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William Franklin (22 February 1730 – 17 November 1813) was an British America attorney, soldier, politician, and Colonialism. He was the acknowledged extra-marital son of Benjamin Franklin. William Franklin was the last colonial Governor of New Jersey (1763–1776), 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.
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.
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 1762. 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 Plantation 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 (15 May 1798 London – 1875 Nice, France), with Ellen Johnson d'Evelin, the sister-in-law of his stepmother, Mary.Daniel Mark Epstein (2017), The Loyal Son: The War in Ben Franklin's House, pp 382 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.Sheila L. Skemp (1990) William Franklin: Son of a Patriot, Servant of a King, pp 274 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., Skemp, pp 274
William was inducted into the original American Philosophical Society, founded by Benjamin Franklin, around 1758.Bell, Whitfield J., and Charles Greifenstein, Jr. Patriot-Improvers: Biographical Sketches of Members of the American Philosophical Society. 3 vols. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1997, I:22–23, 175, 183, 219–28, 220. 391,430, 433–34, 444, II:248,401, III:19, 235, 296, 489, 490, 505.
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 Thomas Penn.H. W. Brands, The First American: The life and times of Benjamin Franklin (2000) pp 327–28.R. C. Simmons, "Colonial Patronage: Two Letters from William Franklin to the Earl of Bute, 1762." William and Mary Quarterly 59.1 (2002): 123–134. He replaced Josiah Hardy, a merchant and colonial administrator who sided with the New Jersey legislature against the government in London. Randall states:
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 Anglophile. 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.Sheila L. Skemp, "William Franklin: His Father's Son." Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 109.2 (1985): 145–178. 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 as a part of England rather than a road to civil war and anarchy. The legislature instead unanimously issued a resolution in support of the radicals in Boston.Epstein, 200–201
While in New York, Franklin tried to encourage a guerrilla war and active reprisals against the rebels but was frustrated by British Commander-in-Chief General Henry Clinton, who did not support the idea or had 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 Franklin's collaborator, British General William Tryon, and Lord George Germain led to Franklin receiving official blessing for the operation in 1780.
When he heard of Huddy's death, General George Washington threatened to execute Captain Charles Asgill, a British officer who had been captured at Yorktown, unless Lippincott were handed over to the American military. The British refused, but tried Lippincott. The British acquitted him of charges in the hanging. Due to the intervention of the French King Louis XVI, who interceded with his American allies to prevent Asgill's execution, the British officer 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 revolutionary Americans in Paris when the Asgill Affair occurred.
In 1783 he visited Scotland and was asked to be a founding member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Benjamin Franklin dedicated his autobiography (written before the war) to his son, though the only mention of William within the manuscript is the inclusion of a newspaper article in which Franklin noted that his son was authorized to make contracts to purchase carts for the British army. But the father and son were never reconciled; the elder Franklin became known for his uncompromising position related to not providing compensation nor amnesty for the Loyalists who left the colonies, during the negotiations in Paris for the Peace of Paris. His son's covert operations and involvement in total war as a Loyalist contributed to his position.Fleming, Thomas, The Perils of Peace: America's Struggle for Survival, (Collins, New York, 2007) 236 The British government gave him £1,800 from the Commissioners of Loyalist Claims. That was the value of his furniture; there was no payment for his lands. He also received a brigadier's half-pay pension of £800 per year.W.S. Randall, American National Biography (2000).
William Franklin sent a letter to his father, dated 22 July 1784, in an attempt at reconciliation. His father never accepted his royalist position, but he responded in a letter dated 16 August 1784, in which he states "We will endeavor, as you propose mutually to forget what has happened relating to it, as well we can." William saw his father one last time in 1785, when Benjamin stopped in Britain on his return journey to the U.S. after his time in France. The meeting was brief and involved tying up outstanding legal matters. In a reconciliation attempt, Benjamin also proposed that his son give land that he owned in New York and New Jersey to William's son Temple, who had served as Benjamin's secretary during the war and for whom the elder Franklin had great affection, in order to repay a debt William owed his father; in the event, William transferred the New York portion of the land. In his 1788 will, Benjamin left William virtually none of his wealth, except some nearly worthless territory in Nova Scotia and some property already in William's possession. He stated in the will that the way William "acted against me in the late war, which is of public notoriety, will account for my leaving him no more of an estate he endeavoured to deprive me of."
William died on 17 November 1813, in London, and was buried in London's St Pancras Old Church churchyard.
William Franklin is referenced in Lin-Manuel Miranda's "Ben Franklin's Song", a supplement to the musical Hamilton. The song, sung from Benjamin Franklin's perspective, references his son William's imprisonment with the lyrics:
William Franklin is also referenced occasionally in the Apple TV+ series Franklin by several characters, including by his son, William Temple Franklin, as well as Benjamin Franklin himself.
Franklin is portrayed by Daniel Betts in 2024 drama film Here.
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