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William Lee
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 William LeeClick for larger view (opens new window) William Lee belonged to the famous Revolutionary generation of Virginia Lees that included brothers Thomas Ludwell, Richard Henry, Francis Lightfoot, and Arthur. After being trained for a career in business he successfuly established himself as a merchant in London, where he became a keen observer of revolutionary politics and held public offices. Congress appointed him to various European diplomatic posts, and is most remembered for the role he and his brother Arthur played in the Silas Deane affair. William Lee was born in 1739 at Stratford Hall in Westmoreland County, Virginia. William Lee’s parents were Thomas Lee, president of the Virginia Council of State and the builder of Stratford Hall, and his wife Hannah Harrison Ludwell (1701–1750), the daughter of Hannah Harrison and Philip Ludwell, Jr., of Green Spring. Perhaps the most wealthy and powerful individual in Virginia, Thomas Lee was the principal founder of the Ohio Company and the father of a Revolutionary dynasty that included not only William but his brothers Arthur, Francis Lightfoot, and Richard Henry Lee. Not much is known about William Lee’s schooling other than that he was along with some of his siblings tutored by a Scots clergyman named Craig. Instead of attending college he learned business from his elder brother Philip (“Colonel Phil”) Ludwell Lee, the inheritor of Stratford, between 1763 and 1768. To supplement that training William for a while he served as secretary for a group of land speculators calling themselves the Mississippi Company. On 7 March 1769 William Lee married Hannah Philippa Ludwell (d. 1784), a rich cousin whose inheirtance included Green Spring, the 7,000-acre estate of Governor Sir William Berkeley that had passed into the Ludwell family through the marriage of Berkeley’s widow, Lady Frances Culpeper Berkeley (b. 1634), to Philip Ludwell, the Virginia colony’s Secretary of State and later governor of Albemarle. Hannah and William had several children, three of whom survived to adulthood, William Ludwell (1775–1803), Portia (1777–1840), who married William Hodgson, and Cornelia (1780–1818), who married John Hopkins. In addition, while in London Lee brought into his family and educated the two eldest sons of his brother Richard Henry, Thomas and Ludwell. William and Hannah’s entire married life was spent in England, for she died there while Lee was making preparations in Virginia for their removal to Green Spring. William Lee went to London in 1769 to open up a commercial house. He hoped to make his fortune, operating in part in the name of the Lee family, by handling trade for aristocratic Virginians. Once in England Lee entered into a tobacco trading partnership with Stephen Sayre and Dennys De Berdts, a father and son team that soon drew Lee into the political arena—all became ardent supporters of John Wilkes (1725–1798), the English radical, politician, and journalist. After a somewhat shaky beginning, Lee, with the assistance of his wife Hannah, built up a respected and lucrative business, operating out of their London home at 33 Tower Hill. While in England Lee left his Virginia estate in the hands of overseers, who were in turn loosely watched over by Lee’s brother Francis Lightfoot. Yes, William Lee and his business partner Stephen Sayre were both elected Sheriffs of London in July 1773. In 1775 Lee also was elected an Alderman of the City of London, a post granted for life. The only American ever to hold that distinction, Lee resigned the office in 1780. Lee made a bid for a seat in Parliament in 1774, but lost the election. After his return to Virginia in 1783 Lee was elected to the Virginia Senate. William Lee represented the new U.S. government in several official capacities while in Europe. Early in 1777 Lee was named, along with Thomas Morris, co-agent for the Continental Congress’s European business interests. (Both Lee and Morris had brothers on the commercial committee, which made the appointments—Richard Henry Lee and Robert Morris.) William went to Paris (taking along his family) in June 1777 to look into Congress’s accounts, and after finding them in a state of confusion he, with the help of brother Arthur, succeeded in casting doubts about how Congress’s representative, Silas Deane, was handling his secret mission to France on behalf of Congress. Meanwhile, Congress had appointed Lee commissioner to Prussia and Austria, in May 1777, but Lee quickly discovered that neither country was receptive to diplomacy. Lee then turned to Holland hoping to negotiate a treaty of commerce, the draft of which eventually became the cause of hostilities between the Dutch and the British. Congress eventually dismissed William from all his diplomatic posts as a result of the fall-out from the Silas Deane affair.
After being appointed the Continental Congress’s joint commercial agent for its European affairs, William Lee traveled to Paris in June 1777, where to his dismay he found the financial accounts a chaotic mess and Congress’s representatives unwilling to cooperate with him. William began to suspect foul play on the part of Silas Deane (1737–1789), a Connecticut lawyer and former delegate to the Continental Congress whom Congress had sent to France as a special secret ambassador charged with procuring men, arms, supplies, and loans for the American war effort. Lee accused Deane of profiting illegally from his mission and began to write home about it, directing his letters to his brother Richard Henry Lee, one of Congress’s most powerful members. William and his brother Arthur eventually went so far as to accuse Deane of treason and finally succeeded in stirring up so much trouble that Congress recalled Deane and held an official inquiry into his actions while in France. In his own defense Deane accused Lee brothers William, Arthur, Richard Henry, and Francis Lightfoot and others of malfeasance and drew further ire upon himself—including that of Tom Paine, who was immensely popular at the time and wrote an essay in defense of the Lees—although he did succeed in having Congress dismiss William and Arthur from their posts in 1779. In a sense, William Lee could be said to have started the war between Great Britain and the Netherlands in 1780. Lee with Dutch merchant Jan de Neufville co-drafted a commercial treaty between the United States and the Netherlands that was discovered by the British when they captured a vessel carrying former Continental Congress president Henry Laurens to the Netherlands on a diplomatic mission. Although no treaty was ever ratified, or even seriously negotiated by the governments of the U.S. and the Netherlands, the draft treaty was used by Great Britain as an excuse for war in December 1780. William Lee inherited no slaves from his father’s estate but when he married his cousin Hannah Philippa Ludwell in 1769 a number of slaves came under his control. After the Revolutionary War Lee’s attitude toward the slaves was to treat them “as human beings whom Heaven has placed under my care not only to minister to my luxury, but to contribute to their happiness.” As a result, Lee endeavored to apprentice his slaves to learn trades. After retiring to Green Spring in 1783 William Lee lived for about a dozen years, dying on 27 June 1795. Lee began going blind about 1785, and the last few years of his life he was completely dependent upon his son, William Ludwell Lee. William Lee was buried alongside his Ludwell ancestors at the Jamestown churchyard burial grounds. Yes, William Lee: Militia Diplomat, by Alonzo T. Dill (Virginia Independence Bicentennial Commission, 1976) is a good short overview of William Lee’s life and political career. |
