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Elizabeth I's Secret Agents

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Factual: History

A look at the secret network behind Queen Elizabeth I's 40-year reign.

A look at the secret network behind Queen Elizabeth I's 40-year reign and the world's first secret service run by her spymasters Robert and William Cecil.

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Elizabeth I's Secret Agents: Series 1: Episode 3

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Episode 3

Series 1

BBC Two - Elizabeth I's Secret Agents, Series 1, Episode 3

A look at the world's first secret service. England has a new monarch and Robert Cecil exposes the most infamous terrorist threat in British history, the gunpowder plot.

Elizabeth I is dead and King James of Scotland travels south to take the throne at the invitation of Robert Cecil. Meanwhile, John Gerard, a Catholic priest who has dedicated his life to the destruction of the Protestant state that developed in Elizabeth's England, has escaped and made contact with a splinter cell in the Catholic underground containing an extremist called Guy Fawkes, who has a plan to blow up parliament with the king inside. 

Cecil hears about the gunpowder plot, but is unaware of when and how they will strike, and his investigation is hampered as he's also trying to manage King James, who has a wildly ambitious idea of unifying Scotland and England in a new kingdom of Great Britain.

Elizabeth I's Secret Agents: Series 1

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Elizabeth I's Secret Agents

Series 1

Episode 3

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