Home Office: Secret Service Accounts and Papers

This series contains accounts, correspondence and miscellaneous papers relating to Home Office secret service expenditure. The papers commence with the appointment of the Duke of Portland as Home Secretary in 1794 and continue, though incomplete, until 1862.

In addition to revealing a great deal about the administrative functioning of the Home Office, they also illustrate the use of secret service money both for political patronage as well as the detection and prevention of treasonable practices.

The archival arrangement of the first half of the collection (HO 387/1-14) reflects the administrative practices of the Chief Clerk of the Home Office, William Pollock. Towards the end of his career there is a transitional phase, where the papers are partly deficient, but the arrangement improves thereafter, with the significant difference that Samuel Phillipps, Permanent Under-Secretary from 1827, was responsible for the administration of the secret service fund and imposed a different arrangement on the later papers.

A large part of Phillipps's papers (HO 387/18-46) was no longer in its original archival order. These papers have therefore been arranged in the following manner: for each Home Secretaryship there is a piece containing a summary account together with related correspondence with the Audit Office. Such pieces are not uniform, however, some being partly deficient, others entirely wanting. There are none for the tenures of Spencer Walpole (1852), Sir George Lewis (1859-61), and Sir George Grey (1861-6).

Aspects of Foreign Office secret service operation HD 3

Audited accounts are in the Audit Office papers AO 1

The Home Secretary obtained secret service money by applying to the Treasury, customarily citing section 27 of the Civil List Act and thereby circumventing restrictions on annual expenditure.

At the end of his period in office each Home Secretary was required to account for the total sums imprested to him by the Treasury. A summary account was submitted to the Audit Office, together with affidavits confirming that the money had been used in accordance with the Civil List Act. These audited accounts are in the Audit Office papers.

In accordance with an important ruling by the law officers of the crown in 1802 the Home Office was not obliged to submit detailed accounts. Therefore the papers listed here, which include orders and receipts for individual payments (known as 'vouchers'), provide far greater information on expenditure than can be gleaned from the accounts submitted to the Audit Office.