The Ambassador, the Spy, and the Chocolatier

The prominence of the Dutch in global trade, combined with the industry of their press, made the 18th-century Dutch Republic an unrivalled news hub. Ambassadors and unofficial agents acting for foreign governments or for themselves descended on the Netherlands to buy influence and silence opponents. In the process, they turned the streets of Amsterdam and The Hague into frontlines in a European war of words.

One such incident in this struggle began on 15 September 1711, when James Dayrolle, an English envoy in The Hague, wrote to Whitehall complaining about an incendiary pamphlet that had appeared in a bookshop several days earlier. The offensive work was a Jacobite pamphlet, Formulair de Serment d’Abjuration (‘Form of the Oath of Abjuration’), which criticised Queen Anne, whom the Jacobites regarded as an unlawful usurper. Dayrolle promptly complained to the Dutch authorities about the pamphlet. Eager to ensure that their press did not give offence to a close ally, the Court of Holland saw to it that Formulair’s printer, Mattias Rogguet, was arrested and taken in for questioning.

Rogguet had printed the pamphlet, but on whose instructions? Dayrolle initially suspected the pope’s secret agent in the Republic, who he described as ‘a man who does no good here’. But informants also tipped him off about a shadowy figure called Corticelli. An Italian who normally resided in London, Corticelli had, Dayrolle learned, made several trips to Holland recently and was allegedly planning to print more pamphlets.

Rogguet was interrogated by the Dutch authorities but he had been in the business for 25 years and was used to unwanted attention from Dutch magistrates, having previously been rebuked for printing a pamphlet criticising Queen Anne’s father, James II, on the eve of William of Orange’s invasion of England in 1688. Rogguet admitted to printing Formulair, but refused to say who had handed him the text.

With Rogguet declining to give up names, the Dutch magistrates resorted to draconian measures and, on 2 October 1711, Dayrolle reported that the Court of Holland had ordered Rogguet to close his shop ‘forever’. As Dayrolle noted, this was a harsh sentence, ‘so seldom, so severely inflicted on the like cases’. The early modern book trade was, like most other businesses, a family affair. By banning Rogguet from printing, the magistrates were not only depriving Rogguet, but also his descendants, of a livelihood.

The severity of the sentence worked. The day after it was delivered Dayrolle wrote that Rogguet had come to him ‘to cry mercy and commiseration for a wife and several children’. The printer insisted that he had printed the pamphlet ‘as a novelty’, without knowing its contents and having been assured that it ‘contained nothing of consequence’. Dayrolle struck a bargain with Rogguet. He would intercede with the Dutch government, as well as with Queen Anne, to restore Rogguet – as long as he revealed who had handed him Formulair. Rogguet relented: it was Corticelli.

As he worked to restore Rogguet’s position, Dayrolle also moved against Corticelli. On 6 October Dayrolle wrote to Whitehall that he had personally questioned Corticelli, without involving the Dutch authorities. While the Italian confessed that he had delivered Formulair to Rogguet, he claimed that he had done so with ‘no design of having it printed’. Corticelli also claimed to have no knowledge of who had sent the pamphlet to him, claiming he had received the text without any accompanying information. Dayrolle was unconvinced and concluded his letter promising that ‘I will endeavour to oblige him one way or another to make a more sincere confession’.

To this end Dayrolle went to the Court of Holland, which secretly ordered its agents to capture Corticelli, but he had already fled The Hague for Amsterdam. On 9 October Dayrolle reported that the Dutch authorities were aware that Corticelli was in Amsterdam and were ‘in pursuit of him’.

Dayrolle had also discovered that Corticelli was not working alone, but as part of a larger network smuggling Jacobite propaganda from their court-in-exile outside Paris into London through Holland. Dayrolle had also learnt that Corticelli was receiving and sending his letters through another Italian, a chocolatier called Benacci based in Amsterdam.

A week later, however, Dayrolle could only report that the Dutch magistrates had looked for Corticelli in Amsterdam but to no avail. After another week, Corticelli assumed that it was safe for him to return to The Hague. Dayrolle, however, quickly learned of his return, and ‘the same night’ that Corticelli arrived in The Hague the Dutch magistrates seized him. Despite the evidence against him, Corticelli continued to deny any knowledge of who had sent Formulair to him. His claims of innocence were rendered yet thinner when Dayrolle discovered that Corticelli had received ‘several pictures’ of James Stuart, whom Jacobites regarded as the legitimate king, and his sister, from Paris, which he had ‘forwarded to England’.

At this point Dayrolle deferred the matter of Corticelli to his immediate master, the principal British ambassador in The Hague, Thomas Wentworth, the 1st Earl of Strafford. No further mention was made of the affair and Corticelli’s fate is unknown. We do know, however, that the British government interceded to reduce Rogguet’s sentence to a substantial fine – presumably at Dayrolle’s urging. The Corticelli affair demonstrates that early modern diplomacy was not the sole preserve of elite politicians. It was also a world inhabited by very ordinary individuals, from printers to chocolatiers.

Basil Bowdler is a PhD student at the University of St Andrews researching Anglo-Dutch news culture and diplomacy in the late-17th and early-18th centuries.