‘Taking the ruffian's wage’: spies, an overview.

In the espionage world of Restoration politics the infantry were those men, and even the occasional woman, who were members of what Clarendon had once called the ‘ignominious tribe’ – the spies. Any intelligence system in the period, whatever its other sources of information, was ultimately dependent upon men and women actually going out to gather information on the ground. It was such people who would perform the dangerous tasks which otherwise could not be carried out. It was the spy who would take the ‘ruffian's wage’, to mix with the ‘hired slaves, bravos and common stabbers, Nose-slitters [and] alley-lurking villains’. They became a necessary, but often double-edged asset to the political and diplomatic life of any regime. They were essential because the late-seventeenth-century world was both physically and mentally a large place for its occupants, and factors of time and distance played a significant part in seventeenth-century government as well as in international politics. Instantaneous communication, other than face to face, was impossible. It took days, sometimes weeks, to communicate by letter, even if one allowed for human or natural intervention. Furthermore in places otherwise out of reach, or in places where no government officer could go openly, it was necessary to have ‘eyes’ to do so. This, as well as the need to counter subversive activity, and to prevent the interference of foreign government in domestic affairs, made the trade of the spy essential if not respectable and in such a world, especially one prone to violence, war and conflict, the trade of the spy could also thrive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]