S8 Ep546: ### HEADLINE: GEORGE DOWNING’S 17TH-CENTURY DIPLOMACY AND ESPIONAGE IN FRANCE SUMMARY: Dennis Su details George Downing’s 1655 mission to France, where he used Latin to negotiate a secret alliance with Cardinal Mazarin against Spanish influence. GUEST: De

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I'm John Bachelors continuing with Dennis Sewell, his new book, Cromwell's Spy

from the American colonies to the English Civil War.

The life of George Downing, the English Civil Wars have concluded.

The King is dead, Charles I executed in 1649 at the beginning of the year.

Oliver Cromwell is now Lord Protector, sort of like a King,

ruling a military dictatorship sort of like a government in England and Scotland.

And pieces of Ireland.

In America, the Puritans run the New England's colony.

One of the Americans, a Harvard graduate, George Downing, has done great work for Oliver Cromwell during the Civil Wars.

And that is rewarded by making George Downing a diplomat for the English government for Oliver Cromwell.

But it's a kind of diplomat that is also in trigger, running espionage rings,

having people give him information that's valuable to England.

So we go immediately to 1655 because Oliver Cromwell, who is running everything now,

and does away with Parliament.

He doesn't want to hear from the Presbyterians.

He has a vision of what he wants.

And he thinks that he wants a united Protestant world with pieces of the continent

that are also Protestant, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, for example.

And George Downing is his agent.

And Downing's mission is to knit all this together, Dennis.

Is that how a Cromwell tells him to proceed?

Yes, his first task is to go amongst a group of highly persecuted Protestants,

the Valdencians, who are out on the borders of where France, Switzerland, and Italy all meet.

So in those valleys were these Protestant farmers who were now being massacred by Regal Savoy

because of their Protestant religion.

This was a cause that Downing and Cromwell believed could possibly unite

the Swiss, the Scandinavian, as you say, and possibly the Dutch,

and start to form a kind of Protestant bloc.

And they've got a righteous court here in most people's eyes.

And so Downing has sent a deal with this.

But on the way, he is to meet with the King of France, his chief minister, Cardinal Maser,

who has something to say and has messages for Cromwell needs to discuss other things

that might be of interest between the two countries.

Now, this is odd because France is not going to be part of this Protestant bloc,

they're a Catholic country, and they are very much involved in the persecutions.

But Downing goes to see him.

The entire thing is conducted in Latin because Maseran does not speak English, Downing does not speak French,

but they find because of his Harvard background that this is no problem at all.

And the two of them get along like house on fire speaking in Latin.

So 1655 in France, the Cardinal is the second most powerful man in French kingdom,

which is the most powerful kingdom in Europe.

And they're sitting by the fire all night by themselves conducting their work in Latin.

Is that the scene?

Indeed.

I mean, what is odd about it is how proud he is, how touched he is,

that this very highly powerful man has given him a really good dinner

and has sent a coach for him and all the rest of them.

So you can see that the French knew exactly what they were doing.

They knew how to flatter, they knew how to get somebody to be impressed.

And Downing for his part sees that they have got a scheme and that they want to deal.

As you say, sitting by the fire all night, he and Maseran start to carve up Europe for us.

They decide, you know, what Maseran wants to sort of cut out the influence

of the other great Catholic power to Spain in the Netherlands.

They're all kinds of jockeying for positions among to do with trade.

So if England were to actually start cooperating with France,

they would be a big surprise to everybody.

They could between them really arrange an awful lot of things as they were, as they wished.

And that's what they do and they come to the steel.

And it's all top secret.

And Downing has to take it back to Cornwall very quickly and say,

look, you know, one of the things on offer, for instance,

is getting back the turn of Dunkirk, which has become a kind of nest of pirates.

And England have wanted and have a kind of historic claim to it anyway.

And this is part of getting what they want.

So it gets gifts from the Cardinal.

Cardinal gives him the understand there's a mole in Cromwell's Navy.

Indeed.

Cromwell, Maseran has spies everywhere.

Yeah.

And everybody seems to have spies everywhere.

It isn't an extraordinary thing.

And he is just given, as it were, the name of the spy.

Meanwhile, funnily enough, even at that same moment,

what is going on in the exiled English court,

the exiled English court is in the same place very long.

So sometimes they're in France, sometimes they're there in Spanish Netherlands.

This is Charles II in his entourage.

This is Charles II and sometimes they're in Belgium and so on.

So they're moving around in different places.

But at one point, they're a cologne.

And what we find is that a spy that was working not for Downing,

but as it were with Downing, he was recruited by the same department.

Downing knows of his existence.

Downing, going on his little trip to the Valdencians and going through France,

is anxious that somebody might attack him or kill him.

And he checks with a spy in place in the royal court in Charles II's court

and says, you know, have any of Charles's people got it in mind to kidnap me

or to kill me, assassinate me.

And he gets the answer now.

You're clear that they haven't said a word about it.

So Downing goes on on his trip, encouraged that he will be able to do so safely.

That spy, however, gets caught.

His name is Manning, and he has just taken out into the woods outside of cologne

and shot in the head.

A detail here about what is offered by Maserid.

It reminded me of the non-aggression pack between Moscow and Berlin.

It's two people who should be at odds with each other,

all of a sudden coming to terms with each other,

which becomes a treaty with Westminster.

But that drives away the other Protestants.

Is that what Kramel wanted to do?

Well, in a way, it was, the Kramel felt it was their own fault for not really jumping

when he said, you know, it gave them the opportunity.

None of them had been too keen.

They were all really mad.

They didn't join to form some block.

They didn't rise to this point of principle.

Kramel was the only one who really gave any huge amount of money to these poor people

who had been suffering and being persecuted.

Nobody else came along.

Although they make all themselves Protestant, they didn't share any solidarity.

So Kramel was sort of fed up with them, really.

And he had his eye on, he could see that the real thing blocking Protestant unity

was the fact that the Dutch were so incredibly successful in trade, global trade.

They were the supreme trading part.

And he thought it was time to knock them off their perch and for England and its navy

to take that accolade from them.

And downing at this point is an official diplomat, though he also acts as a spymaster.

He has spymasters.

Is it Thomas Carter John Thurlow, who's his commander at this time?

At this time, it is John Thurlow.

Thomas Scott had been his master beforehand, but he had turned against Kramel

when Kramel decided to make himself into the Lord Protector and he sort of walked away from it all.

Thurlow, very much like downing of a similar minded, was now Secretary of State.

He was running everything foreign policy, espionage, and really he became the supreme adviser to Kramel

on every subject you can imagine.

So he was almost a Kramel side and he was really in political terms, indispensable to Kramel,

hugely influential immigrants.

And downing is his number one agent.

And downing is probably one or two, yes, in the backing order.

He's certainly very close to Thurlow.

They write to each other daily almost.

And downing is really getting his orders directly from Thurlow,

and helping shape those orders by return with his advice.

I'm speaking with the author, Dennis Sewell.

The new book is Kramel's spy from the American colonies to the English Civil War,

the life of George Downing.

George Downing is now a spy or a secret agent representing England.

And he's not interested in making war, he's interested in making money.

The Dutch are very good at it, the French are not bad.

So his mission now is for himself and his for his new masters.

How do they get so rich and we just spend money on warmaking?

I'm John Baxler.

I'm John Baxler.

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