John Graves Simcoe, 1752-1806

by Mary Beacock Fryer

  Now bedridden, Simcoe had Major Richard Armstrong compile a list of the Rangers who had originally enlisted with the rebel militia or the Continental Army, and who had deserted to enlist with the King. He stopped short of recommending outright desertion, but he suggested, where a Ranger thought he could get away with doing it, that he rejoin the rebel corps from which he had originally deserted, giving a plausible explanation for his absence. The best excuse would be a captive of the British, now so outnumbered in Virginia as to be unable to keep track of their prisoners. As days passed, some of these men disappeared, and Simcoe prayed for their safety.7

  He continued examining ways of escape. He recalled that Benedict Arnold had had some boats built which he had left behind. They might be used to carry some Rangers and others away. He sent Lieutenant George Spencer to enquire whether Major Armstrong might have permission to try an evacuation across Chesapeake Bay into Maryland, where many inhabitants were still loyal, but this Cornwallis refused.

  The formal surrender took place on 19 October, when the British marched out of the defences at Yorktown and grounded their arms before Washington, Rochambeau, and their subordinates. Cornwallis had wondered about moving all his troops to Gloucester, in the hope of escaping from there, but a shortage of boats and a severe storm interfered and the bulk of his army remained at Yorktown. Before the surrender ceremonies, Cornwallis received permission to send out the very ill aboard the sloop Bonetta, which, under the terms of capitulation would be allowed through the blockade with Cornwallis’s dispatches for Sir Henry Clinton in New York. Because the physicians informed him that Simcoe’s only chance of survival lay in a sea voyage, Cornwallis agreed to let him go.8 With Simcoe went as many of the most vulnerable of the Rangers and Tarleton’s Legionaires as could be crammed on the ship. Because Simcoe was so ill, Major Richard Armstrong had already assumed command of the regiment.

  Many Rangers and junior officers were marched to temporary prison camps. The higher ranking officers were allowed to keep their side arms and possessions. They expected to be allowed to go on parole to New York when ships were available. Some of the deserters who returned to their old units were executed, almost on the spot; their tales of being unable to return sooner were not taken seriously. Article 10 of the terms of capitulation which Cornwallis drafted stated:

  Natives or Inhabitants of different parts of this Country at present in York or Gloucester are not to be punished on Acc’t of having joined the British Army —9

  Just as Simcoe had feared, Provincials were not protected: Washington wrote, “This Article cannot be assented to — being altogether of civil Resort.”

  Landed at New York, Simcoe now lay in a military hospital, feeling somewhat stronger. He wrote Sir Henry Clinton concerning rank in the British Army for his Rangers, and half-pay for his officers. Clinton, about to be recalled, agreed to promote the suggestion with the War Office when he reached London. Simcoe, too, would soon be home, invalided aboard a ship shortly to sail.

  Before he left, some of the officers had reached New York from Yorktown, among them Major Richard Armstrong, Captain John McGill, who brought Simcoe’s horse, Salem, and Lieutenant George Spencer. Colonel Banastre Tarleton and a few of his officers had also returned. Simcoe discovered that a paymaster from the British Legion, whom he called only “Mr. H.” had absconded to the rebels at Philadelphia, taking with him some of the Legion’s trophies — regimental flags captured during clashes at such places in the Carolinas as Monck’s Corner, Lenud’s Ferry, Waxhaws, Camden, Fishing Creek, Blackstock’s Plantation, even their disaster at Cowpens. Probably because George Spencer put the idea in Simcoe’s head, he gave his permission for the lieutenant to rescue these standards. He felt he owed Colonel Tarleton a favour for assuming overall command of the troops at Gloucester.

  Clad in his green Ranger uniform, Spencer set out on a round trip of 200 miles by direct routes, somewhat longer along less-travelled ones. He returned before Simcoe sailed, with a tale to tell. He had entered Philadelphia undetected, and a few enquiries directed him to the inn where Mr. H. was staying. Discovering him to be absent, Spencer found the room he was occupying and a hopeful-looking trunk. Inside were the precious colours. Spencer hurriedly removed his coat, waistcoat and pulled his linen shirt over his head. He wrapped the flags carefully around his bare torso, and replaced his shirt and waistcoat. Finding the jacket too tight now, he used a knife to split it up the back, and he put it on, buttoning it in front.

  He set off for New York in a vehicle and delivered the “standards” to Major Armstrong. He reported that on the way he had been insulted at Brunswick (now New Brunswick, New Jersey) because of the anger of local people over incursions by the Queen’s Rangers. The spectre of the dead Captain Vorhees, who was to have been married the next day, still haunted the Rangers. On one occasion Spencer was saved from attack during dinner by four American officers who were travelling in the same wagon. No one found the reclaimed colours he was carrying, or “an attack would have been a certainty.”

  Simcoe reached England in early December, about the same time as Sir Henry Clinton. He soon discovered that some of his officers had been ordered to surrender to the French, as a way of protecting them from irate rebels. Repatriating them promised to be complicated because some of them were on their way to France. While officially convalescing, Simcoe would be kept busy with letters to Dr. Benjamin Franklin, the American plenipotentiary in Paris, and with sending replies to requests for help. Apparently, Simcoe himself was on parole to the French, but he was safe at home. Franklin claimed to know nothing about British officers being held in France, but Simcoe had heard that the Americans had requested the French to detain them.10

  The new commander at New York was General Sir Guy Carleton, a man experienced in dealing with Provincials in the Northern, or Canadian, Military Department. He had served at Quebec City as governor and commander in chief. From certain disenchanted individuals, Carleton heard charges of brutality perpetrated by the Queen’s Rangers which he chose to believe. Although Carleton was competent, and he would deal well with the migration of Loyalists by sea to Nova Scotia, he was a man who held a grudge. He had formed a dislike of the Queen’s Rangers and of their absent commander.

  Unaware of Carleton’s attitude, Simcoe would soon be on his way to Devonshire, to recuperate at Hembury Fort House, cradled in a valley in the Blackdown Hills. There his godfather, Admiral Samuel Graves, and his second wife, Margaret Spinckes Graves, had invited him to stay with them so that they could give him tender care. The one who took a particular interest in the well being of the veteran partisan was Miss Elizabeth Posthuma Gwillim, Mrs. Graves’ niece.

  With the evacuation of Charleston, in 1782, the four troops of Hussars reached New York and they were reunited with the rest of the Queen’s Rangers under Major Armstrong. Later in the year the garrison at Savannah was withdrawn. In the colonies that had rebelled, only New York, the surrounding islands, and a chain of forts along the Canadian border, were still under British occupation. Benedict Arnold reached Britain not long after Simcoe himself. From the safety of New York, he had had no difficulty eluding any rebels who would cheerfully have hanged him.

  John Graves Simcoe’s contribution to the campaign in the rebelling colonies is best summarised in a letter Sir Henry Clinton wrote to Lord George Germain from Charleston, South Carolina, in May 1780:

  Lieut. Col. Simcoe has been at the head of a battalion since October 1777 and since that time has been in the perpetual advance of the army. The history of the Corps under his command is a series of gallant, skilful and successful enterprises against the enemy, without a single reverse The Queen’s Rangers have killed or taken twice their own numbers. Col. Simcoe himself has been thrice wounded, and I do not scruple to assert that his successes have been no less the fruit of the most extensive knowledge of his profession which study and the experience within his reach could give him, than the most watchful attention and shining courage.11

  Simcoe’s
decision as a teenager to “prefer the field to the forum” was more than justified.

  PART III:

  COUNTRY GENTLEMAN

  From 1782 until 1791, Simcoe lived the life of a wealthy Devonshire landowner, although he remained deeply committed to outside events. The near-decade saw love, marriage, the purchase of properties, large and small, and a steadily arriving stream of children. Beyond Devonshire lay a turbulent Europe. The American Revolution was winding down, but British involvement with France, India and other trouble spots continued unabated.

  In 1782, British Admiral George Rodney defeated a French fleet in the West Indies. Spain captured Minorca from Britain and laid siege to Gibraltar. Britain and France fought the naval battle of Cuddalore, off Madras. Admiral Richard Howe relieved Gibraltar. The Tipoo, ruler of Mysore, began a campaign that defeated the British in 1783.

  The Peace of Versailles, signed 3 September 1783, between Britain, France, Spain and the United States, granted independence to the former British colonies. France recovered some West and East Indian possessions; Spain retained Minorca and regained Florida. By a separate peace, the Treaty of Fontainebleau, Britain and Holland settled their differences. Concerned that the private-enterprise East India Company was exploiting the peoples of India, the Pitt Ministry passed an act that placed the company under a government-appointed Board of Control that tried to forbid interference in the affairs of independent Indian states.

  In 1785, Lord Cornwallis, of Yorktown, Virginia, fame, was appointed Governor General of India (which really meant mainly Bengal, then entirely under British control). Catherine the Great achieved an alliance with Russia and Austria in 1787. Britain and Holland formed their alliance in 1788, concerned over the future of the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium). The first British penal colony on the continent of Australia opened at Botany Bay. The British Parliament had a defeated vote to abolish the slave trade.

  In France, the populace was stirring towards the outbreak that commenced in 1789. That August, French revolutionaries abolished the Rights of Man. Emigration of French Royalists began. The Netherlands rebelled against Austria. Owing to the first illness of King George III, Britain’s Parliament passed a Regency Bill.

  In May 1790, Britain and Spain were close to war, over the Spanish occupation of islands around Nootka Sound on the west coast of North America. That was settled when the Spanish agreed to withdraw. In July, Britain formed an alliance with the Nizam of Hyderabad. Power in France began to pass to the Jacobins. In July 1791, King Louis XVI was taken prisoner to prevent him leaving France.

  EIGHT

  LOVE IN THE BLACKDOWN HILLS

  During the sea voyage, Simcoe’s health improved as he had hoped, enough that he resolved to spend some time in London before accepting the hospitality of Admiral and Mrs. Graves. In London he could further his career and possibly benefit his regiment. He would do all in his power to have the Queen’s Rangers placed on the British regular establishment, and numbered. Thus his officers would be eligible for half-pay and permanent rank in the army. He would need the support of highly placed friends. Burying himself in Devon would mean throwing away opportunities. He was well aware that competence counted for little in the unsavoury world of politics. What mattered most was having the right people speaking up for you. The most influential person he could approach was Francis Lord Rawdon, heir to the Earl of Moira, invalided home only a few months before Simcoe himself. Rawdon was now in London, and an aide-de-camp to the King.1 He had been rewarded for his work in South Carolina, notably at the Battle of Hobkirk’s Hill, near Camden, called by Lord Cornwallis “by far the most splendid of this war.” When Cornwallis moved to Virginia, Rawdon, commander in chief of the colony, was based at Charleston until he became too ill to continue.

  His return to England had been more complicated than Simcoe’s The ship carrying him had been captured by a French privateer and taken into Brest. Held as a prisoner of war, he was sent home through an exchange of prisoners. Rawdon was Anglo-Irish, born in County Down in December 1754, and he was less than two years younger than Simcoe. Educated at Harrow, Rawdon had been commissioned Ensign in the 15th Foot, but he had attended Oxford before joining his regiment. Like Simcoe, he did not stay for a degree. At Bunker/Breed’s Hill he had taken two shots through his cap. He had been elected to the Irish Parliament while he was still in South Carolina.

  On 24 December Rawdon wrote to Simcoe at his London address, inviting him to a dinner party at the St. James home of his uncle, Lord Huntingdon.2 (Rawdon’s mother was Lady Elizabeth Hastings, a daughter of the 9th Earl of Huntingdon.) The hour for the dinner was the then fashionable five o’clock in the afternoon. There Simcoe met several influential people who could help him further his ambitions. Rawdon was then working to have his Volunteers of Ireland, 2nd American Regiment put on the British establishment. In time he succeeded, and the regiment became the 105th. At the same time, Simcoe was confirmed as a brevet (rank without pay) Lieutenant Colonel of the Queen’s Rangers.3

  Satisfied with his progress to date, and very aware that he could no longer delay a complete rest, Simcoe set out by stagecoach for Honiton, and Hembury Fort House, the home of his godfather. This peaceful mansion, in its beautiful setting, was the ideal place to recuperate. Admiral Graves had built the house in 1765, high on a hillside with views towards the south coast and Sidmouth. Hembury Fort House, now a retirement home, stands amidst some of the finest scenery — the Blackdown Hills that extend along the Devon-Cornwall border. They form a land of lofty rises and plateaux, many extending 800 feet, cut by deep and mysterious coombes, the commons and heathland, watered by many streams that feed the Culm and Otter Rivers (the later immortalised by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his “Ode to the Otter”).

  Human contact has shaped this landscape, long occupied by man. Close to Hembury Fort House is the Iron Age hill fort of Hembury, with earthwork fortifications. It was originally a Neolithic camp, and later used by the Romans. Nearby runs the Roman road west to Exeter (the Roman Isca Dumnoniorum). For some time Hembury Fort was thought to have been the “lost” Roman station of Moridunum, until 1991 when archaeologists from the Royal Albert Museum in Exeter identified the true site of Moridunum as Axminster, fifteen miles to the east. (The Roman station was uncovered during the course of the building of a modern bypass. Progress has some benefits for archaeology.)

  The hills are dotted with sites of early “barrows” or burial mounds dating back thousands of years. In 1201, Cistercian monks founded Dunkeswell Abbey. The monks used the abbey, and outlying buildings they had erected, until 1539, the last year that Henry VIII was dissolving the monasteries. By the time Simcoe visited Hembury Fort House, local people had long been using stones from the Cistercian remains to build farmhouses, walls and cottages. One of Simcoe’s interests was archaeology; he would find much to entertain him during his recovery.

  By their nature the Blackdowns abound with legends of pixies and demons, smugglers, poachers, ghosts of Celtic and Saxon warriors, and ghosts of participants in the ill-fated Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 who were executed after Judge Jeffrey’s “bloody Assizes.” Such stories would also have intrigued the historian in Simcoe, and helped cultivate the romantic streak in his makeup.

  Romance was also in the air. Waiting to greet him at Hembury Fort House were, not only Mrs. Margaret Graves and the Admiral, but her nineteen-year-old niece, Miss Elizabeth Posthuma Gwillim.

  As her middle name hints, Elizabeth had been orphaned at birth, in September 1762. Her father, Thomas Gwillim, the lieutenant colonel of the 50th Foot, had died, probably in March, while serving with his regiment in Germany. Her mother, Elizabeth Spinckes Gwillim, had died in childbirth. She had been buried the following day in the family plot near All Saint’s parish church, in the village of Aldwincle (now spelled Aldwinkle), Northamptonshire, not far from John Graves Simcoe’s own birthplace.4

  The Gwillims’ only child, Elizabeth had spent her early years with her grandmother, Jemima Steward Spinckes
, at her mother’s home where she had been born.5 She was the sole heir to Aldwinkle, the Spinckes estate, and to Old Court, the Gwillim manor at Whitchurch, Herefordshire. When she was fourteen, in 1776, her grandmother Spinckes died at Aldwinkle. Afterwards, a cousin, William Walcot of nearby Oundle — a good friend of John Graves Simcoe — took care of her interests at Aldwinkle, while her father’s sister, also Elizabeth Gwillim, presided over Old Court. This aunt, as was the custom of the day, was called Mrs. Gwillim because she managed the family property, although she never married. After the death of her grandmother, Elizabeth divided her time between Whitchurch, Hembury Fort House, and the Graves’s London town house.

  In 1769, at age fifty-six, Admiral Graves had married Margaret Spinckes, who was forty-two. The admiral’s first wife had been Elizabeth Sedgewick, of Staindrop, the birthplace of John Graves Simcoe’s father. Samuel Graves may have met Miss Sedgewick through the Simcoe family. His godson could have met Miss Gwillim before he went to war when she was a mere child. At nineteen, she was petite, with dark hair and eyes that denoted her Welsh heritage. She was well schooled in the talents expected of a young woman of means. Although not as much an intellectual as Simcoe, she had been taught to draw and paint in water colours, to speak excellent French and some Spanish, and to be an “amiable companion.” Typical of educated people of the time, both were writers of long letters and diaries.

  She rode very well, and enjoyed jaunts into the Blackdown Hills. At first, Simcoe was content to take long walks, but as his strength returned he, too, loved to ride farther afield. Together they climbed to the top of Hembury Fort, in recent times overgrown, the top covered with brambles and bracken. The Romans had made use of it as a camp, but were thought to have abandoned it about 60 A.D. As the young couple came and went, Admiral Graves watched, satisfied, from the sidelines. Margaret was less enthusiastic about the growing relationship. She had made certain she had passed child-bearing age before marrying, and thought Elizabeth would do well to emulate her. Aunt Margaret had another complaint which no doubt Elizabeth often heard. With marriage, her fortune became the property of her husband. She had lost control of what was hers and she felt resentful of male dominance over women.6 She also felt possessive towards her sole descendant. Gradually, however, her strongest opposition melted. Simcoe could charm her, and he knew he had to win her over. He had truly fallen in love.