William Wragg: A South Carolina Loyalist Memorialized in Westminster Abbey

In the south choir aisle of Westminster Abbey in London lies a marble memorial to a wealthy South Carolina planter. His name was William Wragg. The inscription on the memorial records his unfortunate fate. He was drowned off the coast of Holland (The Netherlands) in September 1777.

 

The monument, sculpted by Richard Hayward, was erected in 1779 by his "afflicted sister." It is unique in the Abbey. Wragg is the only civilian participant in the American War for Independence to be memorialized there, which holds the remains of many British monarchs, heroes, and cultural icons such as Chaucer, Newton, David Livingstone, Dickens, Darwin, and Stephen Hawking. 

The Abbey contains the remains of two British army officers who participated in the Revolutionary War, Major John Andre, who the Patriots hanged as a spy, and General John Burgoyne, who lost the pivotal Battle of Saratoga in 1777. 

William Wragg was born in Charleston (then Charles Town) in 1714, son of Samuel and Marie (Dubose). Shortly after his birth his merchant father purchased a large plantation, Ashley Barony. 

At the age of four William was subjected to a traumatic experience. He was accompanying his father on a trading voyage in May 1718 when their ship, the Crowley, was captured by pirates blockading Charleston Harbor. 

The pirates were commanded by none other than Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard. In battle, he was a frightful figure, famous for putting lighted fuses (slow matches) in his beard, and carrying several loaded pistols during attacks. 

Teach crammed all 80 of the Crowley's passengers and crew into the hold of his flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge. He used them as hostages to demand a ransom. It was an unusual ransom, to say the least: medicines for syphilis, malaria, and wounds. William Wragg's father, Samuel, volunteered to go ashore and procure a medicine chest. 

Teach refused to let Samuel go because his wealth and status made him too valuable a hostage. He chose another hostage for the task. Several days passed. No medicines arrived. Teach threatened to kill Samuel and loot poorly defended Charleston if his demand was not met. 

The Charleston authorities finally sent a large consignment of medicines. Blackbeard put the hostages ashore, but not before stripping them of most of their clothing. They had to walk a long distance through the woods to town. Blackbeard was killed later that year in a naval action along the coast of North Carolina

Having survived his encounter with Blackbeard, young William embarked on another adventure several years later. His parents sent him to England to be educated. He attended Westminster School, Oxford University, and the Middle Temple, where he studied law. He was admitted to the English bar in 1733.  

After practicing law for some years, Wragg returned to South Carolina. His father died in 1750, making him one of the wealthiest men in the colony, with several plantations and more than 250 enslaved laborers. He soon became involved in politics and in 1753 was appointed to the governor's royal council. [Image; William Wragg by Jeremiah Theus]

Wragg proved to be a staunch advocate of the prerogatives of the council and the British Crown against the pretensions of Commons House of Assembly. He was so outspoken that Royal Governor Henry Lyttleton removed him from the council in 1757 to appease the Assembly. Wragg was elected to the Assembly the next year and served until 1768. He resigned, he said, due to the Assembly's increasing opposition to British rule. 

As the disputes between the Crown and the colonies led to more extreme measures on both sides, Wragg remained outspokenly loyal to the British government. Yet he refused offers of royal office, declaring he did not want to profit from his loyalty.  

In 1775 he refused to declare allegiance to the rebel cause by signing a document called The Association. His interrogators, many of them old friends, asked why he would not join them. He replied, 

“I’d despise myself if I subscribed to an opinion contrary to the dictates of my conscience. I have no hostile intentions toward you gentlemen, but I believe the logical outcome of your current measures will be an attempt to separate from the mother country.” 

The gentlemen said he would be left alone if he signed the oath of allegiance to the Patriot cause. Wragg then asked, "What kind of supporter would I be if I signed this document under duress?"  

The de facto Provincial Government of South Carolina ordered Wragg confined to his plantation. Two years later, after he had refused to sign another oath of allegiance, the state government banished him from South Carolina. Leaving his wife and daughters behind, he boarded the ship Commerce for Amsterdam, with only his son Billy and Tom, an enslaved servant, as companions. 

The ship foundered in a storm off the coast of the Netherlands. Wragg drowned trying to save his son. Tom, however, managed to save Billy and himself. The Westminster memorial depicts them clinging to a piece of wreckage, with the sinking vessel behind them. 

Another Loyalist, George Milligen, said of Wragg that "he would have been an ornament to Sparta or Rome in their most virtuous days." 

Next time you are in Westminster Abbey, check out the Wragg memorial! 

Further Reading:

John Drayton, Memoirs of the American Revolution 2 vols., Charleston, 1821. 

The Papers of Henry Laurens. 16 vols., Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1972-2003. Volumes dealing with the 1760s and 1770s.

William Wragg | Westminster Abbey (westminster-abbey.org)

Wragg, William | South Carolina Encyclopedia (scencyclopedia.org)

Report by George Milligen, Surgeon to the Garrison for His Majesty's Forces in South Carolina, dated 15 September 1775. National Archives, Kew CO_5_396_037.pdf

  

London’s Execution Dock: Captain Kidd and All That

On May 23, 1701, a formal procession escorted a forlorn prisoner from the Marshalsea Prison in Southwark to London Bridge. The procession was headed by a group of officials, one of whom carried a silver oar before him. The prisoner followed behind in a cart, accompanied by a man in a white frock carrying a rope. A large and noisy crowd of curious folk took up the rear.   

After crossing the bridge, they turned right and marched along the north bank of the Thames to the bustling port area of Wapping, a land of docks, wharves, warehouses, shops, inns, and "other houses" catering to the needs of ships, merchants, and sailors. 

The procession's destination was Execution Dock. Their mission was to hang the prisoner, the infamous pirate Captain William Kidd. Historians may and do disagree about the justice of Kidd’s conviction, but no one doubts how he exited this vale of tears. 

From the scaffold Kidd made a long and rambling speech protesting his innocence. The prison chaplain attributed his words to being "inflamed with drink," which had made his mind "unfit for the great work, now or never to be performed by him." 

At a signal the executioner, pushed Kidd off the scaffold. The rope broke and he fell to the ground still conscious. The chaplain rejoiced at this second opportunity to exhort Kidd to repentance, and claimed to have succeeded. The executioner launched Kidd into eternity a second time. This time the rope held.

Kidd may have been the most famous pirate executed at Wapping, but he was far from the only one. Hundreds of others, mostly forgotten, shared the same fate over the four centuries of Execution Dock's existence. (Image: William Kidd)

The gallows was erected on the shore close to the low-tide mark. This location was chosen to emphasize that the pirates' crimes were committed under the jurisdiction of the Lord High Admiral. After pirates were hung, they were left to be submerged by the incoming tide, then reappear in ghoulish fashion, for several tidal periods. (Image: Execution Dock, Rotherhithe, with St. Mary's Church in background)

The bodies were generally removed after three tides. Some were buried in an unmarked grave. Many were sent for dissection at Surgeon's Hall. Notorious pirates were often displayed in chains in a metal harness or cage, their bodies covered in tar to preserve them as long as possible. 

Kidd was displayed on a gibbet at Tilbury Point on the lower reaches of the Thames, where his body would have been viewed by thousands of sailors on ships plying the river. (Image: Kidd's body hanging in chains at Tilbury)

The peak of pirate activity in Atlantic waters occurred years after Kidd's execution, between about 1714 and 1726. During that period over 400 people were hanged for piracy. It became common practice to hang scores of pirates at a time, often whole crews, as a deterrent. Some would be spared if they could prove that they were coerced into joining the pirates.

Mass hangings often took place in colonial locations. In Charleston, South Carolina in 1718, Stede Bonnet , "the Gentleman Pirate," was hanged at low tide along with 34 of his crew. In 1723, Bartholmew Roberts and 54 of his crew were hanged at Cape Coast Castle on the coast of West Africa. 

Though less well known today than Kidd or the infamous Blackbeard, who once held Charleston, South Carolina to ransom, "Black Bart" Roberts was the most successful of all the pirates in terms of numbers of prizes he captured. 

The exact location of London's Execution Dock remains a matter of debate. Different authors locate it at several points along Wapping's shore, somewhere between two extremely old pubs, The Prospect of Whitby and The Town of Ramsgate. 

In between them another, more modern pub, claims to be the true location. It is aptly named The Captain Kidd. All of the pubs are excellent locations for sitting with a drink and ruminating on the time, not so long ago, when Execution Dock was in "full swing." (Image: The Prospect of Whitby, with its gallows)  

Further Reading: David Cordingly, Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates (1996)