THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 85 



giving them aid and counsel for the next campaign 

 against the Americans. He went so far as to write 

 out for them a detailed plan of operations. After the 

 disastrous result of the campaign of 1777 the brothers 

 did not wish to disclose the secret of their peculiar 

 obligations to such an adviser. Lee's document re- 

 mained in possession of their private secretary, Sir 

 Henry Strachey, who carried it home to England next 

 year, and carefully stowed it away with other papers 

 in the library at Sutton Court, his fine, hospitable old 

 country house in Somersetshire. There, after a slum- 

 ber of eighty years, it was found and perused by intelli- 

 gent eyes, 1 and it has since found its way into the 

 Lenox Library in New York. The paper is in Lee's 

 handwriting, folded, and indorsed as " Mr. Lee's Plan 

 29th March 1777." The indorsement is in the 

 handwriting of Sir Henry Strachey. In this paper 

 Lee expressly abandons the American cause, enters 

 " sincerely and zealously " (those are his words) into 

 the plans of the British commanders, and recommends 

 an expedition to Chesapeake Bay essentially similar to 

 that which was undertaken in the following summer. 

 This elaborate paper throws some light upon the 

 movements of General Howe, in July and August, 

 1777, which were formerly regarded as so strange. 

 Instead of moving straight up the Hudson River, to 

 cooperate with Burgoyne in accordance with the care- 

 fully studied plan of the ministry, General Howe 

 wasted the summer in a series of movements which 

 landed him at the end of August fifty miles south of 

 Philadelphia, with Washington's army in front of him, 

 while the gallant Burgoyne, three hundred miles away, 



1 Magazine of American History, III. 450. 



