It is only an incident, I confess, but it is of a character to furnish a scene for the "mind's eye," an incident which, though it could never occupy a very prominent place upon the canvass, might prove itself a fine auxiliary, spreading a sweet and tender effect over the more distant parts of the picture. There are many similar events which seem fated to be lost in the rapid changes of feeling and the constant revolutions of business; many too that would give interest to the tale, and pathos to the ballad. It is not generally known that some of the élite of the English nobility served in this country during the revolution, but the fact may be ascertained by referring to the biographical notices which from time to time appear in foreign publications.
Many gallant young men, who were the only hope of their families, and made their first essay in arms against their transatlantic brethren, were doomed to fall at the onset of their career.
Some of the choicest blood of English chivalry bedewed the plains of Brandywine, and valour, birth and merit were alike an unavailing sacrifice in the struggle at Saratoga.
There was one distinguished family in England, which lost its head at this memorable battle, and in which the voice of weeping was heard upon the advent of its melancholy tidings. I allude to that of Sir Francis Carr Clerke, the aid de camp of general Burgoyne, who, although he possessed hereditary honours, and a fair estate in Lancashire, was at the age of twenty nine mortally wounded in the wilds of America, and now sleeps in an obscure grave near that of the unfortunate Frazer.
Several of our prints have lately copied an obituary of the Earl of Balcarras, who was also at Saratoga and had two remarkable rencontres with general Arnold, the one, when at the head of the British Light Infantry, he defended himself against his desperate valour, and the other when he subsequently refused to recognise him as an acquaintance at the court of St. James, even upon the introduction of the King himself.
He was one of the most important witnesses examined in relation to the military conduct of his commander, and his testimony is the most interesting part of the celebrated narrative of the Expedition. He is said to have been to the last, frank, communicate and hospitable, and to have abounded in anecdotes of his American campaign.
Perhaps he had not forgotten, and if he had, certain old matrons of Williamstown in Massachusetts have not, a scene which took place at the village inn, upon his march to Cambridge as a prisoner of war, and when for the gratification of female curiosity, Lord Napier, or himself, mounted a chair, and was exhibited by his comrades, notwithstanding his muddy and threadbare habiliments, as a specimen of a "real lord."
Be this as it may, we all know there is, or very lately was in existence a house in Wall street at New York, which, was long pointed out to the curious as the head quarters of the Duke of Clarence,[2] when he was a stripling officer under the command of Admiral Digby, and it would not be difficult to seat ones-self in the very same window seat in Brooklyn whence the veritable Earl of Caithness was wont with "half an eye" to watch the Union flying at the flag staff in the Fort, or "vertere in se," turn his glance upon his own regiment quartered on his own side of the river.
The late Earl of Harrington was also in America, a captain in the 29th foot, and a supernumerary aid of general Burgoyne. He was very soon exchanged, and in two years after, we heard of his surrender at discretion to the fair heiress of Brompton park. He has recently been most distinguished as the father of that eminent fop, Lord Petersham, the envy of Bond street and the pride of the pave. This sort of notoriety, though not exactly for the same reason was that which immortalized "Philip Thicknesse, father of Lord Audley." The celebrated Lady Harriet Ackland, although we never could forgive her second marriage with Mr. Brudenell, (chaplain to the artillery) upon the major's being killed in a duel in England, has rendered herself for ever famous. The exhibition of her devotion to him amid the horrors of battle, and the tedious hours of sickness, has been celebrated by the classic pen of Burgoyne, as a "picture of the spirit, the enterprize, and the distress of romance realized, and regulated, upon the chaste and sober principles of rational love and connubial duty."
The baroness of Reidesel will also be long remembered, from the display of similar qualities; but there were many, very many others, some of them of equal rank, whose misfortunes in America had no such happy termination, who were exposed to similar privations, and encountered similar hardships, yet were fated to return no more to their native land.