The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Wednesday 8 September 2004

The Prince of America

Most students of British and American history know something of the Battle of Yorktown in October of 1781, in which Charles, Earl Cornwallis was encircled and besieged by the combined armies of George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Comte de Rochambeau. But some may be astounded to learn that even as the 'Continentals' and their French allies manoeuvred toward Cornwallis' eventual surrender, ending British colonial rule in North America, King George III's own son and heir had also alighted on American soil.

In The First Salute, a history of the Revolution, Barbara Tuchman quotes both Rochambeau, in his Memoirs, and modern historians regarding the royal visit. to America. Prince William Henry (1765-1837), George III's third son, who would in 1830 succeed his eldest brother as King William IV, sailed to New York with the rumored intention of someday becoming Royal Governor of Virginia. This posting, of course, bore the implicit royal assumption of his father that the "damned American rebels" would shortly be defeated.

So William, one of the first to establish the tradition in the British royal family of professional sailoring, dutifully set off for the shores of America with Admiral Robert Digby, aboard one of his three Royal Navy ships. While the rest of the British North American fleet tacked up and down the Atlantic coast, trying in vain to sight the French fleet, coming to help the Americans, Digby's little flotilla arrived in New York harbor on September 24, 1781.

The city, long occupied by Cornwallis' counterpart in the north, General Sir Henry Clinton and his troops, certainly posed no danger of combat for a visiting Prince. William was but 16 years old. He would hardly have risked his life in any military action, even had he been allowed to participate in one. General Washington wasn't even there. Failing to lift Clinton's occupation, he had gone south in a last attempt to link up with the French navy.

There was apparently a plot to kidnap the Prince, though. Christopher Hibbert, in Redcoats and Rebels: The American Revolution Through British Eyes, recounts an American colonel's proposal to Washington to attempt it at sea. If William were taken prisoner, so the reasoning went, he might be used as a bargaining counter in negotiations. Washington did indeed authorize the plan, with a proviso against "offering insult or indignity, to the persons of the Prince or Admiral." But the plot was betrayed to the British, the Prince's guards were doubled, and the business remains one of history's tantalizing what-if?s.

Instead of being captured and insulted, on arrival in America the Prince was honored with a 21-gun salute. Despite the privations of war, New York mounted a splendid array of parties, receptions, and parades for him. He was shown a good time: tours of the city, dinners with prominent citizens, an introduction to Benedict Arnold, and a concert by a military band. He reviewed the Hessian and English regiments. He wrote to his father that the streets of New York were "narrow and very ill-paved." The Loyalists amongst the Colonials came out in crowds to see him, eager to show their allegiance now that it looked as if the revolution were sputtering out. No doubt many would-be royal toadies asked favors of the Prince, and tried to endear themselves to him. He mightn't be their future royal master, but they were still subjects of his father, and proud of it.

So, then, what did William do in New York on his own time, so to speak? It is evidently not recorded. Did he gaze with wonder from the flagship deck on the then-thickly forested American coastline, ere he became the first British royal to set foot in America? Was he puzzled by the New York accent he heard? (Probably not: Yankee speech back then was reminiscent of the King's English of East Anglia, according to David Fischer in Albion's Seed.) Did the Prince cut a glittering swath among the homespun Colonials? Did he go hunting or riding or sailing, play tennis or bowls, and indulge himself in decadent or amorous pursuits? Probably all of the above! William is known to have had an eye for the ladies; he also could down a good tipple with the best of the tars. Anglophilia and royal-watching being just as intense then as today, William would have been feted and adored and flattered, just as his modern-day Princely namesake will be, should Charles and Diana's son ever come to America.

Yet while the young Duke of Clarence danced the night away in New York City, and General Clinton smugly assured him that the rebels were all but done in, all was not well for King and Country (and Army). Back home in London, public opinion had turned sharply sympathetic toward the American cause. It was slowly dawning on British minds that the war was unwinnable. Lord Cornwallis, sitting exposed and vulnerable down south, along Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, scanning the Atlantic horizon every day for the French fleet that would trap him, certainly understood that fact by September, as the additional troops and ships he had requested of Clinton never came. When he learned of the Prince's visit; he probably realized that a fellow commander busily engaged in squiring royalty around could scarcely think about manpower and supply requisitions, let alone do anything about them. And so the inevitable result: Washington's victory, and American independence.

By early 1782, a few months later, word of the disaster at Yorktown had sunk in, back in England. Prince William was safely back home. And William's royal father, who had up to now stubbornly insisted on continuing the war, was drafting a statement of abdication. It said that Parliament had "totally incapacitated him from either conducting the war with any effect or from obtaining any peace ... His Majesty therefore with much sorrow finds he can be of no further Utility to his Native Country which drives him to the painful step of quitting it forever." Therefore, "His Majesty resigns the Crown of Great Britain and the Dominions appertaining thereto."

Of course, George III did not abdicate. But perhaps the long and costly American war, and his unruly Whig opposition in Parliament, caused him such stress and sorrow that the hereditary disease of porphyria was able to attack him from within and bring him to madness.

And so ended the chance of his son William to become the Prince of America. If only for a short while, William probably entertained visions of settling there and governing; probably considered Virginia his royal inheritance. It was good that he visited the American continent. Perhaps it truly helped educate him in the diversity of life, broadened his horizons, and gave him a passing acquaintance with places and people other than the royal court and his father's courtiers. Indeed, later in life William was said to be "bluff and unregal." If the flurry of his royal visit caused Clinton to hesitate and delay more than usual in sending reinforcements south, it may even have been a minor factor in Cornwallis' defeat.

At any rate, nearly a hundred years would pass ere another member of the royal family - the future Edward VII - set foot in America (in 1860, as Prince of Wales). A historian could say, mischievously, that with William and his father, Americans had had their fill of royalty, at least for a while.

- Mel Whitney