John Thurloe: Secretary of State 1652-1660
Edmund Baker describes how Cromwell's principal assistant in foreign affairs and his most devoted friend, Thurloe, saw in the Protectoral system “a mean between two intolerable extremes of unrestrained anarchy and reaction.”
A minor mystery of seventeenth century English history is that its greatest Secretary of State should have remained a largely unknown figure right down to the present day. John Thurloe gets only the briefest mention in any work upon the Great Rebellion, despite the fact that for nearly eight years he was at the centre of government, and had in his hands the control of nearly all the administrative machinery for domestic and foreign affairs.
This disregard of Thurloe’s part in the Interregnum is the more puzzling since all students of the period have recourse to his State Papers (edited by Thomas Birch in 7 volumes, 1742) which, together with the complementary Clarendon Papers, must form the basis of any historical research for that period.
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