Aphra Behn: A Secret Life

by Janet Todd

  Byam’s words in his letter about ‘Astrea’ had probably been read by Killigrew and Arlington through their recipient, Sir Robert Harley, now in England and himself much involved in ‘intelligence’. They indicated a flirtation rather than a fully blown sexual affair. If it had been a matter of love, Killigrew and Arlington might have feared that Behn would put Scot’s welfare before her duty. Seduction was no doubt part of the plan and Killigrew thought, along with Behn, that it could happen only once.

  If the idea of Behn’s mission was superficially a good one, it did not reveal Killigrew as a shrewd judge of character. Although she was witty and charming as everyone testified, and although she could be suitably dissembling and secretive about her past, all useful qualities for a secret agent, Aphra Behn would not strike others with her discretion. Such a character would invite confidence, but not necessarily keep it. She had little experience in handling money and the Low Countries were expensive. Above all, she had no experience in so dangerous a mission. She was not simply going to observe and report in relatively safe territory as in Surinam or take unread messages between one agent and another, as she may have done before the Restoration. Instead she was planning to enter enemy terrain and bring in a man who was already proving a double agent and might well be a triple one.

  After the initial talk with Killigrew, Behn probably consulted her fosterbrother, Thomas Colepeper, especially concerning Lord Arlington, her highest employer, whom she probably did not know personally. A relative of Killigrew’s by marriage, Arlington was a cultured, courtly, and unprincipled man, who kept his Cavalier past current by wearing a distinctive patch on his nose to hide a sword cut gained in the Royalist cause.9 Colepeper had had dealings with him: indeed he had sent Arlington a mare from Lord Strangford’s Sturry house where he now lived, in the hope that he would obtain command of the King’s militia in Kent.10 He could assure Aphra Behn of the Secretary of State’s worthiness and of her own abilities. He knew she needed money and had to consider even dangerous (and disreputable) plans seriously.11 She agreed and accepted.

  It was decided that Aphra Behn should initially go to Spanish Flanders rather than to Holland. Flanders was governed by the Marquis of Castel Rodrigo who, feeling vulnerable both to belligerent Holland to the north and aggressive France to the south, was friendly to England. He had already expressed his feelings through the half-English Royalist, Sir Mark Ogniate (Don Marcos Alberto de Oñate) a kinsman of his and Spanish envoy extraordinary living in Bruges, who had acquired an English wife and friendship with Lord Arlington. In March, Castel Rodrigo sent Ogniate to England to discuss tactics with Arlington.12 The two men got on well and each felt he might ask favours of the other. Ogniate would be a useful contact for the female spy.

  The brief was that Behn should meet with William Scot and, through providing him with a little ready money and tempting him with a pardon, find out everything he knew. The authorities were especially interested in Dutch movements of ships and troops and any plans they had for penetrating England. She would then relay this information in code to Major Halsall, an old Interregnum plotter, spy, and intended assassin of Cromwell. She would also write down anything Scot said and she herself might pick up concerning the exiled English and Scots.

  For her work, Behn would be provided with instructions, a pass, a code and sufficient money to keep herself and pay Scot. She may also have been equipped with some of the paraphernalia of espionage, the recipe for invisible ink and lemon juice for writing. Killigrew had seen the letters between Byam and Harley and her code name was again to be Astrea’. Scot was of course ‘Celadon’.

  Presumably Aphra Behn did not know much of the record of royal non-payment, since, whoever had funded the trip to Surinam, it was probably not the crown alone. Although no one had much expected to be paid for Royalist service before the Restoration, there must have been some expectation after, which she shared. Unlike most other minor spies and informers who desired a pardon or the repeal of an exclusion order, she appeared to have no motive for her work beyond money.13 There may of course have been unfinished business with William Scot, but, if so, she kept the matter out of her reports and it does not seem that, at this stage, he held much fascination for her.

  As well as a name and code, Behn needed a chaperone; otherwise her purpose in a foreign city might have been misunderstood. Her mother and brother seem to have survived the plague and either could provide respectability. She had some problems with her mother and may have preferred to take her younger, more tractable brother on her dangerous mission. A man would also be a useful messenger. It was a relatively easy matter for Arlington or Halsall to get her brother released from Albemarle’s regiment for a few months.

  Behn also took with her someone called Cheney. Like her, he was probably from Kent, perhaps one of the Cranbrook Cheneys such as Thomas, relative of Thomas Colepeper.14 Or he could be the Charles Cheney who, on 18 August 1665, had a commission erased to be ensign in a company of foot soldiers; this would make him free at the correct time and suitably impecunious to relish being kept.15 Behn also had her elderly maid, perhaps the doughty lady who had travelled to Surinam and faced the Native Americans without fear, as well as a Mr Piers, whom she may have inherited from her dead husband and who would try to look after the muddled shipping affairs she had been bequeathed. Possibly he thought something might be done in the Low Countries.16

  Before she set out, Behn worked at remembering her code. Some agents took a book as their source—known only to them and their control. Halsall had, however, given her a comparatively simply one in which numbers stood for names. Amsterdam was 26 for example, Scot’s colleague Colonel Bampfield was 38, the ‘Fanatics’ or dissidents 60, and herself and Scot 160 and 159 respectively. She memorised the cyphers speedily, but found the system cumbersome. Would it not be better to make a single character stand for a single letter?

  Code was of course not enough. No thinking person who had lived through the previous twenty years could have been unaware of the malleability of writing. Through the various changes of government and their different styles, he or she would have learnt an undercover sort of expression, a habit of casuistry which would allow multiple meanings to be squeezed from superficially clear words. Words were deeds in their own right and a person could be destroyed by an unguarded phrase.

  ‘Memorialls for Mrs Affora’ had been drawn up at the end of July 1666 by Arlington’s secretary, Joseph Williamson, a fanatical enthusiast for intelligence throughout these years. They were to be handed to her just before she set out. The name suggests that either Behn or Killigrew was keeping silent about her marriage since ‘Mrs Affora’ was not a usual way to address a married woman. Perhaps she was practising secrecy or perhaps, since she was to be used partly as bait, none of the participants wished to know of any marriage. Most likely, it was just policy not to mention last names; none of Behn’s relations is clearly identified with a surname in her reports.

  There were fourteen ‘Memorialls’ and they give no very favourable picture of the mental order of Williamson’s clerk who put them together both as instructions and as certification. Weaving backwards and forwards, they instructed Mrs Affora to find out whether ‘Mr. S.’ resolves to come over and serve the King and, if so, to promise him a royal pardon and a reward which, according to ‘Memoriall’ number 3, would ‘punctually be perfformed’. The last item, no. 14, returned to the refrain, declaring that the agent could assure Scot that this reward would be considerable, such indeed that it ‘may make him to live plentifully, with out depending on any forraigne state’. Behn herself had to work out how to hold frequent oral or written conversations with Scot and to give him directions about her method. She should also provide him with names and locations for meetings, using ‘all secresy imaginable’.

  From ‘Mr. S.’, she was to discover what loss the Dutch had sustained in the last encounter with the English at the end of July; how many ships they now had; whether they would join forces with their allies, the
French, and if so where; whether they expected their East India fleet back in the near future and, if they did, where they would expect to meet it; and anything about the movements of other merchant fleets—when they had been sent out, to what destination, and when expected to return. She was also to ascertain from Scot whether there was any basis for the constant English fear of invasion and, if there were, where an enemy force might wish to land. The danger of internal sympathisers aiding external invaders terrified the authorities, and Behn was to discover all Scot knew about any English, Scottish and Irish correspondents the Dutch might have within the kingdoms.17

  The instructions were daunting, both for Behn and for Scot whose ears would have to have been remarkably keen for him to have given satisfaction. Nothing was said of Behn’s companions or of her cover story. Probably these matters were left to her; the presence of Piers, her factor, suggests that part of the cover was that she was trying to sort out Mr Behn’s financial affairs. Introductions to Dutch merchants in Flanders through his connections could well be intended to assist her primary purpose.

  Chapter 8

  To Antwerp

  ‘the shee spy’

  Arlington knew that Corney and Oudart had been betrayed and imprisoned and that the latter had only just escaped with his life. Scot was recognised as treacherous and, if he did not like the offered terms or if he were attracted to even more complicated dealings, he could betray the new agent to his Dutch employers. He might indeed be forced to do so to save himself. Behn’s assignment was therefore a dangerous one and Arlington needed to know how competent she really was. She would have to be seen in action.

  The first decision was whether she should go to The Hague, where she could easily meet up with Scot and find out information on her own account, or whether she should stay in neutral Flanders, partly protected by Arlington’s friends. If she went far into Holland, she risked capture, but she would be of greater use to her masters. There were English women in Rotterdam, The Hague, Amsterdam and all other major Dutch towns and, with her quickness at picking up smatterings of a language and her familial party, she would not seem out of place. But England and Holland were at war; she had documents that proved her an enemy agent and, if she were unguarded, she could easily betray herself. Perhaps a base in Flanders or near the border would be better. This decision Arlington prudently put into the hands of someone he could trust.

  Sir Antony Desmarches was an old espionage hand, known to both Killigrew and Arlington. In the Interregnum he had infiltrated the French Post Office and had, through reading the English ambassador’s mail, given valuable information to the Royalists about schemes between the English government and the French. Since he was going to the Continent and already doing an errand for Arlington—he was helping Sir Mark Ogniate in the export of horses from England for the Marquis of Castel Rodrigo—Sir Antony could easily arrange to be on the same boat crossing the Channel as Aphra Behn.1 Without clarifying his own relationship with Whitehall, he could casually engage her in conversation and judge whether he thought her capable of going far into enemy territory or safer doing her spying from a distance.

  In such dangerous times, boats did not singly cross the Channel, unless their own business was secret. Packets were routinely stopped and plundered by the Dutch and the passengers ill treated. So vessels waited until they formed a substantial convoy to make the crossing as a fleet—just as they had assembled in the Americas to cross the Atlantic.

  In July, the fleet of two small frigates and ninety merchantmen was held up while Sir Antony Desmarches fetched an export pass for the horses; Ogniate had left the pass at the wrong port. Once all the paperwork was in order, he, Aphra Behn, and other passengers, who included Viscount Stafford and his son John Howard, relatives of the Sidneys, embarked on the boat named for the Spanish governor, The Castel Rodrigo. When the wind was right, the fleet set out for Ostend.2 While on board, Sir Antony no doubt spoke a little to Lord Stafford who, as a Catholic, often went to Flanders to visit his relatives in the convent at Louvain.3 He also made certain he met Aphra Behn. Flattered, she was eager to tell him some of her business.

  The Castel Rodrigo docked briefly at Ostend, but the plague, now abating in London, was raging there and, instead of disembarking its passengers, it left quickly for Paschendaele. There Sir Antony quitted the boat, along with Behn and her party, and probably Stafford. They took another vessel bound for Bruges, a town associated with Charles II in his years of exile: he had found it too quiet, but he had pleased people by visiting the English convent. Nine or ten miles from the sea, it was full of canals and pleasant gabled houses. Here Behn probably presented her letter of introduction to Sir Mark Ogniate, a sophisticated man of the sort she liked.4

  In all this time, Behn may have had some slight connection with Lord Stafford, helped by her tangential tie to the Penshurst Sidneys, although, as a sober devout man in his fifties, he probably found little to admire in the independent young woman. She too might have been put off; his character was not to the taste of everyone—he disliked the admired affability of the King—and he was irascible and regarded as proud by many. But he was also of the class she approved and she may have been impressed that he was a member of the Royal Society.

  In early August, Aphra Behn and her party moved from Bruges to Antwerp, along with Sir Antony Desmarches, Lord Stafford, and his son. Stafford knew the place well having lived there before the Restoration and his daughter, educated at St Monica’s convent in Louvain, had just become a nun there. Behn was glad to have their company. She had grown used to Sir Antony in particular.

  Antwerp was very different from Bruges. It was a large fortified international town—though not on the overcrowded scale of London—joined to the sea by the wide Schelde River, close to the border of Holland and Flanders. A rich and striking place of Flemish baroque, a centre for arts, music, painting and consumer luxury, it had a skyline of windmills, churches, towers, spires, gilded weathervanes, tall step-fronted houses, and masts of anchored merchantmen. Its greatest time was past, since the war of Dutch independence had elevated Amsterdam to preeminence, and its hinterland was constantly threatened by the French. But, though much bruised, Antwerp had, by the 1660s, regained some of its former prosperity and, when the diarist John Evelyn stayed there, he was pleased with its handsome and convenient lodgings. Now it was, par excellence, a city of informers: everyone seemed to be watching everyone else—it was a suitable but tricky place to start a mission.5

  Already Aphra Behn was worrying about money. Antwerp was too expensive a town for an extended period, but she did not intend to stay long. She settled herself and her party at an inn called the Rosa Noble, a middling sort of place, not too extravagant she thought, but not the cheapest. It was in a street called Katelynevest and was owned by a Dutch couple Jacomyna and Joanna Huyckx.6 In this immediate anxiety about money, Behn was echoing a whole line of government spies sent to the costly Low Countries without sufficient means for proper lodgings—and in some cases food and clothes. At once, she dispatched a message to Scot in Holland, inviting him to meet her. He had been waiting impatiently through the delays and was now keen for an encounter. Possibly he entertained the naïve hope that she had the pardon about her, but he could not have been surprised when this proved false. As with the Dutch, so with the English, he would have to sing for his supper. He probably hoped for some amusement with Aphra Behn, as well as some advantage with so inexperienced an agent.

  When he received the message, Behn’s suggestion that they meet in Antwerp rather than a Dutch city appalled Scot: in Flanders he would have neither the status nor the immunity he enjoyed in Holland. He had grown fearful through the years of double-dealing and remembered his father’s fate in Brussels. Besides, his Dutch masters would wonder what he was doing in a country more or less allied to its enemy and rightly suspect treachery. His main reason for terror must, however, have been his discovery that his victim, Thomas Corney, was in Flanders and looking for him. He knew that Co
rney was aware of his movements and he feared that, if Behn waited for him in Antwerp, Corney would wait with her.7 Neither Arlington not Halsall had mentioned Corney to Aphra Behn.

  Despite his reluctance, Scot had in the end no alternative but to meet Behn in Antwerp. So, on a Sunday morning in early August, he came to the Rosa Noble oozing terror. Behn was not impressed, although she must have exulted that her charms or skill had brought him this far.8

  Scot had sunk from his role as the dashing shepherd lover of Surinam, and the first meeting was far from the pastoral encounters of romance. If ever love had tied the pair, little remained. Scot had been drinking heavily over the months and the dangers of his situation told on his nerves.9 On her side, Behn must have made some not very flattering comparisons between William and his father, who went to execution with conspicuous bravery. The nervousness was off-putting and made her anxious about a mission which depended so heavily on her handling of Scot. Would she be able to win his confidence? When he did open up to her, would she be able to discriminate between the useful and the trivial?

  After less than an hour, Scot’s terror got the better of him and he insisted they talk further in a coach travelling swiftly out of the town. So they went into the flat, featureless countryside round Antwerp, into a landscape of poplars, reeds and willow trees, where they could easily notice anyone following them. Such countryside held scant interest for one who liked her landscape Arcadian, but probably Behn had little opportunity to look abroad. Scot would have wanted the shutters closed. On the journey Behn began to understand the full cost of espionage: Scot expected her to pay his expenses as well as the hire of the coach, and the trip was costing at least £10. She had not budgeted for this outlay, which came on top of the unexpected cost of messengers, essential since she had no ‘settled way of correspondence’ between herself in Flanders and Scot in Holland.