JOHN ANDRE: WESTMINSTER’S UNKNOWN POET

by Bruce Heydt

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In Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner, alongside monuments to the likes of Tennyson, Dryden, Spenser, Shakespeare and Chaucer, curious visitors can find the name of a minor poet and artist by the name of John André. It is a relatively easy monument to find; a more difficult task for the visitor would be to locate, or even name, any works written by this nearly forgotten gallant. Devoteés of great literature pass by his monument in puzzlement. Yet his death, more than two centuries ago, caused a sensation both in England and the United States.

André’s journey to Poet’s Corner began in 1771, when he bought a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He studied military engineering in Europe until 1774, when he sailed for America to join his regiment, arriving just eight months prior to the outbreak of open warfare between Britain and its North American colonies.

During the war, André forged two relationships that eventually made this aspiring poet and upstart strategist internationally famous. First, he used his personal charm and command of foreign languages to obtain the position of adjutant to the British commander-in-chief, Sir Henry Clinton. On the social side, André spent much of the winter of 1777-1778, during the British occupation of Philadelphia, with a well-placed and attractive Philadelphia loyalist named Peggy Shippen. In contrast to his well-planned professional connections, André seems to have wanted nothing more out of his association with Peggy than the company of a pretty young woman.

The relationship took on dramatic new importance though, when the British left Philadephia in the spring of 1778. Within a few hours of the British departure, a rebel military governor, General Benedict Arnold, took over control of the city. Before long, Arnold and André had a mutual friend in Peggy Shippen.

Arnold’s interest in Peggy took a more serious turn than André’s, and culminated in a proposal of marriage. The governor’s relationship with a known loyalist outraged many revolutionary politicians. Arnold further angered Philadelphians by inviting the city’s leading loyalists to dinner, and by defending their legal rights.

Arnold would probably have weathered this storm of protests, had he avoided involvement in several schemes to profit personally from his position. Though profiteering was a vice shared by many American officers, it proved a fatal mistake for a man with so many enemies. Constantly attacked in the press as well as in court, Arnold grew estranged from the American cause.

Ever since the British Army left Philadelphia, some of Peggy Arnold’s close friends had maintained a secret correspondence with John André and several of his companions. When Peggy told her husband about this unusual line of communication with the British Army, he asked her to send a message to André.

By this time, André had received a promotion to chief of British intelligence services, making him just the person to arrange the General’s defection. Arnold learned to his frustration, however, that the very same disrespect from his fellow countrymen that prompted him to offer his services to André, also made André question his usefulness. When Arnold asked André what reward he might expect for his defection, André replied that he should get himself appointed to the command of an army, surrender it to the British, and then talk about a reward. Given Arnold’s fall from favour, and a crippling leg wound, a field command was unlikely; so, for a long time, nothing came of Arnold’s offer to help the British.

Eventually, an opportunity to surrender something even more valuable to the British than an American army soon presented itself to Arnold. In 1780, he convinced General George Washington to appoint him to the command of the most strategic fortress in America, West Point. In Arnold’s secret correspondence to André, he suggested that he might prove his worth by turning over the vital defences to the British.

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