The Luddite protests of 1811–15 had been followed by the Spa Fields riots of 1816, the Blanketeers demonstration in March 1817 and soon afterwards the Pentridge or Pentrich rising, in June, and it was a time when many of Britain’s middle and upper classes saw a genuine risk of revolution.
[1] Although some early newspaper reports described Oliver as Welsh and a native of either Cardigan or Pembroke, in evidence to the Home Office he claimed to be from Pontesbury in Shropshire, England.
He was described as "a person of genteel appearance and good address, nearly six feet high, of erect figure, light hair, red and rather large whiskers, and a full face, a little pitted with the small-pox.
He was accepted by Lord Sidmouth and on 23 April began a tour of the North and Midlands, ostensibly for the purpose of obtaining petitions for Parliamentary Reform and representing himself as a "Liberal patriot".
To the more violent reformers, angry about the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, he spoke of the use of physical force in London, where seventy thousand men were allegedly ready to rise, as soon as plans were complete.
Birmingham, Derby, Sheffield, Wakefield, Huddersfield, Dewsbury, Leeds, Halifax, Royton, Middleton, Manchester, Barnsley and Nottingham were all visited, during which time he wrote reports for the Home Office.
Dickinson asked him how he had managed to escape the troops of General Byng, and he gave an embarrassed answer and hurriedly left the town by stagecoach for Nottingham.
Following the brief Pentridge or Pentrich rising on the night of 9/10 June 1817 on the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire border, three rebel leaders, Jeremiah Brandreth, Isaac Ludlam and William Turner, were captured.
He left a will, dated 10 December 1824, in which he described himself as "a native of Ponsonbury (sic) in the County of Salop, aged about fifty, and married to Harriet born Dear of Fulbourn, Cambridgeshire".
Readers of the Leeds Mercury and the public at large, were outraged that Lord Liverpool's Government, having been alerted by Oliver, allowed the Penrich rising to continue, rather than nipping it in the bud.
The public indignation generated by the spy's activities was one more step on the road to reform, and the newspaper revelations made sure of a quite different outcome to that which had been hoped for by the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth.