Wickham, from Cottingley near Bradford in Yorkshire (these days more usually associated with the Cottingley fairies) began his career as a barrister having studied for his degree at Geneva. In 1793 he was appointed as a stipendary magistrate and it was at that point that he began to work on clandestine operations at the behest of Lord Grenville under the power given to magistrates as a consequence of the Aliens Act.

It was thanks to Wickham that the London Corresponding Society, whose members agitated for democratic reform, demanding annual parliaments and universal suffrage for all men found themselves subject to arrest and treason trials. Wickham actually uncovered nothing treasonous and failed to entrap any of its organisers into ill judged sedition. Even so it was bruted abroad that members of the society planned to assassinate the king.

In 1794 Wickham was made ‘superintendent of aliens’ – a snappy job title if ever there was one- and then sent off to Switzerland where he eventually became the English ambassador. It was his task to liaise with enemies of the revolution, set up a spy network of his own and encourage the French to revolt against the new regime. Ultimately the French persuaded the Swiss to expel him. He returned to England in 1801, after some not entirely pleasant adventures.

While not all of his ventures were a rip roaring success – the uprising in the Vendée (1793-1796) was something of a disaster it was thanks to Wickham that the English began to approach the collection, analysis and dissemination of information in a more wholistic fashion rather than the fragmentary approach to spy work that was evident in previous years.

Wickham returned his attention to the London Corresponding Society and in 1798, Father James Coingly was executed for treasonable correspondence with the French. Edward Despard (who was Irish despite the surname) was executed in 1802. Both men were active in the Irish republican movement. Somewhat ironically Coingly had been in Paris at the start of the French Revolution and narrowly avoided being hanged from a lamppost as a royalist sympathiser because of his clerical garb. The story recounted at his trial did nothing to sway the sympathies of the judge or jury.

Not that all went well for Wickham. In 1800 he was accused of misuse of public funds during his time in Europe and it has been suggested that Jane Austen’s choice of the name Wickham in Pride and Prejudice was as a direct consequence of William Wickham’s portrayal in the press at that time.

In 1802 Wickham was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland but reigned two years later following the execution of Robert Emmet for treason (who’d have thought there were so many treason cases during the ‘Regency Period’?) While Wickham believed in the importance of surveillance and the use of informers he also believed that such spying should only be carried out in the interests of national security.

Durey, Michael (2009). William Wickham, Master Spy: The Secret War Against the French Revolution. Pickering & Chatto.