Whorwood, Jane, 1612-1684

Jane Whorwood was a Royalist agent during the English Civil War. Jane married Brome Whorwood in 1634. However, in 1642, at the outbreak of the Civil War, her husband fled England. Whorwood travelled continuously as an active Royalist agent. Composed of merchants and laundresses, the contact networks established by Whorwood's stepfather and mother facilitated her actions in favour of the Royalist cause. James Maxwell, her stepfather, had been a groom of the bedchamber successively to princes Henry and Charles, whose accession to the throne would occur in 1625. Maxwell assumed the office of Black Rod in 1622 and, upon the dissolution of Parliament in 1629, acted as pawnbroker and private financier to Charles I. This enabled him to work closely with merchants with whom Whorwood would co-operate in smuggling funds for the Royalists during the Civil War.

Whorwood remained an active supporter of Charles I throughout most of the 1640s, being invested in gathering more funds, helping to create a network of Royalist contacts extending from London to Edinburgh, and covertly relaying intelligence amongst the king's supporters, as well as from and to the king himself.

Whorwood underwent a brief period of imprisonment herself in 1651, under the Commonwealth, along with a fine for having defrauded the Parliamentary Committee for the Advance of Money in her efforts to finance the Royalists.