Defiant Brides: The Untold Story of Two Revolutionary-Era Women and the Radical Men They Married

by Nancy Rubin Stuart

  Little harm would come from allowing their daughters to participate, Judge Shippen and his wife, Margaret Francis, had decided. At the least it provided the girls with diversion, a reward for the dull months they had spent with their parents in the countryside when militant patriots had ruled Philadelphia from 1775 through summer 1777. At best, their daughters’ popularity, especially Peggy’s, served as social insurance for the judge’s family in the event that the British won the Revolution.

  Nor were the Shippens alone in their thinking. After the British occupation, while Philadelphia’s remaining patriots fumed about flirtations between Colonial women and British officers, one resident rose to the defense of the young women. “Proper allowances,” she insisted, must be made for those “in the bloom of life and spirits, after being so long deprived of the gaieties and amusements.”5 Why should Philadelphia’s young beauties deny themselves pleasure because of politics—especially since females had no control over the war’s outcome? Indeed, by January 1778, the wife of Tory James Allen reported that the city’s social life had resumed. “Everything is gay & happy,” she wrote her husband, “& it is like to prove a frolicking winter.”6

  Sometimes those frolics bordered on the frenetic. “You can have no idea of the life of continual amusement I live in,” Becky Franks, Peggy’s witty friend, gloated to Nancy Paca, the wife of a Maryland delegate to the Continental Congress who had fled to York, Pennsylvania. “I scarce have a moment to myself. I have stole this while everybody is retired to dress for dinner. I am but just come from under Mr. J. Black’s hands, and most elegantly, as I dressed for a ball this evening at Smith’s where we have one every Thursday. You would not know the [ball]room ’tis so much improved.”7

  Not only had the British refurbished the City Tavern and established English-style eating clubs, gaming casinos, and theaters, but they had also sparked interest in the latest European clothes and hairstyles. Stylish dress suddenly became an imperative for Philadelphia’s young women, an expensive endeavor demanding gossamer gowns and the two-feet-high hairdos then fashionable in England and France. “I mentioned to you the enormous head-dresses of the ladies here,” the disapproving New Englander, Thomas Pickering, wrote his wife that spring. “The more I see, the more I am displeased with them. ’Tis surprising how they fix such loads of trumpery [false hair] on their polls.”8

  By late summer, rumors about the approach of the British had prompted thousands of frightened patriots to flee Philadelphia. “Carriages are constantly passing, and the inhabitants going away,” Elizabeth Drinker, a Quaker, noted in her diary on September 11, 1777.9 On the eve of the Continental Congress’s flight to York, John Adams wrote Abigail that “more than half of the inhabitants have removed into the country.”10 Even those city residents who stubbornly remained in their homes, observed druggist Christopher Marshall, were “in confusion, of all ranks, sending all their goods out of town into the country.”11

  Finally, on September 26, 1777, at around 10 a.m., Howe’s nine thousand soldiers had marched into Philadelphia. “Thus was this large city surrendered to the English without the least opposition whatever, or even firing a single gun,” Quaker Sally Logan noted in her diary with awe.12 Subsequent to the peaceful surrender of Philadelphia (then North America’s largest city with forty thousand residents) Howe’s soldiers had transformed it into a miniature London, its once-quiet taverns, shops, and inns converted into boisterous places to drink, gamble, flirt, and fornicate. To the war-weary redcoats and their German mercenary peers, the Hessians, Philadelphia was a place to let off steam, a reprieve from war during the long months of winter. “The only hardships I endure are, being obliged to sleep in my bed, to sit down to a very good dinner every day, to take a gentle ride for appetite’s sake or to exercise my horses, to gossip in Philadelphia to consider something fashionable to make me irresistible this winter,” John André gleefully wrote his sister Louisa in England that November.13

  Nor did the British fear an American attack. That autumn, George Washington’s Second Continental Dragoons had bitterly battled Howe’s men in New Jersey until a snowstorm ended the threat. By mid-December British spies reported that the enemy had trudged twenty-five miles northwest of Philadelphia, its soldiers, ill, ragged, starved, and shoeless, leaving bloody footprints in the snow en route to a hilly hamlet called Valley Forge. Why, then, mused the indolent General Howe, should he bother risking the lives of his troops?

  Privately, critics whispered that Howe’s fondness for high living—heavy drinking, revelry, and long hours with his beautiful, blonde mistress Elizabeth Loring, the wife of an obliging Boston Loyalist—set a bad example for his soldiers. A popular ditty reflected his dissolute image:

  Sir, William, he, snug as flea

  Lay all this time a-snoring

  Nor dreamed of harm, as he lay warm

  In bed with Mrs. ______14

  By early winter 1778, an atmosphere of frivolity and licentiousness dominated the once-dour Quaker City of Brotherly Love. Rumor had it that the costly imported silks and satins many young women suddenly sported were purchased “at the expense of their virtue” for “it is agreed on all hands that the British played the devil with the girls.”15 Sarah Logan, whose Quaker family had fled to Germantown, also reported in her diary “very bad accounts of the licentiousness of the English officers in deluding young girls.”16 Not everyone fell victim, especially the city’s most affluent young women, whose mothers had stockpiled imported fabrics years earlier.

  Still, few women could avoid noticing the bawdy behavior of the British. Becky Franks once confided such an incident to the Shippen sisters. After several officers courteously greeted her on the street, they walked down the road a few steps and entered the home of the notorious Mrs. McKoy, a woman “well known to the gentlemen.” Outraged, Becky added, “And don’t you think Grif and Laow had the impudence to go in while I was looking right at them. I never was so angry in my life. I never think of it, but I feel my face glow with rage.”17

  Far more disturbing to John André than his peers’ sexual exploits was General Howe’s decision to return to England. Regardless of his personal decadence, Howe had triumphed at the battles of Long Island, Brandywine Creek, and Germantown, and had earned admiration from his men.

  “I do not believe there is upon record an instance of a Commander in Chief having so universally endeared himself to those under his command; or . . . who received such signal and flattering proof of their love,” André wrote a friend in England. To demonstrate their devotion, they decided to “give [Howe] as splendid an entertainment as the shortness of the time and our present situation, would allow.”18 To accomplish that André and twenty-two other officers contributed over £3,000 for what that gallant dubbed the “Mischianza,” an Italian term meaning a medley or “composition of several parts.”

  By the afternoon of the appointed day, May 18, the sun broke through the clouds as if in honor of André’s “splendid entertainment.” Philadelphia was decked out to commemorate the celebration. Ships, docked at the wharves of the Delaware, flew colorful maritime flags. Banners and bunting embellished riverside homes and buildings. At four o’clock throngs of spectators gazed from the shore at the British regatta at full mast, festooned with bunting, flags, and streamers as it tacked towards patriot Joseph Wharton’s abandoned estate to the strains of “God Save the King” wafting from a barge.

  At the center of the regatta sailed the battleship Hussar, its flags flying in honor of General Howe, who was accompanied by his brooding replacement, Sir Henry Clinton. Trailing the Hussar was the Cornwallis carrying sixty-year-old General Wilhelm von Knyphausen, commander of the Hessians. At the vessels’ approach to Walnut Grove, seventeen-gun salutes from the Vigilant and Cornwallis boomed across Wharton’s sweeping lawn. By 6 p.m. the Mischianza’s 423 guests, among them Philadelphia’s neutralists and Loyalists, crossed the lawn to a playing field.

  There, colorful, medieval-style tents stood in front of rows of risers,
before which sat two groups of seven women in gauzy Turkish dress, representing the Saracens conquered by the crusaders in Palestine centuries before. Among them, according to André’s published account, was Peggy Shippen, one of the fourteen women chosen who “excel in wit, beauty and every accomplishment, those of the whole World” (italics in original).19

  A flourish of trumpets announced the start of the joust between two groups of knights. The first, announced by the clatter of gray horses, carried the seven “Knights of the Blended Rose,” clothed in red and white silk. They were immediately followed by seven “Knights of the Burning Mountain,” clad in black and orange. Clanging lances and clashing swords shattered the air through four rounds of the tournament, culminating in a match between the knights’ two leaders. Suddenly the Marshall of the Field appeared, declaring the tournament a tie and the beauty of the ladies a draw. As the dusty field cleared, the Turkish women paraded into the Wharton mansion, where knights bent in homage to them before admiring crowds. Afterwards, the knights, ladies, and hundreds of guests entered a ballroom embellished with artificial flowers that glowed in the reflected light from eighty-five tall mirrors and countless candles.

  “The ball was opened by the Knights and their ladies; and the dances continued till ten o’clock,” André recalled in his report in London’s Gentleman’s Magazine.20 After fireworks, and a supper, a ball recommenced, lasting until dawn.

  More than two centuries since that night, Peggy’s attendance at the Mischianza has intrigued scholars. Seemingly trivial compared to the horrors of war, Peggy’s appearance has been posited as one more bit of evidence that she helped betray the American cause. Historians who doubted her presence cite a truncated account of the Mischianza that André penned for his sweetheart, Peggy Chew, which tactfully omitted a mention of her social rival, Peggy Shippen. Other scholars, however, point to Peggy Shippen’s presence at the gala as described in André’s long letter of May 23 to a British friend, which subsequently appeared in Gentleman’s Magazine. It read: “Peggy—M. Shippen—had been paired with the sixth Knight of the Blended Rose, “Lieut. Sloper, in honour of Mlls. M. Shippen—Squire, Lieutenant Brown—Device, a Heart and Sword; Motto, Honour and the Fair.”21

  Another explanation for Peggy’s presence was the likely consequence if Judge Shippen had forbidden her attendance at the Mischianza. Had he done so, family lore insists Peggy would have wept and howled, refusing food and drink until, utterly exhausted, she took to her bed for days. Whenever refused, Peggy reverted to that sort of behavior. High-strung, spirited, and wily, Peggy, according to a family friend, consequently managed to get her way, both as the youngest of the Shippen girls and the “darling of the family circle.”22

  In spite of her willfulness, Peggy became Edward’s favorite, perhaps as that friend suggested, because she always “made his comfort her leading thought.”23 From girlhood, Peggy had commanded the judge’s attentions. Not only had he shared the writings of Pope, Defoe, Addison, Steele, and other commentators with her, but he also encouraged her to read newspapers and political tracts. As his intellectually gifted daughter matured, the judge taught Peggy about foreign trade, investments, accounting, and bookkeeping. Later, Peggy also observed Judge Shippen fuming over Thomas Paine’s 1776 Common Sense, which called for independence from Great Britain.

  Shrewdly, Peggy’s father reminded her that when it came to politics, remaining silent was safer than arousing public scorn for one’s opinions. By late 1776, the patriots suspected Judge Shippen of being a Loyalist. To avoid persecution, he moved his family out of Philadelphia to an obscure farm in Amwell, New Jersey. There, in lieu of formal teas with doting elders, tittering matrons, and fawning beaux, the Shippen daughters—teenagers Mary, Sarah, and Peggy, and their twenty-year-old sister Elizabeth, or Betsy—learned about cows, chickens, and crops. Late that year, when the Shippens briefly returned to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s patriotic authorities, the militant Supreme Executive Council, accused Judge Shippen of being a spy. Placed on parole and forbidden to live more than six miles from Philadelphia, Peggy’s father again hustled his family out of town, this time to nearby Schuylkill Falls. “The scarcity and advance price of every necessary of life makes it extremely difficult for those who have large families, and no share in the present measures to carry through . . . nothing but the strictest frugality will enable us to do it,” the unemployed judge wrote his own father from Schuylkill Falls. There, fortunately, “the wants of our nature are easily supplied, and the rest is but folly and care.”24

  Not, however, according to his teenage daughters, who sorely missed the “folly” of Philadelphia’s social life. Fearing that their former lifestyle was ruined, the Shippens’ eldest daughter, Betsy, wrote her cousin Sarah Yeates in June 1777, “I sincerely . . . [hope] the good times to return, but we must make ourselves as happy as we can till that is the case. . . . I am determined not to suffer myself to be low spirited, as I think it probable we shall have many frights before the summer is over.”25

  By September 26, one of those “frights” would be Howe’s invasion of Philadelphia. Worried that the British would plunder his vacated townhouse, Judge Shippen immediately brought his wife and children back to the city. Self-protection rather than political loyalties now became Edward Shippen’s priority, leading him to hobnob with the British. Peggy, Sally, and Mary were thrilled. Little did it matter that the redcoats had slaughtered hundreds of Americans on the Brandywine, in Paoli, and in nearby Germantown. To the teenage Shippen girls, the social whirl created by Howe’s young, handsome, and urbane British officers was a perfect antidote to the dull months they had spent in the country.

  Who, after all, was to say, what was the “right side” of the war, especially after the turmoil, the food shortages, and scarcity of luxuries? Perhaps it would be best for the colonies to return to British rule—or so the girls often overheard their father debate with his Loyalists friends, the Chews, Franks, and Galloways. Like other Revolutionary-era families, the Shippens were politically divided. Peggy’s uncle, Dr. William Shippen, was director general of Military Hospitals for the Revolutionary army and spent that winter at Valley Forge. Dr. Shippen’s cousin, Mary Willing, and her husband, Colonel William Byrd, or Burd, were also patriots. So, too were Dr. Shippen’s brothers-in-law, Richard Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee, signers of the Declaration of Independence. One of their cousins, Captain Henry “Lighthorse” Lee, became a hero of the Continental army.

  Earlier friendships with men who later supported the Revolution further obscured the judge’s true political stance. On September 28, 1774, he had hosted George Washington for dinner. Peggy, then fourteen years old, had attended and was fascinated by the dignified Virginian. Decades later, learning about Washington’s December 1799 death, she wrote her sister Betsy, “Nobody in America could revere his character more than I did.”26

  Nor would Washington forget his earlier friendship with the Shippens. During the winter of 1776, Peggy’s brother Edward V., or Neddy, rashly joined the British army and was captured by the patriots. Ultimately, Washington declared that Judge Shippen’s son had “taken no commission nor done any act that showed him inimical [and] very kindly discharged him.”27

  British officers, too, sometimes inadvertently forged friendships with the enemy. Among these was Peggy’s friend John André. On November 2, 1775, during General Richard Montgomery’s conquest of Fort Saint John, which protected British-held Montreal, twenty-five-year-old André was captured at Lake Champlain and slated to be transported south to Pennsylvania. One stormy December night, the patriots ordered André into a tiny cabin he was to share with one of their peers. His gregarious, rotund companion was Henry Knox, traveling incognito on his way to Fort Ticonderoga. Finding much in common the two young men spent the night talking and regretfully parted the next morning. Only later did André and Knox realize each other’s political affiliation, never suspecting they would meet again under very different circumstances.

  By Ma
y 1778, that same charismatic André had been released from captivity and had become the chief organizer of British entertainments in Philadelphia. A fierce soldier on the battlefield, the lean twenty-eight year old also inspired admiration from fellow officers because of his fine character, creativity, and wit, a man as comfortable behind a musket as he was dancing a minuet. According to one American observer, the Geneva-educated André “conversed freely on the belles lettres: music, painting, and poetry.”28 Although novelists later interpreted his gift to Peggy of a gold locket containing strands of his hair as proof of a romantic attachment, contemporary historians believe André was simply a friend. His widely acknowledged sweetheart was a pretty brunette, Peggy Chew, daughter of another prominent but decidedly Loyalist judge, Benjamin Chew.

  As her courtly beau, André penned love poems to Peggy Chew but with equal verve also wrote ditties about and sketched portraits of others in their social circle. On one occasion he created fashionable silhouettes of himself and Philadelphia belle Becky Redman. On another he drew a slightly caricatured portrait of Peggy Shippen with high-rolled hair and wearing her Mischianza turban and costume.

  The committee of Quakers who visited Judge Shippen on May 18 were not the only ones who disapproved of the Mischianza. In England, the London Chronicle complained that the time, effort, and money spent upon those festivities were “nauseous.”29 To an aging British major, the Mischianza was a “piece of tomfoolery.”30 Several months after Howe’s return to London, a jeering pamphlet appeared entitled “Strictures Upon the Philadelphia Meschianza [sic], or the Triumph of Leaving America Unconquered.” In Philadelphia, Elizabeth Drinker, famously scrawled in her diary, “This day may be remembered by man for the scenes of folly and vanity. . . . How insensible do these people appear, while our land is so greatly desolated and death and sore destruction has overtaken and impends over so many.”31 To eighteenth-century historian Charles Stedman the festivities for General Howe “rivaled the magnificent exhibitions of that vain-glorious monarch and conqueror, Louis XIV of France.”32