John Thurloe
Secretary of State to the Protectorate's Council of State
Personal details
Born	1616 (1616) Essex
Died	1668 (1669) Lincoln's Inn
Profession	Politician

John Thurloe^[1] (June 1616 – 21 February 1668) was a secretary to the council of state in Protectorate England and spymaster for Oliver Cromwell.

Life[link]

Thurloe was born in Essex in 1616 and was baptised on June 12. His father was Thomas Thurloe, rector of Abbess Roding. He was trained as a lawyer in Lincoln's Inn. He was first in the service of Oliver St John, and, 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 1652 he was named a secretary for state.

In 1653 he became head of intelligence and developed a widespread network of spies in England and on the continent. These included the Dutch diplomat and historian Lieuwe van Aitzema, the mathematician John Wallis, who established a code-breaking department, and 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. He supported the idea that Cromwell should adopt a royal title.

In 1656 Thurloe took charge of the post office. His spies were then 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.)

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 February 27, 1660, he resisted the return of Charles II.

After the Restoration, Thurloe was arrested for high treason on May 15, 1660, but was not tried. He was released on June 29 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.

John Thurloe died on February 21, 1668 in his chambers in Lincoln's Inn and was buried in the chapel. His correspondence is kept in the Bodleian Library, Oxford and in the British Museum. Thomas Birch published part of it in 1742.

Notes[link]

References[link]

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Thurloe, John". Encyclopædia Britannica. 26 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 902, 903. http://archive.org/stream/encyclopaediabri26chisrich#page/902/mode/1up. 

Further reading[link]

• 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)

External links[link]

Wikisource has the text of the 1885–1900 Dictionary of National Biography's article about Thurloe, John.

• John Thurloe, Secretary of State, 1616-68 British Civil Wars website
• Thurloe's 'Collection of State Papers', (edited by Thomas Birch, 1742), as part of British History Online* John Thurloe in Spartacus Educational
• Encyclopædia Britannica

Robert Archibald Wilton (31 July 1868 – 18 or 19 January 1925) was a British journalist.

Wilton, who was born in Cringleford, Norfolk, was the son of a British mining engineer employed in Russia. In 1889 he joined the European staff of the New York Herald, remaining with that newspaper for fourteen years, and corresponding on both Russian and German affairs. He then took up an appointment as The Times correspondent in St Petersburg, and became known as a keen observer of events in Russia during the last years of the Tsarist regime. After the Revolution, he moved to Siberia. Following the collapse of the Kolchak government, Wilton managed to escape from Russia and eventually arrived in Paris where, in 1920, he rejoined the New York Herald. In 1924 he joined the staff of a newly-founded newspaper, the Paris Times (which published in English). He died from cancer at the Hertford British Hospital in Paris early in 1925.^[1]

Wilton served with the Russian army during the First World War, and was awarded the Cross of St George.^[2]

He was the author of two books: Russia's Agony (published by Edward Arnold, London, 1918) and The Last Days of the Romanovs (1920).

Criticism[link]

Wilton was accused of being a right-wing antisemite. He allegedly was a proponent of blood libel and claimed that execution of the Romanovs was a ritual murder by the Jews^[3]. He was criticized by several liberal British journalists for supporting the attempted military coup by Lavr Kornilov.

References[link]

1. ^ Obituary: Mr R. W.(sic) Wilton. The Times, Tuesday 20th January 1925, p. 14 column D.
2. ^ Obituary, The Times.
3. ^ http://www.vestnik.com/issues/2000/0118/win/reznik.htm

External links[link]

• Spartacus
• Russia's Agony by Robert Wilton.
• The Last Days of the Romanovs by Robert Wilton, George Gustav Telberg and Nikolai Sokolov.

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