186 Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture
4. Panzer, p. 13.
5. Bruno Emil König (1875) Schwarze Kabinette mit Anlagen: Geschichte der
Thurn and Taxis’schen Postanstalt und des österreichischen Postwesens, und
ueber die gerichtliche Beschlagnahme von Postsendungen in Preussen-Deutschland
(Braunschweig: Bracke), p. 68. Lamoral II was named after his grandfather
Lamoral I (1559–1624).
6. Panzer, p. 14.
7. For instance, see Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, 77 Pfalz Nr.
9863 i.39, Elector Charles Louis’ letter to Elizabeth, dated 20 January 1637
(OS); or Elizabeth’s letters to Laud, dated 20/30 October and 23 October
(OS) 1637, respectively TNA, SP 16/370 i.9 (ff. 24–5) and SP 16/369 i.63 (ff.
179–80).
8. For the route of the letters see also J.R. Bruijn (1975) ‘Postvervoer en
Reizigersverkeer tussen de Lage Landen en Engeland ca.1650–ca.1870’ in P.W.
Klein and J.R. Bruijn, eds, Honderd Jaar Engelandvaart: Stoomvaartmaatschappij
Zeeland, 1875–1975 (Bussum: Uniehoek), pp. 19–52 at 19. Part of Gerbier’s
treatise is given as an appendix at the end of this chapter.
9. Kevin Sharpe (1984) ‘Thomas Witherings and the Reform of the Foreign
Posts, 1632–40’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 57.136, 149–63
at 148.
10. Proclamation issued by the Privy Council, as quoted in Sharpe, p. 150.
11. Sharpe, p. 153–4.
12. Sharpe, p. 154.
13. Daisy Lucy Hobman (1961) Cromwell’s Master Spy: A Study of John Thurloe
(London: Chapman & Hall), p. 43. Thurloe’s informer not only referred to
the Queen of Bohemia’s court, but also to that of her niece Mary Stuart, the
Princess Royall, who had married the Stadholder’s son in 1641 and estab-
lished her own English court in The Hague in 1642.
14. The Queen of Bohemia also put too much trust in Gerbier, not realizing he
double-crossed her as well.
15. SP 105/13, no pagination, folio or item number. It is part of other ‘Notes for
a Resident att Bruxelles’. It follows Gerbier’s letter to the Earl of Leicester of
2/12 July 1636.
16. This example also shows that Elizabeth had already been using the Taxis post
as early as November 1632, at least half a year before Charles I’s postmaster
Witherings had made his first preliminary agreements with the countess to
use her post line. Witherings was clearly unaware that the countess ran a
Black Chamber.
17. Gerbier’s ‘Notes for a Resident att Bruxelles’, no pagination.
18. Nowadays a bronze plaque commemorates the location of the Taxis post
office in Brussels, where it was to be found up to 1872, when a stately
home replaced it. The convenient proximity to the courtly palace of Infanta
Isabella is striking. Across the street, within the Nôtre Dame du Sablon, the
private chapel of the Taxis family – also mentioned in Gerbier’s ‘Notes for a
Resident att Bruxelles’ (f.1
v
) – is still intact.
19. S. Mendelson and P. Crawford (1998) Women in Early Modern England, 1550–
1720 (Oxford: Clarendon Press), p. 413. See Claire Walker (2001) ‘Prayer,
Patronage, and Political Conspiracy: English Nuns and the Restoration’,
Historical Journal, 43.1, 1–23 at 9–10 and 21.
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