From Macmillan's Magazine. A LITTLE to the south of the great gateway of Lincoln's Inn Buildings, facing Chancery Lane, may be seen one of those tablets for which we have to thank the Society of Arts, bearing in this instance the following inscription : "John Thurloe, Secretary of State to Cromwell, lived here during his tenure of office, 1647-59." The Society of Lincoln's Inn has no part in this memorial. Formerly one of the stones in the crypt of the chapel bore another inscription, now long since ground out by thousands of careless heels: "Here lyeth the body of John Thurloe, Esq., Secretary of State to the Protector Oliver Cromwell, and a member of this Honorable Society. He died Feb. 21, 1667.1 of the parson's large family for his clerk. This brought him in the year 1644 to his first State employment, as secretary to the Parliamentary commissioners (of whom his patron was one) in the fruitless negotiations with the king's party at Uxbridge. In 1647 he was admitted of Lincoln's Inn, and in the following year made clerk of the cursitor's fines under the commissioners of the great seal, a place worth £350 a year. In 1650 he was appointed an officer of the treasury of the Company of Adventurers for draining the and as Cromwell himself was one of the company, it is probable that the two men met for the first time over feus s; its business. In March, 1651, however, Walter Strickland and Oliver St. John were sent over to Holland to negotiate a treaty with the Dutch, and Lincoln's Inn has forgotten John took Thurloe with them for their secThurloe. Who was he? Cromwell's retary. Here he learned something of greatest confidant, answer M. Guizot Holland and of diplomacy, though proband others, and say no more. "One ably not much; for the negotiation of the expertest secretaries, in the broke down and the grand scheme real meaning of the word secretary, which was to unite England and Holany State or working King could have," land in a single republic finally issued is Carlyle's verdict. Private secreta- in the Navigation Act and the Dutch War. On his return from Holland ries, unless they be Edmund Burkes, must expect to be merged in the per- Thurloe, always in St. John's service, sonality of their chiefs; but to have seems to have been employed by him been the most trusted adviser of Oliver as steward of his property, from which Cromwell and chief of John Milton and business he was suddenly taken away Andrew Marvell, these are not quite by his appointment, in April, 1652, to small things. It may be worth while be secretary of the Council of State. to learn something of such a man; How he obtained the post we have no more especially when we have for maclue; but we possess St. John's letter terial the complete records of his office to him on the occasion, which throws in the seven folio volumes known as rather a pleasant light on the relations of the "dark-lanthorn man "" to his Thurloe's State-Papers. former servant. He writes from Dalkeith, being employed there at the head of the commission engaged to settle the union with Scotland. John Thurloe, son of the Rev. Thomas Thurloe, rector of Abbot's Roding in Essex, was born about the middle of the year 1616. We hear of him first as "servant "" to Mr. Oliver St. John, the well-known St. John of the Long Parliament who became chief justice under the Protector. As we learn that St. John educated Thurloe, we may picture to ourselves the Essex squire and rising lawyer (for such was St. John) selecting the most promising 15Old style; March 3rd, 1668, new style. 13 April, 1652. Vane and others of your election into Mr. MR. THURLOE, -I hear from Sir Henry Frost's place [secretary to the Council of State]. God forbid I should in the least repine at any of his works of providence, much more at those relating to your own good and the good of many. No! I bless him. As soon as I heard the news in what concerned you I rejoiced in it upon these grounds. No! Go on and prosper; let Your assured friend, OL. ST. JOHN. A few years later St. John was to address him as sir, and sign himself your affectionate servant, but Thurloe never destroyed this letter. We can understand the reason. not your hands faint; wait upon him in | gathered as to Tromp's fleet, its his ways, and he that called you will cause strength, equipment, and movements, his presence and blessing to go along with is very full and accurate. Copies of you. And if I were otherwise minded Tromp's own despatches, blunt and might I not fear a curse upon what constraightforward even when reporting cerns myself in seeking my own good above defeat, found their way, by what means the good of many. we can guess, to the office at Whitehall, and were doubtless valued at their true rate. Even with these advantages, however, seven furious actions and the death of Tromp himself alone sufficed to bring the Dutch to their knees. Then Thurloe's energies were turned from the military into the diplomatic channel. In June, 1654, four envoys, representing different parties and bitterly at variance with each other, were despatched from the United Provinces to treat for peace. Thurloe obtained copies of every despatch which they wrote and received, and thus possessed himself of their opinions of their mission and of each other - nay, sometimes of their opinions when drunk as well as when sober which simplified the business of negotiation not a little. So at the age of thirty-six Thurloe was fairly installed at Whitehall; as yet only the clerk of a council, not the right hand of an absolute governor, but already busy enough. The times were critical both at home and abroad. In the narrow seas the Dutch and English fleets were bickering with each other, exchanging first broadsides and then apologies, throughout the months of May and June, till the final declaration of war in July. At home the Rump Parliament, lulled into security by the victories of Dunbar and Worcester, But the palmiest days of Thurloe's modestly proposed to perpetuate itself office were not yet, though now close in power, and accordingly found itself at hand. On the 11th of December, dismissed by Oliver Cromwell and a 1653, the Barebones Parliament defile of musketeers on the famous 20th clared that its further existence would of April, 1653. The Old Council of not be for the good of the CommonState was then dissolved, and a new wealth; on the 15th Cromwell was one constituted with the Lord General installed as Lord Protector, and the Cromwell at its head, the first of many Council was reconstituted for the such changes to be witnessed by the fourth time since Thurloe's appointsecretary. Then in July the Bare- ment as secretary. In a word, the fact bones Parliament brought more new was recognized that there was at that faces to Whitehall, notably those of time but one means whereby England Henry Cromwell and William Lock- could be governed; namely by setting hart, with both of whom Thurloe was at the head of affairs the man who had to have much business, immense corre-drilled the victorious party in the Civil spondence, and, with Henry in partic- War and led it through that war to ular, close and intimate friendship. some semblance of peace. It is the Yet another member of that Par-fashion to curse Cromwell's rule for a liament was Thurloe to know well, military despotism, instead of blessing namely George Monk, who was now it for having been at any rate a govat sea fighting against the Dutch. By ernment. It is too often forgotten that virtue of his office Thurloe was in the protectorate was simply a provicharge of the secret information of sional government struggling honestly the State, and was already building up and unceasingly to find a permanent the system of intelligence which made basis. "Truly," said Cromwell himCromwell's secret service so famous in self, "I have as before God often later days. The information which he thought that I could not tell what my Thurloe's first duty was of course to keep the Protector in supremacy, and therein the first consideration was to keep him alive; no very easy matter business was, nor what was the place I ments, acting as mouthpiece of the stood in, save comparing myself to a government when required; and lastly, good constable set to keep the peace of general composer of differences and the parish." The disturbers of Crom-easer of friction in the public service well's parish fell roughly into two di- at large. visions: those who sought to bring about the reign of Christ on earth; and those who wished to restore the reign of Charles Stuart in England. In the former class may be reckoned when we contemplate the interminable the Anabaptists, Quakers, Levellers, series of plots, conspiracies, and insurFifth Monarchy men, and all the rections that were eternally hatching visionary, fanatical, self-seeking mass against him. We have not space to which had for the moment been enumerate those that were frustrated welded together by the pressure of the even in the first year of the Protectostruggle against royalty. The second rate, much less for an exhaustive list. category, the Royalists, stood in a dif- Suffice it that the unravelling of these ferent position. Their peculiar source plots was one great business of Thurof strength was that they knew exactly loe's life; and a task conducted with what they wanted, and labored not for such skill as to shed a halo of romance an impossible ideal, but for a simple around Cromwell's secret service. return to an old order. Being the Burnet's history contains a deal of group strongest in numbers and direct-gossip about it, which however we preness of purpose they became the fer to set aside in favor of the solid general rallying-point of anti-Crom- information in the State papers. wellism; the nucleus to which all discontent attached itself with or without consistency. For if the millennium does not follow one reform bill it is bound to follow the next; and if the defeat of Charles failed to bring it to pass, the defeat of Cromwell could not fail to assure it. There was therefore but one way in which Cromwell could govern England; by keeping his foot firmly on the Royalist, and by checking sporadic irreconcilability gently or firmly as occasion demanded. One means of intelligence which is particularly prominent in the papers is the interception of letters. Thurloe in August, 1655, added the office of postmaster general to his other functions, chiefly no doubt to obtain control of the postmasters and the mails. The position and duties of the postmasters gave them special opportunities for observing anything dark or suspicious that might be going forward; and of these opportunities they were specially enjoined to avail themselves to the utClearly then Cromwell's first requi- most, reporting in all cases to Thurloe site was an efficient police. To nip re- himself. The mass of letters thus or bellion in the bud, good intelligence, otherwise intercepted is enormous, and that is to say vigilance personal and of astonishing variety; but the interest vicarious, is everything; and the chief thereof is dead, so we must pass them of Cromwell's intelligence department by with the remark that Thurloe interwas John Thurloe. He was now sec- cepted at least fifty of Hyde's or of the retary of state in a different sense; for king's letters, for one that Hyde interthe State was Cromwell, and we find cepted of Thurloe's. We turn therethat in virtue of his secret intelligence fore to another matter within the scope he was not only home secretary, for- of police, namely, seditious meetings, to eign secretary, colonial secretary, and all of which Thurloe sent his own rewar secretary, but Cromwell's right porters. One specimen of their reports hand man. He was further a member we must give for its interest in exemof the Council of State, being a man plifying the persistence of a certain whose advice was worth having; a type of mountebank martyr in these member of three Protectorate Parlia-British Islands. This following frag ment is from a speech delivered by Mr. Let us now pass to a more compliFeak, the Anabaptist, on Monday, Jan-cated matter. Cromwell, according to uary 5th, 1656–7. "He [Feak] began Pepys, allowed £70,000 a year for intelto intimate that possibly there might ligence, and thereby carried the secrets be some court spies, some miserable of all Europe at his girdle; and whatintelligencer or intelligencers who ever the price paid, the main statement of Pepys is true. It was the rule in Thurloe's department to pay high for good intelligence rather than pay a little for bad. "Concerning a good correspondent at Rome," writes Thurloe's agent at Leghorn, "I doubt not to effect it to content when I shall know your resolution what you intend to spend therein. These people cannot be gained but by money, but for money they will do anything, adventure body and soul too. Such intelligence came to take notes he told among other things the story of his arrest, all the circumstances of which he did set out in a very pathetical way of speaking to move his audience to compassion, in the same manner as he represented all the other particulars and passages of his suffering in a very enlarged and ample oration. I am almost weary of repeating this kind of stuff," concludes the unhappy reporter. "This is all I could collect [five huge folio pages] being far from candle-light, and my shoulders laden with a crowd of women riding upon the tops of the seats, so that this is but the fortieth part of what he rambled over." must be procured from a monsignor, a secretary, or a cardinal. . . . I should say £1,000 a year were well spent, with £500 pension and now and then £100 gratuity." The court of the exiled Of other reports, sworn statements king was the place where Thurloe's and the like, the number is endless; agents were busiest, and it is astonishbut none have any biographical interesting to find what men were in his pay. except a letter from Oliver St. John, of One at least of Charles's most intimate all persons, invoking Thurloe's assistance for the arrest of his son. This son William, it appears, was rather an unsteady young man, had run away from home, and could not be found; so Chief Justice St. John, anticipating the methods of the elder Mirabeau, applied to Thurloe for lettres de cachet. Needless to say Thurloe soon restored the erring William to his father, who like a true Englishman decided that a ne'er-do-weel would be better in the colonies than in England, and despatched him to the West Indies. Thurloe evidently took pains, for St. John's sake, about the young man, for he caused reports of his behavior to be sent home to himself. These were not circle was permanently engaged. The first of these, one Manning, was unfortunately for him detected by Hyde and shot. A second, Sir Richard Willis, fell into Thurloe's hands first as a prisoner, arrested for complicity in a plot against Cromwell. He was released on accepting service under Thurloe, and was employed as a spy up to the very eve of the Restoration, without provoking the slightest suspicion from Charles or Hyde. A third, Colonel Bamfield, had been a "flaming Presbyterian Royalist," and had been trusted with the duty of smuggling the Duke of York out of England; but he was in Thurloe's pay even before the establishment of the Protectorate. Bamvery satisfactory. "Mr. Will. St. John field was rather a slippery creature, behaves himself very civilly, but is not and required to be carefully watched; willing to undertake any employment," but he stood in particular awe of Thurwrote one correspondent from Jamaica. loe, who kept him in great order and "He stands in need of money and hath employed him to the very last. In fact had some of me." Who could wish | Royalist officers, no doubt through the it to be otherwise? We have met pressure of impecuniosity, seem to so many men of Mr. Will. St. John's have been obtainable for spy's work stamp in the colonies that our heart without the least difficulty. Lord quite warms towards him. Broghill found one agent for Thurloe 1 recognition of his services in this department except on one occasion a vote of thanks from the House of Commons. It is worth while, therefore, to record a short spontaneous outburst of admiration from young Henry Cromwell. "Really," he wrote, in the person of one Colonel Black- | Parliament. "These many months," offenders in these plots for the most |