In another week, Howe would offer full amnesty to all “deserters from His Majesty’s service” despite “the heinousness of their crimes.” But with his newly captured city in ashes, he was in no mood to forgive rebel iniquity. He ordered Hale remanded to the provost marshal for execution in the morning; Howe’s edict declared him to be “a spy for the enemy, by his own full confession.”
