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Barely a pistol shot from my house on the Isle of Skye is Flora MacDonald’s grave. I’ve had reason to study her, the ‘Preserver of Prince Charles Edward Stuart’ (Bonnie Prince Charlie) as her monument tells me, because an Englishman living among Scotsmen needs to understand the deep roots of nationalism. What I had not realised until I read Marc Mierowsky’s outstanding book on Daniel Defoe was the link between the two.
I was brought up on Robinson Crusoe. Mother read me this old-fashioned yarn with huge pleasure, and a little later I thought myself frightfully grown-up by reading of Moll Flanders’ risqué adventures. Both, of course, were blockbuster novels by Defoe – and that’s just what I thought he was: a sensational writer. In A Spy Amongst Us, however, we are told that not only was he a prolific and hugely successful novelist, he was also an aspirant non-conformist preacher, wealthy and poor, three times a gaolbird who endured the pillory, a spin doctor, and, above all else, a secret agent of the Crown.
The author’s introduction is excellent. Here he sets the scene for Defoe’s dissenting politics and unpicks his most troublesome, anonymous pamphlet The Shortest Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church (1702). This was prompted by increased hostility towards Dissenters once Queen Anne came to the throne, but it was bitter satire and led to the first of Defoe’s three arrests by the Tory government for seditious libel. This scandal, and his time in prison, mixing with every class of person, not only informed his later writings, but proved a turning point for him.
Incarceration was followed by further financial difficulty when Defoe’s business was struck by the Great Storm of December 1703. The author very deftly explains how desperately Defoe needed a patron and sponsor, whom he found in the shape of Robert Harley, Queen Anne’s Secretary of State. Harley’s career was progressing well and, noting Defoe’s competence and boldness as a pamphleteer, decided to engage him first to spread agitprop and then as the architect of an almost completely new spy network.
International relations
The primary target for such espionage was Scotland. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, politics north of the border were almost as labyrinthine as they are today! Mierowsky scores heavily, though, by combining a novelist’s style with that of the professional historian to produce an entertaining and informative explanation.
Scotland and England had the same monarch, but little else. Unlike Dublin, Edinburgh had a parliament entirely separate from Westminster, including discrete legal codes, churches, and bureaucracies, which worked well enough until it came to trading partners.
By the turn of the century, many foreign powers believed that Scotland was falling more and more under the influence of England – with whom it was often in direct competition or even at war. France had been an important market for Scotland and vice versa, yet enmity with England heavily discouraged this. In parallel, London forbade Scottish trade with English colonies in the Indies and the Americas.
The author unravels the disaster of Scotland’s attempt to establish a colony of its own at Darién, in the modern-day Republic of Panama, especially clearly. The plan was poorly conceived and badly executed; nor was it helped by epidemics of yellow fever and other infectious diseases to which the Scots had no resistance.
It might have made more headway had King William not been personally hostile to it because he wanted to develop better relationships with the Spanish. They claimed the whole area in which the Scots planned to establish and then expand their colony, although they had made no very convincing attempts to exploit those claims. On top of this, British Jamaica’s colonial authorities were deeply unhelpful, and the whole scheme foundered with considerable loss of both money and prestige.
Broadly, Scottish reactions fell into two camps. One powerful lobby wanted a complete union with England, which would allow Scots merchants access to the wealth of England’s colonies. Conversely, others – mainly Jacobites – were still bitter about the Darién fiasco and wanted to see Scotland fully independent once more.
Protests and uprisings flared, and by 1706 Scotland seemed about to descend into chaos. Never was a skilled intelligence agent more needed, and Defoe fitted the bill. Mierowsky’s descriptions of Defoe’s ‘operations’ are not just the meat of his work, they are the most arresting elements of the book.
By 1706, Scotland seemed about to descend into chaos.
A network of informers
Before practising the art of information-gathering and turning it into useful intelligence, Defoe had thought deeply about the whole theory. In 1704, he summarised this in his pamphlet A Scheme of General Intelligence, and in the summers of that year and 1705, he travelled throughout England talking to influential people.
Simply, he gathered opinions from the newly educated classes who had access to pamphlets and broadsheets – the press. Over a period of months, Defoe identified what we would now call ‘influencers’, created an informer network, and listed those who might be bribed.
The following year, Harley sent Defoe to Edinburgh to identify opponents of the Union. In his own words, ‘In my Management here I am a perfect Emissary. I act the Old part of Cardinall Richlieu. I have my spyes and my Pensioners In Every place, and I Confess tis the Easyest thing in the World to hire people here to betray their friends.’
Then, in 1712, Defoe returned to London to confront the Tory Jacobites. These worthies sought to restore the exiled Stuarts and oust the Whig-led governments of the Hanoverian King George I. Defoe was to ensure, ‘That the Poison of a Factious spirit May Not Spread Among The [Tories]’ – and, despite the uprising of 1715, he did this with much success.
The author has tackled a remarkably complex subject, explaining late 17th- and early 18th-century mores, political manoeuvres, and clandestine tactics with great dexterity.
As I now look out of my window at Flora MacDonald’s shrine and the saltires that flutter from the croft houses in the valley below, Marc Mierowsky has helped me to understand not just the role Daniel Defoe played in Scotland’s history, but also why those blue-and-white flags still proudly fly.
REVIEW BY PATRICK MERCER
A Spy Amongst Us: Daniel Defoe’s Secret Service and the Plot to End Scottish Independence
Marc Mierowsky
Yale University Press, hbk, 448pp, £25
ISBN 978-0300260168
