1769 British Spy Payment For The 'kings Agent In Rotterdam' Against The Dutch- Whitehall Issued Very Rare

1769- Very Rare Whitehall Spy payment to the King’s Agent in Rotterdam to Mr. Davis signed by Stanier Porten and witnessed by Thomas Bradshaw. Dated November 14, 1769, watermarked as shown. Measures 11.875 by 7.625 inches. Toned on edges with what looks to be a water stain and lightly toned all over the document as well. Good condition. A rare ‘espionage’ document.
Reference: 206-132
Estimate: $1,000 to $1,500

Sir Stanier Porten (baptized 1716 – 1789) was an English government official and diplomat. He was the only son of James Porten, a London merchant, of Huguenot descent. The family lived in an old red-brick house adjoining Putney Bridge, but after a failure in business, left in 1748. Porten entered the diplomatic service, and for some years before 1760 he was British resident at the court of the Kingdom of Naples. He was transferred in April 1760 to the post of consul at Madrid. In July 1766 he was appointed secretary to the extraordinary embassy of William Nassau de Zuylestein, 4th Earl of Rochford to the court of France, and he wrote reports on the mission in 1766–1767. In November 1768 Porten was appointed as under-secretary to Lord Rochford, then Secretary of State for the Northern Department, and in December 1770 he followed Rochford to the southern branch, remaining under-secretary until 1782. He was knighted on 5 June 1772, appointed keeper of the state papers at Whitehall in 1774, and from 1782 until November 1786 was a commissioner of the customs. He was characterized as the "man of business" in his department, of a grave demeanor. After a period of illness, Porten died at Kensington Palace on 7 June 1789. Letters to and from Porten went to the Marquis of Abergavenny's manuscripts, and occur in the official papers of Lord Grantham, Sir Robert Gunning, and others, now in the British Library. William Coxe, in his Memoirs of the Kings of Spain of the House of Bourbon, 1700–1788, acknowledged his indebtedness to Porten's papers. A picture of the Porten family, painted by William Hogarth and the property of the Rev. Thomas Burningham, was shown at the exhibition of old masters in 1888. Stanier Porten was depicted in it as handing a letter to his father.

“Richard Wolters, a Dutchman from the city of Rotterdam, became a British agent in the Dutch Republic in 1730, when he was just sixteen years old. The history is sparse for the first thirty years of Wolters’ career, as the archives reveal little information on the beginnings of his intelligence network. In a 1922 article on Wolters’s network in the late 1740s, Dutch historian Pieter Geyl claims that Richard became a British agent shortly after the death in 1730 of his father ‘Dirck’, who had been an “agent” in Rotterdam for the British crown before his death. Despite the “great many pretenders” for the job opening after his father’s death, Richard was chosen to succeed his father.12 While most of Geyl’s claims are largely unverifiable—he did not cite much evidence in his article— the British National Archives do contain a handful of letters from Dirck Wolters to various high-ranking British officials throughout the early 1720s, indicating the importance of Dirck’s job and its connection to intelligence gathering.13 Also clear is the start date of Richard’s career. At several points during his service Richard Wolters claimed that he
started working as a British agent in 1730, substantiating Geyl’s claim that Richard essentially succeeded his father.

Though Wolters’ intelligence network successfully employed the Dutch Republic’s political system, postal service, and geographic location in service of a foreign government in the eighteenth century, his network was not the only one to do so. Starting in the 1760s, the Dutch Republic became increasingly entangled in the disputes between Great Britain and its North American colonies. During the 1760s and 1770s, Dutch merchants smuggled large amounts of consumer goods and (eventually) war materiel to the American colonies. These smuggling activities created discord between Great Britain and
the Dutch Republic and simultaneously revitalized the Dutch political opposition, which increasingly looked to the American revolutionaries for ideological guidance. As the American Revolution unfolded and the Americans sought diplomatic support in Europe during the 1770s, they, like the British, recognised the benefits of the Dutch Republic as the eighteenth-century information entrepôt and recruited American sympathizers in the Dutch Republic for intelligence purposes. Though not nearly as voluminous, independent, or as enduring as Wolters’ intelligence network, the American
intelligence network in the Dutch Republic was tightly intertwined with American diplomatic efforts in Europe and proved successful in collecting intelligence for their newly established government. Additionally, the American intelligence network in the Dutch Republic proved even more successful in shaping Dutch public opinion by waging an information war for the American revolutionary cause. American success in the information wars in the Dutch Republic between 1775 and 1780 infused Dutch political discourse with revolutionary ideas that helped create the Dutch Patriot movement in the
1780s, which ultimately caused the downfall of the Dutch Republic altogether in 1795.

Like Wolters’ intelligence network, the American revolutionaries employed the Dutch Republic’s political system, geographic location, and postal services for intelligence gathering, based on long-standing entanglements in the Dutch economy and politics as well as the Republic’s status as Europe’s information entrepôt. Starting in the early 1760s, American colonists increasingly used Dutch merchants and ports to support their protest Great Britain and undermine British attempts to control their transatlantic trade. Especially after the passing of the Townshend Acts of 1767 and 1768—which implemented taxes and new enforcement measures on the trade in consumer goods to Britain’s North American colonies—American colonists used Dutch merchant networks to smuggle consumer goods to America and subsequently undermined the British government’s attempts to pay back the debts it had incurred during the Seven Years’ War (1754–1763).

American colonists particularly used the Dutch Caribbean island of St. Eustatius to smuggle goods to America, including tea and firearms, significantly contributing to the Tea Act crisis in 1773 and the eventual outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in April 1775” [“No Intrigue Is Spared”: Anglo-
American Intelligence Networks in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic. Matthijs Thieleman; Itinerario, Vol. 45, No. 1, 99–123. © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Research Institute for History, Leiden University.]

William Henry Nassau de Zuylestein, 4th Earl of Rochford, KG, PC (17 September 1717 O.S. – 29 September 1781) was a British courtier, diplomat, and statesman of Anglo-Dutch descent. He occupied senior ambassadorial posts in Madrid and Paris and served as Secretary of State in both the Northern and Southern Departments. He is credited with the earliest-known introduction of the Lombardy poplar to England in 1754.

He was a friend of such major cultural figures as the actor David Garrick, the novelist Laurence Sterne, and the French playwright Beaumarchais. George III valued Rochford as his expert advisor on foreign affairs in the early 1770s, and as a loyal and hard-working cabinet minister. Rochford was the only British secretary of state between 1760 and 1778 who had been a career diplomat.

Rochford played key roles in the Manila Ransom negotiation with Spain (1763–66), the French acquisition of Corsica (1768), the Falkland Islands crisis of 1770–1, the crisis following the Swedish Revolution of 1772, and the aftermath of the Royal Marriages Act of 1772. In addition to his work as foreign secretary, he carried a heavy burden of domestic responsibilities in the early 1770s, especially Irish affairs. He was a key member of the North administration in the early phase of the American War of Independence. Illness and a political scandal forced him from office in November 1775.
1768–70 – Secretary of State, Northern Department and 1770–71 – takes charge in Falklands Crisis.

Thomas Bradshaw (1733–1774) was a British civil servant and politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1767 and 1774. Bradshaw was born. 25 January 1733 in humble circumstances and became clerk to a contractor for forage. Around 1757, he obtained a post as Clerk in the War Office. He married Elizabeth Wilson, daughter of Robert Wilson, of Woodford, Essex, and merchant of London, in November 1757. Elizabeth's sister had married Anthony Chamier who also became a public official at the War Office. In 1759 Bradshaw was promoted to first clerk at the War Office where he served under Lord Barrington. When Barrington became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1761, he took Bradshaw to the Treasury as chief clerk in December 1761. In February 1763 Bradshaw became commissioner of taxes. As an important civil servant, he became connected with several influential politicians, including the Duke of Grafton. When Grafton was first lord of the Treasury, he appointed Bradshaw Secretary to the Treasury in August 1767.

Grafton brought Bradshaw into the House of Commons as Member of Parliament for Harwich, a Government borough, at a by-election on 30 November 1767. Bradshaw helped Grafton with the 1768 general election and was returned himself unopposed as MP for Saltash. From then on, he acted mainly as Grafton's confidential man of business in both public and private matters. He acted as Grafton's go-between with Lord North, and when Grafton wanted to divorce his duchess sought evidence of her adultery.

When Grafton resigned in January 1770, he obtained for Bradshaw the reversion for two lives of the office of auditor general of the plantations worth upwards of £2500 a year, and a pension of £1500 a year until the post became vacant. Bradshaw remained at the Treasury, at the request of Grafton and North to induct John Robinson into his duties. In April 1772 Bradshaw was made a Lord of the Admiralty but when he stood for re-election at Saltash was defeated. He was then returned on petition on 8 June 1772. He was returned unopposed for Saltash at the 1774 general election, shortly before his death. He is not known to have participated in parliamentary debates.

Bradshaw was noted for his “unbounded extravagance” and a “gay and social disposition”. He died on 6 November 1774, by one account from a fever and by another by shooting himself because he was burdened with debts. His will provided for his family on the strength of the auditor ship-general of the plantations, but he never reached that office because it was only held only in reversion. His widow was given a secret service pension of £500 a year, and his two younger sons and daughter were given pensions of £100 a year. Bradshaw's son Robert Haldane Bradshaw was also a public servant and politician. Richard Lee Bradshaw ‘’Thomas Bradshaw (1733-1774): A Georgian Politician in the Time of the American Revolution’’ Xlibris Corporation, 12 Aug 2011.

Notes: Good condition with some staining, possible water on the edges not affecting text. Toned, folded, watermarked.

$1,000 - $1,500

11.875" x 0.001" x 7.625"

Militaria, Military Documents & Ephemera

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