A Loyalist under House Arrest

Having failed to reach the British Army in New York, Cresswell spent a miserable autumn and winter of 1776/1777 in northern Virginia, often arguing with his host, James Kirk, a Patriot and the only man who had ensured the Englishman could keep clothes on his back and a roof over his head.  Cresswell’s loyalist proclivities and extensive travels were widely known and on November 28, three men of the Committee of Safety in Alexandria “waited on me and informed me that the committee did not think it prudent to let me go out of the Country at this time and hoped that I would give  my word of honour not to depart this Colony for three months.  Otherwise they would confine me.  I was obliged to do the first as the lesser evil of the two.  They were polite enough not to search my chest.”[i]  Depressed as ever and suspecting Kirk of arranging the entire affair in order to keep him in Virginia, Cresswell did what he usually did when he was unhappy.  He got drunk.

Continue reading “The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, Part 4” →