Jacobitism, espionage and subversion

The Catholic priest James Carnegy was one of the most long-serving and successful of Jacobite spies, regularly passing vital intelligence from Scotland to the Jacobite court for more than 30 years, apparently without detection. Professor Daniel Szechi reconstructs the career of this remarkable secret agent

Espionage and subversion are the unholy twins at the heart of the darker arts of statecraft. Ever since the emergence of civilisation, governments have spied on, and sought to undermine, each other, and those states that have been successful have gained a distinct advantage over their rivals in military and strategic affairs. Britain’s cracking of the German enigma code, and the American breaking of Japan’s purple cipher in the Second World War, for example, gave both powers a distinct military edge versus the Axis powers, and Russian internet attempts to use disinformation to turn the German population against Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2015-16 and the US population against Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 come out of a long tradition of governments surreptitiously encouraging dissent and unrest among the populations of rival states. The organisation and practice of spying and subversion is, indeed, de facto generally regarded as a major function of government, which is why vast resources are devoted to it.

Espionage and Jacobitism

This was the case, too, in the 18th century. The European great powers sought information of all kinds about each other, but were particularly interested in two forms of intelligence: military and political. The uses that can be made of military intelligence are obvious, particularly in time of war. Political intelligence, by contrast, is more difficult to use, but can be far more strategically devastating. One only has to consider the shrewd use William of Orange made of the political intelligence he received out of the British isles in 1688. By careful coordination with the so-called ‘immortal seven’ conspirators, William was able to paralyse King James VII and II’s administration and set off regional uprisings in support of his invasion of southwestern England. The net result was the collapse of James’s government and the demoralisation of his army. William was able, as a result, to seize control of the southern kingdom, and he then parlayed that success into the capture of Scotland and – eventually – Ireland.

Contemporaries were quite rightly impressed by William’s achievement and the revolution of 1688,