In the nave of Westminster Abbey there is a memorial to Major John André, executed as a spy on the orders of George Washington, commander of the Continental Army, on 2nd October 1780. Before his capture, André had very successfully directed intelligence activities for the forces of the Crown in British North America. The memorial — which King George III directed to be raised — declares that André “fell a Sacrifice to his Zeal for his King and Country”.
In 1821, over 40 years later, in a sign of continued respect for both André and the cause for which he died, his body was repatriated from the banks of the Hudson, and laid to rest beside his memorial in the Abbey, with the Dean reading the Burial service from the Book of Common Prayer. The Dean himself had brought a wreath of autumn leaves, from the landscape around the Hudson, to lie on the tomb.
André’s memorial is not unique. Here and there, across the British Isles, there are a few memorials in churches and churchyards to those who served the Crown in what was known as the American War. In Stirling’s Old Town Cemetery, there is a memorial to Major Arthur Forbes, who served in His Majesty’s North Carolina Highlanders, a Loyalist regiment. In Beverley Minster, Brigadier General Oliver De Lancey is commemorated. A native of New York, moved — in the words of the memorial — “by his loyalty and attachment to his King and his Country”, he raised and equipped three battalions of Loyalists, known as De Lancey’s Brigade. In St. Mary Abbots Church, Kensington, there is a memorial to Lieutenant Thomas Reynell, of the 62nd Regiment of Foot, who “fell in the memorable Battle of Saratoga … bravely fighting for his Country”.
In North America, too, memorials may be found to the approximately 25,000 — both regulars and those who served in Loyalist units — who fell in the service of the Crown during the American War. The grounds of churches constructed in Canada in the 1780s and 1790s by Loyalist refugees were often the last resting place for many of those who had fought for the Crown. In the United States, the town of Arlington, Massachusetts, has a memorial marking the mass grave of forty British soldiers who died in the Battle of Menotomy, 19th April 1775. The memorial reads, “They answered the call of King and Country — They are Remembered and Respectfully Acknowledged”.
Such memorials, infrequent though they might be in the United Kingdom, are reminders of a noble cause. Those who served and fell in the American War of 1775-1783 were defending parliamentary government under the Crown. This was a settled constitutional order which had brought prosperity and ordered liberty to British North America, a constitutional order which retained the allegiance of a significant proportion of the colonial population even as the rebellion commenced.
They defended a constitutional order which still defines the United Kingdom and Canada
As Charles Inglis, a Loyalist parson in New York declared, “The principles on which the Glorious Revolution in 1688 was brought about, continue the articles of my political creed”. Defending this constitutional settlement against a rebellion of those who, having flourished under it, rejected that order and its laws, was a just and worthy cause.
The American War was also a defence of the empire, as the Continental Congress and its allies, the absolutist monarchies of France and Spain, sought to dismantle the British imperial presence in North America and the Caribbean. It is this imperial context which also reveals the limits of British defeat in the War. The loyal colonies in what is now Canada, and the Caribbean colonies, were successfully defended. Likewise, Gibraltar was heroically defended and retained for the Crown in the face of the siege maintained by the forces of France and Spain from 1779 to 1783.
As we are now in the midst of events marking the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the Revolutionary War and the Declaration of Independence, it is a fitting time to consider how we should commemorate the service and sacrifice of those who fought for the Crown on the battlefields of North America, in the colonies of the Caribbean, in the Great Siege of Gibraltar, and on the waves of the Atlantic during the years 1775-1783. They defended a constitutional order which still defines the United Kingdom and Canada. Ensuring that the forces of the Continental Congress did not conquer the loyal colonies that would become Canada, and that the French and Spanish were not victorious in the Caribbean and Gibraltar, had immense significance for the forthcoming titanic struggles with the Revolutionary and Bonapartist regimes in France. The memory, service, and sacrifice of those who served the Crown in the American War should, therefore, be honoured by the United Kingdom.
For those seeking a means to practically support the upkeep of memorials associated with the American War, and to encourage educational efforts related to this, the Napoleonic and Revolutionary War Graves Charity offers an excellent way of doing so.
We might also make an appeal to the Church of England to consider a form of remembrance for those who fought and died for the Crown during the American War. Church of England clergy ministered to both regular and colonial Loyalist units. Many Church of England clergy in the colonies faced hostility and threats for reading the prayers for the King in public services. Throughout the war, days of prayer were also observed in English parish churches. In December 1776, for example, Parson Woodforde noted in his diary, “This day being appointed a Fast on our Majesty’s arms against the rebel Americans, I went to Church this morning and read the Prayers appointed for the same”. And, as we have seen, memorials to those who served the Crown are to be found in some Church of England parishes.
For the vast majority of those who died in the service of the Crown in the American War, the Church of England was — in the words of Sir Roger Scruton — “Our Church”. It should remember them.
