John Vardill

Who was John Vardill?

John Vardill was an American Loyalist educator, pamphleteer, clergyman, playwright, poet, and British spy. Though successful in writing pro British government articles, and an even more brilliantly successful British Loyalist spy, his pamphlets had little effect on preventing the separation with Britain, and his spying in the end was counter-productive. After the war he was seen as no longer useful, and too closely connected to the discredited North Administration, and was denied his expected title and compensation. He spent the rest of his life after 1784 as a country parson, and raising and educating his poet daughter.