Lady Spencer was having a difficult time at Althorp. Her daughter the duchess was ill, as she so often was. During her Christmas visit, she was afflicted with vomiting and headaches. Alas, these proved not to be symptoms of pregnancy, a condition that still eluded her after five and a half years of marriage. And Lady Spencer was seriously worried about her own inability to resist gambling, which she attributed to her weak character.101
To Lady Spencer’s dismay, the duchess had brought opposition leader Charles James Fox with her to Althorp. “Mr Fox is still here,” she wrote significantly in early January. Her daughter thought Mr. Fox fascinating, but neither Lady Spencer nor Caroline agreed. Lady Spencer confessed that he made her feel uncomfortable.102 Despite being a champion of British liberty, Charles James Fox was hardly her type. A rake, a drinker, and a wit, Fox was short, stout, unkempt, and generally unshaven. He also gambled recklessly, frequently losing large sums of money.103
At Althorp, there was also talk of the war. A visiting British officer held the attention of the guests as he sketched a map of the Siege of Savannah.104 The port city of Savannah, in the subtropical colony of Georgia to the north of Florida, had been captured by the British in February 1779, marking a successful beginning to a new British strategy for the war in America. The plan was to shift the fighting to the supposedly more loyal southern colonies of Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia—“rolling up” the South, as it came to be expressed. Other victories followed, although true pacification of the South was never completely achieved. The British army in the southern colonies swelled its ranks with loyalist fighting men, part of a policy of “Americanizing” the war, but it also gave rise to bitter, guerrilla-style partisan fighting that impeded the establishment of law and order. And a dangerous new factor in the war was the threat from the sea posed by the French navy. In September and October, British-held Savannah was under attack by a joint Franco-American force, as D’Estaing’s fleet and an American army besieged the port. On October 9, 1779, the allies gave up after a failed direct assault on the town. But the vulnerability of British stations in America was clear.
The danger the French posed from the sea had indeed been a game-changer for Britain, and the previous summer its effect had been felt much closer to home. That summer of 1779 saw a combined French and Spanish fleet menace the south coast of Britain, the most serious invasion threat since the Spanish Armada two centuries earlier. Enemy warships were plainly visible riding off Plymouth.105 The Channel Fleet was not up to strength, and regular soldiers were in short supply in the event of an enemy landing. The nation resorted to desperate measures: Local counties were instructed that when they heard church bells signaling an invasion, all able-bodied men should be roused to dig defensive trenches. Only in late September did the combined fleet sail away. Meanwhile, the conflict was spanning the globe. The Dutch joined the war against Britain in 1780, and fighting spread to Spanish Central America, West Africa, and India.
DESPITE THE GLOBAL CONFLICTS, however, General Henry Clinton saw things take a turn for the better in America. He started off his campaign in May 1780 with the capture of Charleston, South Carolina, a significant victory for the British. For a time, things looked promising overall. In September 1780, American General Benedict Arnold was discovered to be a traitor, just before he could realize a scheme to hand over the fort of West Point to the British. Arnold escaped to British lines, but his coconspirator, Major John André, who had organized the Mischianza two years earlier, was captured. André’s subsequent hanging did little to mollify public feeling in America, where there was widespread dismay at the sight of a senior American officer defecting to the British.106
If news from America was encouraging for the government in London that year, the Gordon Riots of June 1780 reversed its newfound peace of mind. Named for the leader of the anti-Catholic commotion in Parliament, Lord George Gordon, these disturbances began as a protest against new laws that reduced discrimination against Roman Catholics. The protest rapidly turned into an anti-Catholic riot that raged in London streets for six days, with troops deployed to restore order, prisons stormed, and houses of the wealthy attacked. The crowds were large enough to draw Richard from his house in Grafton Street to reconnoiter.107 On June 7, in the midst of the chaos, writing from her vantage point in the home of Lord Gower, Caroline said, “Never was anything equal to the confusion of last night.” She was with Lord and Lady Gower until 2 a.m., and the noise of troops passing back and forth never ceased. The inmates of Newgate and Fleet Prisons were set free. The houses of prominent men were fortified, and Lord Rockingham, who had been warned that he was a target of the mob, stationed soldiers on his property. “I do not know whose house is safe hardly,” Caroline wrote.
The city was in an uproar, yet in Caroline’s letters the whole thing assumed something of the atmosphere of an open-air party. She spent her evenings at the home of Lady Gower, where she could better observe the commotion. She reassured Lady Spencer that the duke and her daughter were “chearful & good humoured” at Devonshire House. For once it was Caroline, and not her brothers, who was at the center of the action, and she was determined to do her part. She took it upon herself to write lengthy reports to friends and family. A couple of days of dashing off letters had given her a headache, she complained. “I have just finished a 5th long one that is to William who is at Highfield. I think I am upon as hard duty as the poor soldiers.”108 Two days later, the riots had subsided, hundreds were dead, and Lord George Gordon was a prisoner in the Tower of London. Ultimately, he was acquitted of responsibility for the riots.
A few weeks after the Gordon Riots, on July 2, Aunt Juliana Page died.109 Battlesden and Aunt Page had been a fixture in the Howe children’s lives since the death of their father forty-five years earlier. At seventy-eight, Juliana was active to the end, visiting in Grafton Street and at Gloucester House just months before she died, and hosting her nieces and nephews over dinner in her London home. To Caroline and William fell the lot of breaking the news to their mother Charlotte, who had been close to her sister-in-law since they had both been very young. William proposed telling her the news by letter, “to let her have some hours first by herself,” and then joining her at Richmond the next day. Caroline was left with a “very unclear headache” after making these doleful arrangements, she reported to Lady Spencer unhappily, and she hoped to see her friend soon.110
Aunt Juliana’s death was the beginning of another unpleasant summer for William. A general election had been called for the autumn, and William would have to stand again for Nottingham, a town where his service in America had been seen as a betrayal of his 1774 election promises. Since then, he had not returned home victorious, the sole circumstance that might have redeemed him in the eyes of Nottingham’s citizens. One MP wrote of the Howe brothers, “[H]alf the Town abhor them for going to America, & the other half detest them for doing so little there.”111 It was an unenviable situation, and the results of the poll in September should have been no surprise. William was out of Parliament for the first time since George’s death more than twenty years earlier. Richard, however, was duly returned as MP for Dartmouth. The pattern held: The elder brother was the lesser culprit in the minds of the public.
Charlotte Howe could not have been pleased to see her son William pushed out of the seat she had won for him through her bold move in 1758. But she was now too ill for such heroics. She had remained active in her old age, even traveling at the age of sixty-nine on a final tour of the Continent with the Dowager Princess Augusta. On her return a year later, in 1771, she had developed symptoms of a heart problem. Her doctor had advised that if she lived quietly, she might survive another year or two. Charlotte defied the doctor, lived on to grace drawing rooms and card tables, went to court to be congratulated on William’s victory in New York, and confronted Lord George Germain in his own home for his abuse of her sons. She was still a presence to be reckoned with in 1780, when she caused Caroline some embarrassment in Grafton Street by
snubbing a friend of William’s whom she accused of having left her son to the mercies of an election mob at Nottingham.112 A year later, she had another attack, but she still lived long enough to see her family’s fortunes improve, ironically as a result of a new disaster for British arms in America: Yorktown.
In October 1781, the British surrendered to Franco-American troops at Yorktown, Virginia. When the news reached London on November 25, Lord North threw open his arms and said, “Oh God! It is all over!” But the North administration would drag on for a few months yet. George III was determined to retain at least a part of his dominions in the colonies, and he steadily opposed North’s resignation. This was not entirely an instance of royalty in denial, for Britain could have fought on after Yorktown. There was still a British army in New York, and bases in Charleston and Savannah. By 1782, the French fleet was overextended, while the Royal Navy was in a fighting mood. Prior to Yorktown, behind-the-scenes negotiations with the French had occurred, proposing among other things that the British might retain the Carolinas in the event of recognizing America’s independence.113 The exact extent of the future United States of America was not a foregone conclusion.
But the nation was war-weary, and George III could not ignore Parliament. On February 27, 1782, Caroline’s friend General Conway moved that offensive war in America should cease, and the motion passed. The next month, Lord North finally quit his office, probably with relief, in the face of a vote of no confidence.114 Lord Rockingham was now prime minister of a new government that brought together the two main opposition groups: the Rockinghamites with their leading spokesman, Charles James Fox, and Lord Shelburne and his followers.
Now the fortunes of the Howe brothers changed for the better. On April 2, Richard took command of the Channel Fleet, to the joy of Lady Spencer, who had wished for it more than once, declaring, “[W]hen I have the disposal of the great affairs, he shall have the Admiralty,” as well as the Channel Fleet.115
Richard hoisted his flag on HMS Victory, Keppel’s old command and Lord Nelson’s future one, on April 20, 1782. That same day, he was created Viscount Howe of the Kingdom of England, a title of nobility that moved him from the House of Commons to the House of Lords. Richard was still concerned about his brother, and William was appointed lieutenant general of the Ordnance, a government department that oversaw storage and supplies for the armed forces. Fortunately, Charlotte Howe lived long enough to hear of her sons’ rehabilitation and restoration to honorable service. She must have been gratified indeed to see her eldest son raised to the ranks of full aristocracy. But he was unable to be at her bedside when his mother passed away on June 13, 1782, “perfectly quiet and free from pain,” after having been critically ill for several days.116
Richard had a hard summer ahead of him, defending the western approaches of the English Channel against the French and Spanish navies, and the North Sea against the Dutch.117 Yet it was Gibraltar, guarding the narrow sea passage separating the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, that would give him his major challenge. Spain had been trying to recapture Gibraltar from the British since 1713, and the fortress had been besieged since 1779, the garrison surviving with the aid of British relief convoys. In a war of few triumphs, Gibraltar’s resistance was a matter of national pride for Britain.
By the time Richard took command of the Channel Fleet, it had been almost a year since the Gibraltar garrison had last been relieved; in August, he was ordered to resupply the fortress and escort merchant ships bound for the East and West Indies and Portugal. Richard had thirty-five ships of the line under his command, against a combined Franco-Spanish fleet of at least fifty that awaited him near Gibraltar. Richard has been lauded as one of those rare admirals with a special skill for fleet maneuvering, and he showed it here, bringing his convoy safely into the Bay of Gibraltar and resupplying the garrison, “despite a combined French and Spanish fleet snapping at his heels.”118 The British fleet turned back through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Atlantic, followed by the enemy fleet, for neither had room to form a line of battle until they had reached the open ocean. A sunset engagement ensued, and Richard succeeded in fighting off a far superior enemy fleet before heading homeward, arriving at St. Helens on the Isle of Wight on November 14.119
Ten days after the battle, Caroline was at Richard’s home of Porter’s Lodge with Lady Mary Howe and the children, waiting for news. She hoped to have certain intelligence by the end of the week or the beginning of the next, she told the impatient Lady Spencer, who was at the spa of Hotwells, near Bristol, with her husband. News did not come, and Lady Spencer was unsympathetic. She wrote crossly, “I hate you my D[ea]r Howey for not telling me what the reports were from Calais & Paris & I go, perfectly convinc’d they are bad.” Caroline was always expected to be in the know. Two days later, back in London, she quoted verbatim a secret source with news from Paris: “Lord Howe passed thro’ the Gut from the Eastward the 16th of October, he seems to have baffled the combined Fleets in the Mediterranean by a variety of masterly manoeuvres.”120
As always, Caroline was wild with joy. She was in London, staying at the Spencers’ residence in St. James’s Place during Lady Spencer’s absence, while her Grafton Street home was being redecorated. Callers sought her out to convey their congratulations; Lord Frederick Cavendish was there when Captain Adam Duncan made his appearance. The future hero of the Battle of Camperdown in 1797, Duncan had commanded a ship of the line at the relief of Gibraltar and had been dispatched by Richard to carry the news home to England. He personally recounted details of the action to Richard’s ecstatic sister. After scribbling the details to her friend, Caroline signed off: “I have so many to write to that I cannot add a word more.” Other visitors soon followed: Lady Jersey, Richard Rigby, and brother William. In the evening, Caroline went to dine at the home of Lord Shelburne, “who seemed in great spirits, embraced and kissed me both sides my face.”121
By the time he kissed Caroline, Lord Shelburne was prime minister. Rockingham had died on July 1, 1782. Shelburne now presided over the close of the war and the making of peace. In a century when the prevailing theory was mercantilism, and nation-states excluded one another from their trading systems, Shelburne promoted ideas of the advantages of free trade and desired a mutually beneficial trading relationship with the new United States of America. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations had been published in 1776, with its forceful advocacy of free international markets, but it was still ahead of its time. Shelburne’s views on the peace with America also reflected the influence of his mentor, Lord Chatham. Shelburne believed that Britain and the new United States had everything to gain from maintaining close ties in defense and trade. He hoped for a treaty that would leave Americans on the same footing as British citizens in many respects, with a shared trading system and a shared foreign policy.122
Shelburne’s notions, however, did not prevail. In March 1783, his ministry was replaced by the Fox–North coalition. The final peace with the new United States of America rejected Shelburne’s visions and dictated that the Americans now be treated as foreigners. In July 1783, they were excluded from trade with the British West Indies, a move designed to promote Britain’s own merchants and shipbuilding industry. John Adams, in Paris on diplomatic service at the time, predicted that the British measure would backfire, causing the United States to draw closer to France. This, however, did not occur. The British knew that the Americans were dependent on British manufactured goods, and independence would not alter their habits of consumption—established channels of commerce are not easily diverted or changed. The United States would remain closely tied to her former mother country, locked in an unfavorable balance of trade for several decades. Many of the old markets of the thirteen colonies were closed, and it has been estimated that the performance of the American economy fell by 46 percent between 1775 and 1790.123
What the Howes thought of the absolute separation they had worked so hard to prevent is not known, but John Adams recalled years lat
er that while he was in London as American ambassador, between 1785 and 1788, he encountered Lord Howe at a court ball. Finding nowhere to sit, he appealed to Richard to indicate “the Ambassadors Seats. His Lordship with his usual politeness, and an unusual Smile of good humour, pointed to the Seats, and manifestly alluding to the Conversation on Staten Island, said, ‘Aye!, Now, We must turn you away among the foreigners.’ ”124 Ever the pragmatists, the Howes accepted the new status quo and moved on.
Britain had lost her thirteen colonies, but she could still hold her head up at the close of the conflict. She had a string of successes at sea in 1782, including checks to the French in India, Rodney’s notable victory over the French in the West Indies, and the relief of Gibraltar. Keen to drive a wedge between the new United States and its French allies, Lord Shelburne while still prime minister had agreed to allow the Americans generous boundaries, granting them the territory east of the Mississippi and rights to the Newfoundland fisheries. The prewar status quo in the all-important Caribbean remained much as it had been. With the world’s sea-lanes open to it, Britain could look forward to an era of economic expansion. “Far from being fatal to Britain,” it has been asserted, “the loss of America marked the beginning of her period of greatest power.”125
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