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Behind the sale of an 18th-century gold box in New York today lies one of the saddest love stories of the American Revolution.
When the box, embossed with the arms of New York, was presented with the freedom of the city in 1773 to Thomas Gage he was the commander-in-chief of the British Army in North America and was deeply in love with his American-born wife.
Gen Thomas Gage, Margaret Gage and the 18th-century gold box
Two years later, the general was a broken man, his career was in tatters and he was estranged from Margaret Gage for ever after she put the land of her birth before her husband and handed his military secrets to Paul Revere, the most famous of all the revolutionaries.
Gage and Margaret Kemble, from Brunswick, New Jersey, had been devoted, with 11 children and large estates in America and England.
Their marriage fell apart on April 18, 1775, the day Gage sent 800 men to Concord, Massachussetts, to destroy arms caches and to seize the leading revolutionaries Samuel Adams and John Hancock.
But Revere rode through Lexington, Massachusetts, warning of Gage's plans to attack, with the cry, "The British are coming, the British are coming".
Gage was convinced his wife had leaked the details to Revere. "My confidence has been betrayed," he wrote to a fellow officer, Lord Percy, "for I had communicated my design to one person only [apart from you]."
Humiliated, Gage turned over his command to Gen William Howe and banished his wife to England. He followed six months later, but the couple, who were once painted by John Singleton Copley, a leading artist of the period, never spoke again.
The box, valued at £285,000 by Sotheby's, is being sold by the family of the Earl of Rosebery. A previous Lord Rosebery, prime minister from 1894-95, bought the box for £50 from an antique dealer who got it from Gage's descendant, Viscount Gage.
The document from the mayor of New York granting the freedom of the city, originally kept in the box, is at Firle Place, East Sussex, the seat of the present Viscount Gage.
"The box has been kept in a safe for 100 years," said Lord Rosebery's heir, Lord Dalmeny. "I hope it will end up in a New York museum, or bought and given back to the Gages and reunited with the original document."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...ox20.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/01/20/ixworld.html
maximus otter
When the box, embossed with the arms of New York, was presented with the freedom of the city in 1773 to Thomas Gage he was the commander-in-chief of the British Army in North America and was deeply in love with his American-born wife.
Gen Thomas Gage, Margaret Gage and the 18th-century gold box
Two years later, the general was a broken man, his career was in tatters and he was estranged from Margaret Gage for ever after she put the land of her birth before her husband and handed his military secrets to Paul Revere, the most famous of all the revolutionaries.
Gage and Margaret Kemble, from Brunswick, New Jersey, had been devoted, with 11 children and large estates in America and England.
Their marriage fell apart on April 18, 1775, the day Gage sent 800 men to Concord, Massachussetts, to destroy arms caches and to seize the leading revolutionaries Samuel Adams and John Hancock.
But Revere rode through Lexington, Massachusetts, warning of Gage's plans to attack, with the cry, "The British are coming, the British are coming".
Gage was convinced his wife had leaked the details to Revere. "My confidence has been betrayed," he wrote to a fellow officer, Lord Percy, "for I had communicated my design to one person only [apart from you]."
Humiliated, Gage turned over his command to Gen William Howe and banished his wife to England. He followed six months later, but the couple, who were once painted by John Singleton Copley, a leading artist of the period, never spoke again.
The box, valued at £285,000 by Sotheby's, is being sold by the family of the Earl of Rosebery. A previous Lord Rosebery, prime minister from 1894-95, bought the box for £50 from an antique dealer who got it from Gage's descendant, Viscount Gage.
The document from the mayor of New York granting the freedom of the city, originally kept in the box, is at Firle Place, East Sussex, the seat of the present Viscount Gage.
"The box has been kept in a safe for 100 years," said Lord Rosebery's heir, Lord Dalmeny. "I hope it will end up in a New York museum, or bought and given back to the Gages and reunited with the original document."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...ox20.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/01/20/ixworld.html
maximus otter