The text below is excerpted from the much longer article. Amazing stuff. http://www.dipmat.unipg.it/~bartocci/ep2ded.htm The idea for this secret and farsighted course arose from the intense debate in England of the 1580's and 90's on war as the instrument for national security and expansion. It was becoming clear to men like William Cecil, his son Robert, the mathematician and intelligencer John Dee, scholar Hakluyt, Francis Walsingham, and Francis Bacon that England's future lay in overseas trade, expansion, inventions and that, because of its naval superiority, insular England - in the words of Bacon - "is at liberty and may take as much and as little of the war as (it) will." The debate was a national one. Students and teachers at Oxford were debating in that decade among the usual "Questiones Philosophicae" such as "Is Woman a nature's mistake?," "Do many worlds exist?," also "Can war be just for both sides?," "Should one advocate war to promote national goals?," "Is it wiser for a king to invade or [wait] to be invaded?" The same issues - as we shall see - were discussed among lawyers and students of jurisprudence at Gray's Inn where Bacon worked in 1590's. In the intellectual atmosphere of the Elisabethan establishment these debates reflected and influenced the political struggle on the issue in the Court and the Privy Council between the "peace party" led by William and Robert Cecil and the "war party" led by Essex, Walter Raleigh and others. These argued as Essex did in May 1598 in his Apologia that "Peace will encourage the enemy," "A just war is our necessity," while the Cecils maintained what they always believed and acted upon, that "War is a curse." In that month at one fiery Privy Council meeting the elder Cecil shut up Essex by reading to him prophetically from his pocket Bible about the "men of blood" dying prematurily, which Essex did of the axe at 32 in 1601. By 1604 under James I who succeeded Elisabeth in 1603 the issue was settled. Raleigh was in the Tower and Robert Cecil had negotiated for England a peace after 30 years of strife and war with Spain, a peace that helped to open her global ernpire to British trade. The Grandest Scheme Previous decipherers of the Rainbow, Frances Yates, Roy Strong and Rene Graziani, approached it as an expression of "courtly eulogy," of a cult of Elisabeth or "religious sentiment." For Elisabeth herself, her Privy Council, Court and establishment, these were the sweets and trifles whereas power politics, policy, knowledge, intelligence were the daily bread. For the men of the new Elisabethan generation such as Essex, Raleigh, Francis Bacon and others in the decade after the 1588 Armada defeat, the language of art and religion, if used at all, was at best a means to communicate, embellish or hide more ambitious political schemes. Theirs were the updated concerns of the previous generation's explorers, sea dogs like Drake, Cavendish, Hawkins, promoters of commerce like William Cecil and Gresham, intelligencers like Walsingham, Richard Hakluyt and John Dee. Their exploits and designs are described in great detail in Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation, Made by Sea or Over-Land to the Remote and Farthest quarters of the Earth at any time within the compasse of these 1600 Years, published in London in 1589; in biographies of William Cecil, Thomas Gresham, Francis Walsingham, John Dee, Francis Drake and others. The "aspiring minds" of the new generation, as shown by R. Elser, saw the whole earth as England's imperial "Oyster" to be "opened" by Englishmen's intellectual, political, military, commercial and geographic "grand schemes," "mighty designs," "romantic models," as they called them. They dreamed, in Raleigh's words "to seek new worlds for gold, for praise, for glory." Such was Sherley's idea to close Suez to Spanish trade, Essex's plan to invade Spain, Robert Cecil's "Grand Contract" between King and Parliament. Such were Raleigh's colonial expeditions and searches for Eldorado, Bacon's goal for a "total reconstruction of science, arts and all human knowledge" to serve England and by it humanity. Most such ideas were, as a Venetian diplomat described Sherley's, "Grand Scheme, Impossible to accomplish." The Rainbow, I suggest was the grandest scheme of all. Some time around the year 1600 cousins Francis Bacon and Robert Cecil, most probably with the knowledge of Elisabeth, were involved in the production of a farsighted statement of Pax Britannica and imperial strategy based not on war but on England's intelligence, espionage, science, and other might. Some of Elisabeth's portraits have one or two such strange features (the "Phoenix," the "Ermine," the "Sieve", the "Ditchley"'). The Rainbow has three dozens of them. Why these unusual features? Why so many? What do they mean? Up to now art historians who tried have not been able to answer these questions. The Rainbow remains a mystery. FrancesYates, one of the most productive and bestknown interpreters of Elisabethan and Rennaissance art symbolism, tried as many other art historians to solve the Rainbow mystery. In her last work in 1975 she concluded: "Every detail in this picture is significant ... We may wonder how the artist, or the designer of this picture could have supposed the beholder of it would understand its complicated allusions." To answer these questions, to solve the Rainbow mystery one must reconsider the approach to art as expressed in the Rainbow in comparison to that of "pure art" historians of today. To start with, for Elisabeth herself, her Privy-Council led by such pragmatic politicians as William and Robert Cecil, for her court and the whole English establishment both before and after 1588, as for the kings, courts and governments of Europe including the Vatican, "courtly eulogy" (F. Yates), "religious sentiment" (R. Graziani), the "cult" of Elisabeth (R. Strong) - as they saw the essence of the Rainbow portrait - were the form, whereas power politics, policy formulation and implementation, knowledge and intelligence operations were the content of their daily work and concern. For all of them the language of artistic and religious symbolism was an ideological and political weapon extremely useful to mythologize, rationalize and disguise their political, economic, military goals, ambitions, designs and dreams. In spite of abundant sources it is not an easy history to write. For, though feared by everyone, there was no formally organized secret service in Elisabethan England. In typical English fashion each of its top leaders did his own intelligence thing - developed sources and agent networks - while reacting to internal and external threats in the pursuit of more or less jointly defined national goals. It is the sharing of these goals and of daily experience that generated the Elisabethan intelligence culture, unwritten doctrine and tradition all secretly and silently transmitted to future generations. From the commented deeds, principles, judgements and writings of five key Elisabethan figures I shall proceed to extract the basic themes of the knowledge and intelligence doctrines guiding their daily practical work and relevant for the Rainbow. Four of them are, what Bacon called power "gamesters": Queen Elisabeth herself, ruling England as an absolute monarch for 45 years, William Cecil, Francis Walsingham and Robert Cecil for 64 years the Principal Secretaries of State of England. Their job was defined by R. Cecil at the end of this period to be "at liberty to deal ... with all matter of speech and intelligence" and for that purpose "to maintain men abroad ... from all parts of the world." The fifth is the very foremost analyst of the times, Francis Bacon, the ideologue of the knowledge revolution of l6th century, who forsightedly saw in intelligence "the light of the State," the link binding power with knowledge and said so in the "Rainbow scheme" in 1600 and in his writings right up to his posthumous New Atlantis in 1626. Her faithful servant and most famous intelligencer Francis Walsingham was continuously in trouble with Elisabeth for putting his aggressive, expansionist religious ideology first, thus: "I wish God's glory and next the Queen's safety". Elisabeth's shoe throwing and screaming at Walsingham in 1575 and many times before and after, "You Puritan, you will never be content till you drive me into a war on all sides and bring the king of Spain unto me," was accompanied by subtler criticisms of his policy. By means of a symbolic, iconographic message Elisabeth gave Walsingham the same lesson. She presented him with a symbolic painting - now in possession of Mrs Dent-Brocklehurst in England - showing herself leading peace by hand into England while her predecessor on the throne and sister, Queen Mary, and her husband, Phillip, King of Spain, are leading the God of War, thus identifying Walsingham's policy with that of Englands archenemy of the time. >From 1570 to 1600 at least eight important merchant adventures and commercial share companies were founded (i.a., East India Company in December 1600) with the participation of top members of Elisabeth's government, all of whom were "encouragers of merchants." With such ambitions and goals in view from William Cecil right from the start domestic and foreign intelligence was an essential tool of government. The demand for and the use of intelligence was continuously generated by five key factors. Four of them are those identified by H. Wilensky in 1967 in his Organizational Intelligence as generators of the intelligence effort of any social system: the belief prevalent in the power elite if not of the system that its problems can be rationally described and dealt with, its degree of conflict with the environment, the unity of its power elite if not of the system, the complexity of the system and of its problems. For William Cecil, Francis Walsingham and the whole Elisabethan establishment there was from the start a fifth factor: the danger of being certain, of feeling secure about your own, the intentions and capabilities of your allies and enemies, the need for continuous vigilance, and a continuous search for indications both of future perils and opportunities. Archives are full of evidence of the Elisabethan awareness of this fifth factor. It is first of all seen in the creative use of questions in government documents as tools to set in doubt the existing estimates, to detect new problems and alternatives. Furthermore, Walsingham stated in 1586 this basic English intelligence doctrine generating principle when he wrote to Cecil that the factions and disagreements within the government are not so dangerous, but that "there is nothing more dangerous than [the feeling of] securitie." In 1574 he warned Cecil that the new Spanish Ambassador has come "to lulle us a sleepe for a tyme." The principal sectors in which William Cecil and his successors concentrated their intelligence effort were: internal security and counter-espionage, political and military intelligence in Europe including "kindling fires" in enemy camps, commercial and economic intelligence, and in time the "expansion intelligence" in all parts of the globe. Walsingham: "A Diligent Searcher of Hidden Secrets" This way of thinking - with rationalizations, suspicions, emphasis on "foresight" - generated demand for intelligence, for covert, diplomatic, paramilitary and other operations, counter-intelligence, police, judicial, diplomatic and political action. The best documentated example of such intelligence generation in the course of crisis management is the one related to the assassination of William of Orange in June 1584. Three documents in question were all written by Francis Walsingham, the man Cecil chose in 1572, when he became Lord Treasurer, to succeed him as the Secretary of State. By the Spring of 1587, when preliminary intelligence reports from all over Europe indicated Spain's intention to invade England, Walsingham drafted in his own hand the following: "Plot for Intelligence out of Spain" 1. Sir Edward Stafford [English ambassador in France] to draw what he can from the Venetian ambassador. 2. To procure some correspondence with the French King's ambassador in Spain. 3. To take order with some at Rouen to have frequent advertisements from such as arrive out of Spain at Nantes, Newhaven [Havre] and Dieppe. 4. To make choice of two especial persons French, Flemings or Italians to go along the coast to see what preparations ore a making there. To furnish them with letters of credit. 5. To have two intelligencers at the Court of Spain, one of Finale, another of Genoa. 6. To have intelligence at Brussels, Leyden, Bar. 7. To employ the Lord of Dunsany. One basic principle of English intelligence is thus formulated in the official history of British Intelligence in the Second World War (by F.H. Hinsley et alii, 1981): "The value and the justification of intelligence depend on the use that is made of its findings." Numerous examples show that this principle was established and used consistently under Elisabeth's reign. This is clearly shown by how from the "Matters to be resolved in Council," "A plot for the Annoying the King of Spain," the "Plot for Intelligence out of Spain" and the intelligence Walsingham and others gathered, a plan was devised for preventive action. Richard Hakluyt in Vol. VI of his The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and discoveries of the English Nation, whose first volume was dedicated to Walsingham in 1589, its second and third editions to Robert Cecil in 1597 and 1600, describes the famous Cadiz raid in 1587 by the English fleet under the command of Sir Francis Drake: A brief relation of the notable service performed by Sir Francis Drake upon the Spanish Fleete prepared in the Road of Cadiz; and of his destroying of 100 sails of barks, etc. The report starts with the relation of intelligence on which the operation is based: "Her Majestie being informed of a mighty preparation by Sea begunne in Spain for the invasion of England, by good advice of her grave and prudent Counsell thought it expedient to prevent the same." Thus, having in the words of Drake "singed the beard of the King of Spain" by this preventive action based on intelligence, Walsingham continued his intelligence effort, so that when in June 1588 the Spanish Armada approached England, the English - in the words of one observer - "knew more about the Armada than the king of Spain himself." Whoever reads only a small sample of Elisabethan government documents will find that from his first day in office William Cecil - as well as Walsingham and Robert Cecil after him - began to identify the shifting intelligence objectives as the one just described, to invent intelligence software techniques necessary for the purpose, to find or manage men who "could penetrate everything" and "keep a bright lookout on all sides." The targets were many and the three Principal Secretaries of State neglected none: all ports, borders with Scotland, Catholic refugee groups and seminars training infiltrator priests in the Low Countries, France, Spain and Rome, recusants in prison in England, all embassies in London, dissatisfied nobility, Mary of Scotland, the Papal curia, England's chief resources, money and export markets, various factions contending for power in France, Dutch factions and court, Ireland, and numerous actual or potential agents or double agents etc. The activity this intelligence effort required of the Secretary of State - besides other duties than domestic and foreign intelligence - was enormous. We know that Robert Cecil in 80 days in 1610, according to one contemporary "directed and signed 2884 letters" besides "other continuous employment." About William Cecil's agent network there is little systematic knowledge but abundant evidence keeps repeating "His spies were everywhere," "Spies and secret agents paid by him were in every court and camp." For Walsingham and Robert Cecil we have some indications of the relatively small organisation and the cost of intelligence. According to Beale, Walsingham at one time received information from agents in 37 places, from 12 in France to 3 in the Turkish Empire. This was handled by a small number of clerks in London taking care of correspondence, archives and agents. Many students of history claim that British secret service practiced this doctrine everywhere during the centuries of the Empire. Some of Walsingham's exploits along the same line, "intelligence is war carried by other means," have become legends hard to document, but nevertheless parts of the British intelligence lore. Two of them are to be found in Wellwood's Memoirs. The first tells that from an agent in the Pope's entourage Walsingham obtained the Spanish plans for the financing of the invasion of England: "upon this Intelligence, Walsingham found a way to retard the Spanish invasion for a whole Year, by getting the Spanish Bills protested at Genoa, which should have supplied them with Mony to carry on their Preparations." The other example is that - according to Wellwood "Walsingham also laid the Foundation of the Civil Wars in France and in the Low-Countries, which put a final stop to the vast Designs of the House of Austria" and told the Queen "that she had no reason to fear the Spaniard; for tho he had a strong Appetite, and a good Digestion, he had given him such a Bone to pick as would take him up twenty Years at least, and break his Teeth at last. So her Majesty had no more to do, but to throw into the Fire she had kindled, some English Fuel from time to time to keep it burning." "You see ... we maintein a trade not for gold, silver or jewels, nor for silks, nor for spices, nor for any commodity of matter, but only for God's first creature, which was LIGHT; to have light (I say) of the growth of all parts of the world ... These adventureres (he added) we call Merchants of Light." What all the political scientists and historians of science who have written on Bacon have missed or passed over is that these and a dozen other types of "merchants" listed in New Atlantis are plain and simple intelligencers, acting secretly abroad under a variety of covers and that the security of the New Atlantis against foreign intelligencers is extremely high. New Atlantis can be understood as a creative synthesis of the enormous commercial, exploratory, freebooter experience accumulated from 1560 to 1600 and described in books like Hakluyt's voyages. Historians, in my opinion, have not explored this as the source for the "New Atlantis scheme." This is exactly how succeeding generations of the English intellectual elite understood the New Atlantis. Foulke Glenvill, for example, says that with his New Atlantis Bacon produced a "mighty design" for the Royal Society. And in its earliest days the Royal Society did not act only as a center for research in the natural sciences but also for economic, technological, scientific intelligence, as anyone who has read the early Philosophical Transactions can testify. Spratt's history of the Royal Society in 1666 describes in detail the use of detailed "Queries" to program the"merchants of light" before they sailed from England and to "debrief" them, as one would say today, upon their return. Thus, thanks to Bacon the value not only of the political but also of economic, geographic, technological, scientific intelligence became an early component of the English intelligence culture - long before this was the fact in any other country. Except for the likeness of Elisabeth the symbols of light dominate all others in the Rainbow. Thus in order of "brilliance" one [c]an list these light symbols as the golden cloak with its eyes, the astronomical symbols: the sun - identified with England and Elisabeth, with her bright, sunny face, and its position relative fo the rainbow in her hand and the inscription in Latin above the hand; the moon - the image of Walsingham (?), Elisabeth's chief intelligencer who sees in the dark all plots and intrigues; of Cynthia of the Seas, and of the virgin goddess Diana Lucifera; the rainbow; the profusion of pearls, rubies, diamonds, throughout the painting. It is significant to note that in Advancement of Learning, Bacon compares the interactions of light with the noble stones to various kinds of truth, both those obvious and those of the more knotted, complex, tortured kind: "Truth as a naked and open daylight ... may perhaps come to the price of a pearl that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle that showeth in varied lights." Out of a total of 37 identified symbols in the Rainbow, 14 are connected with light (and light as intellect). Finally, as the last and most important symbol of light in the Rainbow we have to examine closely the meanings of the knotted snake, made entirely of noble stones, representing for Bacon, among others, Lucifer, the bearer of light.
