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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: JUN-KHA |
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KER, JOHN (1673-1726) , Scottish spy, was born in Ayrshire on the 8th of August 1673. His true name was Crawfurd, his father being Alexander Crawfurd of Crawfurdland; but having married Anna, younger daughter of Robert Ker, of Kersland, Ayrshire, whose only son Daniel Ker was killed at the battle of Steinkirk in 1692, he assumed the name and arms of Ker in 1697, after buying the family estates from his wife's elder sister. Having become a leader among the extreme Covenanters
licence from the government in 1707 permitting him to associate with those whose disloyalty was known or suspected, proving that he was at that date the government's paid spy; and in his Memoirs Ker asserts that he had a number of other spies and agents working under his orders in different parts of the country. He entered into correspondence with Catholic priests and Jacobite conspirators, whose schemes, so far as he could make himself cognisant of them, he betrayed to the government. But he was known to be a man of the worst character, and it is improbable that he succeeded in gaining the confidence of people of any importance. The duchess of Gordon was for a time, it is true, one of his correspondents, but in 1707 she had discovered him to be "a knave ." He went to London in 1709, where he seems to have extracted considerable suns of money from politicians of both parties by promising or threatening, as the case might be, to expose Godolphin's relations with the Jacobites. In 1713, if his own story is to be believed, business of a semi-diplomatic nature took Ker to Vienna, where, although he failed in the principal object of his errand, the emperor made him a present of his portrait set in jewels. Ker also occupied his time in Vienna, he says, by gathering information which he forwarded to the electress Sophia
home he stopped at Hanover to give some advice to the future king of England as to the best way to govern the English. Although in his own opinion Ker materially assisted in placing George I. on the English throne, his services were unrewarded, owing, he would have us believe, to the incorruptibility of his character. Similar ingratitude was the recompense for his revelations of the Jacobite intentions in 1715;and as he was no more successful in making money out of the East
justification
Cross
See the above-mentioned Memoirs (London, 1726-1727), and in particular the " preface " to part i.; George Lockhart, The Lockhart Papers (2 vols., London, 1817) ; Nathaniel Hooke, Correspondence, edited by W. D. Macray (Roxburghe Club, 2 vols., London, 187o), in which Ker is referred to under several pseudonyms, such as " Wicks," " Trustie," " The Cameronian Mealmonger," &c.End of Article: KER, JOHN (1673-1726) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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