Defoe, the De la Faye letters and Mercurius Politicus

This article presents a new interpretation of the famous series of six letters written by Defoe in 1718 to Charles Delafaye, the Under-Secretary of State, in which he describes himself as having been employed by the Whig government to pass himself off as a Tory and insinuate himself into the management of Tory journals in order to weaken their attacks on the Whigs. It argues that these letters were a fiction, and that Defoe was instead deceiving his own Government paymasters