'Turncoat' by Dennis Sewell Review

Summary

Downing Street is globally recognised as the home of the British prime minister. It is also an early example of branding by the man who built Number 10, George Downing. Yet, as this lively and engaging biography tells us, this was probably the least interesting of Downing’s exploits. In Turncoat Dennis Sewell uncovers the life of this secretive spymaster who moved seamlessly between serving Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s and then Charles II in the 1660s. This is the first biography of Downing for a century (the last was John Beresford’s The Godfather of Downing Street in 1925) and it shines a light on a man who fleetingly appears in other histories, but who, as the author rightly argues, deserves to be better known. Was he, as Sewell asks, ‘the biggest scoundrel in Stuart England’? Downing was born in Dublin in 1623 where his father Emanuel practised law; his mother, Lucy, was the sister of John Winthrop, the first governor of the Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay. In 1638 the couple accepted Winthrop’s invitation to join him and in 1640 young George was one of the first intake at Harvard College. Unfortunately, Harvard’s master, Nathaniel Eaton, was a bully and sadist, who was rapidly sacked, but not before his wife had served the students pudding thickened with goat’s dung. George Downing’s education had prepared him for a career in the congregational ministry and in 1645 he served as a ship’s chaplain in the Caribbean. When his ship sailed to England the following year Downing accepted a post as chaplain in the New Model Army regiment of John Okey, a man he would later betray. He then became chaplain to the regiment of Arthur Hesilrige, the parliamentarian governor of Newcastle upon Tyne. Downing was being noticed, and in 1649 Oliver Cromwell appointed him scoutmaster general of the English army in Scotland. He was no meek man of the cloth and was wounded three times during Cromwell’s ‘great victory’ at the Battle of Dunbar in 1650. The main duty of a scoutmaster...