Queen Elizabeth's Secret Codes and Spy Network
More than 400 years ago, England had a queen named Elizabeth I. Many people wanted to keep her safe, but some enemies wanted to remove her from the throne. There were no phones, no cameras, and no internet. So how did the queen find out about secret plots against her? She had a spymaster named Sir Francis Walsingham. He built a giant secret network of spies who listened, watched, and cracked coded messages. Some people call him the first real 'spymaster' in history. Let's peek into his secret world!
What You'll Learn
- What a spy and a spymaster do - Who Sir Francis Walsingham was - How secret messages were hidden using codes and invisible ink - How code-breakers caught a real plot in the year 1586
What Is a Spymaster?
A spy is a person who secretly gathers information, like who is planning something, or what an enemy will do next. A spymaster is the BOSS of many spies. The spymaster decides where to send spies, reads the reports they bring back, and puts the clues together like a puzzle. Sir Francis Walsingham was Queen Elizabeth's spymaster, and he had spies in many countries all at once!
Hiding Secret Messages
Spies could not just write 'Attack on Tuesday!' plainly, an enemy might grab the letter. So they used tricks: - CODES: they swapped each letter for a different letter or symbol. To anyone else it looked like nonsense. - INVISIBLE INK: they wrote with lemon juice or milk. The words were invisible until someone warmed the paper by a candle, then the writing turned brown and appeared! - HIDDEN SPOTS: messages were hidden inside shoe heels, or even sealed inside the stopper of a beer barrel.
Dip a cotton swab in lemon juice and write a message on white paper. Let it dry, it disappears! Ask a grown-up to hold it near a warm lamp, and your secret words will slowly appear. Real Elizabethan spies used this exact trick!
Cracking a Real Plot: 1586
In 1586, a group led by a man named Anthony Babington made a secret plan to harm Queen Elizabeth. They wrote coded letters and hid them inside the stopper of a beer barrel to sneak them out. But Walsingham was one step ahead. His spies secretly grabbed the letters, and his brilliant code-breaker, Thomas Phelippes, cracked the secret code and read every word! The plotters thought their code was safe, but it was not. Walsingham caught them because he understood codes better than they did. Being a great code-BREAKER is just as important as being a great code-MAKER.
Match each spy word to what it means.
Terms
Definitions
Drag terms onto their definitions, or click a term then click a definition to match.
What was Sir Francis Walsingham's job for Queen Elizabeth?
How did Walsingham catch the plotters in 1586?
Become a Code-Maker and Code-Breaker
1. Make a SHIFT CODE: write the alphabet, then write it again but shifted by 3 letters, so A becomes D, B becomes E, and so on. 2. Use your code to write a secret message to a friend, like 'MEET AT NOON.' 3. Give your friend ONLY the coded message and see if they can crack it, then give them the shift key and let them decode it. 4. Trade roles: they make a code and YOU be the code-breaker like Thomas Phelippes. Deliverable: your coded message on paper plus the decoded answer written underneath.
Flashcards — click each card to reveal the answer
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