William Franklin was appointed Royal Governor of New Jersey in 1762. He served competently for fourteen years. When the break came, he remained loyal to the Crown. His father never forgave him. The letters they exchanged, and the silence that followed, are in the Founders Online archive and at the American Philosophical Society.
William Franklin spent 1775 trying to maintain a moderate position while his father moved steadily toward the Patriot cause. He continued to function as royal governor while the war began around him. He called the New Jersey Assembly into session in January 1776 to consider a petition to the Crown for reconciliation. The Patriots regarded this as obstruction. The Continental Congress directed New Jersey to arrest him.
William was arrested in June 1776, two weeks before the Declaration of Independence. He was taken to Connecticut and held in close confinement at Litchfield for eight months. He was exchanged in October 1778 and went to New York. Benjamin Franklin, then in Paris as American commissioner, received word of his son's arrest. He made no public effort to intervene.
Nothing has ever hurt me so much and affected me with such keen Sensations as to find myself deserted in my old Age by my only Son, and not only deserted, but to find him taking up Arms against me, in a Cause wherein my good Fame, Fortune, and Life were all at stake.
After his exchange, William Franklin became president of the Board of Associated Loyalists in New York, authorized by the British government to conduct partisan operations against Patriot forces. His tenure ended badly in 1782 when a member of the Board hanged a captured Patriot officer without authorization, leading to the Board's dissolution. William sailed for England in August 1782. He never returned to America.
Benjamin Franklin died in Philadelphia on April 17, 1790. His will, probated in Pennsylvania, included a specific reference to William. Benjamin acknowledged that he had once intended to leave William his Nova Scotia lands. He did not. The bulk of the estate went to Benjamin's daughter Sarah Bache and her family.
The part he 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.
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