Parker’s Private Secretary

An Historical Incident

The story I am about to tell relates to an incident in the history of England which is but little known, and which you will not find in books, but one which nevertheless had a great effect on her destinies.

About the beginning of this century, while the revolutionary wars were raging, communication in cipher was naturally very prevalent; and ingenuity was taxed to the utmost on one hand to invent, and on the other to detect, the medium used in secret correspondence. As a rule the decipherer had beaten the cipherer, and no known method was secure of detection. If conventional signs were used, the recurrence of the different symbols gave a key easily followed out. Some ingenious spirits corresponded by reference to the pages and lines of particular editions of books—methods, although they might preserve the secret, disclosed what was often quite as dangerous: there was a secret. I am about to tell you of a plan which for a long time was not only undetected, but unsuspected.

It was at that time when the first Napoleon had assembled his fleet and transports at Brest, with the ostensible, and as is generally believed the real view, of making a descent on England. The greatest precautions were observed by the English Government in regard to correspondence from France, and an amount of espionage was practiced at the post office, which left Sir James Graham’s subsequent performances in that line far behind. The national excitement was intense, and the political departments of the government were administered with an iron sway.

My uncle, Sir George Trevor, was, as all the world then knew, high in the Admiralty—and as it was from him that I heard this anecdote, its veracity may be depended on.

The dispatches… Read More