Peggy Shippen

Peggy Shippen was a member of a prominent Philadelphia family who married the Continental general Benedict Arnold in 1779. Through her social connections she knew the British officer John André and assisted the secret correspondence behind Arnold’s plan to surrender West Point. After the plot failed, she joined Arnold in British-held New York and later lived with him in Britain and Canada.

Lucia St. Clair Robson’s Shadow Patriots portrays Shippen as an active participant in the Arnold conspiracy rather than an innocent wife surprised by her husband’s treason. Historical fiction has alternately blamed, romanticised or excused her, but the surviving correspondence supports a more complicated picture of political loyalty, personal ambition and covert communication within elite social networks.