Intelligencers

- aka - spies.

By the 18th century, three secret departments had been created within the General Post Office; these were: the Secret Office, the Private Office and the Deciphering Branch. All three departments operated out of the main post office building off Lombard Street (see 17 March post - 'From Horwood's Map.')

While the Secret Office was concerned with intercepting foreign correspondence, the Private Office covered domestic letters from suspects identified by principal parliamentary secretaries, and applied for by warrant. The Deciphering Branch was staffed by codebreakers, who 'can discover a close-stool to signify a privy-council; a flock of geese, a senate; a lame dog, an invader; the plague, a standing army; a buzzard, a prime-minister; the gout, a high priest; a gibbet, a secretary of state; a chamber pot, a committee of grandees' [Jonathan Swift].

Very few people outside government were aware of these departments' existence; at home and abroad, Britain was considered to be the freest country in Europe. Nevertheless, cumulatively they formed a genuine and highly organised espionage agency, used by ministers but with an entirely independent structure and personnel. Robert Walpole, Britain's first Prime Minister, employed a large team of 'intelligencers' - both men and women - drawn from aristocratic, literary and criminal circles. He was strongly suspected of using them to acquire privileged knowledge for his own commercial advantage.