Espionage, Diplomacy & the Lodge: Charles Delafaye and The Secret Department of the Post Office

Espionage, Diplomacy & the Lodge is one of Ric Berman’s most important works. The book unveils Charles Delafaye, one of eighteenth-century Britain’s least known but most influential figures, a senior under-secretary of state, investigating magistrate, anti-Jacobite spymaster and leading freemason. Delafaye was a member of the elite Horn Tavern lodge in London and at the centre of the government’s inner circle for some two decades. He was also a key conduit for intelligence from the Secret Department of the Post Office and the decrypters and code-breakers within its deciphering branch, and central to the measures taken against the supporters of James Stuart, ‘the king over the water’. Berman provides a unique glimpse into Britain’s early secret intelligence service and outlines for the first time the interconnections between freemasonry, espionage and diplomacy.