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The final chapter of this work takes us into the Cromwellian regime’s espionage activities that frightened so many in the era, as we saw at the very beginning of this work. This chapter will also take us into the Cromwellian regime’s office routine, its intelligence analysis and into the nature of what actually lay behind the realities of espionage and secrecy under Secretary John Thurloe and the Protectorate regime. It will also seek to show just how this secret intelligence material entered into the
This book considers in detail the culture and language of plots, conspiracies and intrigues and exposes how the intelligence activities of the Three Kingdoms of the 1640s began to be situated within early modern government from the Civil Wars to the rule of Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s. It also introduces the reader to some of the personalities who were caught up in this contemporary intelligence and espionage world from the intelligencers, especially Thomas Scot and John Thurloe, to the men and women who became its secret agents and spies. The book includes accounts of espionage activities not just in England but also in Ireland and Scotland, and it especially investigates intelligence and espionage during the critical periods of the British Civil Wars and the important developments which took place under the English Republic and Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s.
was that at the centre of his coming rule Charles II should now place secret and state intelligence matters for, as Newcastle pronounced: in the ‘greateste secrets of state Intelegence is the life of a state’. 1 The death of John Thurloe in February 1668 presents us with a final glimpse of the role and the purpose of secret intelligence gathering and espionage matters as they had stood under the English Republic and Cromwellian Protectorate; an age had ended, but by that stage the Restoration regime, now replete
John Thurloe had already manufactured, or, as we shall argue here, had simply revived, what later commentators came to see as one of the most formidable espionage systems ever created by the state. This intelligence network certainly guaranteed Thurloe some contemporary fame and a real notoriety, which he retains in the more general histories of intelligence and espionage to this day – especially, perhaps, in the more popular versions of ‘spy history’. But were all of these covert actions, all of these resorts to espionage
government since. Although, as one prominent member of the underground Royalist Sealed Knot, Alan Brodrick, pointedly remarked, there was another view of our man and his secret work: ‘Scot … [had] less braines then [John] Thurloe & was always gulled of 9 partes in 10 of w[ha]t hee gave for intelligence … [but] hee is ten tymes more diligent in search of pacquets.’ 49 It’s a moot point, of course, whether it remained dogged determination, diligence or individual flashy intuition that now proved to be more beneficial in such
ordinances, ii, pp. 774, 830. 100 Fleetwood to Thurloe, 23 November 1654, in Thomas Birch (ed.), State Papers of John Thurloe (7 vols, 1742), ii, p. 733. 101 Adair, True narrative, pp. 220–1. Cf. Kirkpatrick, Historical Essay, p. 301. 102 Rights of presentation were regained by those, like Sir John Clotworthy, no longer under state disfavour, Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, p. 150. 103 Seymour, Puritans, pp. 99–100. 104 Little, Lord Broghill, pp. 98–9, 105, 108–9 suggests connections between the arrangements in Ulster and those subsequently overseen by Broghill in
Wales, 1642–1660 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1981), p. 85. Bennett, ‘Royalist war effort’, p. 345. E. W. Hensman, ‘The East Midlands and the Second Civil War, May to July, 1648’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6 (1923), 126–59 at 154. ‘The examination of George Clayton, March 13, 1654’, in T. Birch (ed.), A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe Esq, 7 vols (London: Thomas Woodward, 1742), III, pp. 228–9; ‘The examination of John Baggelow servant to Mr. John Cooper, of Thurgaston, taken the 14th day of March, 1654. before col. Berry and
upwards of two thousand people, including the stationer and publisher Giles Calvert, who was reported to be constantly printing, was the cause of government alarm and Secretary John Thurloe received intelligence that Quakers were armed and planning insurrection. 67 The scale of the uprising was such that George Fox was eventually arrested and taken first to the Marshalsea prison at Leicester, and
dissolution of parliament, and the Irish land settlement was taken up by an interim council chosen by the army. 5 A committee, chaired by John Lambert, was set up by an interim Council of State on 17 May 1653 to draw up ‘instructions’ for ‘disposing of the forfeited lands in Ireland’ and to ‘frame them so as may be for the best advantage of the service’. 6 The following day, and to avoid interruptions from the Adventurers, the interim Council of State appointed John Thurloe as its gatekeeper in Westminster, to receive and reply to petitions and to report back to the
Conclusion Burying the good old cause T he experiences of Edward Bowles were typical of godly clergy who lived through the mid seventeenth century. A supporter of Parliament’s cause, he was appointed chaplain to a regiment of foot in the early months of the civil war. In the next decade, Bowles ministered at York, where he corresponded with Oliver Cromwell’s spymaster John Thurloe. Despite his support for the Protectorate, Bowles saw the restoration of Charles II as the surest method of reaching a political and religious compromise, and, with it, peace and