So Obstinately Loyal: James Moody, 1744-1809

This is the biography of James Moody, the at one time famous, even infamous, partisan of Britain during the American Revolutionary War. His story begins in New Jersey, where Moody was "a plain contented farmer" before enlisting in a Loyalist provincial corps. Why he, and others like him, did so, defying republican neighbours and seeming political imperatives, is a compelling and largely untold aspect of Colonial history." "Once called "that villain Moody" by George Washington himself, and "The best Partizan we had," by William Franklin, the Loyalist Governor of New Jersey, Moody risked his life recruiting, gathering intelligence, and freeing prisoners behind American lines. Next came dispossession and exile in London, where he strove to obtain British recognition of his losses and wrote the objective, exciting account of his fateful choice, and the exploits which inspired this book." "So Obstinately Loyal culminates in Weymouth, Nova Scotia, where along with almost 40,000 other Loyalists, Moody had to remake a life among the Acadians and earlier Yankee settlers. This complex career encompassed shipbuilding, efforts to found an Anglican parish, military service as an officer in a regiment formed to defend against invasion from revolutionary France, and building on his American experience to work for constitutional reform.


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