#and i'd genuinely love to know the name of the woman sent to Isabel Neville 👀

[wonder-worker]

"If anonymity was required [for reconnaissance and espionage] the woman going about her business, between markets, was the perfect messenger. The Compaignon's news was taken to Lille by a female courier. Writing to the English government on the eve on a projected Scottish invasion Sir William Bulmer was interrupted by the arrival of the wife of one of his spies who had come because 'hir husband was suspect, so that he durst not come hyself. . .'. Equally, Sir William reported that among his spies in Scotland in 1523 he numbered one he called 'the Priores'. In the border war of intelligence it was reported, two years later, that the Scots had lost a female spy at Durham where she was captured and interrogated. There should be little surprise at this, for as Philippe Contamine points out women were much involved in medieval warfare and were employed as messengers and spies throughout the Hundred Years War. But again it is to Edward IV, and the great crisis of his reign, that we must turn. With Warwick and Clarence in France allying with Margaret of Anjou, the king sent Lady Isabel Neville one of her servants bearing an offer of peace. The woman's real business was to plead with Clarence not to be the ruin of his family, and to remind him of the deadly feud between York and Lancaster. Did he really take Warwick at his word when, having done homage to Henry VI's son, he said he would make Clarence king?* The choice of this woman was made because of her shrewdness and because she could gain access to her lady, and thus Clarence, quicker than any male agent."

-Ian Arthurson, "Espionage and Intelligence from the Wars of the Roses to the Reformation", Nottingham Medieval Studies (1991)

*The source for this is the memoirs of Philippe de Commynes, who later served in the French court and was very cognizant of espionage in contemporary politics and warfare. It's not proven or disproven by any other source.