Emerging Revolutionary War welcomes guest writer, historian Kenneth Bancroft


Leesburg, Virginia. Tuesday, July 9, 1776. “…News that the Sanhedrim (1) had declared the
thirteen united Colonies Free and Independent States. That this was intended by the
Northern Colonies from the first, I am well convinced…” (2) These are not the words one
expects when talking about the Declaration of Independence, but to a 26-year-old
entrepreneurial Englishman caught in a revolution that he neither wanted nor supported,
this was the worst news ever. (3)

The Journals of Nicholas Cresswell is an informative source on the Revolutionary War from what could be considered a ‘Tory’ point of view. It is a personal account that shows that the struggle for freedom was not just on the battlefield but also in the streets and homes at the end of the colonial era. Nicholas Cresswell was an outsider from the moment he stepped on American soil in 1774 and heard news of the siege of Boston, noting that the colonists “talk as if they were determined to dispute the matter with the Sword.” (4) For two years, Cresswell observed the American colonies descend into rebellion, “The people here are Liberty mad, nothing but war is thought of.” (5)

When the colonies officially separated, Cresswell felt despair and anger instead of hope.
Cresswell’s intention was to set up life as a farmer, but misfortune and bad timing foiled his
plans. He blamed the “cursed Rebellion” for turning this “earthly paradise to a Hell upon
terra firma.” (6) Constantly under the suspicion of the local committees tasked with enforcing the
Continental Association as a suspected ‘Tory’ spy, he grew to despise the Continental
Congress as vile and hypocritical. “The Congress under the fallacious pretense of nursing
the tender plant, liberty, which was said to thrive so well in American soil, have actually
torn it up by the very root.” (7)

Cresswell could not help himself and always got into political discussions in the bars and
houses of Virginia. “At Dinner had a long dispute with Doctor Jacson about the origin of the
present proceedings…Most of the company agrees that I had the better of the argument.
But never so much embarrassed in my whole life.” (8) He even chided General Washington as a yeoman farmer “Negro-driver” (9) and a and was befuddled that he kept evading General Howe. Ultimately, he did decide that he was a decent General.

In the end, Cresswell decided that Virginia, for all of its bounty, was lost and returning to
England was his only option. After three years of surviving the storm of a revolution, he
made his slip to British lines. While technically not a Loyalist, (10) Cresswell provides critical
details on the otherwise missing narrative of Loyalism in the colonies, especially Virginia.
His last act dramatically involved him in a plot to free English sailors and soldiers from a jail
in Alexandria Virginia. Some of the conspirators were well known merchants in
Alexandria. (11) Thankfully Cresswell’s account exists to inform how a revolution hits the
home front and the profundity of independence at that time.

To learn more about Nicholas Cresswell, visit Kenneth Bancroft’s website at: https://nicholascresswell.wordpress.com/ and see his Rev War Revelry episode on Nicholas Cresswell on our You Tube Channel at: https://youtu.be/fyONRWmy6_I?si=-tIAEmJ69-GHv2BI

1 Cresswell’s derisive term for the Continental Congress. It refers to the Sandedrim, or Jewish Supreme
Council. “Sanhedrim,”McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia, accessed June 2, 2026
https://www.biblicalcyclopedia.com/S/sanhedrim.html. 2 Nicholas Cresswell, The Journals of Nicholas Cresswell, 1774-1777, (North Charleston, South Carolina:
reprinted 2024, 117. Free online version at the Library of Congress https://tile.loc.gov/storageservices/service/gdc/lhbtn/30436/30436.pdf. 3 See: “An Englishman’s Journal of the Revolutionary War: The Journals of Nicholas Cresswell 1774-1777,”
Emerging Revolutionary War, October 20, 2025, https://emergingrevolutionarywar.org/2025/10/20/anenglishmans-journal-of-the-revolutionary-war-the-journals-of-nicholas-cresswell-1774-1777/. 4 Cresswell, 16. 5 Ibid, 77. 6 Ibid, 197.
7 Ibid, 198.
8 Ibid, 99.
9 Ibid, 193. It is interesting that that turn of phrase is famously used by Samuel Johnson, an avowed Tory who
despised what the American colonies were doing. See: Interview, “Gordon S. Wood: How the American
Revolution “infused into our culture our noblest ideals and highest aspirations,” Library of America, accessed
June 7, 2026 https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/639-gordon-s-wood-how-the-american-revolutioninfused-into-our-culture-our-noblest-ideals-and-highest-aspirations/. 10 McGill … Cresswell was more of an immigrant who still had cultural ties to his homeland. 11 William Buckner McGroarty, “Loyalism in Alexandria, Virginia, The Virginia Magazine of History and
Biuography, 52, no. 1 (January 1944), 42-43, accessed March 11, 2026 https://www.jstor.org/stable/4245269.