Langar Hall, 1792
THE
Howe
DYNASTY
THE UNTOLD STORY OF
A MILITARY FAMILY
AND THE WOMEN BEHIND
BRITAIN’S WARS FOR AMERICA
Julie Flavell
For Andy, who always finds a way
CONTENTS
List of Maps and Illustrations
Howe Family Tree
PreludeDynastic Secrets
OneThe Howe Women
TwoDiaspora
ThreeThe Brothers
FourWorld War
FiveThe Peaceful Years
SixCaroline and Company
SevenA Game of Chess
EightAmerican Destiny
NineHome Front
TenNew York, 1776
ElevenThe Tide Turns in America
TwelveAbout Mrs. Loring
ThirteenSurvival
FourteenThe Glorious Return
EpilogueLegacy
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
LIST OF MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
MAPS
The Seven Years’ War in America, 1756–1763
William Howe’s New York Campaign, 1776
William Howe’s Philadelphia Campaign, 1777
John Burgoyne’s Saratoga Campaign, 1777
ILLUSTRATIONS
Black-and-White Illustrations
Langar Hall, 1792. Published by John Throsby, 1792. ©Nottingham City Council.
Portrait of John Howe of Hanslope in Buckinghamshire (1707–69). George Knapton, 1741. Collection of the Society of Dilettanti, London. Reproduced by kind permission of the Society of Dilettanti, London.
Captain Viscount Howe. Thomas Gainsborough, RA, probably 1758. Private collection. ©Keith Simpson.
Admiral Sir Edward Hawke defeating Admiral M. de Conflans in the Bay of Biscay. Thomas Luny (1759–1837). Private collection/Bridgeman Images.
“The monument to Viscount Howe in the south nave aisle of Westminster Abbey, from Ackermann’s Westminster Abbey (1812).” Engraved by J. Black from a drawing by H. Villiers. ©The Dean and Chapter of Westminster.
11–13 Grafton Street, Westminster LB [listed building]: front elevations (1964). London Metropolitan Archives, City of London (Collage: London Picture Archive, ref. 133202).
3 Grafton Street, Westminster LB: first floor landing (1967). London Metropolitan Archives, City of London (Collage: London Picture Archive, ref. 133259).
Portrait of Lady Mary Coke, half-length, in ermine-trimmed red cloak (oil on canvas). Joshua Reynolds (1723–92). Private collection. Photo ©Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images.
Billopp House, Hylan Boulevard, Tottenville, Richmond County, NY. Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division [HABS NY-4370].
The Conference between the Brothers HOW to get Rich. [London]: Publish’d by W. Williams Fleet Street, as the Act directs, 1777 Oct. 10. Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division [reproduction number USZ62-41467].
The Temptation of Eros. Style of Angelica Kauffmann (Swiss; Chur, 1741–1807 Rome), 1750–75. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of James DeLancy Verplanck and John Bayard Rodgers Verplanck, 1939 (39.184.19).
The Victory of Eros. Style of Angelica Kauffmann (Swiss; Chur 1741–1807 Rome), 1750–75. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of James DeLancy Verplanck and John Bayard Rodgers Verplanck, 1939 (39.184.19).
Lady Altamont, 1788. George Romney (1734–1802). Tate. Photo ©Tate.
Visit of George III to Howe’s Flagship, the Queen Charlotte, June 26, 1794. Henry Perronet Briggs, RA (1828). ©National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Greenwich Hospital Collection.
Color Plates
Mary Sophia Charlotte, Viscountess Howe (1703–82). Circle of Michael Dahl, 1719. Private collection. ©Keith Simpson.
Sophia Charlotte von Kielmansegg, Countess of Darlington (1675–1725). Sir Godfrey Kneller, ca 1715. Private collection. ©Keith Simpson.
Juliana Howe (Mrs. Page) (d. 1780), painted as the goddess Diana, ca 1735. Enoch Seeman. Private collection. ©Keith Simpson.
Mary Howe, Countess of Pembroke (d. 1749), ca 1725. Enoch Seeman. Private collection. ©Keith Simpson.
The Honorable George Augustus Howe (ca 1724–1758), ca age 8, painted as Cupid. English School, 18th century, ca 1733. Private collection. ©Keith Simpson.
Portrait of George Augustus, 3rd Viscount Howe, half-length, wearing the uniform of the 1st Guards (oil on canvas). Joshua Reynolds (1723–92). Private collection. Photo ©Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images.
Mary Countess Howe, ca 1764, by Thomas Gainsborough, RA (1727–88). The Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood House, London.
Commodore Viscount Howe (1726–99), ca 1763–64, by Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88). Private collection. ©Keith Simpson.
The Death of General Wolfe (1727–59), ca 1771 (oil on panel). Benjamin West (1738–1820). Phillips, Fine Art Auctioneers, New York/Bridgeman Images.
Georgiana, Countess Spencer, with Lady Georgiana Spencer, 1759–61 (oil on canvas). Joshua Reynolds (1723–92). Collection of Earl Spencer, Althorp, Northamptonshire, UK/Bridgeman Images.
The Honorable Sir William Howe, 1777 (color mezzotint). Brown University Library, Providence, Rhode Island/Bridgeman Images.
Lord Howe and the Comte d’Estaing off Rhode Island, 9 August 1778 (oil on canvas). Robert Wilkins (ca 1740–ca 1790). Private collection/Bridgeman Images.
Sophia Charlotte, Baroness Howe (1762–1835), ca 1790. English School, 18th century. Private collection. ©Keith Simpson.
Lady Mary Juliana Howe (1765–1800). Sir William Beechey, RA, ca 1790. Private collection. ©Keith Simpson.
The Battle of June 1, 1794. Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg, 1795. ©National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Greenwich Hospital Collection.
The Honorable Mrs. Caroline Howe (1722–1814), age 90. Henry Howard, RA, 1812. Private collection. ©Keith Simpson.
Howe Family Tree
THE
Howe
DYNASTY
Prelude
Dynastic Secrets
Grafton Street in early December 1774 was one of Georgian London’s newest developments for the very rich. A terrace of handsome brick houses, the pale Tuscan columns of the doorways stood out through the gloom of an English winter afternoon. Eighteenth-century London remained one of the worst-lit capital cities in Europe, but candlelight shone from the windows of the street’s prosperous dwellings. At Number 12, the Honorable Caroline Howe was writing, as usual, in her snug drawing room. Callers came and went at Number 12 on their way to or from the royal court, Parliament, a card party, or a club, all bearing news that was suitable or not for inclusion in whatever letter was in progress. Caroline did not write with a view to posterity and publication, like her contemporary, the famous memoirist and wit Horace Walpole. Her letters were spontaneous, purposeful, and altogether private.
On this particular afternoon, Caroline was composing a hurried note to her closest friend, Lady Georgiana Spencer. Just a few casual sentences evoke her daily life at the center of Georgian London’s most fashionable set:
I really shall have no writing time today, I have for the first time these ten days played half a dozen Games of Chess. It has been with Dr. Franklin. Lord Spencer came in, I was dressing yesterday when he was so good to call, he seems well & in spirits, & is to meet me at the Play to see Garrick in Hamlet.1
Lady Spencer’s husband, handsome, moody John, 1st Earl Spencer, who would escort Caroline to the play, was one of the wealthiest men in Britain. He and Lady Spencer were the parents of Georgiana Cavendish, the celebrated Duchess of Devonshire, whose lifestyle of compulsive gambling and high f
ashion lent glamour to the Whig politics she espoused.
Caroline Howe’s opponent at chess that day was an entirely different matter. Benjamin Franklin, premier spokesman in London for the American colonies, was notorious for supporting the colonial resistance to British rule that would break out into the American War of Independence in less than five months. He was not a man polite London expected to call, for he was under a cloud of suspicion for stirring up trouble in the colonies. But Lady Spencer required no explanation. She knew that the chess games were a front designed by Caroline to cover highly secret negotiations with the American in a last-minute quest for peace, negotiations that involved her brothers, Richard Admiral Lord Howe and General William Howe.
Benjamin Franklin’s journal is the only surviving record that these talks ever took place. They are also the context for Caroline Howe’s sole appearance, until now, in history books. Franklin would write of her, “I have never conceived a higher opinion of the discretion and excellent understanding of any woman on so short an acquaintance.”2 He was displaying his usual acumen, for Caroline was in reality more than a hostess; she was closely involved in her brothers’ careers, and never more so than in their behind-the-scenes meetings with Franklin himself.
The Franklin talks marked the beginnings of an aura of mystery that would cling to Caroline’s brothers throughout the years that they served together as British commanders in chief in the American Revolution between 1776 and 1778, and beyond. How had Britain suffered its only defeat in modern times to an army of unprofessional provincials? Richard and William Howe had both achieved hero status twelve years earlier in the Seven Years’ War of 1756–1763, yet the nation’s finest military and naval commanders seemed unable to outfight the rebel General George Washington, a tobacco planter from Virginia. The Howes were known to have pro-American sympathies; had they done less than their duty in suppressing the rebellion?
The suspicions, with their unmistakable insinuations of treason, began during the war and have persisted in the almost two and a half centuries since. Contemporary Britons saw the Howe family as intensely private, an iconic English military dynasty—stoical and self-contained. The “whole race” of Howes, as Horace Walpole put it, were “undaunted as a rock, and as silent.”3 The noted Howe trait of silence provided fertile ground for the conspiracy theories that proliferated as the nation reacted to the stain on British honor.
Historians have concurred with the stereotype, pronouncing the eighteenth-century generation of Howes to be inscrutable. The two major twentieth-century studies of the Howe brothers’ joint American command have labeled them “difficult subjects,” “reticent men who were involved in complex, covert transactions.”4 Recent biographers continue to strike the same note: Lord Howe’s meetings with Franklin in 1774 at his sister’s Grafton Street house were “the most mysterious episodes in the life of the admiral”; the admiral left nothing to reveal to us “what he thought about in his time ashore or around his family.”5 A history of William Howe’s generalship named him “one of the most enigmatic figures” in the American War of Independence, lamenting that his inner thoughts remain concealed behind a “crippling lack of primary sources.”6 The destruction of the family papers in a house fire in the early nineteenth century seemingly set the seal on that verdict.
And yet the correspondence of their sister, the Honorable Caroline Howe, with Lady Georgiana Spencer forms one of the most extensive private collections of letters in the British Library. Past historians of the careers of Richard Admiral Lord Howe and General Sir William Howe have virtually ignored these manuscripts, only dipping into them to spotlight events in the lives of Caroline’s brothers. After all, what relevance can letters between two women have for understanding the motives of military men?
In what has been called “the systematic privileging of masculine interests over feminine,” it is too often assumed that the sphere of women and the drawing room is insignificant, while battlefields and high politics are important.7 The result is that selective use has been made of Caroline’s letters where they relate to the public business of the brothers, but she, the primary correspondent, has been presumed to be extraneous. The voice of the writer, so clear and so decisive and knowledgeable, is overlooked in the narrow quest for the political and military matters of men. It is an attitude that would not have been shared by Caroline or her brothers.
Historian Mary Beard has written powerfully that women’s voices have been excluded from public spaces down the centuries.8 But that does not mean that they have been excluded from private spaces. Within her family, Caroline’s was a voice of authority. Consequently, her letters lead us directly into the conduct of the interests and affairs of the Howe dynasty, because Caroline herself was actively involved in its promotion and preservation.
The Howe women were a conspicuous example of that Georgian phenomenon, the politically involved aristocratic woman. Caroline was born to a family whose women had a tradition of managing the dynastic fortunes. She grew up under the tutelage of her aunt, Mary Herbert Countess Pembroke, who served as a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Caroline between 1727 and 1737. It was the countess who launched the military careers of Caroline’s brothers George, Richard, and William Howe, all of whom would achieve the status of national heroes while they were still young men, serving in America, France, Italy, and Flanders. Caroline watched her mother, Charlotte Viscountess Howe, play cards with the mistress of King George II, and politics with his prime minister, the Duke of Newcastle, promoting the careers of her sons in a world where determined women found a way to wield power in the service of their families. In her turn, Caroline, during the reign of prudish, awkward King George III, engaged in her own drawing-room politics, moving deftly between a straitlaced court and a London high life that was becoming scandalously amoral.
The Howe family was close-knit, with unusually egalitarian relations between its men and women. If the Howe men were known as epitomes of silent, daring English warriors, the women were by turns admired and caricatured for their unfeminine and forthright qualities. The Howe Dynasty tells the story of this celebrated and intrepid military family across four wars and spanning nearly a century, focusing on their crucial role—and their very personal odyssey—in the American Revolution.
As the first whole-family history of the Howes, it also breaks new ground on the history of Britain during the American War of Independence. In First Family: Abigail and John Adams, American historian Joseph Ellis has written of the power of family-based histories of the American Revolution to fuse personal emotional journeys with the “larger political narrative” of what was for America a transformative conflict.9 The letters of elite American women such as Abigail Adams, and the papers of the Adamses, the Jeffersons, and the Washingtons, have been thoroughly interrogated in many fine works. But no historian has consulted the domestic papers of Britain’s “first families,” whose members were actively engaged in the conduct of the war. The result is that the home front of this tragic civil war has, until The Howe Dynasty, remained an American subject.
Biography is often dismissed as mere storytelling, but narrative history has the power to give a voice to the voiceless. As this book brings the silent Howe brothers to life, the women, after two centuries of obscurity, also emerge unexpectedly and vividly into the light. Starting out with no ambition but to marry and have children, each of them in her own lifetime was compelled to manage the dynastic interests, and each proved equal to the challenge in her own highly individual way. By intervening in the careers of the famous brothers, the Howe women would influence the destiny of the British nation and the momentous events that led to American independence.
One
The Howe Women
“I saw the Duchess of Devonshire last night across the room at The Messiah. She and the Duke came alone. It was charming, my two sisters, Lady Howe and I sat upon an upper bench and the three Girls at our feet, the King and Queen seem’d to take great notice of such a collected Howery.”1
Caroline Howe’s playful vignette of a night at the concert in 1786 portrays her family as a well-known group in Georgian high society. Caroline’s inner circle included some of the leading characters of the century: fashion diva the Duchess of Devonshire; gossip and eccentric Horace Walpole; the pleasure-seeking George, Prince of Wales; notorious adulteress the Duchess of Grafton; brave General James Wolfe, who had taken Quebec for the British empire in 1759.
Yet today little remains of Caroline’s world. A fire destroyed the Howe family papers within twenty years of her death in 1814, and their dynastic seat of Langar Hall in Nottinghamshire was pulled down in the nineteenth century. The public careers of her brothers, George Augustus, 3rd Viscount Howe, Richard Admiral Lord Howe, and General Sir William Howe, are all that is remembered of this remarkable generation of eight siblings. The Howe women get barely a mention in the military biographies. Caroline, and the sisters and nieces who made up her fanciful “Howery” on that musical evening, have joined the legions of forgotten women who simply disappear from history.
It would be wrong, however, to imagine that the Howe women would care about being rescued from obscurity and restored to the pages of the history books. The feminist slogan “Well-behaved women seldom make history,” coined two centuries after they flourished, would have had little meaning to them. These self-assured women did not crave posterity’s validation, and they barely troubled to consider whether they were well behaved. What they did care about was the welfare and reputation of their dynasty. Three notable Howe women, Charlotte Viscountess Howe, Mary Herbert Countess Pembroke, and the Honorable Caroline Howe, would have a decisive impact on the careers, fortunes, and characters of their more famous male relatives.
Caroline’s mother, the Viscountess Howe, born Charlotte von Kielmansegg, was not yet sixteen when she married Scrope, 2nd Viscount Howe, in 1719. In her wedding portrait, she appears girlish, wearing a loose silk gown with her hair arranged around her shoulders and one hand fondly stroking her little spaniel.2 For her, as for any woman of her day, marriage was the defining moment in her life. That one brief ceremony conferred on her as much formal authority as she would know in her lifetime, through the roles of wife, mother, and household manager. The bride in the portrait looks too young to take up the position of Viscountess Howe, presiding over the dynastic seat at Langar Hall in Nottinghamshire, managing a houseful of servants, establishing a proper footing with the tenants, and hosting balls and dinners for her aristocratic neighbors. But Charlotte von Kielmansegg was raised for the role of lady of the manor.
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