Under the Molehill: An Elizabethan Spy Story. (Reviews).

John Bossy, Under the Molehill: An Elizabethan Spy Story.

New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. xiv + 10 pl. +189 pp. $25. ISBN: 0-300-08400-5.

John Bossy's new book is both fascinating and strange. As its title implies, it is a study of espionage during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. In particular Bossy investigates the attempts of the French to conduct a secret correspondence with Mary Queen of Scots and the efforts of the English to intercept the letters. This might have been a serious matter, for Bossy believes that there was a genuine plan to invade England in 1584, place Mary on the throne, and restore the Catholic faith. The chief actors in the story are Elizabeth's secretary Sir Francis Walsingham, whose involvement in secret operations has long been known, and the French ambassador Michel de Castelnau, a man of uncertain leanings and apparently a friend of Walsingham's. The secretary was able to find a mole--someone willing to leak information to the English--within Castelnau's establishment.

The bulk of the book consists of attempts to discover just who the mole was and just what information was passed. Here the arguments become exceedingly technical; in particular they involve the identification of handwriting, made even harder by the fact that some of the men in question wrote in two styles, a hurried, informal hand and a more formal one for final documents. A number of illustrations enable the reader to follow Bossy's comparisons and deductions. There are, of course, also pseudonyms and other covert terms. In the end, Bossy rules out John Arnault (possibly the same man as Giordano Bruno, whose story Bossy told in an earlier book), and Claude de Courcelles, who followed Arnault as Casrelnau's secretary. The true mole, he concludes, was Laurent Feron, a clerk in the French embassy who had access to Mary's correspondence. Not much is known about Feron, who may also have been known as Fagor; he appears to have been a native of London but a naturalized French citizen. In the end, the invasion schem e came to naught, as a result of diplomatic changes rather than Walsingham's discoveries.

Bossy's arguments are often so detailed that only the most attentive reader can follow them. He seems to delight in detecting errors by earlier historians, including Conyers Read and Alexander Labanoff. His writing throughout is exceedingly personal and imaginative; he hopes, for instance, that Walsingham read the intercepted correspondence "sitting down after dinner in front of a good fire, with a rare bottle" (107). His conclusions, however, are well founded: he shows that the Elizabethan secret service was not a true government agency, but rather a personal, private operation of Walsingham's, managed without funds, archives, or any director other than the secretary himself. In addition to the illustrations, the book contains transcripts of the more important documents and an appendix which lists the letters passed from Salisbury Court, the ambassador's residence, from July 1583 to November 1584.

While only a few serious historians will find this detective work of real importance, many readers may enjoy following the twists and turns of argument as Bossy's narrative develops.