Serle, Ambrose

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Serle, Ambrose

SERLE, AMBROSE. (1742–1812). Devotional writer, colonial official, and naval officer. An evangelical Anglican, he became undersecretary to William Legge, earl of Dartmouth, in 1772, went to America in 1774, and was in New York from 1776 to 1778. There he acted as William Lord Howe's secretary, for a time controlled the local press, and published a religious argument against the Revolution, Americans against Liberty (1775). His letters and journal, edited by E. H. Tatum and published by the Huntington Library as The Journal of Ambrose Serle, Secretary to Lord Howe, 1776–1778, (1940), are invaluable sources for historians.

                              revised by John Oliphant