The Case of Beverly Robinson [Editorial Note]
The Case of Beverly Robinson
Editorial Note
The appearance of Beverly Robinson before the Committee for Detecting Conspiracies is of particular interest, demonstrating as it does John Jay’s tact and restraint in dealing with an important man suspected of Loyalist leanings. Jay knew that Robinson’s oldest son had left to join the British, and while not making any effort to conceal his own knowledge, he refrained from cajoling or threatening the witness. Instead, he granted him a generous amount of time to clarify his position.1
Born into a prominent Virginia family in 1721, Beverly Robinson had settled by about 1749 in New York City, where he became a merchant in partnership with Oliver De Lancey.2 His marriage to Susanna Philipse, a cousin of Sarah Livingston Jay’s mother, made him a member of New York’s aristocracy and put him in possession of a considerable fortune. About 1764 he and his family removed to a part of Dutchess County that is now in Putnam County. He lived thereafter at Beverly, the mansion he built across the Hudson River from West Point, cultivating a large farm and operating grist- and sawmills and potash works on a 60,000-acre estate on which there were 146 tenants. His wealth and his services as militia colonel, judge, and founder and principal benefactor of St. Philip’s Church in the Highlands established him without a rival as the leading personage in the area.3
On 22 February 1777, in his testimony before the committee, Beverly Robinson appeared anxious to remain neutral, but it is difficult to believe that he could have ended up as anything except an active Loyalist. His zealous Anglicanism gave him a predisposition to favor the Crown, and several of the people closest to him became avowed Tories. Both of his brothers-in-law, Frederick Philipse and Roger Morris, rejected the American cause, and so did his former business partner, Oliver De Lancey.4 Beverly Robinson opposed sending Dutchess County delegates to the provincial congress in 1777, and he remained inactive and publicly uncommitted as long as possible after the Revolution started.
Robinson was still maintaining his neutralist posture when the committee examined him, but very shortly thereafter he began to espouse his true position. On 4 March he wrote Jay that he was going down to Colonel Philipse’s to discuss the state of the country and that he might or might not return. Upon receipt of that letter, which was forwarded to him by Egbert Benson, Jay wrote the 21 March letter to Robinson’s wife that appears below. In it he shows his unwillingness to lose so respected a man to the enemy without one last attempt to persuade him to reconsider.
Jay’s friendly warning arrived too late to have any effect, because Beverly Robinson had already started to raise the Loyal American Regiment in New York City. He served as its colonel during the balance of the conflict and played a role in the negotiation between Major André and Benedict Arnold. Robinson’s entire estate, valued at £79,980, was forfeited under the terms of the Act of Attainder dated 22 October 1779, and he and his wife arrived in England in 1783 as penniless political refugees. They remained there permanently, and ultimately the British government awarded him £17,000 as partial reimbursement for his losses.
1. JJ had learned from a report received by the committee on 15 Feb. 1777 that Beverly Robinson Jr. had gone to New York City. Later that year the young man became a captain in his father’s Loyalist regiment, eventually achieving a lieutenant colonelcy. , 1: 123, 283; Crary, The Price of Loyalty, 149–50. Enoch Crosby’s 15 Oct. 1832 description of his career as a spy, discussed above, depicted the manner in which he broke up Robinson’s attempt in 1777 to recruit soldiers for the Loyal American Regiment.
2. Oliver De Lancey (1718–85) enjoyed a successful career as a merchant until June 1776, when he joined General Howe on Staten Island. He raised three Loyalist regiments, was commissioned a brigadier general, and served as commanding officer on Long Island. All of his estates were confiscated, and he died in England. Margherita Hamm, Famous Families of New York (2 vols.; New York, 1901), 1: 94–95.
3. NN: American Loyalists’ Claims Transcripts, 43: 203–7. A biography of Beverly Robinson can be found in E. Clowes Chorley, History of St. Philip’s Church in the Highlands, Garrison, New York (New York, 1912), 117–54. Edwin R. Purple, Contributions to the History of Ancient Families of New Amsterdam and New York (New York, 1881), 93–98, provides genealogical information about the Robinson and Philipse families.
4. Roger Morris (1727–94), a British officer who had served in the Braddock campaign, married Mary Philipse, with whom he lived at what is now known as the Morris-Jumel Mansion in New York City. Before her marriage, she had caught the eye of George Washington when he paid two visits to New York in 1756, staying both times with his friend Beverly Robinson. The Morris properties were all confiscated in 1779, and Colonel Morris and his wife spent their last years in England. Colonel Frederick Philipse (1720–85) was the proprietor of Philipse Manor. In August 1776, Washington ordered him removed to Connecticut because of his dubious loyalty, and Philipse was not allowed to return to his home until December 1776. Ibid., 96–97; , 2: 531.