If I can ask a follow up question, Varys' "little birds" are loyal to him and him alone, not the current head of state. Is that consistent with organisations like the CIA, MI5/6, KGB etc?

This isn't ancient, but I'm assuming it's the kind of information you're looking for.

Henry VII was the first Tudor King of England, reigning from 1485 to 1509. He was a justifiably paranoid man. He'd won his crown on the battlefield, and through the years he'd faced multiple rebellions, conspiracies, and insurrections.

There wasn't just any one spymaster. Instead, Henry's multitude of advisers, in addition to their official roles, collected information for him.

Spies were kept in-line through a variety of methods. There were professional, paid royal informers. When Sir James Tyrrell was arrested, his servant Robert Wellesbourne was the key witness in his trial. It was unclear how long he had been an informant. His family had close ties to Sir Thomas Lovell, who was Chancellor to the Exchequer as well as an informal spymaster.

In any case, Robert Wellesbourne was granted a half-year's salary of 60s 10d, an extremely generous sum, and continued serving as a spy.

Then there were those spies who worked for free. Sir John Wilshire was sent down by Henry to monitor the books at Calais. He was also expected to cultivate a spy network, keeping a close eye on Henry's exiled enemy Suffolk. Wilshire did so by promising pardons to Suffolk's associates in-return for information.

Some spies didn't have employers. Often times, men came forward to the king with information on their own initiative, either hoping for rewards or just trying to destroy their political rivals.

In one conversation, Sir Hugh Conway, the treasurer of Calais, complained about disloyalty in the Calais garrison. In response, Sir Sampson Norton told him to talk to the king about it.

Conway refused, stating that the king would suspect him of, "envy, ill-will and malice" and that he would have, "blame and no thank, for his truth and good mind". So many men went forward to the king with information that he had become deeply suspicious of them. Henry's problem wasn't that he had too little information - it was that he had too much. In fact, Henry sometimes personally interrogated suspected traitors. Presumably he wanted to cut through the rumor mongering that dominated his reign.

The reason we know about Conway's complaints is because one of the men involved, John Flamank reported the conversation to the king. Flamank had gotten into an argument with Sir Richard Nanfan, one of the men present in the discussion, and had decided to inform on everyone.

To summarize: Henry VII had multiple competing spymasters. These spymasters maintained their networks through official salaries, bribes, or promises of pardons. In addition to these networks, many informants came in on their own initiative. All these different sources of information were used to double-check each other.

Source: Penn, Thomas. Winter King: Henry VII and The Dawn of Tudor England. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012. Print.

Sort of a follow-on, but were 'ancient spymasters' even a thing? Did ancient espionage exist in a form similar to modern espionage? If so, would there have been a single person in charge of it?

First post here. Let me know if I haven't done something properly :)

The Neo-Assyrian Kings well understood the benefits of using spies and did so on numerous occasions (we're talking 9th to 7th centuries BCE here btw). One example is in the usage of spies in an ongoing power struggle with the Urartians, a kingdom to the North of Assyria that threatened to overtake them as the dominant power in the region.

The image we have of spies in this particular ancient setting is very reliant on the type of evidence that is available from the period. We have a vast quantity of cuneiform texts from the major Ancient Assyrian cities that record correspondences between the Assyrian Kings and his higher level administrators. It's a bit hard to navigate but I encourage you to have a look at some of them if you want a glimpse at the sort of evidence that survives this period. Large amounts of it can be found online in the State Archives of Assyria series. Because what we see is the what is presented to the King or his central administration, we only get a glimpse of what was more than likely an extensive network of spies. Only the most important matters deserve to reach the King.

Dubovsky talks about information reaching the king in three ways 1. Ambassadors visiting his court, 2. People being sent on independent missions to his court and 3. Through 'provincial information hubs'. These information hubs were managed by his centrally appointed Governors (think Member of Parliament but with full authority over the region) within the empire. So rather than ancient spymasters, intelligence was within the common remit of the provincial administrators within the empire. Outside the empire we have examples of delegates appointed within client kingdoms known as 'Qepu' who would report on the activities within the kingdom. These people could do so in any number of ways. Interrogation of prisoners, paid spies, interception of messengers/ messages, informers etc.

So what can we take away from this? Both of these positions I've posted were roles within the Assyrian state structure. Any intelligence networks that existed, while they may not themselves have been formalised, entered and followed a similar path to the administrative state hierarchy at the provincial level with the Governors taking on the closest we have to the role of a 'spymaster.'The question then becomes about the loyalties of the state officials to the King and this is something which the Assyrian system also addressed... often by chopping off their gonads.

--Dubovský, P., Hezekiah and the Assyrian spies: reconstruction of the Neo-Assyrian intelligence services and its significance for 2 Kings 18-19 (Biblica et orientalia 49), Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2006

--http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/corpus

I also highly recommend this resource for anyone looking to find out about the Neo-Assyrian Empire: --http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sargon/