Conclusion

Summary

In November 1688 the Secretary of State, Charles Middleton, was concerned to note that despite the fact that Dutch troops were on English soil his intelligence from the West Country was extremely poor. The reason ‘we have so little intelligence’ he noted, was that ‘none of the gentry of this or adjacent counties come [anywhere] near the court and the common [folk] are spies to the enemy’. Even the Stuart regime's professional spies proved to be unreliable during the invasion; they took the king's money only to join William's forces at the first opportunity. As the regime finally collapsed King James and his ministers were left virtually blind in intelligence matters, forced to rely upon the exaggerated common reports for their assessment of invaders' intentions. This lack of intelligence was undoubtedly one of the contributing factors in the final collapse of the regime in 1688 and confirmed Sir Samuel Morland's view that ‘for want of this art [espionage] & intelligence a Prince may lose his crown’. Having said this, however much poor or faulty intelligence contributed to the disasters of 1688, it was never the only, or even perhaps a major, cause of the fall of James Stuart. While the history of intelligence work in the Restoration period was often one of casual betrayal, brutality and error in its political life, clearly some final assessment of the real impact such activities had upon the state as well as the nation at large should be made.