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Daniel Defoe (1660 – April 24, 1731) was an English 
writer and journalist, who first gained fame for 
his novel Robinson Crusoe.

Biography
Born Daniel Foe, the son of James Foe, a butcher in 
Stoke Newington, London. He later added the 
aristocratic sounding "De" to his name as a nom de 
plume. He became a famous pamphleteer, journalist 
and novelist at a time of the birth of the novel in 
the English language, and thus fairly ranks as one 
of its progenitors.

Defoe's pamphleteering and political activities 
resulted in his arrest and placement in a pillory 
on July 31, 1703, principally on account of a 
pamphlet entitled "The Shortest Way with Dissenters", 
in which he ruthlessly satirised the High church 
Tories, purporting to argue for the extermination 
of dissenters. The publication of his poem Hymn to 
the Pillory, however, caused his audience at the 
pillory to throw flowers instead of the customary 
harmful and noxious objects, and to drink to his 
health.

After his three days in the pillory Defoe went 
into Newgate Prison. Robert Harley, 1st Earl of 
Oxford and Mortimer, brokered his release in 
exchange for Defoe's co-operation as an intelligence 
agent. He set up his periodical A Review of the 
Affairs of France in 1704, supporting the Harley 
ministry. The Review ran without interruption until 
1713. When Harley lost power in 1708 Defoe continued 
writing it to support Godolphin, then again to 
support Harley and the Tories in the Tory ministry 
of 1710 to 1714. After the Tories fell from power 
with the death of Queen Anne, Defoe continued doing 
intelligence work for the Whig government.

Defoe's famous novel Robinson Crusoe (1719), tells 
of a man's shipwreck on a desert island and his 
subsequent adventures. The author may have based 
his narrative on the true story of the shipwreck 
of Alexander Selkirk. (See Robinson Crusoe: Selkirk 
as the inspiration for Crusoe).

Defoe's next novel was Captain Singleton (1720), 
amazing for its portrayal of the redemptive power 
of one man's love for another. Hans Turley has 
recently shown how Quaker William's love turns 
Captain Singleton away from the murderous life of 
a pirate, and the two make a solemn vow to live as 
a male couple happily ever after in London, 
disguised as Greeks and never speaking English in 
public, with Singleton married to William's sister 
as a ruse.

Defoe wrote an account of the Great Plague of 1665: 
A Journal of the Plague Year.

He also wrote Moll Flanders (1722), a picaresque 
first-person narration of the fall and eventual 
redemption of a lone woman in 17th century England. 
She appears as a whore, bigamist and thief, lives 
in The Mint, commits adultery and incest, yet 
manages to keep the reader's sympathy. Both this 
work and Roxana, The Fortunate Mistress (1724) 
offer remarkable examples of the way in which 
Defoe seems to inhabit his fictional (yet "drawn 
from life") characters, not least in that they 
are women.

Daniel Defoe died on April 21, 1731 and was 
interred in Bunhill Fields, London.


Defoe and the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707
No fewer than 545 titles, ranging from satirical 
poems, political and religious pamphlets and 
volumes have been ascribed to Defoe. His ambitious 
business ventures saw him bankrupt by 1692, with 
a wife and seven children to support. In 1703 he 
published an ironic attack on the high Tories, 
and was prosecuted for seditious libel, sentenced 
to be pilloried, fined 200 marks, and be detained 
at the Queen’s pleasure. In despair he wrote to 
William Paterson, the London Scot, and founder 
of the Bank of England and part instigator of the 
Darien Disaster, who was in the confidence of 
Robert Hartley, leading Minister and spymaster 
in the English Government. Hartley accepted 
Defoe’s services and released him in 1703. He 
immediately published The Review, which appeared 
weekly, then three times a week, written mostly 
by himself. This was the main mouthpiece of the 
Government promoting the Act of Union 1707.

Defoe began his campaign in The Review and other 
pamphlets aimed at English opinion, claiming 
correctly that it would end the threat from the 
North, gaining for the Treasury an “inexhaustible 
treasury of men” a valuable new market increasing 
the power of England. By September 1706 Hartley 
ordered Defoe to Edinburgh as a secret agent, to 
do everything possible to help secure acquiescence 
of the Treaty. He was very conscious of the risk 
to himself. Thanks to books such The Letters of 
Daniel Defoe, (edited by GH Healey, Oxford 1955) 
which are readily far more is known about his 
activities than is usual with such agents.

His first reports were of vivid descriptions of 
violent demonstrations against the Union. "A Scots 
rabble is the worst of its kind," he reported. 
Years later John Clerk of Penicuik, a leading 
Unionist, wrote in his memoirs that,

"He was a spy among us, but not known as such, 
otherwise the Mob of Edinburgh would pull him 
to pieces." 

Defoe being a Presbyterian, who suffered in 
England for his convictions, was accepted as 
an adviser to the Assembly of the Church and 
Parliamentary Committees. He told Hartley that 
he was "privy to all their folly", but "Perfectly 
unsuspected as with corresponding with anybody in 
England." He was then able to influence the 
proposals that were put to Parliament and 
reported back:

"Having had the honour to be always sent for 
the committee to whom these amendments were 
referr’d, I have had the good fortune to break 
their measures in two particulars via the bounty 
on Corn and proportion of the Excise." 
For Scotland he used different arguments, even 
the opposite of those he used in England, for 
example, usually ignoring the English doctrine 
of the Sovereignty of Parliament, telling the 
Scots that they could have complete confidence 
in the guarantees in the Treaty. Some of his 
pamphlets were purported to be written by Scots, 
misleading even reputable historians into quoting 
them as evidence of Scottish opinion of the time. 
The same is true of a massive history of the Union 
which Defoe published in 1709 and which some 
historians still treat as a valuable contemporary 
source for their own works. Defoe took pains to 
give his history an air of objectivity by giving 
some space to arguments against the Union, but 
always having the last word for himself.

He disposed of the main Union opponent, Andrew 
Fletcher of Saltoun, by just ignoring him. Nor 
does he account for the deviousness of the Duke 
of Hamilton, the official leader of the Squadrone 
Volante against the Union, who finally acted 
against his comrades in the decisive stages of 
the debate. Hamilton was to lead an Anti-Union 
Rebellion of 1708, where Covenanters had marched 
from Galloway (and were betrayed at Dumfries) to 
unite with Jacobites at Edinburgh. A Highland 
Army camped outside Edinburgh were given the 
keys by the town guard to let them in. The 
Illustrious Duke failed to turn up, due to a 
toothache, and the French frigates in the Forth 
had to turn back.

Defoe made no attempt to explain why the same 
Scottish Parliament which was so vehement for 
its Independence from 1703 to 1705 became so 
supine in 1706. He received very little reward 
from his paymasters and, of course, no recognition 
for his services by the government. He made use of 
his Scottish experience to write his Tour thro’ 
the whole Island of Great Britain, published in 
1726, where he actually admitted that the increase 
of trade and population in Scotland, which he had 
predicted as a consequence of the Union, was “not 
the case, but rather the contrary.”

Defoe’s description of Glasgow (Glaschu) as a 
“Dear Green Place” has often been misquoted as 
a Gaelic translation for the town. The Gaelic 
Glas could mean grey or green, chu means dog or 
hollow. Glaschu probably actually means 'Green 
Hollow'. The "Dear Green Place", like much of 
Scotland, was a hotbed of unrest against the 
Union. The local Tron minister urged his 
congregation "to up and anent for the City of 
God". The 'Dear Green Place' and “City of God” 
required government troops to put down the 
rioters tearing up copies of the Treaty, as at 
almost every mercat cross in Scotland.

When Defoe revisited in the mid 1720’s he claimed 
that the hostility towards his party was, “because 
they were English and because of the Union, which 
they were almost universally exclaimed against.”


Quotations
"One day, about noon, going towards my boat, I 
was exceedingly surprised with the print of a 
man's naked foot on the shore, which was very 
plain to be seen on the sand." – from Robinson 
Crusoe 

Wherever God erects a house of prayer 
The Devil always builds a chapel there; 
And 'twill be found, upon examination, 
The latter has the largest congregation. 
– (from The True-Born Englishman, 1701)