[00.07]
Informing and informers were pervasive in successive governments’ attempts to maintain the security and stability of the English Republic between 1649 and 1660.
Some members of the public felt that by informing on others they significantly and positively contributed to the security of the Interregnum Regimes. Indeed, many members of the public considered that informing on others, including their own neighbours, was a responsibility of every supporter of the Government.
Recently this little-studied aspect of life in the Republic has been researched by doctoral researcher, Waseem Ahmed, at University College London. Here he discusses the topic of “Everyday informing in Revolutionary England”.
[00.58]
In early March 1654, an ‘honest’ felt-maker came to rest on the side of the road, as he made his journey back to Bristol from the village of Beckington in south Somerset. As he sat down, he watched as two unknown gentlemen exchanged pleasantries. The conversation, however, quickly turned to matters concerning the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. One of the gentlemen relayed that he had come from Southampton where he had a met a French merchant and had been told some shocking news. The merchant informed him of a great Jesuit plot where a number of men had bound themselves to assassinate Cromwell in order to foment Rebellion, in the hopes that it would bring about the Restoration of the exiled pretender, Charles Stuart. The other gentleman upon hearing this, voiced his approval, only hoping that it would not lead to further bloodshed amongst the common people. The poor felt-maker who had overheard dared not to speak. Instead, he notified the local army officer, James Powell, who proceeded to write to Phillip Jones, a member of Cromwell’s Council of State, and an account of the incident can be found in the state papers of the Secretary of State, John Thurloe. This ‘poor felt-maker, as we will come to see was merely one of countless individuals who came to play an active role in contributing to the security of the Republican regimes.
The religious radical and polemicist, Clement Writer, described 1650s England as being overrun with
“hundreds of Spies and Intelligencers… swarming over all of England as Lice and Frogs did in Egypt.”
[02.43]
There were two critically important heads of intelligence in the period. The first was Thomas Scot, a Regicide and prominent member of the Rump Parliament who served as Head of Intelligence from 1649 until 1653, and again in 1659 after the collapse of Richard Cromwell’s Protectorate. The second was John Thurloe, the all-knowing Secretary of State who held the post from 1653 to 1659. Together, they created a highly organised and effective intelligence network which succeeded in protecting the successive republican regimes of the 1650s from subversive threats.
They were supported by a number of capable assistants: George Bishop supported Scot by taking charge of domestic intelligence, Samuel Moreland and Isaac Dorislaus supported Thurloe in deciphering Royalist codes. The latter was also put in charge of the post office and was responsible for searching through, opening and copying any interesting mail. Royalist plots such as the Penruddock Uprising in March 1655, an attempted nationwide rising which was ultimately restricted to the West Country, as well as various plots to assassinate Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, including John Gerrard’s plot in 1654 and Miles Sindecombe’s attempt in early 1657, were quickly suppressed and their ringleaders imprisoned and executed. The majority of plots during the period were scuppered by the authorities before they ever came to fruition.
Thurloe adopted a calculated strategy of permitting conspiracies to mature merely in order to implicate more individuals before suppressing them at the most effective moment where they could not prove damaging to the stability of the regime. He also proved highly adept at infiltrating the exiled Stuart court or conspiratorial groups within England with his spies. Rather than creating martyrs out of Royalist agents, Thurloe became an expert at convincing them to abandon their loyalties and to collaborate with the new regime. Individuals like Isaac Berkenhead, a Royalist agent who was captured and subsequently undertook a number of missions on behalf of the Commonwealth, provided vital intelligence to the Council of State which helped to ensure that Charles’ uprising was not accompanied by a series of other plots designed to undermine the Republic. Henry Manning and Joseph Bampfield provided Thurloe with intel from the Charles Stuart’s court, while low ranking individuals such as William Masten and Thomas Peace, both former Royalist servants, were critical in exposing assassination plots against Oliver Cromwell.
[05.32]
At the same time, Thurloe was astute at establishing links with local government leaders who were willing to co-operate with Westminster by supplying information about potential schemes. No wonder then that contemporaries frequently noted the capacity of the Cromwellian state to penetrate every corner of public and private life. George Bate, who had served as physician to Charles I, Oliver Cromwell and Charles, complained that the period witnessed
“whole swarms of informers {who} wandered about in all places, both publick and private, sacred and prophane. They listned in Churches, sneaked into compa∣nies in Taverns and Alehouses, and went to wrestling in the Rings.”
The intelligence apparatus established during the 1650s served as a model for subsequent English governments in the second half of the seventeenth century as they continued to develop their intelligence operations.
[06.31]
Many historians of seventeenth century England have investigated the nature of ‘intelligence’ during the 1650s, the organised system of gathering and analysing information relating to affairs of state, particularly in regards to state security, alongside processes such as espionage and professional spying, usually from the view of the authorities. In reality, however, despite the republican authorities seeking to paint a picture of a comprehensive and widespread professional intelligence service, the state simply lacked the necessary state apparatus to maintain this.
On one level, the state was simply unable to employ so many people given the immense the financial cost for an already cash-strapped government. Alan Marshall points out that the annual budget for intelligence gathering under the Cromwellian Protectorate was said to be between £1200 and £2000, far below the exaggerated reports that we find in the Restoration period, when writers such as Samuel Pepys spoke of sums of around £70,000. Even so, there were frequent complaints that the allotted funds were delayed or were received in a fairly haphazard fashion.
Rather, what is perhaps most intriguing is that the majority of intelligence that the state received emerged from unsolicited sources such as the ‘poor felt-maker’ that I began this discussion with. This did not mean that they would not be adequately rewarded for their services but that the vast majority of individuals were not professional spies under the employment of the state. John Thurloe’s state papers, therefore, are bursting with information from ordinary men and women denouncing potential opponents of the Republics.
While individuals informed for a variety of reasons, ranging from a desire to avoid punishment or secure office and financial rewards, to pursue interpersonal disputes or a sincere sense of duty to the Republican state, they all played a crucial role in maintaining the stability of the Republics and protecting the regimes from their enemies. As an informal political practice that allowed individuals, even humbler ones, who were usually excluded from more formalised political Engagement, informing is another activity which is part and parcel of what Jason Peacey has coined an increasingly “participatory political culture” which emerged during the English Revolution.
[09.04]
One of the most common forms of disaffection voiced towards the Republics involved nostalgic sentiments for the executed King Charles I and expressions of support for his son, Charles Stuart. The Commonwealth in 1649 was acutely aware of the danger posed by seditious statements and their ability to de-legitimise and undercut the authority of the burgeoning Republic. With that in mind, a Treason Act was enacted on 17 July 1649, which meant that the
“writing, printing, or openly Declaring, that the said Government is Tyrannical, Usurped or Unlawful; or that the Commons in Parliament assembled are not the Supreme Authority of this Nation… shall be taken, deemed and adjudged by Authority of this Parliament to be High Treason.”
Subsequent legislation continued to be passed by successive regimes throughout the 1650s in order to assert their authority, and to make clear that it remained illegal to promote the Stuart cause. This included an ordinance passed in January 1654, which made it illegal to question the authority of the new Protectorate and asserted that to
“proclame, declare, publish, or any way promote Charles Stuart, Eldest Son to the late King”,
would be considered treasonous offences. Dissenting grumbling, therefore, could be used to prosecute disaffected individuals. And yet, the lack of a professionalised bureaucracy meant that much of the onus was on ordinary individuals to report potential dissidents.
One intriguing example of this concerns the minister for Nettlecombe in Somerset, Robert Gay, who denounced his fellow minister, Bernard Waite, to Thurloe in March 1655. While riding down to London from Somerset, Gay was overtaken en route by Waite and they fell into discussion. Waite explained that he was heading to London to make a case to the government to restore him to his livings after he had been removed as minister of Exford by John Pyne, a leading figure of Somerset’s County committee during the 1640s and a devoted supporter of the Rump Parliament which Cromwell had dissolved in April 1653. With Pyne’s refusal to serve the Protectorate government, and the supposed backing of a certain Colonel Gorges, Waite believed that it was an ideal opportunity to make his case heard. From this initial discussion, and having met him once before, Gay recognised that Waite “was a person… disaffected to the Commonwealth.”
Gay pressed him into discussing the recent failed Royalist uprising known as Penruddock’s uprising that had centred on Salisbury given Waite’s proximity to events since he lived in Andover. Waite’s response to Guy’s questioning made his loyalties starkly clear. Rather than voicing his opposition to the rising, as Guy had done, Waite formulated his own theory about the uprising’s failure, arguing that it would have had more success if Charles Stuart had provided the plotters with formal commissions, so that they
“might have said to the people…come, go along with us, we will bring you to your king; we will shew you the face of your king.”
Gay played along, asking Waite, “why then the people would have said, where is our king?”. “He is in the north parts of England”, Waite replied. Gay had had enough by this point, and responded curtly that, if he was referring to the King of the Scots meaning Charles Stuart, then “he might incur the same misery his father did.” Waite then sought to defend Charles Stuart, asserting he was “innocent from any crimes” before Gay responded that Charles was “guilty of high misdemeanours, as by bringing in the Scots army to Worcester”, and “having fought against the parliament’s army”. This was a reference to Charles’ defeat at the hands of Oliver Cromwell as he sought to recover his crown in 1651.
[13.25]
It is interesting to note that Gay referred to himself on numerous occasions as an ‘informant’, which suggests that he was well-assured of the role he was playing in bringing Waite to the attention of the authorities. Throughout the letter to Thurloe, there is a running theme that Gay was not only attempting to demonstrate Waite’s culpability as an enemy of the state, but also to assert his own republican credentials. For instance. Gay was happy to criticise Charles I by asserting that his son, Charles Stuart, would “incur the same misery his father did” if he was to reappear in England, a seemingly tacit approval of the execution of Charles I.
Denunciations like Gay’s were not exceptional. In another case, a soldier named Thomas Osborne of Sherbourne Dorset denounced a Steven Bound in July 1655 for proclaiming that he hoped to have a King. When Osborne queried who was meant, Bound responded that he hoped it would be King Charles (meaning Charles Stuart) and “that all those who disowned him were rogues.” Bound was likely aware that Osborne was currently serving in the Republic’s service and that his comments would be provocative. Bound’s only defence was that their conversation had taken place at a fair when he was heavily intoxicated, and that he could not recall what he had said.
The republican authorities were well-aware of the ‘moral’ dangers of drunkenness in relation to their drive for Godly Reformation, but also of the role that drinking played in promoting opposition to the regime. In March 1654, a Jane Lane was brought before the Cheshire Quarter Sessions for a possible drinking offence, after she was reported by Jane Richardson of Hurleston for various misdemeanours in support of Charles Stuart, including making a toast to the exiled King’s health.
As a number of historians have pointed out, contemporaries were mindful of the association between drinking, particularly health-drinking, and popular Royalist culture. Toasts to Charles Stuart represented a serious political gesture, designed to express contempt for the current regime, and to demonstrate one’s adherence to the Stuart cause. The authorities, incredibly wary of the power of toasting to sustain what they believed to be a symbol of monarchy, sought to tighten legislation to curtail the practice of health-drinking, but also drinking offenses more generally. Informers, like Thomas Osborne and Jane Lane were well aware then of the dangers to the state posed by health-drinking or in the case of Osborne, seditious talk under the influence of alcohol, and also of the state’s drive to curtail such practices.
[16.14]
Many of these encounters that have come to the awareness of the state help to demonstrate how far everyday discourse has been transformed by the revolutionary turmoil of the previous decade. Much has been said about the supposed universal condemnation of the execution of Charles I by England’s populace, but a number of these informing cases bring to the fore justifications and defences of the Regicide. In a discussion between Ann Barter and Mary Wadden in Somerset in 1651, the former voiced her complaints against those in Parliament who were said to have hanged the King. Wadden corrected her by arguing that Charles had in fact been executed by beheading, before going further to suggest that this should have taken place before he had even married Henrietta Maria. Such a forthright account moves beyond a sympathetic understanding of past political events that led to the emergence of the Republics, to one that explicitly emphasised not just Wadden’s support for the execution of Charles I, after he had embroiled the nation in years of Civil War, but also one that voiced apparent support for the execution of the King, before he had even been crowned.
Similar sentiments were voiced by Ralph Smalwood of Yorkshire when discussing the Irish Rebellion of 1641 with his neighbour John Hitchmough. Smalwood sought to pin the blame of the Irish Rebellion and subsequent war on Charles. Hitchmough’s defence of Charles and his statement that “the King’s blood would be revenged” led Smalwood to denounce him to the authorities.
Informing on behalf of the Republics did not always relate to royalism, but could also arise from individuals failing to conform to government policy. In 1658, for example, Randle Palin from the parish of Malpas, Cheshire, petitioned local government to report numerous people who had violated the 1653 Act relating to marriages, births and burials, by performing clandestine marriages – an offence tantamount to adultery. Citing the Act, Palin urged the Justices of the Peace to ensure that the individuals in question faced punishment.
Little is known about Palin beyond the fact that his name appears on a petition, also in 1658, requesting aid to be given to his neighbour, a William Barnet of Hampton, Cheshire. Barnet had suffered a wound when he was part of the force that took Shocklath Hall in Malpas, on behalf of Parliament. Palin clearly held some credit with the regime, since the authorities acted upon his information. When questioned, all those he accused admitted to being married in violation of the 1653 Act.
In a very different case in 1650, the governors of King Edward’s School in Birmingham, were denounced by Parliamentarian captain Robert Girdler and risked losing their employment for failing to take the Engagement, an obligatory requirement for all men holding public office, including schoolmasters to promise to be
“true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England, as it now Established without a King or House of Lords.”
[19.38]
As other cases – including the one concerning the felt-maker with which this discussion began – demonstrate, individuals who denounced others to the authorities clearly understood that security issues relating to life of the Lord Protector, and ultimately the preservation of the regime, were the most important to bring to the attention of the state. Thus, in March 1656, Nathaniel Bunch was encouraged by his would-be denouncer, James Seabrooke, to provide his thoughts on various individuals associated with the regime, first on Colonel Thomas Pride, best remembered for his role in Pride’s Purge, and then Colonel John Okey. The latter was a stalwart republican and a staunch opponent of the Protectoral regime. After Seabrooke managed to convince Bunch to admit to his private meetings with Okey, he implied that their meetings were part of a plot to kill the Protector. While we only have the examination of Bunch, we can determine that Seabrooke then accused him of stating that “the said Lord Protector should be put to the same death the King was at Whitehall-gate.” It is highly probable that this was a case of trepanning, or what we would call deliberately entrapping someone.
It seems likely that Seabrooke was acquainted with Bunch given that his line of questioning indicated that he was aware of Bunch’s and Okey’s connection. Given the fact that Bunch was indeed closely associated with Okey, a leading opponent of the regime who was constantly getting in trouble himself for being implicated in Fifth Monarchist and republican plots, including an armed insurrection led by the Fifth Monarchist leader, Thomas Venner, in 1657, it is highly probable that Bunch was also involved. Thus, Seabrooke seems to have regarded it as his public duty to act as a credible informant on behalf of the regime, albeit through disingenuous means.
[21.41]
Bunch was indicative of a range of individuals not formally employed by the state who, for various reasons, saw it as their public duty to report possible plots to the authorities. The importance of informing to pubic duty and good citizenship was never as institutionalised or as encouraged as places elsewhere such as Venice where the authorities were able to instil a culture of informing on the part of its citizens. Nevertheless, there were longer term developments that shaped how ordinary men and women in England understood the relationship between civic duty and informing by the 1650s. For example, Thomas Leng has drawn our attention to how central government in early Stuart England encouraged non-elites to carefully monitor their local communities in order to neutralise the threat from the nation’s internal enemies, most commonly papists. At the same time, Ciceronian ideals of civic virtue, emphasising the duty to act selflessly in defence of the public good, further reinforced the notion that individuals bore a moral responsibility to protect the commonweal from potential threats. By the 1650s then, many ordinary people would have been used to the idea that they could and should play an active role in rooting out and exposing potential enemies as part of their public duty.
Others went even further in their service to the regime, infiltrating disaffected groups on their own initiative in an effort to uncover plots themselves. In a letter sent to Oliver Cromwell in May 1655, an Oliver Williams relayed how he had managed to ingratiate himself with the mother of a papal agent by pretending to be a fellow Catholic. Through her, he learned that her son had travelled to Lincolnshire to give commissions to individuals from Charles Stuart himself. Williams also reported that another agent, a Major Caver, had arrived in London as part of what seems to have been a Royalist-Catholic conspiracy to seize the Tower of London in order to launch an insurrection. There is always the possibility the whole plot was fabricated by Williams. Yet, Williams did not seek a reward for uncovering the plot, instead requesting Cromwell’s guidance on how to proceed. Clearly, Williams saw himself as a vital servant for the regime. If what Williams said was indeed true, his actions demonstrate the extent to which private individuals were willing to risk personal danger in defence of the Republics.
[24.26]
The final type of intelligence that I want to discuss is information submitted to the authorities anonymously. Such reports assumed a variety of forms including, but by no means limited to, rumours focusing on the exiled Stuart court, warnings of potential threat to the regime and denunciations against certain individuals.
One piece of anonymous information sent to Thurloe concerned possible plots relating to certain religious groups. For instance, information was sent to Thurloe in August 1653 by an individual known as N.N. The informant, who was a Spaniard, claimed that Jesuits, monks and friars swarmed the nation, and this imagined group’s superior was said to reside in the Spanish ambassador’s house. At the same time, they were also conveniently located in the houses of other Catholic foreign ambassadors, namely the French and Portuguese. Even worse was the fact that these Catholic groups had support amongst government officials, who were happy to receive bribes. Finally, they were said to express immense joy at the continuing war between England and its fellow Protestant nation, the Dutch Republic.
Clearly the agenda of this anonymous source centred upon whipping up anti-Popish hysteria and connecting it to foreign Catholic nations, notably Spain. While to some extent fears of popery faded during the 1650s, particularly when radical sects such as the Quakers began to be considered as the more potent threat to political and social stability, there remained underlying anti-Catholic sentiment that could burst to the surface, especially in times of acute crisis, and particularly when mixed with hostility to England’s long-standing adversary, Spain. It was also clear that the anonymous individual hoped to point to the dangers of continuing the war with the Dutch that had broken out in 1652, with the possibility that the Spanish could capitalise on this while the two Protestant nations remained at war.
[26.40]
Another anonymous letter of intelligence was sent to Oliver Cromwell in November 1653, warning him of the dangers of those on the other end of the religious spectrum. The anonymous figure claimed to have attended a religious meeting at Blackfriars, made up of zealous sectarians, where they were shocked to have heard aspersions cast against Parliament, the Army, and the Council of State. If Cromwell failed to take control of the situation and convince all men of ‘true piety and learning’ to support certain fundamentals in Church and State, then the Stuarts could capitalise upon the situation.
Both anonymous sources clearly had their own motivations for writing to Thurloe and Cromwell. The first source emphasised the threat posed by Catholics, while the other emphasised the threat posed by radical sectaries. Both attempted to demonstrate that the enemy within could compromise the nation, which in turn could be capitalised upon by external enemies. Indeed, both anonymous sources provided information in a way which suggested that if the government took on board their advice to pursue Catholics or the sectaries, the government would be able to maintain political stability.
One final but intriguing example was sent by an opponent of the regime around 1657, who explicitly admitted that they remained a cavalier. Nevertheless, they had decided to provide information to the state due to the fact that they ”abhor bludy plots.” Thus, they decided to inform the authorities about a plot by old Parliamentarians, who were planning to rise in support of the King if Cromwell accepted the offer of the crown by the second Protectorate Parliament. The said plot may have been entirely fabricated given that there is no evidence to suggest that individuals named – including the Earls of Warwick and Manchester – were involved in any plots against the Cromwellian government. Similarly, the fact, that the plot was by old Parliamentarians rather than committed Royalists may suggest that the author was merely attempting to sow divisions among former Parliamentary colleagues. Perhaps it was all a ruse in order to put off Cromwell accepting the crown that had been offered to him by Parliament in February 1657 which would make it even more difficult for a Stuart Restoration.
Nevertheless, it is interesting that this anonymous source thought it was possible to retain a Royalist identity, while simultaneously serving the regime as an informer against his own supposed colleagues. If we take the individual on his word, the interests of political stability apparently overruled personal allegiance, to the extent of being willing to put the interests of the country over his support for the Royalist cause.
[29.31]
To bring this episode to a close. I have sought to sketch out a series of illustrative examples of informing in order to demonstrate the pervasiveness of the practice and its crucial role in maintaining the stability of the English Republics. While historians have tended to concentrate on professional espionage and the intelligence system from the view of the authorities, I have instead sought to offer an alternative view, one that considers informing from below to show how the security of the regime could also be understood as a collective responsibility shared by the populace as a whole. Although the precise motives of most informers are difficult to discern and traces of these obscure individuals are often fragmentary, their interventions, whether denouncing seditious speech, exposing plots or offering advise to counter perceived threats, proved vital to the Republics’ survival.
We could go further and suggest that such actions reflected an enthusiasm for the preservation of the Republics from their opponents and encouraged individuals to identify more closely with the new regimes. Informing was not simply a top-down process directed by the state in which participants acted as passive agents. Rather, informing constituted a dynamic point of contact between the governors and the governed in which their actions were reciprocal. While the state may have encouraged such practices, those who voluntarily provided intelligence to the state were able to reap rewards for their service. Beyond material incentives, informing offered ordinary men and women a stake in the regime and an opportunity to make a meaningful impact on the political stage.
[31.22]
In addition to this fascinating research, you can also listen to a programme by Professor Nadine Akkerman entitled “She-intelligencers – Women and Espionage in the British Civil Wars”. And for teachers, also see our special classroom module on spies, in our programme for schools entitled “Upside Down World”.
You can find both programmes on our website, www.worldturnedupsidedown.co.uk, as well as more than 100 additional contributions from leading historians.
[Ends]