The Eye of the Crown: The Development and Evolution of the Elizabethan Secret Service

This volume discusses the development of governmental proto-bureaucracy, which led to and was influenced by the inclusion of professional agents and spies in the early modern English government.

In the government’s attempts to control religious practices, wage war, and expand their mercantile reach both east and west, spies and agents became essential figures of empire, but their presence also fundamentally altered the old hierarchies of class and power. The job of the spy or agent required fluidity of role, the adoption of disguise and alias, and education, all elements that contributed to the ideological breakdown of social and class barriers. The volume argues that the inclusion of the lower classes (commoners, merchants, messengers, and couriers) in the machinery of government ultimately contributed to the creation of governmental proto-bureaucracy. The importance and significance of these spies is demonstrated through the use of statistical social network analysis, analyzing social network maps and statistics to discuss the prominence of particular figures within the network and the overall shape and dynamics of the evolving Elizabethan secret service.

The Eye of the Crown is a useful resource for students and scholars interested in government, espionage, social hierarchy, and imperial power in Elizabethan England.

Kristin M.S. Bezio is Associate Professor in the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond, USA. Her background is in theater and early modern drama, and her publications include Staging Power in Tudor and Stuart History Plays (2015), ＂’Munday I Sweare Shalbee a Hollidaye’ The Politics of Anthony Munday, from Anti-Catholic Spy to Civic Pageanteer (1579-1630),＂ in Études Anglaises (2018), and the edited volumes William Shakespeare & 21st Century Culture, Politics, and Leadership: Bard Bites with Anthony Presti Russell (2021), and Religion and the Medieval and Early Modern Global Marketplace (2021) and Religion and the Early Modern British Marketplace (2021), both co-edited with Scott Oldenburg.