“Hang Together” on the Restoration Stage

Yesterday I alluded to a Professor Buzzkill podcast as my spur to look for the statement “We must hang together or separately” in a letter by the Virginia politician Carter Braxton.

That same episode from 2022 stated that the “hang together” wordplay can be traced further back to “John Dryden’s 1717 book, The Spanish Fryar, where it is referred to as a ‘Flemish proverb.’”

Dryden (1631–1700) produced his play The Spanish Fryar, or The Double Discovery in 1681, and it was reprinted often after that. In Act IV, Scene 1, one character says, “I’ll not hang alone, Fryar,” and Friar Dominick eventually replies, “in the Common Cause we are all of a Piece; we hang together.”

Dryden wasn’t the only playwright to play on the phrase “hang together” in 1681, however. Aphra Benn (1640–1689, shown here) wrote this exchange in The Round-Heads; Or, The Good Old Cause (Act III, Scene 1):

Fleet. My Lords and Gentlemen, we are here met together in the Name of the Lard———

Duc. Yea, and I hope we shall hang together as one Man—a Pox upon your Preaching. [Aside.

Unsurprisingly, Dr. Samuel Johnson chose Dryden over Benn to demonstrate the use of “hang together” in his dictionary.

As for Professor Buzzkill’s remark about a “Flemish proverb,” I can’t find any mention of that phrase in three early editions of Dryden’s Spanish Fryar. Perhaps that was an annotation by the editor of a later edition based on the 1717 text. Or perhaps separate references to a “hang together” saying got muddled together.

It would be striking if the “hang together” witticism came from another language because double meanings of that sort are often hard to translate. Indeed, the Rev. E. O. Haven’s 1869 textbook on Rhetoric uses Edouard Laboulaye’s unsuccessful attempt to render the saying (credited to Benjamin Franklin) in French as evidence for his warning “Puns usually Untranslatable.”

Be that as it may, the idea that a “Flemish proverb” was the seed of this American quotation has taken hold and now appears several places—all apparently after 2022. I welcome any earlier reference.

TOMMOROW: A post-Revolutionary reference.

“It is a true saying of a Wit”

In 2014 and again in 2016, I noted that the Pennsylvania lieutenant governor Richard Penn was the first Revolutionary figure credited with this remark:

An evidence of this was the pleasantry ascribed to him, on occasion of a member of Congress, one day observing to his compatriots, that at all events “they must hang together:”

“If you do not, gentlemen,” said Mr. Penn, “I can tell you that you will be very apt to hang separately.”

More recently, the Professor Buzzkill podcast called my attention to a letter the Virginia delegate Carter Braxton wrote on 14 Apr 1776:

Upon reviewing the secret movements of Men and things I am convinced the Assertion of Independence is far off. If it was to be now asserted, the Continent would be torn in pieces by Intestine Wars and Convulsions. Previous to Independence all disputes must be healed and Harmony prevail. A grand Continental league must be formed and a superintending Power also. When these necessary Steps are taken and I see a Coalition formed sufficient to withstand the Power of Britain, or any other, then am I for an independent State and all its Consequences, as then I think they will produce Happiness to America. It is a true saying of a Wit—We must hang together or separately.

Less than three months later, Braxton voted for independence.

Did Braxton have a particular “Wit” in mind? Alas, he didn’t say.

TOMORROW: Flemish roots?

“Count Brown” of King William County, Virginia

In 1767, William Burnet Brown moved out of Massachusetts.

He sold his father’s country house on Folly Hill, “Browne Hall,” to his cousin William Browne, by then one of Salem’s representatives on the Massachusetts General Court. [That meant this property went from William Browne to his son William Burnet Brown to his cousin William Browne, causing immense headaches for future chroniclers.]

It looks like Brown sold his mansion in Salem to his aunt Elizabeth, mother of William Browne, who had remarried Epes Sargent and then been widowed again. She eventually sold that property to her son Paul Dudley Sargent, later a colonel in the Continental Army.

William Burnet Brown, his wife Judith, and their infant children moved to her home colony of Virginia. He bought the King William County estate called Elsing Green from Carter Braxton, a politician who would become one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Braxton might have needed cash in 1767 because he was caught up in treasurer John Robinson’s embezzlement of colonial funds.

The mansion house of Elsing Green is shown above. It was built beside the Pamunkey River in the late 1710s. Around it were dependencies, one of those buildings dating to the 1690s; gardens; and fields of tobacco. The estate rested, of course, on the backs of the black workers enslaved there. In the early 1780s the state tax assessors counted seventy-five people working a thousand acres.

Soon Brown brought his sister Mary, his only surviving sibling, to live at Elsing Green. Their voyage in late 1767 was delayed by a storm that blew their ship aground near Stonington, Connecticut. The 24 Dec 1767 Boston News-Letter reported that all the passengers and “the Baggage and Horses of Mr. Brown” were safe.

Living in colonial Virginia was quite different from living in colonial Massachusetts, but the shift was probably not so drastic for William Burnet Brown as it would have been for others. He was an Anglican, not a Congregationalist, so the church worship was the same. He had grown up immensely rich and being served by enslaved black domestic servants. He now had to run a large agricultural plantation, but his wife and her Carter relatives no doubt helped him adjust to the Virginia way of doing things. He became a justice of the peace, and eventually his neighbors called him “Count Brown” for his wealth.

Brown still owned real estate up north. An attorney advertised in the 27 Jan 1769 Connecticut Journal of New Haven about a large amount of property for sale in that colony.

Brown was probably visiting Boston on business of that sort in September 1769 when he happened to witness the fight between James Otis, Jr., and John Robinson (no relation to the late Virginia treasurer). Why he got involved, swinging his cane and striking John Gridley, is unclear. But it caused some legal difficulties in the following weeks, as I’ll soon discuss.

Brown returned to Virginia, and I’ve seen no evidence that he ever visited Massachusetts again. He was never politically active. The only time his name appeared in the newspapers during the Revolutionary War was in 1779 when he advertised “a fine black horse” called Othello for either stud (“will cover mares for 20 dollars the leap”) or sale (for three payments spread out over up to ten years).

William Burnet Brown died in the spring of 1784, aged only forty-five. He was buried at Elsing Green. His daughter Judith married Robert Lewis, a nephew of George Washington. Without surviving sons, Brown willed the plantation to a grandson on condition that the child take his name. The name of William Burnet(t) Brown(e) has therefore been passed on to this day.