Happy Fourth of July—thanks to two loutish British lords

Are we able to celebrate Independence Day because the two men in charge of King George III’s war against the Colonies were England’s most notorious heterosexual adulterer and its most notorious homosexual?

John Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich, was first lord of the Admiralty during the pre-Revolutionary period and the Revolution itself—he was in charge of Britain’s war at sea. George Sackville, also known as Lord George Germain, was Britain’s secretary of state for the American Colonies from 1775 through 1782—he ran the land war, although he had been court-martialed under accusations of cowardice two decades earlier.

I referred briefly to both in a Saturday Series article about George Washington early last year, and some readers requested more information. Their personal habits are important because they led to erratic professional activities and created a reservoir of distrust among subordinates.

British historians still debate whether Sandwich himself was responsible for British navy decrepitude during the Revolution, but all recognize the inadequacies of the once-proud (and future-proud) navy during that particular period.

At the beginning of the war, when British Vice Adm. Samuel Graves wanted to blockade the major American ports, he did not have enough ships to do the job. At the end of the war, when a French fleet sailed to the Chesapeake Bay, Rear Adm. Thomas Graves (Samuel’s cousin) had to attack with an inferior force. Part of the problem was the deployment of ships, and part the non-existence of ships that should have been constructed. The shortage of frigates and other smaller warships was particularly severe.

Why did the British naval building program falter? England’s Dictionary of National Biography in 1882 proposed that Sandwich’s conduct as first lord of the Admiralty “was as great a scandal to public as it had all along been to private morality.” Sandwich irritated his able administrative head, controller Charles Middleton, who complained about “the sad management that prevails at present, and the ruin that accompanies it.” (Middleton, an evangelical Christian, was “the most indefatigable & able” official in the government, according to Navy Office clerk Robert Gregson.)

Middleton communicated his frustration in a memo to Sandwich: “One error has produced another, and the whole has become such a mass of confusion, that I see no prospect of reducing it to order. … Is it possible, my lord, that gentlemen who are at an office one day, and following their amusements or private concerns another, can carry on a line of business that requires not only great practical knowledge, but the closest application and attention?”

The gentleman who set the tone was Sandwich, and Middleton had the courage to be direct: “If I, my lord, who am a professional man, find myself unequal to the duties of the office I am in, with an application of twelve hours six days in the week, how is it possible that your lordship can manage yours, which is equally extensive, in three or four?” The question: What was Sandwich doing when he should have been at the office?

The philosopher David Hume gives us a hint. In May 1776, as the colonists were moving toward independence and the war was about to enter a new phase with the impending British takeover of New York City, Hume was surprised to encounter, at an inn, Sandwich along with three companions and “two or three Ladies of Pleasure”: They were all embarked on a three-week fishing and philandering trip. Hume thought it incredible that “the First Lord of the Admiralty, who is absolute and uncontrolled Master in his Department, shou’d, at a time when the Fate of the British Empire is in dependance, and in dependance on him, find so much Leizure … during the most critical season of the year.”

Sandwich had problems with those who knew of his lechery and did not trust him to carry out his work faithfully. He antagonized Adm. Augustus Keppel, one of the navy’s most admired officers, and lent his support to an attempt in 1779 to court-martial Keppel for largely political reasons. (This became known as the battle of the Montagues—playing off Sandwich’s family name, John Montague—and the Keppelites.)

Keppel disclosed that when he had taken command of the fleet against the French in 1778, he had found that Sandwich’s claims of 35 ships fit for duty were slightly off—there were only six. Keppel was found not guilty. Some talented officers resigned for reasons such as that given by Capt. John Leveson-Gower: Sandwich “never had any decency.” According to the Dictionary of National Biography, “many officers of character and ability … refused to accept a command while he remained at the admiralty.”

Some background: Sandwich, born in 1718, married at age 22 Dorothy Fane, but later slept with the Duchess of Bedford (his best friend’s wife), noted courtesans Fanny Murray and Kitty Fisher, and many more. He was also a marathon gambler. Once, not wishing to leave the gaming table, he called for two slices of bread and a hunk of meat to stick between them, and thus bequeathed his lowercased name to the English language. (His spin doctors later passed around the story that he had started eating sandwiches because he worked so hard that he could not leave his desk.)

Sandwich and his wife parted in 1755, and from 1760 on he had, along with other liaisons, a live-in lover, Martha Ray. He met Ray when he was 42 and she still a teenager, trained her as a singer, and had her perform before guests in his home. In 1778 one guest, young Ensign James Hackman, listened to Ray sing, fell in love with her, and repeatedly tried to convince her to elope with him. Failing in that effort, Hackman resigned his commission, quickly became an Anglican cleric, and in 1779 went berserk: He shot Martha Ray in the face as she emerged from the theater.

When Sandwich was informed of Ray’s death, at a crucial time when the British were transporting troops to conquer South Carolina, he flung himself on his bed and cried, “Leave me alone, I could have borne anything but this!”

Sandwich’s womanizing also affected his relations with officials who reported to him. He wrote to Capt. James Gambier about a young lady he had met and lusted after but was afraid to approach on the grounds of his age: “Fear of her being offended or laughing at me prevented my saying half what I had in my mind. … I must own that after 55 a man in love is but a ridiculous being.” Sandwich wanted Gambier to pimp for him, and the ambitious captain agreed to do his best.

I do not know whether the desired tryst took place, but Sandwich in 1778 made the “thoroughly lackluster” Gambier (author N.A.M. Rodger’s characterization) a rear admiral. Three years later, as the naval drama along the American coast was coming to a crux, Gambier wanted additional preference and threatened to expose the first lord of the Admiralty, but Sandwich called his bluff: “It will probably occasion some ridicule upon me; but I have never pretended to be free from indiscretion, and those who know me have been so long accustomed to forgive my weaknesses.” Gambier desisted.

Playwrights and satirists found Sandwich an inviting target. Charles Churchill described him in Act 3 of his play The Duellist: Sandwich was “Too infamous to have a friend, / Too bad for bad men to commend.” Others portrayed Sandwich mixing Admiralty business with personal interest, as in a sketch of him watching a young lady leave his office: Sandwich exclaims, “Enchanting devil! This girl would be the utter ruin of me at seventy years of age, if my fortune was not already dissipated, and my character lost beyond recovery.”

The other member of the British Cabinet whose competence was crucial for successful prosecution of the war was Secretary of State Lord George Sackville, the comeback kid of his century. Born in 1716 into an illustrious family, he became a member of Parliament in 1741, a major general in 1755, and commander in chief of British forces in Germany, under the authority of German Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. But in 1759 Sackville was court-martialed for refusing to obey Ferdinand’s command to advance at a crucial moment in the battle of Minden.

Public opinion declared him a coward, and the court sentenced him to political disgrace and military exile: “Lord George Sackville is, and he is hereby adjudged, unfit to serve his Majesty in any military capacity whatever.” Sackville, though, retained his seat in Parliament and in 1769 changed his name and gained a fortune in the process. One of his admirers, the widowed Lady Betty Germain, willed her estate to him on the condition he take her last name, and Lord George Germain he became.

Shortly after the Revolution broke out, King George III appointed Germain secretary of state for the American Colonies. (The British government then had three secretaries of state: essentially, one for northern Europe, one for points south and east, one for points west.) The choice was unpopular among army officers. One of Germain’s many military critics, Col. Henry Lawes Luttrell, predicted that British soldiers would have Germain to lead them only if they ran away.

Germain talked big. He would use the “utmost force of this kingdom” to force rebel surrender—but gossip on top of his reputation for cowardice chilled his effectiveness. Germain had five children and perhaps he was bisexual, but accusations that he was homosexual were common. Onlookers castigated him for promoting the “beautiful warrior” who was his unofficial domestic partner. Politician and art historian Horace Walpole—referring to a three-way involving Germain, Col. Robert Cuninghame, and Anglican Church prelate George Stone—wrote, “Religion is now become a mere farce / Since the head of the church is in Cunningham’s arse.”

In 1776 William Jackson’s poem Sodom and Onan—Jackson wrote it under the pen name “Humphrey Nettle”—attacked King George III for appointing Germain despite his proclivities, thus agreeing “to pardon Sodomites and damn the Nation. / Sackville, both Coward and Catamite, commands / Department honourable, and kisses hands / With lips that oft in blandishment obscene / Hath been employed.” (Catamites are boys used in homosexual practice.)

Germain threw fuel on the fire by appointing to key positions two men also suspected of sodomy. When he gave Richard Cumberland a Board of Trade position, diarist Hester Thrale (a friend of Samuel Johnson) called Cumberland “a profess’d favourite of Lord George. … Effeminancy is an odious quality in a He creature, and Cumberland did like the Masculine gender best.” Germain’s other appointee, Benjamin Thompson, purportedly ate every meal with Germain, including breakfast. The future Marquess Wellesley commented about the power of “Sir Sodom Thompson, Lord Sackville’s under Secretary.”

In 1777 Germain’s critics in the military sarcastically referred to him as a “buggering hero.” Two years later, when parliamentary leaders removed the Board of Trade from Sackville’s control and gave it to the Earl of Carlisle, Londoners said Carlisle had taken “half of such a buggerer’s bed.” Loyalist and former Massachusetts Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, describing a conversation in which one British lord had criticized Germain’s homosexuality, wrote, “I was astonished at the freedom with which he spoke of what it’s shocking to think of.”

Londoner opposition to the war and the conduct of it turned to rioting. An angry mob broke the windows of Germain’s London home. Others saw Sandwich traveling on the streets and “near massacred” him, according to British historian Horace Walpole. Eyewitness Sir Samuel Romilly described Sandwich’s close call in his memoirs: “I expected … to have seen him torn in pieces; but, leaping quickly out of the chariot, he saved himself in a coffee-house, and a very strong party of guards immediately rode up and kept off the mob.”

Germain died in 1785, and Richard Cumberland wrote a book, The Character of the Late Viscount Sackville, attempting (without great success) to defend him. Sandwich lived on and some Londoners recalled a famous exchange he had with the actor Samuel Foote. Sandwich: “Foote, I have often wondered what catastrophe would bring you to your end; but I think, that you must either die of the pox, or the halter.” Foote replied, “My lord, that will depend upon one of two contingencies—whether I embrace your lordship’s mistress, or your lordship’s principles.”

Sandwich made it to age 73 and died in 1792. By then, the new United States had a Constitution and a great president.