:21Speaker 05

  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 we don't, 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, of this political society, shall we say.

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• 22:51Speaker 00

  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 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 harder 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, the 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?

• 23:32Speaker 00

  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.

• 23:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:43Speaker 00

  Not a tapestry, it's an embroidery, just to clarify for everyone. I'm going to take us to 1066 and we're talking about the Bayeux 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, has it come to the British Museum? It's here right now, isn't it?

• 24:02Speaker 05

  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 spies on the Bayeux Tapestry. And I said, it must be really exciting times at the British Museum at the moment.

• 24:21Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's in the headlines.

• 24:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. It is, 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 Bayeux Tapestry at various points. I remember doing it as part of my masters. I did an Anglo-Saxon and medieval module at York, which I loved so much. And just thinking about the Franz casket there as well, it was sort of giving me slightly nervous flashbacks of that.

• 25:04Speaker 00

  But, you know, this was not a, 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?

• 25:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, so is this a good moment to confess that I haven't actually looked at the birds on the Bayeux 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 Bayeux Tapestry is two very specific individuals that clearly are spies. And one of them is in a tree, right?

• 25:43Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 25:44Speaker 05

  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, in a sequence of the tapestry. This is actually when Harold Godwinson, who is, he's one of, King Edward 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 Count of Punture. And, you know, William, Duke William of Normandy finds out about this and decides that actually

• 26:29Speaker 05

  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, Count of Punture, for the release of Harold Godwinson. And the point at which the spy is in the tree is actually when the envoy is a kind of returning to 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 envoy's coming back, runs back to William and kind of go, the envoys are coming, duh, duh, duh, you know.

• 27:14Speaker 05

  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, 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.

• 27:49Speaker 00

  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.

• 28:04Speaker 05

  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.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:39Speaker 05

  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.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 28:54Speaker 05

  Right? This is absolutely fine.

• 28:56Speaker 00

  Why don't I just touch on that? Because the other scene in the Bayeux Tapestry that has a spy, and I use that word in inverted commas, because, you know, you mentioned earlier, the word espionage doesn't exist in this moment.

• 29:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:09Speaker 00

  And 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 in the story. And we have a Latin word, because of course the Bayeux 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, nuntiant, which is a word for an informer, is that right? Or to inform?

• 29:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, to inform, yeah.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  And then just thinking about, you know, kind of moving spying into that diplomatic context and giving it that sort of elevation, do you think that's what's happening here in terms of? Labeling it with the Latin word and and sort of giving it that legitimacy, I suppose.

• 29:57Speaker 05

  Yes, this is exactly it. And it's one of the things that we see in quite a lot of different sources. So this is what I mean about that kind of the diplomatic sort of military context. Then they are using sort of words like that that kind of gives it a 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 that wouldn't be kind of the the done thing. But but here is kind of being presented as military reconnaissance, right? And so using this word nuncia to kind of informing gives it that legitimacy. We see it in lots of other sources. I mean, I I think it's so interesting. So

• 30:41Speaker 05

  the Encomium MI, for example, which is a 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 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 twenty years, twenty five years before ten sixty six. But it has all this kind of notion of spying and it's really Emma trying to like excuse herself for using spies and secret messengers.

• 31:24Speaker 05

  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, it was an ambassador, it was a messenger, and she was merely bringing news and she was sending a letter to someone. Isn't this nice?

• 32:03Speaker 05

  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 is really important. If we if we look to other sources, so if we look to like once we get sort of governmental records or so on.

• 32:44Speaker 05

  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 context. We have cursor, which also means sort of messenger or, you know, someone who who's running effectively. This is 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

• 33:25Speaker 05

  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 if we had sources that sort of says, here's the spy, right? They wouldn't be very good at it.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Shit spies.

• 33:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, really, really rubbish. I mean, think about how we talk about, you know, I 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 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 give public lectures. But I mean, so so it's all about how you're kind of, you know, sort of describing how you're trying to kind of get away from saying what you're actually doing. And and it's really important. I'm pretty sure that anyone who works for MI6, you know, on their

• 34:32Speaker 05

  on their kind of, you know, when they get their payslip at the end of the month, it probably doesn't say for spying services, I'm pretty sure, right?

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, just accountant.

• 34:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  So what we're gonna do now is we're gonna take a quick break. And when we come back, we're gonna talk about the role of women in this particular craft, because it may surprise some of our listeners.

• 35:05Speaker 06

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• 35:43Speaker 07

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• 36:12Speaker 00

  So Jenny, you mentioned earlier about female spies or spymasters, mistresses. You also mentioned very briefly Emma of Normandy. Just tell us a little bit more about her and and the sorts of spying networks that she was involved in, that she was overseeing.

• 36:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, so Emma is a is a very interesting character. As I said, she commissioned this this work about her life as a kind of, you know, she she was on the criticism at the time. And so this is about ten forty one, ten forty two, something like that. 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 the Second, or Etheret the Unready of England. And then when he died, kind of England ended up getting into the hands of Knut of Denmark.

• 37:14Speaker 05

  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 the life of her, she writes about this one incident that happens when her new husband Knut dies in ten thirty five. And Knut also has a son from a previous marriage. And it's that person, Harold Hereford, 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.

• 37:59Speaker 05

  Her own son, Wid 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 is that, you know, we're not entirely sure exactly what happens. But one of the sons, Alfred, Alfred Etheling, comes to England in ten thirty six and he is killed through the complete deceit. He comes over and he's captured and they basically gouge out his eyes.

• 38:34Speaker 00

  There's a lot of eye gouging in this.

• 38:36Speaker 05

  I know.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  No tongues.

• 38:37Speaker 05

  No, 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.

• 38:47Speaker 00

  That will happen if you do gouge inside that with a knife.

• 38:50Speaker 05

  It's not a good thing. So he eventually dies being kind of tortured. I mean, it's, you know, 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 tricky situation because she clearly hasn't been helping her exiled sons. And she 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

• 39:29Speaker 05

  to Alfred inviting him to come to England, and this is what that letter said, but it definitely wasn't from me.

• 39:38Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 39:38Speaker 05

  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

• 40:22Speaker 05

  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 in 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.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's, 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 de Saint, 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.

• 41:06Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, so Alice de Saint is a really interesting woman. So the period we're talking about now is sort of the reign of King John, who ruled eleven ninety-nine to twelve sixteen. 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 Saint being described as a spy, explorator.

• 41:40Speaker 00

  I mean, that's unusual, isn't it, that she's named as such?

• 41:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, she's, she actually comes as the kind of, as the female equivalent. She says exploratrix, which is like the female variant.

• 41:50Speaker 00

  Oh my god, I love that so much.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Or something. Robert Harris, very sounding book.

• 41:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:55Speaker 05

  Absolutely. I love that idea. Yeah.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Robert, get writing.

• 42:02Speaker 05

  Yeah. And so there are basically a few entries with her. They relate to two specific years, twelve oh nine and twelve twelve. And what we know about what is happening in kind of 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 Saint is. And so Saint is this 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

• 42:43Speaker 05

  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 side, for example. And so we don't know very much about Alice, apart from the fact that she is from Saint. But she appears in twelve oh nine and we know that maybe she was merely reporting about what was happening in Poitou at the time, in this French region of France, perhaps just telling John about kind of those who had loyalties to him. But there is another issue in twelve oh nine, and that is to do with John's relations with the church, because

• 43:28Speaker 05

  England is under interdict, which means that no church services can be performed. So no weddings, no baptisms, no funerals, these kinds of things. It's actually, it's actually quite hard on the people in some way. John himself doesn't care, of course, but you know, for the people is probably not, 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 the time is to do something to do with that.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:06Speaker 05

  In twelve twelve, by contrast, it is very likely that it is the situation in Poitou. 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 and 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

• 44:51Speaker 05

  was attached to like a secular member, to an ecclesiastic community. There is a Bé Odam, which is a kind of nunnery in Saint. 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 realise is that there are only two people in these household roles that are explicitly named as explorator, exploratrix. And so I think the second one is definitely

• 45:36Speaker 05

  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 of 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 eleven seventy-three between Raymond, who is counted to lose, and one of the Iberian kings. And this treaty is, basically says that Raymond is going

• 46:19Speaker 05

  to expel all the male and female military workers, logadiras, in his kind of area. And this is so interesting that it has, like, it specifically says also female ones, right? And this gives us this idea that women have very crucial roles, even in military contexts. 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.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Where it's needed.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  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.

• 47:25Speaker 05

  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.

• 47:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, inevitably.

• 47:58Speaker 05

  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.

• 48:27Speaker 00

  And no less dangerous.

• 48:28Speaker 05

  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 spymaster? Access to people, right?

• 48:53Speaker 01

  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?

• 49:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, do you know, so court records about this, in particular about espionage, don't actually define it as espionage until we get into the very late medieval period. So from the kind of fourteenth, so late thirteenth and fourteenth century onwards. And then we get sort of trials against spies where they are specifically labelled 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 kind of, one of the nice, nice, I don't know why I'm saying, because sentences are never nice, but it's a really good sequence.

• 49:59Speaker 05

  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 the Second of England. So Henry the Second rules eleven fifty-four to eleven eighty-nine, and this is about midway through, so eleven seventy-three to eleven seventy-six, something like this. And this is a man called Adam of Chertown.

• 50:22Speaker 00

  Very English name, isn't it?

• 50:24Speaker 05

  Very English name. Yes, absolutely. Now, it's actually Adam of Chertown, the Yorkshireman.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 50:31Speaker 00

  There we go.

• 50:31Speaker 05

  I thought that would appeal to you.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 50:35Speaker 05

  So Adam has been placed by the English king into his son's household. Now, his son, confusingly also called Henry, so I refer 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, he kind of feels that his father should share his powers with him a little bit better. And, you know, Henry the Second is basically not so keen on that. And so, 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.

• 51:20Speaker 05

  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, back to Henry the Second, 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.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 51:48Speaker 05

  So Adam is caught absolutely red handed.

• 51:52Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 51:53Speaker 05

  And Henry the Young King convenes this council. And his councillor 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.

• 52:27Speaker 00

  It's really blown his cover.

• 52:29Speaker 05

  Yes, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. 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 patriarch intervenes and basically says, no, you can't punish him and you cannot kill him off. And the reason for that is because Adam of Chertown is an ecclesiastic. He, he is basically a churchman. And the king does not have jurisdiction to punish this churchman. Only the church can do this.

• 53:09Speaker 05

  So at that point, Adam is then collected by his master, Henry the Second, 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 out on his next mission. That's my feeling, right?

• 53:31Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 53:32Speaker 05

  Um, 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, they are, 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, in modern times, you know, we had that case quite recently where they decided that they couldn't actually kind of class it as kind of espionage. Because actually, there wasn't a 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?

• 54:15Speaker 05

  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 incident, so I said, there are no court records. But the reason why we know about it is because it appears in this chronicle of Roger of Hauden. Now, Roger of Hauden, he's another Yorkshireman, by the way.

• 54:57Speaker 05

  And he is someone who himself is at Henry the Second'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 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 court. So for example, he, we know that he has been providing safe conduct for the, for the Scottish king, for example, at one point. So this is someone who is a kind of diplomat come lots of other 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 Hauden

• 55:41Speaker 05

  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 the Second's court. So it's quite an interesting kind of insight into this.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  You've spoken about Jenny, the, the fact that this is not a formalized system to begin with. When do we see that formalization start, or do we indeed see that formalization start to come into place? And what are the, if we do, what are the, the structures that's, that are put around us?

• 56:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, so this is, it's quite a difficult question to answer. Primarily because we can see formalization at different, different times in the medieval period in different ways. So in the eighth and ninth century, uh, 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, um, a, a tract that is kind of called On the Governance of the Kingdom, which describes a setup for espionage.

• 57:01Speaker 05

  It talks about how informants should come to the court. It talks about the chancellor being the keeper of secrets, for example. So, 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 tract, by the way, is written by Adelhard. You remember the cockerel from that letter? It's written by him, right? So this is set 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 Alcuin's letters

• 57:44Speaker 05

  and from poetry and from other kind of letters and so on. But the Carolingian period, so this period in the kind of late eighth and ninth century around the reign of Charlemagne, uh, and then his son Louis the Pious, the most powerful kings in Europe at the time. We see that this is like a, a big renaissance where we see lots of documents being written. Uh, literacy is spread among the kind of elite in a kind of completely different way to one, 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 of usually spies,

• 58:28Speaker 05

  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 of Salisbury, 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, um, the people, the nobles around him, his immediate advisors should act as his eyes and ears everywhere and bring this information back to, to the king effectively. So it's again, setting up that this is what the system should be.

• 59:08Speaker 05

  And then, of course, we start getting these governmental records, which has records of, so we get records like, um, um, towns being fined for having communicated with the enemy, for example. We get individuals that are very clearly spies. Adam of Chertown is one of them, for example. Uh, 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 a tiered level. So the spy at the kind of bottom, then a kind of middleman on top of that.

• 59:53Speaker 05

  So the middleman will be someone that has kind of access to, you know, lots of different people, um, kind of men of his own. Uh, 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. Uh, 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?

• 1:00:34Speaker 05

  So this kind of this uh four levels, but effectively three levels at the system of espionage with the the king at the top. And so we so we get quite a lot of evidence for that. Uh, and by the time we get to uh twelve twenty one, we have this really extraordinary first English spy report. Where we can see this uh functioning extremely well. Because it's a letter that is sent from this middle man to the spy master. Hubert the Borough, who is uh Hubert the Borough is a kind of um um high status baron. Who started off in King John's household as his kind of chamberlain.

• 1:01:17Speaker 05

  You know, the person who's kind of looking after John's very innermost kind of um. His spaces, shall we say, he controls access to the king. So this is a person that's very frequently, certainly in literature, um said to be a spy master. Um, and Hubert the Borough clearly starts off that. And then we can trace some of his activities and some of the things that he does. Uh, looking at the men that he's clearly employing in the early parts of John's reign. Hubert the Borough himself is kind of acting as a spy. We know that at one point after King John uh wins the uh the battle at Mirbo, for example, in twelve oh two.

• 1:02:00Speaker 05

  He captures more than two hundred knights, including some of his most powerful enemies. And Hubert the Borough is one of the people in charge of these enemies. And what he effectively does is that he uh 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 a code and only three people uh 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.

• 1:02:41Speaker 05

  So it's a very kind of, it's a it's a coded way, quite a secure way of making sure that. Uh, information is kept to a very, very limited, small amount of people. And Hubert the Borough is right at the centre of this at this particular point. And from there, Hubert the Borough, 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 twelve twenty one, Hubert the Borough is effectively the regent of um King John's son. Who's now the the person on the throne, uh Henry the Third, who's a minor at this time. And this is then why Hubert the Borough clearly is the spy master.

• 1:03:24Speaker 05

  So the middle man writes off this spy report to Hubert the Borough 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 travelled through these various places, making his way to Yorkshire. Have you noticed how Yorkshire turns up?

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  All the time, yeah, that's why I've moved there on the spy now. Charles the Third has engaged me on diplomat, secret diplomatic mission.

• 1:03:58Speaker 05

  So he's, so William the Force, who's 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. Um, and um, yeah, so the middle man is writing this report, basically saying, and he 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 as he went. And he says, this is where they are going. And he says, you know, while I, while the spy was also with William the Force.

• 1:04:41Speaker 05

  He enacted sabotage and made sure that William couldn't travel too far so that we could kind of counteract what he was doing. And he basically sabotages William's horses.

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 1:04:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:52Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:04:53Speaker 05

  Make sure that they they can't go on basically as quickly. And then he clearly sends a messenger to the middle man, who then sends this next messenger to Hubert the Borough. But the middle man, he also kind of sends out other messengers and other men. So he sends one towards Scotland, one, a couple to kind of other castes 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. Right? It's a great story. What of course happens is, 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.

• 1:05:36Speaker 05

  Because it was a successful attempt to basically intercept them. And I think what is really interesting about this particular letter is that it really shows that three tiers. So, you know, the spies at the bomb, the middle man that has all these men and the spy master at the top. It's interesting also that it shows how many men the middle man actually was, you know.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:06:02Speaker 05

  So it was the guy in in the rebel's household. But then in order to send the message to the middle man, that man had to send another messenger. Because you can't post a letter, right? This is a, this is a moment where letters 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 instance. Which is quite interesting uh in itself. Um, and so i- it is this kind of great story that just really gives us a. A really strong hint at how institutionalized it was at this particular point in twelve twenty one.

• 1:06:45Speaker 05

  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.

• 1:07:09Speaker 00

  Jenny, you've absolutely blown my mind about, I suppose it is, you've offered a different way of visualizing the medieval world, I think, and mapping it. And understanding those, you know, the the hierarchies that I thought were in place, often in place, but there's a whole. Sort of exciting world bubbling away under the surface. And 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?

• 1:07:43Speaker 05

  Uh-oh, yeah, this is the dreaded moment. I would say probably not too soon, yeah, I I think I'm.

• 1:07:51Speaker 00

  That's what a spy would say.

• 1:07:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 1:07:53Speaker 00

  Keep it vague.

• 1:07:54Speaker 05

  The suspense, right?

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  But you can see the amount of material you're trying to work with, especially having spoken to you about it now.

• 1:08:02Speaker 00

  It's so exciting how rich the archive actually is.

• 1:08:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely. And it's, you know, when I first started, uh, everyone said, oh, there won't be very much evidence. And then as I started looking for it, I kind of realised, 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 so I guess that, you know, I don't know, I'm not going to put a date on it.

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, whenever, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:40Speaker 05

  But I am writing this book, it is coming, you know, please, boys, when it's out.

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, when you see a book called Little Birds, you know that Jenny wrote this.

• 1:08:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, um, well, we're all about gaps in the archive and and reading those gaps and 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 podcasts. 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, [email protected].