"Hone and the Spy System"

Although Britain has always had some sort of domestic spy system, it reached an intensity of operation in the period following the ending of the Napoleonic wars, until the death of Queen Caroline. It seemed to many that Britain was on the eve of a revolution. This paper examined how the insidious nature of Sidmouth's Spy System damaged personal relationships and poisoned that of the two most successful radical polemicists of the day William Hone and William Cobbett.