Americans at the Abbey

Major André (1750–1780) 

One of the most dramatic connections between America and Westminster Abbey may be found in the nave. Memorialised – and later buried – in the Abbey is artist, poet and spymaster Major John André. André’s 18th-century story is intertwined with Hamilton characters Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, King George, and with the notorious American traitor Benedict Arnold. It all culminates in a tragic trial and hanging that shook both America and Britain during the Revolution. 

Born in 1750, Major John André came from humble origins. His parents were emigrants to London seeking religious freedom, his father from Switzerland and his mother from France. Young, handsome, multilingual and talented, he took his inheritance, purchased a commission in the British army in 1771, and quickly moved up through the ranks. Defector Benedict Arnold agreed to weaken the defences at West Point, an essential stronghold on the Hudson River, for an easy British victory. André agreed to sail up the Hudson to negotiate his defection and collect maps and intelligence.  

He had been cautioned how to avoid being taken for a spy, but when his escape arrangements fell through, he was forced to don a civilian disguise to try and smuggle the information back through American lines. He was captured, the West Point plans found on his person, and he was imprisoned. He was convicted of espionage and condemned to death. In a letter of 1st October 1780 to General Washington (the scene is represented on the relief sculpture that fronts his monument), he requested a firing squad but was condemned to death by hanging.

Washington, who fed André from his own table during his captivity, reportedly signed the order with tears in his eyes. Hamilton, who, like Lafayette, supported Major André’s request, said: ‘never perhaps did any man suffer death with more justice, or deserve it less’. André was only 30 years old at the time of his execution. 

British interest in Major André and his execution was intense. His youth, bravery and death in service of England compelled attention. George III authorised a gift and annual pension for André’s mother as well as the creation of a monument for him in the Abbey. The monument – which featured both the mourning figure of Britannia and a lamenting lion – remembers a young man ‘universally beloved and esteemed by the army in which he served and lamented even by his foes’. 

In 1821, his body was disinterred from its burial site in America and, at the instigation of the Duke of York, moved to England for burial in the Abbey, the body being transported in a wooden box which is still part of the Abbey’s collection. Now little-remembered in Britain, André’s life is tied up in America’s origins.

Martin Luther King Jr (1929–1968) 

In the early 1990s, the Abbey Chapter accepted the suggestion of Canon Anthony Harvey that the ten empty niches above the Great West Door house the statues of ten contemporary martyrs. Martin Luther King Jr was chosen as one of these ‘modern martyrs’. 

King was justly renowned as an American pastor, theologian and civil rights activist, but he also had a significant impact on the UK. In 1961, he appeared on the BBC’s Face to Face TV programme and preached at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church in the West End. In 1964, en route to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, King preached in front of a packed congregation at St Paul’s Cathedral. 

The Times extolled his appearance at St Paul’s: ‘He was actor, poet and preacher all at the same time’. Afterwards at a St Paul’s press conference, King warned that England needed to pay attention to racism and xenophobia, lest those problems become as damaging as those in the States. A few months before his death, King received an Honorary Doctorate of Civil Law from Newcastle University. 

The Abbey’s statue of King, sculpted by Tim Crawley in French limestone, depicts him in a preaching robe. On 4th April 2018, the 50th anniversary of King’s death, the Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend John Hall remarked that: ‘…we hope again to learn from the example of Martin Luther King and to commit ourselves afresh to keeping the dream alive of justice for all peoples under God and of peace in the world.’  

Mary Endicott (1864–1957) 

George Peabody (1795–1869) 

This noted American industrialist and philanthropist is commemorated by an intriguing stone in the central aisle near the Great West Door. 

George Peabody, born in 1785, was one of seven children in a poor family in Massachusetts. His experience of deprivation drove him towards business success and to give back to those who found themselves in similar circumstances. Peabody got his start in dry goods and then moved into banking, where his partnership with Junius Morgan led to the creation of the JP Morgan Company. Peabody’s fame came not from his great wealth, but from what he was willing to do with it. As the Abbey memorial notes, he prayed for the chance to do ‘some great good to my fellow men’. 

In 1837, Peabody relocated to London, where he worked in finance and helped cement the international financial reputation of his young nation. He created the Peabody Trust in 1862 with an initial donation of £150,000 ‘for the benefit of the Poor and Needy of London’, followed by other major gifts and a bequest upon his death to help create affordable housing for poor Londoners. To date, the Peabody Trust has built around 108,000 homes and houses approximately 220,000 residents in London. 

While in England, Peabody was an advocate for Anglo-American relations and was the first American to receive London’s Freedom of the City. His statue – the first in the City of London commemorating an American citizen – was unveiled in 1869 and today sits near The Royal Exchange. 

Peabody is often considered the first modern philanthropist. In addition to his major gifts in London, Peabody’s largesse benefitted schools and universities in the American south, as well as Harvard University, Yale University, the city of Baltimore in Maryland, and many other institutions. His total charitable donations are equivalent to around £186 million in today’s money. 

Upon Peabody’s death, the Dean of Westminster recommended – and Queen Victoria approved – the gift of temporary interment in the Abbey as a measure of Britain’s regard for the man and his gifts to British life. An etching in the 20th November 1869 edition of The Illustrated London News shows a substantial gathering for the ‘Funeral of Mr. Peabody in Westminster Abbey’ and Peabody’s death and interment were international news.

But Peabody’s remains were only in the Abbey for a short time; as the monument indicates: ‘Here were deposited from Nov 12 to Dec 11 1869 the remains of George Peabody then removed to his native country and buried at Danvers now Peabody in Massachusetts.’ Prime Minister William Gladstone ordered the British dreadnought HMS Monarch to return Peabody’s remains to the United States, where his will dictated that he be buried in his birthplace. 

Today, George Peabody is recognised by memorials in London and across the United States, and his remains are interred in Harmony Grove Cemetery in Salem, Massachusetts. 

Henry James (1843–1916) 

One of three American writers memorialised in Poets’ Corner is fiction writer, critic and memoirist Henry James, author of The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, and The Golden Bowl. Renowned for psychological insight, narrative experimentation and a deep interest in the contrasts between American and European life, James was born to a wealthy family in New York City but spent much of his life in England and on the continent, where he met Charles Dickens, George Eliot, John Ruskin, Émile Zola, Ivan Turgenev and many other writers, artists and thinkers. 

Today, James is included in anthologies of American and British literature, meaning that both literary traditions claim him – and teach him – as their own. Certainly, James had substantial American ties and influences – he knew and was mentored by the realist novelist William Dean Howells and the editors of The Nation and The Atlantic Monthly.

The anthologies have it right – Henry James is an American and British writer who learned from and contributed to both traditions, and he cannot be understood without the details on his gravestone in Cambridge, Massachusetts: ‘Citizen of two countries. Interpreter of his generation on both sides of the sea.’ James’ memorial in the Abbey, white letters on black marble, commemorates his long connection with England and his dual literary citizenship. 

Franklin D Roosevelt (1882–1945) 

Near the Great West Door is the first memorial to a foreign head of state erected in the Abbey. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is remembered for his stewardship of the United States through the Great Depression and his expert guidance of his own country and partnership with the Allies during the Second World War.

His friendship with Churchill and conviction that Nazi Germany must be defeated led him to shepherd policies supporting Britain in its war efforts, among them the 1940 transfer of 50 ageing destroyers to England in exchange for 99-year leases on British military bases. These actions firmly aligned the United States alongside the United Kingdom in the conduct of the war.  

The Abbey’s monument, sculpted by Herbert William Palliser in grey marble, depicts the American eagle emblem with a wreath of oak leaves. Mrs Roosevelt, Prime Minister Attlee and former Prime Minister Churchill were present at its unveiling in 1948. 

Greg Garrett is the author of 30 books and is the Carole Hanks Professor of Literature and Culture at Baylor University, as well as Canon Theologian at the American Cathedral in Paris, France.