The Howe Dynasty

by Julie Flavell

  Any account of the early years of this rising generation of Howes must give due recognition to the formidable Aunt Mary, Lady Pembroke. Her decisive role in shaping the careers of the three famous Howe brothers has gone unnoticed by historians, whose adherence to official correspondence and documents in reconstructing the careers of the men has overlooked the leading roles played by the women of the dynasty. Lady Pembroke did not simply offer emotional support and clean linen to her nephews. When her brother died, she became the virtual head of the family. Lady Pembroke worked for the rest of her life to ensure the survival of her brother’s lineage, mentoring not only the boys but also the widowed Lady Howe and her daughter Caroline in the business of exercising influence at court and in the country. Both Caroline and her mother became apt pupils of their capable kinswoman.

  By the time of her brother Scrope’s death in Barbados, Lady Pembroke herself was widowed, the aged Lord Pembroke having died in 1733.45 She retained the courtesy title of Dowager Countess Pembroke until her death. Perhaps she was relieved to be free of her eccentric husband. She had certainly not cultivated domesticity during her married life, for she had become a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Caroline when her husband King George II ascended the throne of Britain in 1727.46 In 1735, Lady Pembroke wedded again, this time to Jack Mordaunt, a grandson of the 3rd Earl of Peterborough. Seven years earlier, her sister Anne had married a Mordaunt, and the union had been fruitful.47

  If Lady Pembroke hoped for children with Jack Mordaunt, who was at least eight years her junior, she was disappointed. It remained her fate to be mother to her numerous fatherless nieces and nephews. Her house at Parsons Green became home not only to Lady Howe and her daughters, but also to the daughter of her cousin William. William Howe had been a student in Paris with Scrope when the two were teenagers, chalking up bills in the cafés and acquiring a veneer of French manners. By 1733, William had married, been widowed, and had died, leaving a daughter, Mary, who was slightly younger than Caroline.48 Mary became part of the Howe brood in Lady Pembroke’s Parsons Green household, where she joined her cousins Caroline, Charlotte, and Julie.49

  Lady Pembroke’s creative networking skills now came into play in the service of her brother’s family. Income was necessary; the widowed Lady Howe must have a place at court, the only paid position open to one of her rank. A few months after her brother’s funeral in 1735, Lady Pembroke began to lobby to have her sister-in-law named as a lady-in-waiting to the Princess Augusta, wife of Frederick, Prince of Wales, a post that brought an annual salary of £400.50 However, it would not be until May 1743 that Lady Charlotte Howe took up a position in the princess’s household.

  One wonders about Charlotte’s thoughts on this turn of events. Many years earlier, she had made her escape from the sinuous, incestuous politics of court life. Now necessity compelled her to return; the royal family was no less dysfunctional, but it was a new generation. Heir to the throne Prince Frederick and his father, George II, detested one another. Frederick’s sisters and his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, were split into factions, the result of an upbringing riven with family politics.51 But Lady Howe could remain outside the tumult of this latest generation of royals. The old hatreds and rivalries of her mother, the insecure Sophia von Kielmansegg, had been consigned to dust. Even Queen Caroline was dead. Lady Howe—refined, correct, brought up to understand the court etiquettes of Hanoverians as well as Britons, and able to speak German in a court where many of the great still stumbled over their English—was admirably adapted for her new role in life. In an echo of the old days, Prince Frederick was heard to call her “aunt,” an acknowledgment of a distant cousinship.52

  As soon as Lady Howe became a lady-in-waiting, with its associated increase of income and influence, the Howe family fortunes began to revive. George was made an ensign in the First Regiment of Foot Guards in 1745. At the age of twenty, he finally had a job. Within two years, he was a captain as well as aide-de-camp to the British army’s captain general, William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland.53

  William, who had been a toddler when his father died and the household at Langar broke up, had lagged behind George in his education. In 1742, at the comparatively advanced age of thirteen, he had been sent to Eton for a year, together with his younger brother Thomas.54 Lady Howe now finished her third son’s education by obtaining a post for him as page of honor to George II in 1744.55 This position, with an annual salary of £200, was sometimes given to youths like William Howe from impoverished genteel families. Limited attendance on the king was expected, but royal pages were also taught horsemanship in the Crown stables and were prepared for entry into the army. William, like many pages, was commissioned after a few years.56 He followed his brother into the army in 1746, at age seventeen, becoming a cornet in the 15th Dragoons; within a year, he was a lieutenant.57

  William and George both saw action in Flanders before the War of the Austrian Succession ended in 1748. The conflict was part of more than a century of Anglo-French rivalry between 1689 and 1815. During this war, Prussia emerged as a leading power in Europe, and Anglo-French rivalry was extended to include colonial possessions in America and India. By the time the two brothers had enlisted, Britain and France were the main combatants. Both Howes gained repeated promotions; no doubt they were as conspicuously brave in this early stage of their respective careers as they would prove to be ever after, but the fact that their mother now had access to the royal ear can only have helped their advancement. Richard’s comparatively gradual ascent up the naval ladder provides an instructive contrast.

  But as far as Lady Pembroke was concerned, finding careers for her nephews was not enough to ensure the future of the Howe dynasty. Since 1673, the men of her family—her father, followed by her brother Scrope—had represented the county of Nottinghamshire as Whig MPs. She was determined that George should follow in their footsteps. In 1739, while George was still too young to enter Parliament, Lady Pembroke installed her obliging young husband, Jack Mordaunt, in one of the two parliamentary seats for Nottinghamshire. The understanding was that he was doing so to protect “the Howe interest” and would step aside when George came of age. Staking a claim to a seat on behalf of a minor was not unprecedented, and the Howes felt entitled to the honor. Lady Pembroke, however, did this over the loud protests of some of the established political figures in Nottinghamshire, drumming up enough support to override them.58

  It was not until 1747 that George was finally of an age to stand as a candidate; by then, however, he was serving in Flanders. Lady Pembroke was left with a battle on her hands to secure her nephew’s seat in Parliament, for the county of Nottinghamshire put up such resistance to his candidacy that she was obliged to transfer her sights to the town of Nottingham itself. There, however, she discovered that the Duke of Newcastle was blocking George in favor of one of her distant relatives, John Plumptre, who had represented the town for more than thirty years.59 If the duke was not going to lift his hand to help young Lord Howe, Lady Pembroke had another idea that involved pushing Mr. Plumptre out of the race. Once again, she resorted to matrimony to secure advantages for the family.

  Abel Smith was a prominent Nottingham banker whose family had emerged from obscurity just a generation or two earlier. They had money, but the air of the countinghouse still clung to them. The Smiths had a great deal of influence in the Nottingham elections, for Abel had loaned money to half the businessmen and grandees in town, including the Howes, and the two families had known each other for years.60 Now each had something the other wanted: Abel Smith wished to climb into the ranks of the gentry, and Lady Pembroke needed a seat in Parliament for her nephew. On August 14, 1747, George Smith, eldest son of Abel, was married to Mary Howe, Lady Pembroke’s ward. Mary was not just a Howe; she boasted royal blood, for her grandmother was Ruperta Howe, natural daughter of Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who had Stuart blood and was the uncle of George I to boot.61 The wedding took place less than two months after George Howe had been elected a mem
ber for the town of Nottingham.

  The newspapers proclaimed that George had been elected “without Opposition,” but there had been plenty of it behind the scenes, for the Duke of Newcastle’s favorite, Mr. Plumptre, had been obliged to drop out of the race once he realized he had lost the support of the ambitious Abel Smith.62 The unhappy Mr. Plumptre complained to the duke of “the ungentlemanlike and the ungrateful behaviour of that family,” the Howes.63 The Duke of Newcastle was upset at the flap—he wailed that he was “accused by the Howe family of endeavouring to drive them out of the county and town.”64

  If Mr. Plumptre found the family “ungentlemanlike,” perhaps it was because it was a Howe lady who was directing affairs. Since George was overseas and could not make a public appearance in Nottingham, Lady Pembroke did it for him.65 She did it with great panache, Mr. Plumptre reported grudgingly: “Lady Pembroke made her Entry here today with a great Appearance of People to meet her & great Acclamations on her Arrivall.”66 One trusts she greeted the voters from the safety of her coach, since the army—the only effective police force of the day—was not allowed by law within two miles of a place of election until the polling was over, to preserve the boasted independence of the British electorate. The result was a frightening carnival atmosphere in which drunks, hecklers, stone-throwers, and obscene remarks were common, with the occasional eruption of serious violence.67

  Other heads of the Howe clan—Lady Howe and Mr. and Mrs. Page—came along to give their determined sister moral support.68 George Howe would not be denied his birthright if his family could help it. Determined to leave nothing to chance, Lady Pembroke wrote to her influential friend at court, Lady Yarmouth, mistress of King George II, advising her that certain members of the rival political camp had Jacobite tendencies. Lady Howe no doubt joined her sister-in-law in the campaign of character assassination, for Newcastle’s political agent wrote that “the women of the Howe family are perpetually teasing Lady Yarmouth to intermeddle in [George’s] Favor.”69

  All this striving and conniving was worth it in the end, because not only did George became MP for Nottingham, but the Smiths also were satisfied with their bargain. George Smith was given the trappings of gentrification by his rich father, including a handsome income, a townhouse in Nottingham and a country seat at East Stoke.70 Nor was George Smith’s spouse, cousin Mary Howe, forgotten. Lady Howe influenced the Duke of Newcastle to make George Smith a baronet in 1757.71 After all, it was only right that Mary should end up as “Lady Smith.”

  Lady Pembroke was entirely a pragmatist in matters of matrimony, so it is not surprising that she also made plans for her niece Caroline, who came of age while under her ladyship’s wing. Caroline made her first appearance in the rumor mill when her name became romantically linked with Edward Walpole, brother of Horace and son of Robert, the all-powerful prime minister, who was still in office when an engagement was mooted. In November 1741, Horace wrote to a friend that his brother Edward “had agreed to take [Caroline] with no fortune, she him with his four children.” Edward had hard work obtaining his father’s consent, probably because the bride was poor. Finally he prevailed, and then, in a tragicomic episode, instantly “repented; and instead of flying on the wings of love to notify it, He went to his Fair one, owned his Father had mollified, but hoped she would be so good as to excuse Him!”72

  Edward Walpole was a truly awful character. In London, he mixed with a set who drank and gambled; in Ireland, where he held a minor government post, he was associated with the Dublin Hellfire Club, whose members set fire to cats and added violent brawls to the usual indoor vices. By the time he was in his thirties, he had fathered four illegitimate children by a beautiful milliner’s apprentice who died in 1738. His one saving grace was his acknowledgment of his children, whom he raised in his household, to the disapproval of polite society.73 He was a well-educated man, and Caroline was the only woman he ever seriously considered marrying, perhaps because she was an intelligent young woman.74

  It may be that the engagement was never as solid as Horace Walpole believed, because just a few months later Caroline was engaged to John Howe of Stokes Manor, Hanslope, in Buckinghamshire, and they would marry in 1742. Despite his name, John was no relation. He was a friend of the Pages and part of their circle of regular visitors.75 Like them, he came from a family of religious dissenters. His paternal grandfather had served as chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan soldier who toppled Charles I, and his maternal grandfather had fought alongside Cromwell during the Civil War.76 Since then, the family had settled down and acquired property, following the prescribed English path to upward social mobility.77

  If John Howe’s family history was unconventional, he himself was not. Throwing off his dissenter heritage, he moved in rarefied circles that included Frederick, Prince of Wales.78 He shared with the Howes their love of the country life—riding, the hunt, chess, and visiting. Also, like Caroline and her brothers, he was fascinated by the world opening up to science in the eighteenth-century age of exploration. Caroline’s attractiveness for educated men was a constant note in her adult relationships. She was the first of her sisters to marry, and the only one who married while still only twenty years of age, despite having no dowry. In choosing John Howe, Caroline reaffirmed her ties to the life she had known as a girl in Nottinghamshire.

  John Howe’s Member Portrait for the Society of Dilettanti, painted in 1741, the year before his marriage. The members posed in fancy dress; Howe pours wine from a vessel in the shape of a globe.

  Lady Pembroke died in 1749. Her will contained a heartfelt note that belied her persona of a hardheaded matriarch: “I wish you my Sisters and all my Friends all manner of Worldly Happiness and that we may all meet Joyfull in that blessed place.” To her, family was everything. Her brother Scrope had died in his prime, but there was still the next generation and the future of the dynasty to work for. This she had done to the utmost of her ability. “If it will not be too much Expense,” was her final wish, “I would like to have my Remains Interred at Langar near those of my Dearest Brother.”79 She rests today in Langar Church.

  Lady Pembroke left an abiding impression on her eldest niece, Caroline. Her shrewd understanding of the politics of the private and public worlds through which she moved, her lack of inhibition about entering spheres that were usually reserved for men, and above all her loyalty and her sense of family destiny—these qualities would later show themselves in Caroline. During the early years of Caroline’s marriage, when the War of the Austrian Succession scattered her brothers far and wide into danger, she first learned to watch which way the wind blew as she waited for news of them from abroad. “North East & nothing but North East so no news”; “The Wind fair, but it is very uncertain when we shall have news”; “The wind has lately been easterly, so I fear we must wait still longer for intelligence.”80 It would become a lifetime habit. The Howe siblings would be separated often by war, but the close bonds of childhood would prevail.

  Three

  The Brothers

  On a late spring morning in 1755, in the cold waters off Newfoundland, Captain Richard Howe, commanding HMS Dunkirk, ended a prolonged game of hide-and-seek in the fog with three French men-of-war by firing a broadside into the 64-gun Alcide. Although war between Britain and France would not be officially declared for another year, Captain Howe’s action on June 8 began the Seven Years’ War at sea. The Dunkirk had sailed from Plymouth six weeks earlier as one of a squadron of twelve warships under the command of Vice Admiral the Honorable Edward Boscawen. Their mission was to intercept French ships carrying reinforcements to Canada.1

  Britain’s prime minister, the Duke of Newcastle, did not want war, but rivalry with France over colonial possessions in America was forcing him down that road. The peace that concluded the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748 was little more than a temporary truce. Within five years, France began a project of aggressive fort-building to the west of the British seaboard colonies in America, with the objecti
ve of uniting its own colonies in Canada and Louisiana, encircling the British settlements, and obstructing further British westward expansion.

  When the French began construction of Fort Duquesne on the banks of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers in 1753, the British colony of Virginia was provoked to respond. The following year, young Colonel George Washington was sent off with a Virginia provincial regiment, and a series of inconclusive frontier clashes ensued. This was the first time that a war between Britain and France would begin in the colonies and then spread to Europe. America’s importance was clearly beginning to be felt. But the question by 1755 was, Could the British protect their American colonies without starting a war in Europe? Early that year, the government shipped two regiments of redcoat regulars under General Edward Braddock to the colonies to seize French forts in the Ohio Valley. The French, who also hoped hostilities could be confined to America, responded by shipping troop reinforcements to Quebec.2 It was this flotilla that Admiral Boscawen was ordered to intercept.

  The mission posed an interesting problem for Boscawen. What was he to do when he intercepted the French that would not provoke outright war? This was why the account of Richard’s clash with the Alcide would be pored over in the press. The public wanted to know who had fired the first shot, as they would twenty years later with the Battle of Lexington and Concord. It would not be the first—or the last—time that Richard found his acumen as well as his physical courage put to the test in an extreme situation.