Sir James Jay Editorial Note
Sir James Jay
The letter from Frederick Jay of 20 April 1782, above, was the first of many reports informing John Jay of the capture and possible defection of his errant brother Sir James Jay, discussed by Robert R. Livingston in his letter of 9 May, below.1
Since his return to America in 1778, Sir James had seemed to relish taking public positions discomforting to his younger brother and associating with persons and causes that proved embarrassing to the Jay family. Craving, but failing to obtain, the kind of recognition his brother had earned, Sir James became increasingly competitive. When John Jay aligned himself with Franklin and Silas Deane in the controversy with Arthur Lee, Sir James espoused the latter’s cause.2 As a member of the New York Senate (October 1778–April 1782), he joined forces with John Jay’s longtime foe John Morin Scott to push through the legislature the punitive Act of Attainder (22 October 1779), confiscating the property of conspicuous New York Loyalists—an action that John Jay deplored. Writing to Governor George Clinton from Aranjuez on 6 May 1780, John Jay observed that if the legislation as reported in an English newspaper was “truly printed,” New York was “disgraced by Injustice too palpable to admit even of Palliation.”3
Having lost to depreciation a large portion of the value of funds he brought from Europe, Sir James, facing financial difficulties and debt by 1781, was not shy about calling congressional attention to his intelligence-gathering services while in England and pressing his claims upon Congress for reimbursement. Upon his arrival in Boston, he had advanced $20,000 to Continental army clothiers Otis and Andrews to be repaid in Philadelphia. He later insisted that he had been prompted “not by a desire of promoting the public service,” but “by the view of transferring my property from Boston to Philadelphia with ease and safety.” On 14 December 1780 Congress awarded him $400 in bills of credit in full compensation for the damage he had sustained from delayed payment in currency that had substantially depreciated in the interim. Since he considered the sum nowhere near the equivalent of the value lost, Sir James continued to press Congress for recovery of sums due him, but without success.4
Whether or not the alleged ingratitude on the part of Congress prompted Sir James’s increasingly controversial conduct, it might have been predicted that more embarrassments were in store for the staunchly patriotic Jay family. Early in 1782 Sir James began a stay with the Livingstons in Elizabeth, New Jersey, much to the distress of Susannah French Livingston, who reported that she had told Sir James “he was in a very unsafe place, and that my house was in dangered by him to be plundered.”5 According to New York’s Royal Chief Justice William Smith, in March 1782 Sir James entered into discussions at Elizabeth with Loyalist Henry Van Schaack and, to facilitate further negotiations with the British, stated that he wished to be captured in order to “execute a Proposition beneficial to the Crown.” He reportedly had also alluded to “his Dread of the French, a Project for overturning the present Rebel Bank, and a Reunion.” In April 1782 he was seized by Staten Island Loyalists during a brief visit to Arent Schuyler in New Jersey and brought within the British lines, where he was placed in the Provost, the New York debtor’s prison.6
There he was soon joined by John Jay’s former secretary Henry Brockholst Livingston, whose ship had been captured on 25 April during his return voyage from Spain, but not before Brockholst had destroyed dispatches he was carrying. Brockholst was confined on order of the British military governor of New York, Lieutenant General James A. Robertson, who feared he might convey important information to Congress if free. Brockholst was also regarded as a potential hostage against the life of Captain Charles Asgill, the British officer chosen for execution in retaliation for the hanging of American officer Joshua Huddy. Brockholst’s cell mate, Sir James, promptly revealed the gist of his conversations to Loyalist Chief Justice William Smith, retailing with some relish an account of the discontents that had riddled the Spanish mission. After efforts to have Brockholst help establish diplomatic contact with Congress failed, the newly arrived Sir Guy Carleton, whose mission was then to promote peace on almost any terms so long as they detached America from France, paroled him. Brockholst then began the study of law under Peter Yates at Albany and launched what was to become a successful legal career.7 Carleton also released Sir James from prison on 6 May. After securing permission from Carleton to go to England, Sir James sailed on the packet that left New York on 13 May.8
Some months after John Jay’s and Sarah Livingston Jay’s families broke the news of Sir James’s capture, Gouverneur Morris wrote, implying that James had defected. Robert R. Livingston, however, told Jay that, while many people attributed James’s seizure and departure for England to “design,” he acquitted James “of everything but imprudence.”9 The reports prompted Jay to assert that if Sir James had “improperly made his Peace with Great Britain,” he would “endeavour to forget that my Father had such a Son.”10
Jay’s instincts were sound. Despite his later professions of steadfast loyalty to the American cause,11 Sir James proved a willful meddler in England. There, on 15 June, two days before the Enabling Act authorizing peace negotiations with the Americans was adopted, he sent Shelburne suggested modifications to it. He urged the British to incorporate the colonies “into one grand body politic on the solid basis of affection and common interest.” More pernicious was his proposal for treating with the assemblies of the separate states and bypassing Congress, a plan long since repudiated and one that would have cut the ground from under Congress’s peace commissioners.12 He also appealed to Washington on behalf of prominent British prisoners of war, first for a Captain Eld of the British guards, a prisoner at Yorktown,13 and then for Charles Asgill.14
Sir James proved himself as much of a nuisance to British officials as he was to the Americans. He refused to disclose any information to Shelburne concerning America until the earl listened to an “idle story about a naval invention.” Shelburne recommended either sending him back to Carleton in New York or, if he refused to go, cutting off his stipend. Having worn out his welcome, Sir James abandoned his ill-timed efforts in England and moved on to the Hague.15
By mid-August, although he had received no letter from him, John Jay was aware that his brother was in Holland and wrote Sir James detailing the suspicions against him. Sir James explained his failure to communicate in a letter to Franklin of 27 October 1782, in which he stated that because his parole did not allow him to go to France, he had refrained from even writing to anyone there. By December, Philip V. B. Livingston had visited the Jays in Paris and reported having seen Sir James. He gave assurances that James had been “grossly misrepresented” and had conducted himself as a “warm american.” This account reduced John Jay’s apprehensions that Sir James had acted improperly.16
1. See Frederick Jay to JJ, 20 Apr., above; RRL to JJ, 9 and 22 May, below, and 17 Sept., ALS, NNC (EJ: 6868); Gouverneur Morris to JJ, 21 May, below, and 6 Aug. 1782, LS, NNC (EJ: 6970); Susannah French Livingston to SLJ, 21 Apr. 1782, ALS, NNC (EJ: 6882); JJUP, 2: 216–17.
2. On Sir James Jay’s dissatisfaction with his treatment on arrival and his stance in the Deane-Lee affair, see Gouverneur Morris to JJ, 16 Aug. 1778, and RRL to JJ, 4 Mar. 1779; for his provision of invisible ink and his role in artillery experiments for the Continental army, see JJ to Washington, 19 Nov. 1778. : 531–32, 532–33nn1–3, 603, 604n3, 547.
3. JJ to George Clinton, 6 May 1780, Dft, NNC (EJ: 7618); , 1: 314–15; , 5: 684–86. See also , 2: 524–40.
4. Sir James claimed to have advanced $20,000 in paper money when it was worth about $7,000 in specie and to have been repaid the money when the value had fallen to about $500 in specie. His request for reimbursement for depreciation amounting to about 6,500 specie dollars plus interest was denied by Congress on 20 Sept. 1781. , 18: 1152, 1153; 21: 1026; , 6: 497–500; James Jay to the President of Congress, 18 July, 4 Sept., and 20 Dec. 1780 and 16 Aug. and 20 Sept. 1781, ALSs, DNA: PCC, item 78, 13: 171–74, 179–82, 211–14, 253–56, 273–76.
During this time Sir James had also been involved to some extent in Benedict Arnold’s treason. Sir James used the family wartime home at Fishkill as his base of operations while serving in the state senate. Around 8–9 Sept. 1780 he stopped off in Haverstraw at the home of Joshua Hett Smith, an intermediary between Major John André and Benedict Arnold. He then traveled on to West Point with Arnold, who was frantically awaiting his wife’s arrival from Philadelphia before making his fateful move. On returning to Fishkill, Sir James dutifully communicated an unspecified request of Arnold’s to Governor Clinton; two days after Sir James’s letter was received, Arnold defected. See James Jay to Arnold, 14 Sept. 1780, ALS, NNC (EJ: 12652); JJUP, 2: 254; and A. B. Hart, ed., The Varick Court of Inquiry (Boston, 1907), 89–91, 96–99. For the New York delegates’ earlier support of Arnold’s plan to become a citizen of New York and establish a settlement there for officers and soldiers who served with him, see their letter to George Clinton of 3 Feb. 1779, : 584, 585n1.
6. William H. W. Sabine, ed., Historical Memoirs of William Smith, 1778–1783 (New York, 1971), 488, 495, 503, 506; New York Royal Gazette, 17 Apr. 1782.
7. Henry Brockholst Livingston to William Livingston, 3 May; to James A. Robertson, 8 May; and to Washington, 16 June 1782, DLC: Washington, ser. 4; JJUP, 2: 255, 259–62; , 3: 504. On the dispatches Brockholst carried, see JJ to the President of Congress, 3 Oct. 1781, above, note 31; and JJ to John Vaughan, 5 Feb. 1782, ALS, PPAmP: Vaughan (EJ: 2562); NNC (EJ: 8160). On Brockholst’s later career, see Gerlad T. Dunne, “Brockholst Livingston,” in The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789–1969, ed. Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel (4 vols.; New York, 1969), 1: 387–98.
8. Sabine, Historical Memoirs of William Smith, 1778–1783, 503, 506. Sir James’s departure for England was noted by William Smith (ibid., 506) and reported in the Freeman’s Journal (Philadelphia) of 22 May and subsequently in other newspapers. See also RRL to JJ, 22 May, below; and JJ’s reply of 13 Aug. 1782, ALS, NHi: Robert R. Livingston (EJ: 829).
9. Gouverneur Morris to JJ, 6 Aug. 1782, LS, NNC (EJ: 6970); RRL to JJ, 17 Sept. 1782, ALS, NNC (EJ: 6868).
10. JJ to Peter Van Schaack, 17 Sept. 1782, DftS, NNC (EJ: 9423); JJ’s Diary of the Peacemaking, at 12 Oct. 1782, AD, NNC (EJ: 13316); , 38: 250.
11. Sir James Jay to JA, 21 Nov. 1782, in which he mentioned that he had received a letter from JJ under cover of a letter from JA. Sir James’s assertion of innocence hardly conforms with evidence (Shelburne to Townshend, [June-July 1782]) that he was receiving a stipend from the British. JJUP, 2: 263, 266.
12. Shelburne to Townshend, [June-July 1782], JJUP, 2: 263.
14. Sir James Jay to Washington, 19 July 1782, ALS, marked “Copy”, DLC: Washington, ser. 4 (EJ: 12491); JJUP, 2: 164–65. The Asgill affair, which escalated to an international incident, arose when Sir Henry Clinton released an artillery captain hailing from Monmouth County, New Jersey, by the name of Joshua Huddy and placed him in the custody of Richard Lippincott, a so-called “refugee” from the same county. On 12 Apr. 1782, Lippincott, reportedly under orders from former New Jersey governor William Franklin, hanged Huddy in reprisal for the death of his Loyalist kinsman Philip White. In response to a memorial from the inhabitants of Monmouth County, Washington demanded that Lippincott or an officer of equivalent rank be handed over for condign punishment. His action was endorsed by a resolution of Congress of 29 Apr. When Clinton declined to comply, Washington directed Brigadier General Moses Hazen to designate by lot “a British Captain who is an unconditional prisoner” for execution in retaliation for the hanging of Huddy. The lot fell on Captain Charles Asgill, member of a prominent aristocratic British family and an officer protected beyond dispute by Cornwallis’s terms of capitulation. When Washington proved adamant, the young man’s mother appealed to the comte de Vergennes, among others. Richard Oswald reported that JJ and BF declined to intervene on the grounds that “the Execution of Huddy was undoubtedly a cruel murder; and for which Lippincott who commanded the Party ought to suffer.” In the end, as a result of intercession by Louis XVI, Congress voted on 7 Nov. that Asgill be released. Washington complied. See RRL to JJ, 9 May, below; Sabine, Historical Memoirs of William Smith, 1778–1783, 500ff; Larry Bowman, “The Court-Martial of Captain Richard Lippincott,” New Jersey History 89 (1971): 23–27; Oswald to Strachey, 31 July, and Townshend to Oswald, 28 Aug. 1782, Cs, UkLPR: FO 95/ 511; and , 5: 462–64, 617–18, 634–36; 6: 64–65.
15. Shelburne to Townshend, [June-July 1782]; Sir James Jay to Townshend, 9 July; Townshend to Oswald, 11 Oct. 1782, JJUP, 2: 263–64, 500–501.
16. Sir James Jay to BF, 27 Oct. 1782, ALS, PHi (EJ: 13401), and JJUP, 2: 265–66; , 38: 250, 361–62, 371–72; JJ to Frederick Jay, 7 Dec. 1782, Dft, NNC (EJ: 6338).