"In the hollow of his wooden leg": The Transportation of Secret Letters, 1642–49

• In Event: "Dangerous Texts": Materiality, Circulation, Control, 1550–1650

Abstract

In late November 1645, a lame soldier was stopped and searched on his way out of Cardiff. His wooden leg was unscrewed and was found to contain 18 ‘letters of consequence’, including one from Prince Maurice to Prince Charles and another from Secretary Nicholas to General Goring. The letters were sent up to the Commons: the lame soldier’s fate is not recorded. This paper explores the clandestine transportation of letters by royalists during the English revolution (in hatbands, gloves, hose, hollow canes, shoes, and even in the belly). It investigates how poor men and women’s identities were often of less interest to news-book writers than the messages they carried, and looks at the ways in which messengers hazarded their lives and bodies for the transmission of texts.

Author

• Karen Britland, University of Wisconsin–Madison