Eimer 955, BHM 568A.
69mm. Silver. By G.F Pidgeon.
Reverse showing large glasshouse against a wall in a formal garden, obverse with two female figures adorning a herm with fruit and flowers, engraved around 'Presented To The Rt Hon. William Wickham. April 7th 1818'.
Some marks within fields otherwise toned About Extremely Fine and very rare. Housed in contemporary red leather circular case.
William Wickham (11 November 1761 – 22 October 1840) was a British spymaster and a director of internal security services during the French Revolutionary Wars. He was credited with disrupting radical conspiracies in England but, appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, failed in 1803 to anticipate a republican insurrection in Dublin. He ended his career in government service in 1804, resigning his post in Ireland where, privately, he denounced government policy as "unjust" and "oppressive"
From 1790 to 1794, Wickham was a commissioner of bankrupts. Following the passing of the Middlesex Justices Act of 1792, Wickham was appointed in 1793 as one of the new stipendiary magistrates. In this position he began to undertake secret work for the Government, at the behest of Lord Grenville, the then Foreign Secretary. Wickham was made "superintendent of aliens" in 1794 by the then Home Secretary, the Duke of Portland.
Because of his knowledge of Switzerland, Grenville sent Wickham to that country in 1794 as assistant to the British ambassador. A year later he was named chargé d'affaires when the ambassador took extended leave, and then appointed ambassador in his own right. His unofficial duties were to liaise with French opponents of the Revolution. By 1795, England was openly combating the French revolutionaries who had usurped and beheaded King Louis XVI and his Queen, Marie Antoinette. Wickham established a spy network in Switzerland, southern Germany and in France and negotiated with French Royalists and others, supporting amongst other initiatives the disastrous rising in la Vendée.
The government secretly funded Wickham with a substantial budget for his objects. A good deal of this was spent in a complex plot to bring French revolutionary general Charles Pichegru over to the ranks of Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé, who maintained an army on the Rhine. Wickham advanced £8,000 to feed and supply Pichegru's troops; however, Pichegru vacillated and the initiative failed. Wickham also reported on French troop positions, armaments and operations. French spies, however, learned of his network, and France pressured Swiss authorities to expel him. Wickham resigned, returning to England in 1798, where he resumed, after some internal wrangling, his position as Superintendent of Aliens, and was appointed Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department. For a year and a half he was "the effective head of the secret service"
In 1802 Wickham was appointed to the Privy Council and named Chief Secretary for Ireland under Lord Hardwicke. In 1806, Wickham was appointed a Lord of the Treasury, but he resigned again from his post the following year. He would not serve in an administration that refused Catholic Emancipation. Wickham never again held government office.
In 1802, he had entered the new United Kingdom Parliament as MP for the Irish borough constituency of Cashel, serving until 1806. Wickham then sat for the English seat of Callington in Cornwall until 1807.
He was a keen gardener, sending for many seeds from a seed supplier in Paris and his surviving papers also record his interest in growing figs at Binsted Wyck. His paper on the growing of figs in England led to his membership of the Horticultural Society in 1818 (hence this medal).
Sheryl Craig suggests that Wickham's notoriety in this period inspired Jane Austen to name the duplicitous villain of Pride and Prejudice, George Wickham, after him. As the historical spy-master William Wickham appeared in the Poldark novels of Winston Graham and in the 2015 BBC historical drama series of the same name. His character was played by Anthony Calf.