A Spy Amongst Us by Marc Mierowsky review: 'detailed and thrilling'
This fine exploration of the events that led up to the Act of Union in 1707 doesn’t fall into the trap of looking for easy answers, writes Stuart Kelly
At the outset of this detailed, thrilling book – subtitled “Daniel Defoe’s Secret Service and the Plot to End Scottish Independence” – Mierowsky does a judicious piece of tight-rope walking. “That this work” – the espionage Defoe undertook – “cleared the way to the Act of Union puts lie to the belief that a parliamentary union between England and Scotland was a fait accompli”. This argues against the Whig, even Hegelian, view that Union was inevitable, natural and almost pre-ordained. Mierowsky continues, however, “But nor was the making of the Union simply a ‘political job’, carried out through well-placed bribes and the manipulation of patronage”; which argues, as he notes, against the Burns “parcel of rogues”. As always with such complex situations with multiple actors whose motives were sometimes contradictory, the idea of a singular, encapsulating “why” is a phantom. Sometimes things are murky, messy and muddled.
By beginning with the conclusion I am doing a disservice to Mierowsky as a writer, since the actual opening of the book is quite different. It begins in 1703, with an unnamed person crossing London, hoping for words from government officials, and finding an unexpected letter on his return. The reader might wonder why we are given such detail about the pipe system from Hampstead to St Pancras, and its confluence with the filth of the Fleet. The unnamed person turns out to be William Paterson, the man who came up with the disastrous Darien Scheme. He is hoping to hear from Godolphin, the Lord Treasurer, but receives a communiqué from a bankrupt, pilloried writer: Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe is far in the future. What is done so well here is the sense of flows and networks, connections and corruptions, even the way the Fleet – not yet Street – is lingering like miasma over the dung-heap. This is a book about the circulation of information, about all the doubtful meanings of intelligence.
This is a form of group biography, with Defoe at the centre, but with a constellation around him. There are the three significant political figures from London – Godolphin, Marlborough (the great military leader) and especially Robert Harley, Speaker of the House of Commons, later Chancellor and 1st Earl of Oxford, and most significantly “Secretary of State for the northern department”. There being no “Foreign Secretary” in the period, diplomacy was divided between the south – France and Hapsburg Spain, to a lesser extent Italy – and the region comprising Scandinavia, the crucial (and Protestant) Low Countries, the states that were not yet Germany (including Hanover) and Scotland. Harley was also, to all intents and purposes, the head of an MI5 and MI6 of his own making.
There are moments that Le Carré would be proud to have described. Defoe is sent to Scotland, first and foremost, to gather intelligence. That might shade into influencing opinion, but there was an acute awareness of, to quote Donald Rumsfeld, “the unknown unknowns”. More significant than the outcome of the Union negotiations seems the gradual understanding of information gathering in terms of political necessity. Which members of the Scottish Parliament were likely to vote which way, and why? What were the “hot topics” – salt and malt were more significant than people thought, as it transpires, as in those products the pound in the pocket would be hit by new tax rules. I did laugh that once the Union was passed, Defoe noted a rise in the importation of French wines and spirits before the date of commencement, to take advantage of a window where Scotland could still trade with France, then sell on to England. (I live on the Border, and the “Berwick booze cruise” is a real thing. Plus ça change).
What fascinated me most in this exceptional book was the bizarrely inclusive natures of the spies. Alongside Defoe and Paterson, Harley had Captain John Ogilvie, a soldier who had fought at the Battle of the Boyne alongside James II but was now a Jacobite double-agent, and John Pierce (“run” by Defoe) who was “very acceptable” to the Hebronite and Cameronian Covenanters of the south west. It is espionage as spread-betting. Another curious point – and Mierowsky is understated but perceptive about analogies – is the way in which there are eddies and nudges between the “political class” and “the people” – or the elites and the Mob. Defoe is astute at observing how few “pro-Union” rallies and demonstrations there are compared to the opponents. Was popular dissent or even vocal public concern (from pulpits for example) a self-generated phenomenon or something kindled by a group who felt they were losing the argument?
This is the finest kind of non-fiction writing, accessible and fluent. Mierowsky has a Defoe-like knack for catching even mercurial characters in a few lines, and pursuing the argument never occludes the narrative drive. Although he has a few pages about the later fortunes of the principals, more on Defoe would have been welcome. His work for the government may have “informed” his novels, or at least drawn on the same skill set, but fleshing out the ideas of obligation, collusion and impersonation might have been profitable. Nevertheless, what a fine book this is. On finishing it I thought – I must recommend this to Allan Massie, he’ll love it – and then remembered.
A Spy Amongst Us, by Marc Mierowsky, Yale University Press, £25
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