The Howe Dynasty

by Julie Flavell

  The proposal was for a conference “with some of the members in their private capacity,” since the British commissioners could not negotiate with the illegal Continental Congress. The invitation should have been treated as a private matter, but somehow word got around in Philadelphia, perhaps through Richard himself, and the resulting publicity put pressure on Congress to agree.66 For his part, Richard was disappointed to learn, on September 9, that the congressional delegation was restricted to the role of a fact-finding mission: “. . . [T]he object of this deputation apparently was to interrogate rather than to confer.” Everyone was being circumspect. The brothers, after considering, decided to receive the delegates.67

  Billopp House on Staten Island, New York. Today it is part of historic Conference House Park.

  With William preparing for the operation at Kips Bay, it was left to Richard to set the stage for the conference. Benjamin Franklin proposed as a location the royal governor’s mansion in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, or else Staten Island. The Howes chose Staten Island. There, just across the river from Perth Amboy, stood the Billopp House, a comfortable old stone manor house owned by wealthy loyalist Christopher Billopp.68 By this time, however, a Hessian officer, Colonel Ludwig von Wurmb, had made it his headquarters.69 It had gone the way of most homes ceded to the military—It was “as dirty as a stable,” recollected John Adams—but Lord Howe had ordered it beautified for his guests. Moss carpeted the floor, and military ingenuity had resorted to the classical manner of adorning the meeting room, using shrubs and foliage from the island, making it “not only wholesome, but romantically elegant.” A cold repast was served: “good claret, good bread, cold ham, tongues, and mutton.”

  The entire episode was marked by careful good manners on both sides. The American delegates declined the admiral’s offer of leaving a British hostage behind on the New Jersey shore to ensure their safe return. John Adams noted that Lord Howe in turn treated the delegates “with the utmost politeness.”70 Henry Strachey, who was present for the meal and the conference afterward, recorded that an exchange of conventional pleasantries began as soon as the delegates stepped ashore, “A general and immaterial Conversation from the Beach to the House. . . .”71 The delegates were at the Billopp House for three hours, two of which apparently involved small talk, for the conference itself only lasted an hour.72

  No record remains of the conversation that took place among these ill-assorted dinner guests. As well as Lord Howe and Henry Strachey, Colonel von Wurmb was present for the meal. Franklin’s fellow delegates included John Adams, whose opposition to conciliatory measures in Congress had already been published in London newspapers by September 1775. Adams recalled later that, after one of his own heated remarks, Lord Howe commented to the others, “Mr. Adams is a decided character.” Even before they began, Richard knew that the delegate from Massachusetts would not budge on independence.73

  Adams rendered his personal opinion of his host in a letter to his wife, Abigail, written a few days later: “His [Lordship] is about fifty Years of Age. He is a well bred Man, but his Address is not so irresistable, as it has been represented. I could name you many Americans, in your own Neighbourhood, whose Art, Address, and Abilities are greatly superiour. His head is rather confused, I think.”74 Adams, like many others from his native New England, had seen little of the Anglo-Atlantic world from which to judge Richard’s manner. We have seen that Richard, unlike his brother George, often appeared standoffish and remote to those outside of his private circle. One wonders who had briefed Adams on Lord Howe’s “irresistable” address. Perhaps it was Ben Franklin, who had seen Richard at his most engaging at his sister’s house in Grafton Street, where Franklin, too, had felt at home. It is not surprising that Richard’s “confused” demeanor was evident that day, for the admiral had been unwell, and Lady Howe was concerned.

  South Carolinian planter Edward Rutledge, who had studied law at the Inns of Court in London, probably felt more at ease than the Yankee Adams. Rutledge’s support for independence had been slow to come, and many in his native colony had harbored doubts.75 Lord Howe’s secretary afterward reported a rumor from a well-connected loyalist that Congress had voted for Rutledge’s inclusion in the delegation because “they could be sure to come at the Truth from him, which they could not from the other two.”76

  The third and most eminent delegate, Benjamin Franklin, had changed since his games of chess in Grafton Street more than a year and a half earlier. After returning to America, he turned his back on the prospect of reconciliation with Britain. For months, he had kept his fellow delegates in Congress guessing—some hoping he had a plan of conciliation, others suspecting he was a British spy. But by July 1775, despite giving his support to the Olive Branch Petition, he believed that America and Britain needed to part ways. “Words and arguments are now of no use,” he wrote to an old friend in London. “All tends to a separation.”77 Franklin had made his position clear in a terse exchange of letters with Admiral Howe during the summer of 1776. Henry Strachey, dispatching the correspondence to Lord Germain’s office, summed it up briefly: “[N]o accommodating Measures are yet likely to be countenanced by the Congress, if it be true that the Doctor is One of the greatest Influence among them.”78

  At the outset, the inevitable discussion of protocol arose, and Franklin finally agreed that they could speak on the footing of private gentlemen: “. . . the Conversation might be held as amongst friends.” But the American delegates nonetheless insisted that any formal negotiation would have to take place between Britain and the “free and independent states” of America. This was more than mere posturing. Edward Rutledge pushed the notion that Britain could gain greater advantages from alliance with an independent America than a colony. The former mother country would continue to have the lion’s share of American commerce, the benefit of its raw materials, and its alliance in protecting the valuable West Indian sugar islands and the Newfoundland fisheries. Britain, he urged, should seize this opportunity “before anything is settled with other foreign Powers”—a pointed allusion to France.

  It was an incredible long shot, but the delegates were taking it in earnest. Franklin hinted that Lord Howe might apply to the ministers back home for authority to confer on this basis, calculating that it would require three months to hear back, by which time the constituents of Congress would be able to give their own reactions to such a proposal.79 In fact, Franklin had been secretly mulling over the possibility of returning to London to promote a peace treaty with an independent America. That, of course, required that Congress first be put on a legitimate footing. He probably was feeling around at the conference for reactions to such a move. However, within two weeks of the conference, Franklin would instead accept a mission to represent the fledgling United States in Paris.80 Richard seemed aware that this was in the offing, for John Adams recalled that the admiral blundered a little, saying to Franklin, “I suppose you will endeavor to give us employment in Europe”—an indirect allusion to France. The delegates maintained a rigid silence.81 After an hour of discussion to no purpose, there was nothing more to say and the conference came to a close.

  Each of the men sitting around the table had had his own agenda. Franklin wanted to return to Europe to negotiate somewhere; uncharitable onlookers in London thought he wanted to leave America before the rebellion collapsed entirely.82 Edward Rutledge was anxious to avoid the necessity of an alliance with the French—no less the traditional enemy of British America than of Britain itself—and was the most sincere of the American delegates in hoping for some constructive outcome. He was said to have quarreled with John Adams after the conference, “declaring that Adams has greatly misrepresented the Substance of the Conversation” with Lord Howe.83 John Adams wanted to extinguish once and for all the illusion of a reconciliation with Britain.

  For his part, Richard wished to explore the potential for talks held out in the Olive Branch Petition of the previous year. In his opening remarks to the delegates, he said so explic
itly, and he regretted that he had arrived after the Congress had declared independence. John Adams recalled years later that Lord Howe also briefly struck a personal note, mentioning George Lord Howe, his brother who had died at Ticonderoga in 1758. The admiral remarked that if America fell, “I should feel and lament it like the loss of a brother.”84

  Richard’s official account of the Billopp House conference, however, written on September 20, was brief and unsentimental. It was in the hands of Lord George Germain by November 3, 1776. He reported that he had informed the delegates that he could not enter into any treaty with an independent United States. The delegates, in return, attempted to persuade him that it was in the interests of Britain to do so. “Their arguments not meriting a serious attention, the conversation ended and the gentlemen returned to Amboy.”85

  In the government offices of Whitehall, there was vexation at the outcome of the Staten Island meeting. A memorandum in the Germain Papers concluded that the American leaders, learning that the British government had appointed peace commissioners, rushed the Declaration of Independence “before Lord Howe’s Arrival,” in order to forestall the negotiations proposed by the Congress itself the previous year in its Olive Branch Petition.86 There was certainly anger; an apocryphal story was circulated in London that Admiral Howe’s parting words to the delegates had been “To let the Blood that should be shed in consequence [of their refusal to negotiate] lye at their door.”87 The congressional leaders had proved to be obstinate. There remained only the thin consolation that the bluff had been called; they aimed at independence.

  For the British public, the news of the Billopp House conference gave the impression that Britain had tried to find a way toward peace. The reported obduracy of the rebels served to dilute the impression of a British Goliath crushing the American David. One British newspaper reported the “very unreasonable Demands” made by the Americans, which ended the conference. There were stories that General Washington had lied to his troops, warning them that the British commanders had refused to listen to any terms of accommodation, so the Americans must perforce fight for their very lives.88 As an exercise in public relations, the meeting was an antidote to the earlier news that Washington had spurned communication with the Howes until they recognized his rightful rank. That had made the rounds in British newspapers in September, evoking widespread admiration for the “spirited” rebel general.89 Now the Howes were the heroes of the hour.

  As the Howes had predicted, the American rejection of the peace commission put the rebel leaders “still more in the wrong” (as Henry Strachey put it) at home. The King’s Speech of autumn 1776, marking the opening of Parliament (just as it does today), asserted that the American leaders “have rejected, with circumstances of Indignity and Insult, the Means of Conciliation held out to them under the Authority of our Commission; and have presumed to set up their rebellious Confederacies for Independent States.” The American appeal to talks had been exposed as insincere, but this at least would lead to “Unanimity at Home, founded in the general Conviction of the Justice and Necessity of our Measures.” There must be another campaign, said His Majesty; the rebellious colonies had enjoyed great happiness and increased wealth by land and by sea under a mild government. Now, British dominion must be reasserted. The cause of the British nation was as benevolent as it was just. John Stuart, Lord Mountstuart, rose to support the speech and spoke “vastly well,” noted Caroline with approval.90

  Word of the Battle of Brooklyn reached London at 4 a.m. on October 10. Lady Mary Coke, hurrying to Grafton Street, found Caroline in an elevated state of happiness. A few days later, Horace Walpole, whose American sympathies Lady Mary abhorred, failed to appear at the usual game of cards at Lady Blandford’s. “. . . [H]e said he had the gout in his knee but I suspect he did not care to come where everybody was pleased with our last good news,” she wrote shrewdly. She believed that he particularly wanted to avoid the Dowager Lady Howe, for “it w[oul]d have been brutal not to have expressed satisfaction at her Son’s success & as we all know he wish’d him beat. I imagine the pain in his knee came to his aid.”91

  Caroline was satisfied with all that her brothers had accomplished, both on the battlefield and at the conference table. For her, the most momentous news was the military victory at Brooklyn, not the Staten Island talks. Jubilant, she began a letter to Lady Spencer: “No indeed my dear Lady Spencer I have not suffered from anxiety, & if I had, it would have been amply made up, by the great & good news we have received, & by the hopes I now have of the possibility of a proper & lasting peace being the end of the present unnatural contentions.” Caroline was convinced that Brooklyn was the turning point for the discord in America. “[W]ild I was with Joy,” she told her friend, “& unable to do anything quietly.” She felt as if “feriam sidera vertice,” she was elevated to the stars. “I have been writing without ceasing for hours,” she concluded, a joyous bearer of the news to London’s aristocratic world.

  Four days later, Caroline sent Lady Spencer news of the other Howe women: “I am but just come from Fanny, who arrived in town this morning late, she is in delightful spirits, had not been well for two or three days before the arrival of the dispatches, but is now perfectly so, & says she never shall be ill again.” Fanny, the Dowager Lady Howe, and Caroline were to dine at “Dickess’s,” her reversion to the old childish nickname another indicator of Caroline’s high spirits.92 Fanny was now a titled lady; shortly after arriving in town, she was presented for the first time at court as “Lady Howe.” On the same day, William became Sir William Howe, when the red ribbon conferring the Order of the Bath was presented to his aide-de-camp at a royal drawing room. The British army was carrying all before it, the war would be short, bonfires were lit, and church bells were rung in celebration. The “honour, the interest, and consequence of the British empire” had been at stake and had been upheld by the Howes.93

  This was not the first time the Howe dynasty had been on the front line in defending the nation’s honor, and the venerable Dowager Lady Charlotte Howe was honored with a private royal audience. Within a week of Fanny’s appearance at court, William’s proud mother was received by King George III and Queen Charlotte at the Queen’s Palace of Buckingham House. “This worthy Lady has had the singular Happiness of seeing three of her Sons head the British Armaments against the common Enemy,” reported the press. Touching upon the death of her son George, the report went on to reprint Lady Howe’s famous letter to the voters of Nottingham in 1758, asking them to return William as their MP. Once again, she was compared in the press to a Roman matron.94 For Lady Howe, the Howe dynasty had reemerged as an iconic military family, just as it had in the Seven Years’ War.

  It was a final moment of glory for the elderly woman. Writing to her Kielmansegg relatives in Hanover, she boasted happily, “General Amherst has spoken publicly of the great qualities of Sir Wm Howe, your nephew.” Quoting Amherst’s praise of the action at Brooklyn, in which he referred to the “magnamity and Judgement” of “the brave Howes,” she concluded proudly, “The King himself said ‘these are the only people I could have made choice of on this occasion.’ ”95 She was probably repeating his private remarks to her at Buckingham House.

  Others were just as happy and relieved. Adjutant General Edward Harvey, who had prophesied the previous year that the army would be “destroyed by damned driblets” in a mainland war in America, was overjoyed at the commander in chief’s conduct of the campaign. “We may build on the solid Prudence of Howe’s Conduct,” he wrote to the Duke of Newcastle. With reasoning that reflected William’s, he added, “We must not be Impatient. In this war, men must not be wantonly sported away. Difficult to Replace them.”96 William’s cautious tactics were applauded in the face of his success.

  At the end of November, the Howes issued a proclamation commanding the rebel fighting bodies to disperse and calling on Congress to renounce the authority it had assumed. This was the second of their proclamations to the American public. The first,
published a week after the conference on Staten Island on September 19, was a predictable outcome of the conjunction of the victory in the Battle of Brooklyn and the stalemate on Staten Island. It went over the heads of the members of Congress to invite “well-affected subjects” to negotiate directly with the Howes. On the surface, the brief document seemed to promise much, undertaking to review legislation that “may be construed” to restrain the freedom of the colonial legislatures, or “may” cause Americans to “think themselves aggrieved.” Patriot pamphleteers quickly exposed its flimsy wording, but they could not suppress the false rumors of conferences with Lord Howe that proliferated over the next weeks and months, threatening to undermine congressional leadership. In London on November 2, Caroline received a copy of the document from Lady Mary Howe, and she publicized its contents as far as possible, sending it to the wives of Whig opposition leaders and broadcasting it at social gatherings. It was soon in the metropolitan newspapers. To Caroline, it was a natural component of her brothers’ campaign to end the rebellion; in her letters, the successes of the army were the main news.97

  The second proclamation of November 30 was a more down-to-earth document. Full pardon was offered to any individual who appeared within sixty days before a British official and took an oath of loyalty. It was issued toward the conclusion of the campaign, when the Howes seemed tantalizingly close to ending the rebellion. By mid-December, the rank and file of the Continental Army was fading away as short-term enlistments expired, and the search for new recruits, even in zealous New England, went badly. Many deserted as the advancing British army sapped morale. The response from the American public to the November proclamation was striking. Nearly five thousand colonists claimed pardon during December.98