John King (official)
John King (1759–1830) was Under Secretary of State at the Home Office from 1791 and was briefly a Member of Parliament for in 1806. Life The fifth son of James King Dean of Raphoe and his wife Anne Walker, he was educated at Eton and matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford in 1777, graduating B.A. in 1781, M.A. in 1784. King became a Home Office law clerk in January 1791. He had the support of William Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville, at that time Home Secretary, and at the end of the year became Permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department. Under Grenville's successor Henry Dundas, King belonged to the circle gathering government intelligence across departments, including also Richard Ford, Francis Freeling, William Huskisson, Evan Nepean, and William Windham (later Charles William Flint). One surveillance operation in which he was involved was on Alfoxton House in August 1797, where William Wordsworth was staying, and about which James Walsh reported to King because of the presence of John Thelwall, an operation partly prompted by Dr. Daniel Lysons. Windham, a politician rather than an official, used King (an older Christ Church contemporary) as an intermediary with Greville in 1792, when entering a covert