Susan Hyde

Susan Hyde ( July 1607 – 23 September 1656) was an English noblewoman and spy. Hyde was active during the time of the Protectorate after the English monarchy had been overthrown in the English Civil War (1642–1651). She worked as an intelligence-gatherer for the exiled royal claimant Charles II as part of the secret organization the Sealed Knot and was instrumental in organizing communication between England and its members. Hyde was captured in September 1656 and died after being subjected to psychological and perhaps physical torture.

Personal life Susan Hyde was born July 1607, being baptized on 22 July. Her father was the politician Henry Hyde and her mother was Mary Langford. Susan was the sister of Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, an important English statesman in the seventeenth century. Burke's Peerage states that Susan married Kympton Mabbott, son of the journalist and publisher Gilbert Mabbot, and had a daughter, Diana, with him. This information is considered questionable since contemporary documents suggest that Kympton and Diana were siblings, not father and daughter. It is more likely that Hyde remained unmarried throughout her life. Female spies were employed since their letters were often not examined as closely as those written by men given that they were most often thought to be simply of domestic nature. Hyde was part of the Sealed Knot from the very beginning, having written letters to later leading members already in July 1653, months before the Sealed Knot formed. Her brother was a key figure in its inception, and Hyde seems to have operated in the underbelly of the organization.

Unfortunately for Hyde, the Sealed Knot had underestimated Cromwell's agents, who intercepted her letters even before the Sealed Knot was formed. Some of Hyde's movements can be reconstructed from her surviving letters. She stayed near Baynard's Castle in London. Around July/August 1656, she moved from Hart Hall in Oxford, one of her brother's previous residences, to Grittenham, where she stayed with Ms. K. Ayliffe, presumably a relative of Anne Ayliffe, her brother's first wife. Hyde used many different aliases, including "Mistress Simburbe", "Mistress St Barbe" and "Mistress Edwards". She also sometimes used the alias "Ms. Gotherintone", posing as "Wollendraper at the signe of the Ravene in Paules Church-yarde". and died a week later