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A Look Inside General Hand's Field Desk
By Sam Slaymaker, Executive Director
As the shutdown continues, our Curator, Sarah Alberico, and I are taking the opportunity to stay in touch with Rock Ford's friends by providing some behind-the-scenes glimpses of specific objects in our collection. You may not have noticed these items during past visits to the mansion or, even if you did, your guide wouldn't have had time to discuss them in much detail within the confines of a 45 minute guided house tour.
General Hand's field desk, located on top of the chest of drawers in the Gold Parlor, is one of the most significant items in our collection and is often pointed out on tours. However, because of its age and fragility, it not been opened for visitors for many years. The photos below will give you a peek inside of this very special artifact.
The field desk was a portable desk that is believed to have been used by Edward Hand while moving with the Continental Army "in the field." As Adjutant General to Washington during the later years of the Revolutionary War, Hand would have had a great deal of paperwork and this desk would have seen frequent use by him. As you can see, the desk opens-up and folds out to provide a flat writing service. It provides flaps in which folded letters and papers may be tucked as well as three inner compartments where particularly sensitive material could be stored. Lacquered onto the inside interior of the uppermost compartment is an engraving of King Charles I after a portrait by Van Dyck. While it may seem strange for General Hand to have hidden a portrait of an English King inside of his field desk while in the midst of fighting a war against another English King, two possible (but not mutually exclusive) explanations come to mind.
Hand was a devout Anglican, serving as a Vestryman and Church Warden at St. James in Lancaster. Charles I, who was willing to be tried and executed by Oliver Cromwell's army rather than give into Puritan demands that he abolish the Book of Common Prayer, is still considered a Saint and Martyr of the Anglican/Episcopal Church. Thus, for Hand, keeping the image of King Charles about his person while in harm's way would have been akin to soldiers who wear religious medals of saints under their uniforms while going into battle.
Another contributing factor to the presence of this engraving inside of Hand's field desk may derive from the fact that King George III was of the Hanoverian line of monarchs who were the mortal enemies of King Charles's House of Stuart. Charles I's great-grandson, Charles Edward Stuart (aka, "Bonnie Prince Charlie") attempted to seize the throne from George III's grandfather, George II by seeking to invade England from Scotland in 1745. He was defeated by the army of George II at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.
It also seems likely that Hand was inspired by the courage of King Charles who led troops in battle during the English Civil War and who, on the morning of his execution, put on a second shirt over top of the first while getting dressed. Speaking to his manservant, he said that because it was a cold morning, he did not want the crowd by the scaffold to see him shiver and think that he was afraid: "I would have no such imputation. I fear not death. Death is not terrible to me. I bless my God I am prepared."
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