John Thurloe[1] (June 1616 – 21 February 1668) was an English politician who served as secretary to the council of state in
ProtectorateEngland and spymaster for
Oliver Cromwell and held the position of Postmaster General between 1655 and 1660. He was from Great Milton in
Oxfordshire and of
Lincoln's Inn,[2]
Origins
Thurloe was born in
Essex in 1616 and was baptised on 12 June. His father was Rev. Thomas Thurloe, Rector of
Abbess Roding.
Career
He trained as a
lawyer in
Lincoln's Inn. He was first in the service of
Oliver St John, solicitor–general to King Charles I and Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.[2] In January 1645, became a secretary to the parliamentary commissioners at the
Treaty of Uxbridge. In 1647 Thurloe was admitted to Lincoln's Inn as a member. He remained on the sidelines during the
English Civil War but after the accession of
Oliver Cromwell, became part of his government. In March 1651, Thurloe accompanied
Oliver St John as his secretary on his embassy to the United Provinces to propose a union between the Commonwealth and the Dutch.[3] In 1652 he was named a secretary for state.[4]
In 1653 he became head of
intelligence and developed a widespread network of spies in England and on the continent. These included
Henry Manning, the Dutch diplomat and historian
Lieuwe van Aitzema, the mathematician
John Wallis, who established a code-breaking department, as well as diplomat and mathematician
Samuel Morland, who served as Thurloe's assistant. Thurloe's service broke the
Sealed Knot, a secret society of
Royalists and uncovered various other plots against the Protectorate. In 1654 he was elected to Parliament as the member for
Ely.[4]
He supported the idea that Cromwell should adopt a royal title.
In 1655 Thurloe became
Postmaster General, a post he held until he was accused of treason and arrested in May 1660.[5]
His spies were able to intercept mail, and he exposed
Edward Sexby's 1657 plot to assassinate Cromwell and captured would-be assassin
Miles Sindercombe and his group. (Ironically, Thurloe's own department was also infiltrated: in 1659 Morland became a Royalist agent and alleged that Thurloe,
Richard Cromwell and Sir
Richard Willis – a Sealed Knot member turned Cromwell agent – were plotting to kill the future King
Charles II.) About forty years after his death, a false ceiling was found in his rooms at Lincolns Inn; the space was full of letters seized during his occupation of the office of Postmaster-General. These letters are also now at the Bodleian.[6]
In 1657 Thurloe became a member of Cromwell's second council, as well as governor of the
London Charterhouse school, and in 1658 he became
chancellor of the
University of Glasgow. After the death of Oliver Cromwell in 1658, he supported his son Richard Cromwell as
Lord Protector and, in 1659, represented
Cambridge University in the
Third Protectorate Parliament. Later that year various parties accused him of arbitrary decisions as head of intelligence, and he was deprived of his offices. Reinstated as a secretary of state on 27 February 1660, he resisted the return of Charles II.
After the
Restoration, Thurloe was arrested for
high treason on 15 May 1660 but was not tried. He was released on 29 June on the condition that he would assist the new government upon request. He retired from public life but served as a behind-the-scenes authority on foreign affairs and wrote informative papers for
Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, but he did not become part of any new government.
Marriages and children
He married twice:
Firstly to a lady of the Peyton family, by whom he had two sons who died as infants;[7]
Secondly he married Anne Lytcott,[8] 3rd daughter of Sir John Lytcott (died c.1645),[9] of
East Molesey in Surrey, a
Gentleman of the Privy Chamber who in 1633 had purchased the
manor of East Molesey[10] from Ralph Freeman. He was buried in St Mary's Church, East Molesey, where survives his monument and several to members of the Clerk family, the children of his daughter Ursula, who became his heirs.[11] Anne Lytcott's mother was Mary Overbury, daughter of Nicholas Overbury of Bourton on the Hill in Gloucestershire and sister of the famous Sir Thomas Overbury.[7] By Anne Lytcott he had four sons and two daughters, including:[7]
John Thurloe, eldest son, admitted at Lincoln's–Inn in 1665, died at Amesbury in Wiltshire, where he was buried.
Oliver Thurloe, 2nd son, who married but died childless.
Thomas Thurloe, 3rd son, born in March 1650/1, in about January 1676/7 appointed Governor of James Island in the River Gambia, where he died.
Nicholas Thurloe, 4th son, "educated to the sea",[7] living in 1678.
Mary Thurloe, eldest daughter, married to Thomas Ligoe of Burcott in Buckinghamshire, by whom she had issue:
Thomas Ligoe, married to a sister of John Hamilton;
Eleanor Ligoe, married to the said John Hamilton.
Anne Thurloe, 2nd daughter, married to Francis Brace of Bedford, by whom she had issue:
John Thurloe Brace, who married a lady of the name of Harris, by whom he had one son, Harris Thurloe Brace, and a daughter, Anna Maria, married to Godfrey Copley of Yorkshire.
Death and burial
John Thurloe died on 21 February 1668 in his chambers in Lincoln's Inn and was buried in the chapel. His monument is inscribed as follows:[7]
"Here lyeth the body of John Thurleo, Esq; Secretary of State to the Protector Oliver Cromwell, and a member of this honourable Society. He died Feb. 21, 1667. Here lyeth the body of Francis Brace, Esq; a member of this society. He was son of Francis Brace, esq; of the town of Bedford, by Anne, one of the daughters and co–heirs of the late John Thurleo. He died on the 6th day of April 1721, in the 34th year of his age."
He owned several
manors including
Whittlesey St Mary's and Whittlesey St Andrew's and an estate at Astwood in Buckinghamshire worth £400 per annum. He held the
rectory of Whittlesey St Mary's, in the
Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire. He purchased the
Wisbech Castle estate, sold off some of the land, cleared the remains of the bishop's palace and built and furnished a mansion (demolished c1816 by
Joseph Medworth) just before the
Restoration of the Monarchy, after which it was restored to the
Bishop of Ely.[7][12]Thurloe Square, Thurloe Street and Thurloe Place in
South Kensington, London, are all named after him. They were built in the 1820s on land he once owned.[13]
Legacy
Apart from building his mansion in Wisbech, in 1658 he gave £50 to purchase books for the
Public library[14] and contributed eighty-one volumes and £50 for making a road 'from the corn market to the little sluice' and £150, the interest to be applied towards putting out poor children apprentice.[15]
A portrait of Thurloe was presented to
Wisbech & Fenland Museum by D.Gurney in 1847.[16] A photograph of this is held on the
National Portrait Gallery website.[17] There is a Thurloe Close in Wisbech.[18]
Two of his portraits now in the local museum are in the online
BBC collection.[19]
Fictional portrayals
He is a recurring character in the Thomas Chaloner series of mystery novels by
Susanna Gregory, which show him in a favourable light.[20]
He is a recurring character in the
Edmund Godfrey series of mystery novels by Mark Francis, which show him as an
eminence grise behind Restoration politics.
He is one of the key characters in
Robert Wilton's historical novel Traitor's Field, published on 1 May 2013 (UK) by Corvus, an imprint of
Atlantic Books.[21]
He is a character in the play Cromwell, by
Victor Hugo.
He is a recurring character in "The Seeker" historical crime series by S. G. MacLean.
Notes
^In his diary,
Samuel Pepys spells Thurloe's name as Thurlow
^
abThe life of John Thurloe Esq., Secretary of State, published in: A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe, Volume 1, 1638–1653, ed. Thomas Birch (London, 1742), pp. xi–xx.
[1]
^"The Charities of Wisbech". Lynn News & County Press. 19 July 1890. p. 3.
^LF Salamanca, ed. (2002). A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely:volume 4, city of Ely; Ely, N. and S. Witchford and Wisbech Hundreds. Victoria County History. pp. 268–269.
^"Wisbech Museum". Norfolk News. 9 October 1847. p. 3.
^"John Thurloe". www.npg.org.uk. Retrieved 17 December 2020.
Aubrey, Philip; Mr Secretary Thurloe, Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd, 1989
Peacey, Jason T.; "Order and disorder in Europe: Parliamentary agents and royalist thugs 1649–1650";
The Historical Journal (1997), 40: 953–976 Cambridge University Press (
Published online 1 December 1997)
Ellis, John; To walk in the dark; Military Intelligence during the English Civil War. The History Press. 2011.