William Franklin
William Franklin was an American-born attorney, soldier, politician, and colonial administrator. He was the acknowledged extra-marital son of Benjamin Franklin. William Franklin was the last colonial Governor of New Jersey, and a steadfast British Empire Loyalist throughout the American Revolutionary War. In contrast, his father Benjamin was, in later life, one of the most prominent of the Patriot leaders of the American Revolution and a Founding Father of the United States.
Following imprisonment by Patriots in 1776 to 1778, William became the chief leader of the Loyalists. From his base in New York City, he organized military units to fight on the British side. In 1782, he went into exile in Britain. He lived in London until his death.
Early life
William Franklin was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, then a colony in British America. He was the extra-marital son of Benjamin Franklin, a leading figure in the city. His mother's identity is unknown. Confusion exists about William's birth and parentage because Benjamin Franklin was secretive about his son's origins. In 1750, Benjamin Franklin told his mother that William was nineteen years old, but this may have been an attempt to make the youth appear to have been conceived within marriage. Some older reference books give William's birth year as 1731.William was raised by his father and Deborah Read, his father's common-law wife; she had been abandoned by her legal husband but not divorced. William always called her his mother. There is some speculation that Deborah Read was William's biological mother, and because of his parents' common-law relationship, the circumstances of his birth were obscured so as not to be politically harmful to him or to their marital arrangement.
William joined a company of Pennsylvania provincial troops in 1746 and spent a winter in Albany in King George's War, obtaining the rank of captain in 1747. As he grew older, he accompanied his father on several missions, including trips to England. Although often depicted as a young child when he assisted his father in the famed kite experiment of 1752, William was at least 21 years old at the time.
Marriage and family
As a young man, William became engaged to Elizabeth Graeme, daughter of prominent Philadelphia physician Dr. Thomas Graeme and step-granddaughter of Pennsylvania's 14th Governor, Sir William Keith. Neither family approved of the match, but when William went to London to study law about 1759, he left with the understanding that Elizabeth would wait for him.File:William temple franklin by john trumbull.gif|thumb|William Temple Franklin, painted by John Trumbull
William studied law at the Middle Temple, chiefly under Richard Jackson "The Omniscient". While in London, William fathered an illegitimate son, William Temple Franklin, who was born 22 February 1760. His mother has never been identified, and Temple was placed in foster care.
Later that year, William married Elizabeth Downes on 4 September 1762 at St George's, Hanover Square, in London. She was born in the English colony of Barbados to the sugar planter John Downes and his wife, Elizabeth. She met William while visiting England with her father in 1760. They moved to the New Jersey colony in 1763. Elizabeth died in 1777 while he was imprisoned as a Loyalist during the American Revolutionary War. She was interred beneath the altar of St. Paul's Chapel in lower Manhattan, where she had resided after the British evacuated Perth Amboy. The memorial plaque on the wall at St. Paul's was commissioned by William Franklin from London, where he went into exile following the war. He was a widower for more than ten years.
On 14 August 1788, William married Mary Johnson d'Evelin, a wealthy Irish widow with children. William's son, Temple, after a failed business career in the U.S., lived with his father and stepmother for a time, and followed in his grandfather and father's footsteps and had an illegitimate daughter, Ellen, with Ellen Johnson d'Evelin, the sister-in-law of his stepmother, Mary. William took responsibility for his granddaughter Ellen. Temple moved to Paris, where he lived the remainder of his life and never saw his father again. After Mary died in 1811, William continued to live with Ellen, age 13 at the time, and when he died in 1813 he left most of his small estate to her.
Colonial governor
William Franklin completed his law education in England, and was admitted to the bar. William and Benjamin Franklin became partners and confidants, working together to pursue land grants in what was then called the Northwest. Before they left England, Benjamin lobbied hard to procure his son an appointment, especially working with the Prime Minister Lord Bute.William was inducted into the original American Philosophical Society, founded by Benjamin Franklin, around 1758.
In 1763, William Franklin was appointed as the Royal Governor of New Jersey. He had asked Lord Bute for the position. Bute made the decision secretly to grant the request, not even informing Benjamin Franklin; he intended the position as a reward for Benjamin's role and a move to weaken the Penn faction. He replaced Josiah Hardy, a merchant and colonial administrator who sided with the New Jersey legislature against the government in London. Randall states:
American War of Independence
Owing to his father's role as a Founding Father and William's loyalty to Britain, the relationship between father and son became strained past the breaking point. When Benjamin decided to take up the Patriot cause, he tried to convince William to join him, but the son refused. After Benjamin Franklin was systematically ridiculed and humiliated by Solicitor-General Alexander Wedderburn before the Privy Council on 29 January 1774, he expected his son to resign in protest. Instead, William advised his father to take his medicine and retire from office.His Loyalist position was a reflection of his respect for benevolent authority which he felt was embodied by the British Crown, a view consistent with his father's earlier Anglophilia. Further, unlike his father William was a devout member of the Church of England, which reinforced his loyalty to the Crown. Financially, he needed the salary and perquisites. On 13 January 1775, with revolution seeming imminent, Franklin delivered his "Two Roads" speech to the New Jersey legislature, urging the New Jersey Legislature to take the road toward prosperity by remaining loyal to the Crown rather than a road to civil war and anarchy. The legislature instead unanimously issued a resolution in support of the Patriots in Boston.
Capture and imprisonment, 1776–1778
William Franklin remained as governor of New Jersey, and secretly reported Patriot activities to London. He continued as governor until January 1776, when colonial militiamen placed him under house arrest, which lasted until the middle of June. After the Declaration of Independence, Franklin was formally taken into custody by order of the Provincial Congress of New Jersey, an entity which he refused to recognize, regarding it as an "illegal assembly". He was incarcerated in Connecticut for two years, in Wallingford and Middletown. He surreptitiously engaged Americans in supporting the Loyalist cause. Discovered, he was held in solitary confinement at Litchfield, Connecticut for eight months. When finally released in a prisoner exchange in 1778, he moved to New York City, which was under British occupation.New York Loyalist leader, 1778–1781
Once in New York, Boyd Schlenther says he became, "the acknowledged leader of the American loyalists, for whom he struggled to secure aid. He also built up an unofficial yet active spy network." He set up Loyalist military units to fight the Patriots, such as "Bacon's Refugees". In 1779, he had learned through his friend Jonathan Odell and British Major John André that American General Benedict Arnold was planning on secretly defecting to the British.While in New York, Franklin tried to encourage a guerrilla war and active reprisals against the rebels but was frustrated by British General Henry Clinton, who did not support the idea or have much use for American Loyalists. Nonetheless, Franklin coordinated a multi-colony group known as the Associated Loyalists that waged guerrilla warfare in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. A correspondence between an associate of Franklin, British General William Tryon, and Lord George Germain led to Franklin receiving official blessing for the operation in 1780.
Asgill Affair
In 1782, Franklin was implicated in the Loyalist military officer Richard Lippincott's hanging of Joshua Huddy. During a raid, Loyalist troops under Franklin's general oversight captured Huddy, an officer of the New Jersey militia. The Loyalist soldiers hanged him in revenge for similar murders of Loyalists, in particular Huddy's brother-in-law Phillip White. Huddy was a member of the Association of Retaliation, a Patriot group which had attacked and murdered several Loyalist and neutral colonists in New Jersey. At the time, some alleged that Franklin had sanctioned the killing of Huddy. This claim was theoretically substantiated by a note left on Huddy's body, which read, "Up goes Huddy for Philip White."When he heard of Huddy's death, General George Washington demanded Clinton court-martial Lippincott. At Lippincott's court-martial, his defence successfully argued that as an irregular, he was technically a civilian, and as such was subject to civilian law instead of military law. Chief Justice William Smith ruled that he did not have jurisdiction to try Lippincott since the incident occurred in an area outside effective British control. In response, Washington threatened to summarily execute Captain Charles Asgill, a British officer who had been captured at Yorktown.
Due to the intervention of King Louis XVI of France, who interceded with his American allies to prevent Asgill's execution, Asgill was eventually released by the Continental Congress, where it was agreed he should return to England on parole. Despite the speed with which it was terminated, the Asgill Affair temporarily stalled peace talks between American and British authorities, extending uncertainty over the United States' prospects. Ironically, Benjamin Franklin was a senior negotiator for the Americans in Paris when the Asgill Affair occurred.