Caroline, of course, was ready to wade in, cleverly negotiating her way through groups on all sides of the issue. In late August 1775, while her brother William was in Boston directing the government’s policy of armed coercion, she arrived at Park Place in Berkshire, the country seat of Henry Seymour Conway, a prominent member of Lord Rockingham’s parliamentary opposition. Conway was a military officer who had served with the Howe brothers. Like all the Rockinghams, he opposed the use of force in America. He would soon condemn the war before the House of Commons as “cruel, unnecessary, and unnatural; called it a butchery of his fellow subjects.”38 Also at Park Place was another supporter of Lord Rockingham, Charles Lennox, Duke of Richmond, brother of Lady Sarah Bunbury and Lady Louisa Conolly and a longtime friend of William Howe.
The Rockingham Whigs were the main parliamentary opposition group at the start of the American War of Independence. They were the foremost champions of the conspiracy theory swirling around George III since his accession to the throne, claiming that the king aimed to increase the power of the Crown by unconstitutional means. This had no basis in reality, and their opposition most probably was motivated more by resentment at being pushed out of power. But the Rockinghams sincerely believed they had a mission to protect English liberties from the overweening ambitions of the Crown. What is novel to modern ears is that they sought to curb royal power without increasing popular democracy.
One of their number, Lord George Cavendish, famously declared that “he liked an aristocracy, and thought it right that great families with great connexions should govern.” To their aristocratic way of thinking, what mattered was getting the “right men” into power—men who understood the malign influences surrounding the throne and who would undertake reforms to decrease the king’s corrupt influence in Parliament. These men, naturally, were the members of the Rockingham group. The fact that they did not wish to share power with other parliamentary groups was an unusual stance at the time, but it has since emerged as the model for modern political parties held together by shared principles and policies.39
The leading spokesman for the Rockinghams was Edmund Burke, the famous political theorist and author. As colonial agent for New York, Burke had worked with Benjamin Franklin in lobbying for American interests in London and had spoken publicly about conciliation with America. While not abandoning the concept of parliamentary sovereignty, Burke showed a willingness to compromise and an open-minded approach to conducting talks with leading Americans. In what was his second proposal for conciliation, rejected by Parliament in November 1775, he allowed a limited role for the upstart American Continental Congress in negotiations, a move that the Rockinghams recognized as crucial in maintaining the trust of patriot leaders.40
It was inevitable that a house party at Conway’s country seat in late summer 1775 would lead to animated discussion of the American crisis, but as always, Caroline was discreet in her report of the activities. “This is a pleasant house to be in,” she wrote to Lady Spencer, praising “the delightful near & distant views” of its extensive grounds, where General Conway had made lavish improvements. She said nothing of America to her friend, other than to assure her that there had been no more news from William. And she noted in closing that Lady Spencer’s daughter, the Duchess of Devonshire, had called at Grafton Street while Caroline was in Berkshire.41
There was nothing politically neutral about the duchess, eighteen-year-old Georgiana Cavendish, young as she was. Her husband William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, and his uncles were powerful Whigs who supported the Rockinghams.42 Despite an age difference of more than thirty years between the duchess and Caroline Howe, they moved in the same social circles, where the American crisis was a constant topic.
But in late 1775, Lady Spencer was far more worried about her daughter’s marital problems than about politics. The duke and duchess had been married for more than a year, and Georgiana was discovering by this time that the duke was rather uninterested in having a wife, whom he expected only to produce children and sustain the dynastic social position. He had his mistress and his West End gentlemen’s club. His duchess was therefore finding consolation in a very public manner, by becoming a fashion diva and a doyen of the gaming table. While on the Continent in 1775, she had developed a friendship with Marie Antoinette, the ill-fated queen of France. Both ladies suffered under the cloud of childlessness. Georgiana had already miscarried at least once by the time the Devonshires and the Spencers set out for Spa together.43 When she returned to England ahead of her parents in September, she miscarried again.
Georgiana’s travails were the main topic of conversation at a dinner party in early October that included Caroline Howe and Lord Frederick Cavendish. “[S]o the Duchess of Devonshire has miscarried, but how is it possible she can ever go on her time if she will not be a little more quiet. Lord Frederick says she cannot walk into a room she must come in with a hop & a jump, she seems to have unfortunate good spirits & tho’ I believe she is perfectly good humour’d & innocent I don’t believe she will ever be a day older,” wrote Lady Mary Coke, one of the dinner guests and a rare critic of the popular duchess.44
Lady Mary was herself a well-known figure in high society, an unusual—even eccentric—woman who combined willfulness and an egotistical self-assurance with a slavish devotion to monarchy and rank. Beginning in 1766, she kept an extensive and detailed diary, a mixture of gossip, politics, and news, in the form of letters addressed to her sister Anne. She maintained the diary for twenty-five years, leaving behind a fascinating account of Georgian aristocratic life.45 In it can be found the full spectrum of opinion on Britain’s war with its colonies within the social circles of the Howe women between 1775 and 1783.
Contemporaries were aware of Lady Mary’s dedicated journal-keeping, which preserved in writing much of the ephemeral gossip circulating in drawing rooms. In the spring of 1767, Lady Spencer and Caroline each took turns pressuring Lady Mary to allow them a read. First Lady Spencer urged that she “wou’d be contented with a Single page.” When that tactic failed, it was Caroline’s turn to try. “Mrs Howe talk’d of my journal, & said She wish’d much to read it. I assured her I could not comply with her request.” Caroline and Lady Spencer would never have their curiosity gratified.46
Lady Mary Coke was the youngest daughter of John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll. She was considered a beauty by some, and a professional virgin by all, because in 1747 she had refused to consummate her marriage to Edward Viscount Coke, the heir of the Earl of Leicester. Following the ceremony, the feckless heir—perhaps irritated by a courtship in which the bride-to-be relentlessly played hard to get—shunned the marriage bed for a night of revelry with his friends. Twenty-year-old Mary in turn denied her husband what, by the thinking of the day, were his marital rights. Edward’s father, the distraught Earl of Leicester, whose only thought was to maintain the family line, railed at both of the young people. When that got no results, he resorted to locking Lady Mary in her quarters at the family seat of Holkham, a lengthy virtual imprisonment that today would undoubtedly be considered abuse, if not kidnapping.
Mary reveled in the role of victim, entertaining guests in her room and refusing to give in to the demands of the Cokes. Eventually, in 1750, Leicester agreed to a legal settlement by which Mary was allowed to live with her mother. Luckily for the virgin bride, her husband died in 1753 and Lady Mary Coke, as she was known ever after, became an independent widow at the age of just twenty-six.
The Howes knew Lady Mary via two separate connections. Her sister Anne was related to the Conollys through her marriage to the Earl of Strafford. In addition, Lady Mary was also a conspicuous figure at court, famously harboring a crush on the king’s brother, Prince Edward Augustus, while Richard Lord Howe was serving as the duke’s Lord of the Bedchamber. The prince died in 1767, and with him Lady Mary’s hopes of becoming royalty.47
Lady Mary Coke wearing an ermine-trimmed red cloak, painted by Joshua Reynolds.
Unsurprisingly,
Lady Mary Coke was a strong opponent of the rebellion in America, but there were plenty in her set who disagreed. On a visit in October to William Ponsonby, 2nd Earl of Bessborough, a supporter of the pro-American Rockingham group, Lady Mary mentioned the American rebels, “upon which he look’d at me and answer’d in a most complaining voice do you call them all rebels?” A few weeks later, Lady Mary called upon the ailing and elderly Lady Blandford, who gave forth quite an opposite opinion: “ ‘[I]f the Stamp Act had not been repeal’d,’ ” she pronounced to the startled Lady Mary, “ ‘all wou’d have gone well,’ & that she wish’d Lord Rockingham & all those who had any hand in it were hanged.” “This you’ll allow was being pretty warm,” thought Lady Mary privately.
By December 1775, Lady Mary was seated at a loo table where the players were discussing “a rumour of bad news from America.” Horace Walpole, always outspoken in his support for the Americans, was present. “I expressed my concern that any of our people shou’d fall into the hands of those cruel Americans,” she recorded, “upon which Mr Walpole laugh’d in my face & told me I had many sorrows that he had not.” “This is the person who pretends to humanity,” the indignant Lady Mary confided to her journal.48 That same day, Walpole had written gleefully to a friend with the news that American General Richard Montgomery had captured Fort St. John in Canada from the British. By now, the Americans had shown enough spirit to convince him that it would be a long war; and “the commissioners for treating of peace, who are still talked of, will not find their [American] minds in good temper, when provoked on one hand, and victorious on the other.”49
As Walpole’s words show, the prospect of a peace commissioner persisted eight months after the start of hostilities. Richard and his associates had continued to keep the idea alive over the summer of 1775. Less than a fortnight after William had embarked for America on April 20, Richard was in Bath for his gout, a condition that would worsen with the years. But he was back in London by June. In the midst of dining at Lord Dartmouth’s, an officer arrived bearing word that Benjamin Franklin had reached Philadelphia and been appointed a delegate to the Second Continental Congress.50 Now it would be seen whether the talks with Franklin the previous winter, when the American philosopher had endorsed the notion of a peace commissioner, would bear fruit.
But Richard and his associates did not wait for news from the Congress. In late July 1775, after word of the Battle of Bunker Hill reached London, Lord Dartmouth introduced “several American Gentlemen” to the king at a reception at St James’s Palace. Among the Americans was probably the wealthy South Carolina planter Ralph Izard, a friend of the Rockinghams who also had contacts in the Continental Congress. Hoping to help broker talks between the British government and American leaders, the South Carolinian lingered in London.51 Izard was among those who advised Lord Dartmouth and other members of government that moderates in the Congress were making a last-ditch effort to send a petition to the British government pleading for reconciliation.52
Benjamin Franklin, meanwhile, arrived in Philadelphia on May 5, almost two months after his final meeting with the Howes in Grafton Street. There he discovered that, just as in London, all eyes were turned on him as the individual most qualified to act as a middleman between the colonies and Britain. The day after his return, he was appointed a delegate to the Congress. Four days later, on May 10, 1775, the Second Continental Congress opened in crisis. Fighting had started, and from all along the Atlantic seaboard, requests for instructions, aid, and leadership poured into Philadelphia. The Congress was a de facto government for the rebelling colonies, yet the members could not even fully agree on what to do next. Hopes were high that Franklin would know. A Philadelphia merchant wrote, “The Doctor has yet said but little, and People seem much disappointed,” for they had expected him to have a plan drawn up by Lord Chatham, “but Nothing of the Sort has yet appeared.”53
Franklin was immediately co-opted onto the committee drafting a petition to the king. This was an obvious assignment for a man who surely knew more than anyone in Philadelphia about the mood in London and the inner intentions of the ministers. The ghost of his talks with the Howes and others can just be discerned in the scattered records of that turbulent session. Franklin sketched out proposals for the committee that reflected some of the ideas he had pitched in London—namely, that the colonies should offer Britain an annual revenue, in return for which they would be allowed to trade freely with the rest of the world. This would have been a significant concession in the eyes of British legislators. Surprisingly, members of the Congress seem to have thought the proposals worth considering.54 But things were moving too fast now to allow for in-depth and divisive deliberations.
Franklin’s committee instead drafted what would be the final petition of the Continental Congress. The “Olive Branch Petition,” as it would be known, was associated from its inception with the hopes that a royal commission would be sent to the colonies. The first (discarded) draft made an outright request for the king to “commission some good and great Men to enquire into the Grievances of [England’s] faithful subjects.” Such words, had they been retained, would have given support to the case for a peace commission being pushed by Richard Howe and others at that very moment in London. In the end, however, the committee members opted for vagueness; they merely requested that King George “direct some mode” for a permanent reconciliation.55
Nevertheless, it was plain that the petition called for negotiations. This was enough to sway that great friend of Caroline and Richard, the Duke of Grafton. When the Olive Branch Petition reached London in August 1775, he believed that the government should call a temporary halt to military preparations and give colonial delegates a chance to be heard. Recalled Grafton years later, “[I]t was . . . well known, that a compromise had taken place [in the Congress] in order to render the petition unanimous, by a promise of a declaration of Independency from the majority, in case of the rejection of this final application.”56 Grafton firmly believed that the Americans would be propelled down the road to declaring independence if the British government ignored this final appeal.57
A few days after the Olive Branch Petition reached London, on August 23, Lord North’s administration issued the proclamation of rebellion. Grafton was appalled, and by November he had resigned from the cabinet. No doubt Caroline and Richard listened to the evolution of his ideas that summer and autumn as he moved toward his decision to quit the government.
With William in America, Richard took up the role of maneuvering in the corridors of power on behalf of his brother. This was the first war in which a Howe male remained in England while one of his brothers served abroad. During the previous war, it had been the Dowager Lady Howe who oversaw the interests of her sons at court. Unluckily, the man Richard had to deal with in 1775 was his old nemesis from the Cherbourg expedition in 1758, Lord George Sackville. It was well known in fashionable circles at the start of the War of Independence that Lord Howe and Lord Sackville had not been on speaking terms since Cherbourg. William also knew Lord George, having served under him in the 20th Foot before the Seven Years’ War.58 He probably shared his brother’s animosity, for he was not likely to warm to a man who made Richard his enemy, and in any case the Howes moved in circles where Lord George was detested.59 It was not a promising start to what was, professionally, an important relationship for the Howes.
Gifted with his tongue, circumspect when in danger, Lord George Sackville was as unlike the Howe brothers as it was possible to be. The year after Cherbourg, he made a dismal reputation for himself by misunderstanding three separate orders to advance at the Battle of Minden in 1759. At the subsequent court-martial, he was “adjudged to be unfit to serve his Majesty in any military capacity whatever.” There followed a period of social ostracism, but the tenacious Sackville somehow clung to his seat in Parliament and steadily built up his political career. In 1770, he inherited a fortune, taking the surname Germain, according to the terms of the bequest.60
Lord Ge
orge Germain, as he was known thenceforth, may not have been a coward, but in a period when physical bravery was an indispensable element of masculinity, he managed to cast doubt. When he fought a duel in 1770, he appeared to hesitate over the business, drawing a comment from the king himself that the delay in issuing his challenge did “not give much of an idea of his resolution.”61 Yet Germain was a skilled orator in the House of Commons—so much so that, by 1775, Lord North sought his support as an able spokesman for government policy, and the king approved of his hard-line attitude toward the colonial crisis.62
By the time word of the Bunker Hill debacle arrived, in July 1775, Lord George Germain had already been making himself conspicuous as a man in quest of a government post, and he was tipped to get one. Thus, it was to Lord George that Richard sent extracts of William’s letter of June 12, remarking, “I thought some passages of sufficient moment to merit the notice of Government.”63 A letter from William describing the battle followed shortly. Copied by Richard, it was shorn of the emotive language that William had used in his report to the adjutant general. A third letter to Germain in early August reviewed the military requirements for the garrison at Boston, at the same time expressing Richard’s gratification on the occasion of his brother’s promotion to commander in chief in America.64
In September, however, Richard conveyed to Germain a very different message, which must have caused surprise in government circles: William Howe himself was less than overjoyed about his promotion. In a letter that has not survived, William admitted as much to his elder brother, and Richard was delegated to speak in London on his behalf. Richard paraphrased William’s words in his communication with Lord George. Writing that General Howe calculated that he would need between twenty and twenty-four thousand additional troops next year to conquer New England, he added that the general’s plan “on the enlarged Scale he now deems the State of that Country requires, he professes to be of much greater Compass than he feels himself able to direct. And . . . [he judges] it proper that a Chief Officer vested with unlimitted Powers in the Character of a Viceroy should be chosen for the occasion.”65
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