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

by Nancy Rubin Stuart

  Her friends, the avuncular Washington and Martha, convinced her otherwise. “The General and Mrs. Washington, prefers Mrs. Knox to take a trip to Virginia and she seems inclined to accept the offer,” Knox wrote to his brother, William. If so, Lucy planned to take their son, nicknamed Hal, to Mount Vernon with her and would leave her daughter in a boarding school watched over by her friends Rebekkah and Colonel General Clement Biddle.34

  To prepare for Yorktown, Knox asked Congress to order an enormous collection of arms from the states, among them three-, six-, and twelve-pound guns; three hundred musket cartridges; countless rounds of ammunition; and twenty thousand flint and one thousand powder horns. By September 8, the Continental army was thus readied for battle. “Our prospects are good and I shall hope to inform you in fifteen days that we have Lord Cornwallis completed invested,” Knox predicted to William. His wife, Lucy, he wrote, “in the next five or six days will set out for Virginia to reside with Mrs. Washington.”35

  Washington arrived at Mount Vernon the next day—his first visit in six years—followed a day later by Rochambeau and his aides. By September 12, the two generals and their aides rode down the tree-lined path from the gracious plantation house bound for Williamsburg and Yorktown. Riding up that same path a day or two later to Mount Vernon came Lucy and infant son Hal. Few details remain about that visit, save for Lucy’s reminiscences. “Often have I heard her describe the agitated life they then led—the alternations of hope & fear, the trembling that seized them on the arrival of the daily express,” recalled her eldest daughter, Lucy Thatcher Knox.36

  Walking the lush grounds overlooking the Potomac, sipping tea, or engaged in needle work in one of Mount Vernon’s wainscoted parlors, the two matrons must have made a remarkable contrast; Martha, its soft-spoken mistress, and Lucy, her warm but high-strung “northern” guest.

  “I met a very kind reception from the good lady of this place,” Lucy reported to Knox on September 29. Appreciative as she was of Martha’s hospitality, Mount Vernon made her “ardently to wish for a home.” With remarkable insensitivity, Lucy wrote her husband on the eve of the Battle of Yorktown, “I see but one possible way to obtain one. You know my meaning [leaving the army]. I wish for nothing inconsistent with your happiness and future peace, but could you reconcile it to your feelings, I think it would make me happy.”37

  Long accustomed to Lucy’s childish outbursts, Knox simply replied, “I was made happy my dearest and only love by your letter. . . . Yesterday the enemy evacuated their outposts which gives us a considerable advantage in point of time. Our prospects are good & we shall soon hope to impress our haughty foe with a respect for the combined arms.”38

  Knox’s massive collection of arms impressed even seasoned soldiers like Joseph Plumb Martin. “Our commanding battery was on the near bank of the river and contained ten heavy guns,” he scrawled in his diary, “the next was a bomb-battery of three large mortars; and so on through the whole line; the whole number, American and French, was ninety-two cannon, mortars and howitzers.”39

  For three days the French-American forces, Lafayette’s troops, and three thousand of de Grasse’s men—some twenty thousand altogether—battered Cornwallis’s outnumbered army. Meanwhile, at Mount Vernon, Lucy regressed to her earlier peeves over Henry’s silence. On October 8, she sourly wrote that she was “led to conclude that you could not spare time for the perusal of such an epistle. Never was I so anxious as at this moment nor ever less able to bear it. . . . Let me know when there is a ray of hope that I may see you and why you do not write by the post.”40

  That day, Knox’s artillerists began pounding the British in an assault leading to the climax of the siege, from October 10 to 12. “A tremendous and incessant firing from the American and French batteries is kept up,” Dr. Thacher scribbled in his journal. “The enemy return the fire, but with little effect.”41 Their lackluster efforts, Chastellux believed, resulted from Knox’s “military genius . . . [his] artillery was always very well served, the general incessantly directing it and often himself pointing the mortars; seldom did he leave the batteries.”42 At one point during the battle, Washington, Knox, and General Benjamin Lincoln watched the action in an exposed area. When an aide pointed out their danger, the commander in chief curtly replied, “If you are afraid, you have liberty to step back.”43

  While protected from those details, Lucy’s anxieties, nevertheless, increased. Another week passed before two letters arrived. Neither was from Knox. “Mrs. Washington and Mrs. Custis [Eleanor “Nelly” Calvert Custis, wife of John Parke “Jacky” Custis] have just been made happy by the receipt of long letters; from their husbands, while I poor unhappy girl, am not worthy of a line,” Lucy penned. “It is not possible for any person to be more low spirited, than I have been for more than a week past. Heavens, that I should be neglected at such a time.” Pointedly, she added, “Mrs. Washington and her daughter-in-law planned to travel to the army camp at Williamsburg.” She, meanwhile, “shall remain here . . . probably ignorant of what is passing at the place where my all is at stake.”44

  Knox had not forgotten her. The same day Lucy wrote to him, in fact, he had dashed off a note from the “Trenches before York” that read, “My love I have only one moment to write by an express . . . to inform the best beloved of my soul that I am well & have been perfectly so. The [night before] last we stormed the enemies’ two advanced works with very little loss. . . . I hope in ten or twelve days, we shall with the blessing of heaven terminate it. I shall take care of your Harry for your sake.”45

  Three days later, Wednesday, October 17, his predictions were realized. Euphorically, he wrote Lucy, “I might be the first to communicate good news to the charmer of my soul. A glorious moment for America! This day Lord Cornwallis and his army marches out and piles their arms in the face of our victorious Army.”46

  Thrilled, Lucy replied, “If this should prove true and my Harry is safe how grateful ought I to be to heaven.”47 A week later, Knox assured her, “I hope to have the sweet felicity of embracing you in ten days from today and perhaps sooner.” In a jovial reference to his infant son, Hal, he added, “Cannot you impress his memory [so] powerfully with the taking of Lord Cornwallis as to make the little fellow tell it to his children?”48

  Hopes for a son’s tales about Yorktown for another generation of the Washingtons were crushed when George and Martha’s son, Jackie, died on November 5 from “putrid fever.” Struck by the juxtaposition of that tragedy with the triumph at Yorktown, Knox wrote General Biddle that the Washingtons “amidst flattering public prospects have received the most fatal blow to their domestic felicity.”49

  A week after Jackie’s death, the Washingtons returned to Mount Vernon. Obliged to appear before Congress, but grieving nearly as deeply as Martha, Washington consequently brought his wife to Philadelphia on November 20. Before long the Knoxes would join them, for, as Henry explained to General Benjamin Lincoln, he intended to remain with Lucy “until the moment of her difficulty shall be over.”50 Proudly, he wrote General Greene on December 12 that Lucy had “presented me with another son,” whom they named Camillus Marcus.51 Washington was to be his godfather.

  Four days earlier, a fleet of 150 ships of the Royal Navy had sailed at dusk from Philadelphia to Sandy Hook, bound for England. Hidden within the thicket of white sails also sped the Robuste with Charles Cornwallis and General Arnold aboard. Nearby, a packet ship carried Arnold’s wife, Peggy, and her newborn son, James, and toddler, Neddy.

  The couple had deliberately separated for the transatlantic crossing. Peggy’s decision to travel in an expensive packet ship, Rebecca Shoemaker had gossiped to her daughter, was “more agreeable for her than a man of war, yet not safe for him [Arnold]. They give for the cabin 300 guineas and then took what company they chose, chiefly military, I believe. I do not hear of any females but her maids.”52

  9

  “Yet We Wade On”

  IF PEGGY’S PERSONAL STAR was on the rise, Arnold’s was
in freefall as their respective ships headed into the high seas. The Rebel, an American privateer, suddenly loomed into view behind the Robuste, attempting to capture Arnold. During that chase, high winds and driving rains from an Atlantic storm battered the Robuste, impelling Arnold’s move to the Edward, a transport ship. Ultimately the Rebel captured the Robuste, but, as London’s Public Advertiser of January 24 surmised, the sailors were doubtless “chagrined at their disappointment in missing their expected prey.”1

  By January 21, the Edward anchored at the Scilly Isles on Britain’s west coast, where fishing boats ferried the passengers to shore. Only Arnold remained aboard the Edward, determined to wait there until, the London Chronicle reported, “a vessel of force appeared . . . to warrant his safety” and deliver him to Portsmouth.2 Peggy’s trip went more smoothly. Despite a similarly stormy crossing, the packet ship carrying her and her children arrived in Falmouth, England, without incident.

  By Tuesday, January 22, the newly reunited Arnolds rode into windswept London in “a good deal of small rain.”3 That day the Daily Advertiser announced, “They have taken a house and set up a carriage and will, I suppose, be a good deal visited.”4 The Arnolds’ new residence was a handsome five-story townhouse, the tallest in fashionable Portman Square. Other American Loyalists lived nearby, among them William Fitch and his young sisters, Ann and Sarah, who soon befriended the Arnolds.

  Margaret Shippen Arnold

  Soon after Peggy’s arrival with “the General,” as she called Arnold, she renewed acquaintance with her American-born cousin, Dorothy Willing Stirling, whose husband, Sir Walter Stirling, introduced Arnold to George III at court. Subsequently, Arnold had a private audience with the king, followed by a stroll through St. James Park with the king and the Prince of Wales.

  Afterwards, Arnold boasted to his New York Loyalist friend William Smith that “his Majesty wished me to return to America” and “promised me that I could be promoted.”5 By February 4, the London Daily Advertiser reported General Arnold would “shortly to return back to America, and to have the command of the Loyalists.”6

  Peggy, too, was initially swamped with attention. Colonel Banastre Tarleton and other officers who remembered the former belle from Philadelphia now declared Peggy “the most beautiful women in England.”7 One of the women who fussed over her was Elizabeth Lady Amherst, the lovely, fair-skinned wife of Sir Jeffrey Amherst, who introduced Peggy at court on February 10. Immediately she was lionized. George’s wife, Queen Charlotte, it was said, became “so interested in favor of Mrs. Arnold as to desire the ladies of the court to pay much attention to her.”8 Contrary to her usual austerity, the plain, good-hearted queen lavished an annuity of a hundred pounds a year upon Peggy for the maintenance of her children, as well as for those not yet born.

  On March 19, George III also issued a royal warrant to his paymaster of pensions on Peggy’s behalf. “Our will and pleasure is and we do hereby direct, authorize and command, that an annuity or yearly pension of £500 be established and paid by you unto Margaret Arnold, wife of our trusty and well-beloved Brigadier General Benedict Arnold, to commence from the day of the date hereof and continue during our pleasure.”9 After commissions and fees, as General Clinton noted in a memorandum of 1792, Peggy received £350 from the King “obtained for her services, which were meritorious.”10 Revealed when Clinton’s papers were publicized in the early twentieth century, the memorandum convinced subsequent historians that Peggy had participated in Arnold’s treason.

  Superficially, the Arnolds’ social success in London society in 1782 seemed ensured. Though not fabulously wealthy, the Arnolds lived luxuriously. Their townhouse was outfitted with fine mahogany furniture; their table handsomely appointed with fine silver, crystal, and Wedgwood; their personal needs attended by a staff of servants, with a private coach and four ready to drive them through London. Still, appearances meant far less in England than a man’s character, and its lapse inevitably produced a cloud of suspicion as thick and impenetrable as a London fog. Instead of the admiration Arnold anticipated he would receive from the British, he inspired contempt.

  Sir Walter Stirling’s reaction typified this reaction. Mrs. Arnold, he opined, “was an amiable woman, and was her husband dead, she would be much noticed.”11 By February 16, a satiric “Ode Addressed to General Arnold” by “Lady Craven” appeared in the Whitehall Evening Post. The first of its twelve withering stanzas read:

  WELCOME one Arnold to our shore! / Thy deeds on Fame’s strong pinions bore / spread loyalty and reason: O! had success thy projects crown’d / Proud Washington had bit the ground / And Arnold punish’d treason.12

  Political resistance to a continuation of the American war intensified contempt for Arnold. In the lofty halls of Parliament’s House of Lords, Thomas, Lord Walsingham, descried the “case of one Arnold, who, coming to this kingdom, with his hand treacherously and traitorously reeking in the blood of his countrymen, closeted with the King, to be received at Court, to be smiled upon, to be caressed, to be rewarded in contamination and to the disgrace of the British army . . . the instrument of that delusion to this country, which . . . have so successful for themselves . . . though so ruinously for this nation, promoted and obtained?”13

  Another protest came from Anglo-Irish statesman, Edmund Burke. To consider Arnold for a military leadership role was reprehensible, the influential Burke proclaimed in the Commons, “lest the sentiments of true honor, which every British officer [holds] dearer than life, should be afflicted.”14 In a heated March 6 meeting of the House of Commons, Lord Surrey opposed the idea of “placing at the King’s elbow a man perhaps the most obnoxious to the feelings of the Americans of any in the King’s dominions.”15

  Simultaneously, the Tory government, headed by Lords North and Germain, was crumbling. Leading the Whig opposition to continuation of the American Revolution was the golden-tongued parliamentarian, William Pitt the Younger. “A long and obstinate perseverance in a fatal system of war has brought this country to the brink of ruin,” the twenty-two year old declared. “What then is to be done? We can no longer appeal to the reason or feelings of ministers; their conduct [in support of the war] has been in the teeth of reason and feelings. . . . What hath all this purchased for us?—the dismemberment of half the empire and perhaps the extinction of more than half our commerce.”16

  To counter those protests, Arnold met with William Petty-FitzMaurice, Earl of Shelburne, to propose a forty-gun frigate with which to battle the Americans. After weeks of silence from Shelburne, Arnold’s proposal was tabled. Public resentment towards Arnold steadily increased. “It is thought that Mr. (commonly called General) Benedict Arnold as soon as the new Ministers are sworn into office, will have it hinted to him that if . . . he does not support his loyal figure so often as he has lately done in the Royal presence,” sneered the Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser on March 28.”17 Before long, Arnold and Peggy were hissed at when they appeared at the theater and in the streets.

  Many American Loyalists also reviled Arnold. One of them, a graying attorney, Peter Van Schaack, recorded his personal aversion to the man whom he encountered during a visit to Westminster Abbey. As he passed a marble memorial inscribed with the words, “Sacred to the Memory of Major John André,” Van Schaack noticed a nearby couple. “It was General Arnold, and the lady was doubtless Mrs. Arnold. They passed to the cenotaph of Major André, where they stood and conversed together. What a spectacle! The traitor, Arnold, in Westminster Abbey, at the tomb of André, deliberately perusing the monumental inscription which will transmit to future ages the tale of his own infamy.”18

  Whatever discomfort the couple felt about Andre’s death was carefully concealed from their British and Loyalist friends. Peggy hid hers beneath a veneer of charm, merriment, and wit as Arnold continued efforts to raise his financial prospects. At the likely suggestion of his friend, Cornwallis, he applied for a post with the East India Company. The application was not only rejected but coldly returned by a di
sgusted American Loyalist.

  The year 1783 held other disappointments. Peggy delivered a daughter named Margaret in January, but in August the baby died. By then she was pregnant again. For all her earlier fragility and nervous energy, Arnold’s wife was developing a resilience and fortitude that would have astounded the Shippens. An ornament of London’s aristocratic galas, the twenty-two-year-old blonde spent that spring in social engagements to which she invited her visiting friend, Becky Franks, the bride of Colonel Henry Johnston.

  From her home at Killarney Castle, Ireland, the following February, Becky described Peggy to another former Philadelphia belle, Williamina Bond Cadwalader. “I can tell you very little of your American acquaintances as I left the place last August & indeed . . . knew very little of them except Mrs. Arnold,” Becky explained. Peggy had “always behaved more like an affectionate sister than a common friend, she still continues the same. I hear every week or fortnight from her.” In London, as in Philadelphia and New York, Peggy had become immensely popular, “more noticed and more liked than any American that ever came over. She is visited by people of the first rank & invited to all their houses.”19

  Friendships and royal pensions were rapidly becoming Peggy’s defense against personal disappointments. Behind closed doors at 18 Portman Square, other sorrows abounded. In March 1784, her fourth child, George, died shortly after his birth. Simultaneously, Arnold, brooding over his half-pay as a retired brigadier general, petitioned the British government for more money. As a former American, Arnold had a right to do so, for in July 1783, Parliament voted into law the Loyalist Claims Commission to recompense those who fled the Revolution. Among Arnold’s claims for reimbursement were expenses he had incurred to outfit his American Legion. Another lost sum of money was the £5,000 he had paid for Mount Pleasant as a wedding gift to Peggy, which Pennsylvania seized after his defection. Shrewdly, Arnold failed to mention that his father-in-law, Judge Shippen, had repurchased the house at auction at his own expense. Slippery too was Arnold’s claim that, because of his agreement with Clinton, he had refused General Washington’s offer for his “command of the American army in South Carolina . . . afterwards given to Greene . . . with the sum of 20,000 pounds.”20 All told, he claimed, the British government owed him £16,125 beyond the £6,365 Clinton had initially paid.