Chapter 10 - Divertimento

As well as perhaps giving me the key to the Thomas Hickey mystery, Page Smith related something that, while at best peripheral to that story, is nonetheless an entertaining diversion.
In investigating the plot to abduct or assassinate Washington, "A committee appointed by New York’s Provincial Congress took testimony regarding this 'most wicked and dangerous conspiracy'...They met of June 23 to examine a number of witnesses. [One of whom heard, James Clayford] inform a group of conspirators that a young woman named Mary Gibbons 'was thoroughly in their interest'. Mary Gibbons, according to Clayford, was a New Jersey girl 'of whom General Washington was very fond' and whom he 'maintained...very genteelly at a house near Mr. Skinner's at the North River; that he came there very often late at night, in disguise...' Mary Gibbons, who was also mistress to Clayford, reportedly told Clayford everything that Washington confided to her...

"At this point Peter Livingston called a recess in the hearings to allow the members of the committee to consult with Washington 'as he was some way affected by the last witness to apprize him of it and consult with him...' The committee thereupon adjourned until the Third of July...In the meantime, Thomas Hickey...was tried by court-martial...[and]...hanged by the neck.'

"Clayford heatedly denied the charges.

"What will be more striking to the reader are the statements by witnesses that Washington was involved in a liaison with a woman of Mary Gibbons' character. The action of the committee in adjourning the hearings was testimony that the members believed the statements of the witnesses were serious enough to require 'many conferences on the subject with General Washington'. We have of course no notion of what Washington said to the committee. We can assume that he did not take any action to hush up the inquiry as it related to Clayford. Clayford was called to the stand and there once more was charged by witnesses with having been involved with Mary Gibbons. Nothing more was said directly of Washington's own relation with the woman, but the statement was repeated that she had been instrumental in securing papers of Washington's that Clayford had boasted of possessing and of having copied. It seems reasonable to assume that Washington could have prevailed upon the committee to drop the investigation of Clayford if he had tried to do so...it would thoroughly be in character for Washington to put no impediment in the way of the committee's completing its investigation. The deliberations were, after all, secret...[although]...the minutes of the committee were not destroyed.... I have been unable to find out what happened to Clayford; was he in fact executed, or was he sent with the rest of the Tories to Connecticut?

"The final word on the matter of Washington’s relationship with Mrs. Gibbons may well be taken from the introduction to an 1865 edition of the minutes of the trial of the conspirators. 'Respecting the charge against the morality of Washington - often asserted by his contemporaries - whether true or not, and we should be loathe to believe it, it must be recollected, that at that day a laxness of social virtue was not visited with so severe a censure as it is in our own time - and that some of the prominent men of the age were not proof against temptation, we know from the confessions of Hamilton and the intrigues of Burr.'

"Nevertheless, some strange inconsistencies and questions remain...would he have come in disguise with his pockets full of letters and dispatches that Mary Gibbons could have copied?...Could Washington have been ninny enough to confide strategic plans to a woman like Mary Gibbons? If the story of Washington's involvement with Mary Gibbons was false then, then Clayford's story was false and he was not guilty...In this case he had only to say so and, presumably, produce Mary Gibbons to corroborate his defense. It is, in any event, a most puzzling episode."

Now back to the hunt for Hickey.

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