The Watchers
A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
In a Europe aflame with wars of religion and dynastic conflicts, Elizabeth I came to the throne of a realm encircled by menace. To the great Catholic powers of France and Spain, England was a heretic pariah state, a canker to be cut away for the health of the greater body of Christendom. Elizabeth's government, defending God's true Church of England and its leader, the queen, could stop at nothing to defend itself.
Headed by the brilliant, enigmatic, and widely feared Sir Francis Walsingham, the Elizabethan state deployed every dark art: spies, double agents, cryptography, and torture. Delving deeply into sixteenth-century archives, Stephen Alford offers a groundbreaking, chillingly vivid depiction of Elizabethan espionage, literally recovering it from the shadows. In his company we follow Her Majesty's agents through the streets of London and Rome, and into the dank cells of the Tower. We see the world as they saw it-ever unsure who could be trusted or when the fatal knock on their own door might come. The Watchers is a riveting exploration of loyalty, faith, betrayal, and deception with the highest possible stakes, in a world poised between the Middle Ages and modernity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Alford, a fellow in history at Cambridge University, has delved deeply into 16th-century archives to unearth a history of the dark underside to the Elizabethan golden age a page-turning tale of assassination plots, torture, and espionage. When Elizabeth I ascended to the throne in 1558, Protestants saw her as the rightful heir; Catholics regarded her as the godless Henry VIII's bastard daughter who had usurped the throne from its legitimate occupant, Mary, Queen of Scots. Thus, throughout Elizabeth's reign, she was targeted by foes both within and outside the kingdom, from the 471 English priests working to return England to the Church's fold, to the power-grabbing rulers of France and Spain. A perfect storm of Elizabeth's childlessness, Europe's religious wars, and the assassinations of Protestant leaders elsewhere, intensified the anxieties of Elizabeth's ministers. Her spies thus resorted to deception, interrogation, and even doctoring evidence to destroy both real and perceived threats to the queen's safety including Mary Stuart, who was executed for treason in 1587. Her execution "jolted" the Elizabethan world "on its axis." While the government's extensive spy network maintained a precarious peace during Elizabeth's reign, Alford vividly makes the point that its effectiveness actually undermined the monarchy, with repercussions that extended well into the next century. B& illus., maps.
