79BL/AP, 75617, CH/LS, April 17, 1781.
80Matthew Montagu, ed., The Letters of Mrs Elizabeth Montagu (3 vols., Boston, 1825), vol. 3, pp. 168–69.
81Gerald Newman, ed., Britain in the Hanoverian Age, 1714-1837: An Encyclopedia (New York and London, 1997), pp. 516–17; John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1997), pp. 364–65, 396–98.
82Jennifer Hall-Witt, Fashionable Acts: Opera and Elite Culture in London, 1780-1880 (Lebanon, NH, 2007), p. 195.
83Gillian Russell, Women, Sociability and Theatre in Georgian London (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 12, 72.
84BL-AP, 75611, CH/LS, Nov. 19, 1772; Dec. 11, 1772; 75612, CH/LS, Nov. 1, 1774.
85BL-AP, 75743, List of the original members of the Ladies’ Club.
86Russell, Women, Sociability and Theatre in Georgian London, pp. 72–75.
87BNA: Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, Aug. 29, 1771.
88BL-AP, 75611, CH/LS, Nov. 24, 1772.
89BL-AP, 75612, CH/LS, March 9, 1773; 75616, CH/LS, May 9, 1780.
90LLMC, vol. 4, p. 448, and see pp. 429, 449.
91Gruber, “Howe, William, fifth Viscount Howe (1729–1814).”
92George Mason, The Life of Richard Earl Howe (London, 1803), p. 34.
93“Parishes: Heckfield,” in A History of the County of Hampshire: Volume 4, ed. William Page (London, 1911), pp. 44–51. British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hants/vol4/pp44-51 [accessed Sept. 1, 2020].
94BL-AP, 75611, Juliana Howe to LS, Aug. 12 [1771].
95BL-AP, 75611, Juliana Howe to LS, Aug. 12 [1771]; Aug. 31 [1771]; CH/LS, Aug. 15 [1771]; Sept. 8 [1771].
96BL-AP, 75611, CH/LS, Sept. 1 [1771], manuscript marked “1770”; Sept. 16 [1771]; Friday AM October 1771.
97BL-AP, 75611, CH/LS, Sept. 22, 1772; 75612, CH/LS, Feb. 22, 1773; March 9, 1773.
Seven: A Game of Chess
1Cited in Bernard Donoughue, British Politics and the American Revolution: The Path to War, 1773-1775 (London and New York, 1964), p. 132.
2H. W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (New York, 2000; paperback ed. New York, 2002), pp. 470–74.
3David T. Morgan, The Devious Dr. Franklin, Colonial Agent (Macon, GA, 1996), pp. 225–26; Julie Flavell, When London Was Capital of America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), p. 228.
4Peter D. G. Thomas, Tea Party to Independence: The Third Phase of the American Revolution 1773-1776 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 43, 38; Thomas, Revolution in America, pp. 38–39.
5Thomas, ibid., pp. 39, 41, 44.
6Julie M. Flavell, “American Patriots in London and the Quest for Talks, 1774-1775,” in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 20 (1992), pp. 339–40.
7Thomas, Tea Party to Independence, p. 157.
8WCL-KP, Box 2:15, John Pownall to William Knox, Whitehall, August 31, 1774.
9PBF, vol. 21, p. 396.
10G. M. Ditchfield, “Shipley, Jonathan 1713-1788, bishop of St Asaph,” ODNB Online [accessed July 16, 2020]; Donoughue, British Politics and the American Revolution, p. 294.
11Margaret DeLacy, “Fothergill, John (1712–1780),” ODNB Online [accessed July 16, 2020]; Flavell, When London Was Capital of America, p. 205; John Fothergill, Chain of Friendship: Selected Letters of Dr. John Fothergill of London, 1735-1780, eds. Betsy C. Corner and Christopher C. Booth (Cambridge, MA, 1971), pp. 15, 421.
12PBF, vol. 21, pp. 550–51, 553.
13Ibid., vol. 21, pp. 562–63; R. Hingston Fox, Dr John Fothergill and His Friends (London, 1919), p. 327.
14PBF, vol. 21, p. 550.
15BL-AP, 75612, CH/LS, May 12, 1774; Donoughue, British Politics and the American Revolution, p. 294, presumes Lord Spencer voted against the Massachusetts Government Act on May 11; Caroline’s letter of May 12 confirms this.
16“Noblesse oblige: Female charity in an age of sentiment,” by Donna T. Andrew in John Brewer and Susan Staves, eds. Early Modern Conceptions of Property (London and New York: 1996), pp. 292–93.
17Langford, A Polite and Commercial People, pp. 481–86; Donna T. Andrew, Philanthropy and Police: London Charity in the Eighteenth Century (Princeton, 1989), pp. 3–4.
18Ibid., pp. 57, 69, 70–71; Langford, A Polite and Commercial People, p. 486.
19Andrew, Philanthropy and Police, pp. 60–61, 72, 110; cite on p. 110.
20Andrew, “Noblesse oblige: Female charity in an age of sentiment,” pp. 276, 278, 292–93, 294fn, 296; Andrew, “Spencer, (Margaret) Georgiana, Countess Spencer (1737–1814).”
21BC: London Evening Post, March 22–24, 1774.
22Foreman, Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, pp. 18–20; Georgiana: Extracts from the Correspondence of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, pp. 11–12, cite from p. 11.
23Andrew, “Spencer, (Margaret) Georgiana, Countess Spencer (1737–1814)”; Foreman, Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, pp. 10–13.
24BL-AP, 75613, LS/CH, Dec. 3, 1776; see also CH/LS, Nov. 5, 1776.
25BC: Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, Jan. 19, 1774; BL-AP, 75612, LS/CH, April 19, 1774; CH/LS, April 1774.
26BL-AP, 75612, LS/CH, Aug. 18, 1774; Aug. 27, 1774; CH/LS, Aug. 19, 1774; Sept. 14, 1774.
27Andrew, “Noblesse oblige: Female charity in an age of sentiment,” pp. 292–93; BL-AP, 75612, CH/LS, Oct. 14, 1774; Nov. 4, 1774; Nov. 22, 1774; Nov. 26, 1774; Dec. 5, 1775; Dec. 13, 1774; Dec. 24, 1774; LS/CH, Dec. 16, 1774; Tuesday, N/D; Monday [1774?].
28BL-AP, 75612, LS/CH, Nov. 25, 1774; CH/LS, Nov. 26, 1774.
29BL-AP, 75612, CH/LS, Dec. 5, 1775; Dec. 24, 1774.
30Andrew, “Noblesse oblige: Female charity in an age of sentiment,” p. 278; Andrew, Philanthropy and Police, p. 83; BL-AP, 75612, CH/LS, Nov. 26, 1774; Dec. 5, 1775.
31Montagu Pennington, ed., A Series of Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Talbot, from the year 1741 to 1770 (1809), p. 99.
32Flora Fraser, Princesses: The Six Daughters of George III (London, 2004), pp. 10–11, 14, 34–35; BL-AP, 75612, CH/LS, Dec. 5, 1775; Dec. 21, 1774.
33B. D. Bargar, Lord Dartmouth and the American Revolution (Columbia, SC, 1965), pp. 6–7.
34See, for example, BL-AP, 75612, CH/LS, Dec. 2, 1774; Nov. 22, 1774; Nov. 26, 1774.
35LLMC, vol. 4, p. 420; CPE, vol. 4, pp. 122–23.
36Syrett, p. 37.
37Cited from PBF, vol. 21, p. 409. Other conjectures are found in Gruber, The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution, p. 53; Bargar, Lord Dartmouth and the American Revolution, p. 134; Donoughue, British Politics and the American Revolution, p. 221.
38BL-AP, 75612, CH/LS, Nov. 1, 1774.
39BC: Public Advertiser, Oct. 28, 1774; Middlesex Journal and Evening Advertiser, Nov. 8–10, 1774; LLMC, vol. 4, pp. 417, 420. I am indebted to Professor P. D. G. Thomas for the suggestion that “St. Anthony’s fire” most likely indicated scarlet fever in the case of the Dartmouth baby.
40Thomas, Tea Party to Independence, pp. 158–59, cite from p. 159.
41Ibid., p. 61.
42Bargar, Lord Dartmouth and the American Revolution, p. 116.
43Thomas, Tea Party to Independence, pp. 130, 132–38, quote from Thomas, pp. 137–38; David Ammerman, In the Common Cause: American Response to the Coercive Acts of 1774 (Charlottesville, VA, 1974), pp. 23–33.
44Josiah Quincy, Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, Jr. of Massachusetts, 1744-1775 (Boston, 1874), p. 206; BC: St James’s Chronicle, or the British Evening Post, Nov. 19–22, 1774; General Evening Post, November 19–22, 1774; London Chronicle or Universal Evening Post, Nov. 19–22, 1774; Clifford K. Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Those Who Attended Harvard College, vols. 4–17 of Sibley’s Harvard Graduates (Cambridge, MA, 1933–75), vol. 15, p. 489.
45PBF, vol. 21, p. 562.
46BL-AP, 75613, CH/LS, March 2, 1778.
47BC: Middlesex Journal and Evening Advertiser, Nov. 8–10, 1774; Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, Jr., p. 204.
48PBF, vol. 21,
p. 550.
49BL-AP, 75743, List of the original members of the Ladies’ Club, with notes of those who have attended [1770?].
50Lewis, Sacred to Female Patriotism, p. 90. On the Howe connection, the Shipleys were related through the Mordaunts. Spencer et al., eds., Letters of David Garrick and Georgiana Countess Spencer, p. 12.
51Gruber, p. 58.
52Samuel Kirk, Grocer, Nottingham to General Howe, Feb. 10, 1775, reproduced in Bellamy Partridge, Sir Billy Howe (London and New York, 1932), pp. 6–7.
53Gruber, p. 58. For a recent example, see Rick Atkinson, The British Are Coming: The War for America 1775-1777 (London, 2019), p. 134.
54BL-AP, 75612, CH/LS, Oct. 14, 1774.
55WCL-KP, Box 10:21, William Knox, “Secret proceedings respecting America in the new Parliament 1774 & 1775”; Thomas, Tea Party to Independence, p. 161; Donoughue, British Politics and the American Revolution, p. 211.
56PBF, vol. 21, p. 572.
57BC: Public Advertiser, Nov. 28 and Dec. 6, 1774; Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser, Dec. 22, 1774.
58PBF, vol. 21, pp. 436–37, 550, 552, 566, 567.
59See, for example, BL-AP, 75612, CH/LS, May 2, 1774; 75610, CH/LS, Nov. [8?] 1764; CH/LS, Oct. 24 [1762 or 1763].
60“The Morals of Chess” [before June 28, 1779], PBF, vol. 29, p. 750.
61BL-AP, 75615, CH/LS, April 21, 1780; 75612, CH/LS, May 2, 1774.
62Kerry S. Walters, Benjamin Franklin and His Gods (University of Illinois Press, 1998), p. 195fn.
63BL-AP, 75612, CH/LS, Dec. 2, 1774; BC: Middlesex Journal and Evening Advertiser, Dec. 1–3, 1774; Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser, Dec. 2, 1774.
64BL-AP, 75612, CH/LS, Dec. 5, 1775.
65PBF, vol. 21, p. 552.
66Ibid., vol. 21, pp. 565–68.
67Ibid., p. 571.
68Donoughue, British Politics and the American Revolution, pp. 284–85.
69Chain of Friendship, pp. 248–49; Eliga H. Gould, “Pownall, Thomas (1722–1805),” ODNB Online [accessed July 27, 2020].
70Richard Koebner, Empire (Cambridge, 1961), p. 185; B. D. Bargar, “Lord Dartmouth’s Patronage, 1772-1775,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, vol. 15 (1958), p. 196. Franklin discovered that Pownall still hoped to be appointed a peace commissioner in January 1775. BPF, vol. 21, p. 568.
71Donoughue, British Politics and the American Revolution, pp. 170–71, 206; Bargar, Lord Dartmouth and the American Revolution, pp. 109, 116–17.
72PBF, vol. 21, pp. 553–63, 366–68, 583–88.
73Dickinson, Liberty and Property, p. 155; Thomas, Tea Party to Independence, pp. 269–70.
74Sheffield City Council, Libraries Archives and Information: Sheffield Archives: Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments, Rockingham Papers, R1-1244, Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham to William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth, November 1769.
75Donoughue, British Politics and the American Revolution, p. 169.
76WCL-KP, Box 2:17, John Pownall to William Knox, London, Sept. 13, 1774.
77Ian R. Christie, Crisis of Empire: Great Britain and the American Colonies, 1754-1783 (London, 1966), pp. 66–67.
78“A Provisional Act for settling the Troubles in America, and for asserting the supreme legislative Authority and superintending Power of Great Britain over the Colonies,” Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, vol. 4, pp. 533–36.
79Arthur Lee, “A SECOND Appeal, published in a single volume with An Appeal to the Justice and Interests of the People of Great Britain in the Present Disputes with America. By an Old Member of Parliament” (London: 4th ed., 1776), p. 40.
80WCL-KP, 10:21, William Knox, “Secret proceedings respecting America in the new Parliament 1774 & 1775.”
81Ian R. Christie and Benjamin Labaree, Empire or Independence 1760-1776 (New York, 1976), pp. 228–29.
82Donoughue, British Politics and the American Revolution, pp. 229, 254–55.
83PBF, vol. 21, pp. 436, 573, 574, 587.
84Ibid., vol. 21, p. 566.
85PBF, vol. 21, pp. 586–90. On Barclay’s proposal that both sides should back off from the conflict in a sequence of staged retreats, involving Boston’s payment for the tea, followed by the appointment of a commissioner who could suspend the Boston Port Act and enter into negotiations, see “Barclay’s Plan of Reconciliation,” on or before February 16, 1775, Ibid., vol. 21, pp. 491–94.
86Syrett, pp. 7, 27.
87PBF, vol. 21, p. 573.
88BL-AP, 75612, CH/LS, Dec. 5, 1774.
89BC: Middlesex Journal and Evening Advertiser, Feb. 7–9, 23–24, 1775; London Evening Post, Feb. 21–23, 1775. On Nottingham’s petitions against coercing America and loyal addresses in favor, see James E. Bradley, Popular Politics and the American Revolution in England: Petitions, the Crown, and Public Opinion (Macon, GA, 1986), pp. 21, 28–29, 198–200; see also letters of Burke to Mark Huish on the presentation of the petitions, George H. Guttridge, ed., The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, vol. III (July 1774–June 1778) (Chicago, 1961), pp. 121, 130.
90Max M. Mintz, “Burgoyne, John (1723-1792),” ODNB Online [accessed Jan. 15, 2020].
91James Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga (London, 1976), pp. 74–75, 76, 78; Edward Barrington de Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes in the Latter Half of the Eighteenth Century. Derived from the Life and Correspondence of the Right Hon. John Burgoyne (London, 1876), pp. 129–30.
92In his final instructions to General Gage on April 15, 1775, Dartmouth allowed Gage some latitude in appointing either Howe or Burgoyne to New York. Four regiments were to be sent there from Ireland. By the time of this letter, the idea of a commissioner had been entirely given up. The military presence in New York was intended solely to prevent help from reaching New England from the southern provinces. Thomas, Tea Party to Independence, p. 229.
93Donoughue, British Politics and the American Revolution, pp. 214–16, cite on page 216.
94Bargar, Lord Dartmouth and the American Revolution, p. 147; Thomas, Tea Party to Independence, p. 189; BL-AP, 75612, CH/LS, Dec. 21, 1774.
95PBF, vol. 21, pp. 589, 591–92, 595.
96Thomas, Revolution in Britain and America, pp. 49–50.
97Julie M. Flavell, “Lord North’s Conciliatory Proposal and the Patriots in London,” in English Historical Review, vol. 107 (1992), pp. 307–8.
98PBF, vol. 21, p. 597.
99BC: Middlesex Journal and Evening Advertiser, Feb. 9–11, 1775. Generals Howe, Burgoyne, and Clinton had all accepted appointments to go to America by February third. Thomas, Tea Party to Independence, p. 181.
100Gruber, p. 59; Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire (New Haven (CT) and London, 2013), p. 89.
101The Last Journals of Horace Walpole during the Reign of George III, vol. I, p. 420; Troy Bickham, Making Headlines: The American Revolution as Seen through the British Press (DeKalb, IL, 2009), p. 64.
102The Last Journals of Horace Walpole during the Reign of George III, vol. I, p. 433.
103Cited in Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, p. 69.
104BC: St. James’s Chronicle, or the British Evening Post, March 4–7, 1775; Thomas, Tea Party to Independence, p. 207.
105LEC, vol. 2, p. 310.
106Elizabeth Harris to [James Harris], February 6, 1775, J. H. H. Malmesbury, ed., A Series of Letters of the First Earl of Malmesbury, His Family and Friends from 1745 to 1820 (2 vols., London, 1870), vol. I, p. 290.
107Thomas, Tea Party to Independence, p. 229; Fitzgerald, Lady Louisa Conolly, pp. 39, 91–92; Correspondence of Emily, Duchess of Leinster, vol. 3, pp. 140, 144.
Eight: American Destiny
1O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America, p. 86.
2Anderson, p. 71.
3Henry Lee, Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1812), vol. I, p. 55.
4An excellent account of the battle is Mark Urban, Fusilie
rs: Eight Years with the Redcoats in America (London, 2007), pp. 34–43. See also Sir John Fortescue, The War of Independence: The British Army in North America, 1775-1783 (London, 1911; this ed. London and Mechanicsburg, PA, 2001), pp. 9–12; Thomas J. Fleming, Now We Are Enemies: The Story of Bunker Hill (New York, 1960), pp. 241–42, 250; Nathaniel Philbrick, Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution (New York, 2013), pp. 208–30; O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America, pp. 85–86.
5Philbrick, Bunker Hill, pp. 224, 230, cite from p. 230; Fleming, Now We Are Enemies, pp. 267–68. According to Fleming, General Howe found himself standing entirely alone before the enemy on three separate occasions during the battle.
6Gruber sums up William’s career on pp. 56–57; his article in the ODNB, “Howe, William, fifth Viscount Howe (1729–1814),” is fuller but necessarily brief. Anderson gives a very sketchy account of William’s background on p. 44; Smith, pp. 18–19, restricts his account of William Howe’s experience in the Seven Years’ War to the siege of Quebec in 1759 and the 1762 Havana campaign. He also considers William’s interest in light infantry training after the Seven Years’ War on pp. 20–23. Partridge, Sir Billy, the only dedicated biography of Sir William Howe, gives an overview of his career prior to the American War of Independence on pp. 9–11.
7Among many examples, see Fleming, Now We Are Enemies, pp. 268, 270, and, more recently, Philbrick, Bunker Hill, who cites the phrase out of context and calls it evidence of a “life-altering sensation” (p. 225). See also note 15, below, for source of Howe quote.
8WCL-HCP, Series 1, 10:5 [Sir Henry Clinton] [June 17, 1775] “Account of the battle of Bunker Hill. Part in cipher, with decipher for all but a few words.” Not all historians treat William’s “moment” out of context. See, for example, Mark Urban, Fusiliers, chapter 4, “Bunker Hill,” discussing William’s assessments of the battle in letters home on pp. 39 and 43, and O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America, p. 85.
9William B. Willcox, Portrait of a General: Sir Henry Clinton in the War of Independence (New York, 1964), p. 48.
10Fleming, Now We Are Enemies, p. 182. Fleming does not provide references, but the letters are: Staffordshire Record Office, Dartmouth MSS. Major General William Howe to Lord Howe, Boston, June 12, 1775, D(W)178-II-1315; “A Letter of Intelligence,” Boston, June 12, 1775, The Correspondence of King George the Third from 1760 to December 1783, ed. Sir John Fortescue (6 vols., London 1927), vol. 3, pp. 215–18; General Howe to Lord Howe, June 22, 1775 (Copy), HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of Mrs. Stopford-Sackville of Drayton House, Northamptonshire (2 vols., London and Hereford, 1904, 1910), vol. 2, pp. 3–5.
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