Network Profiles

Abstract Chapter 4 introduces a method developed by the authors for mapping the unique network ‘fingerprint’ of each person in the dataset based on a combination of eight metrics. These unique fingerprints can be compared in multidimensional space to discover latent similarities between correspondents, facilitating ways of thinking about what it means for two things to be similar, which bypass human-assigned labels and taxonomies to look directly at correspondents’ function within the network. The chapter employs this method to examine the activities and personnel that constituted the information wing of the Tudor government. The results suggest that, with the professionalisation of the role of ambassador came a need for informal networks of informants, which were supplied in the form of movable types such as merchants, military figures, and travelling intellectuals. In applying the method to the practice of letter interception—another intelligence strategy of the Tudor government—the outputs of the method show its suitability for identifying structural similarities that may not be apparent from the biographies or other obvious labels we might associate with a set of individuals. The subjects of interception often had little in common apart from their correspondence being opened, read, and copied without their consent.