The following is the 100% true account of William Franklin, Ben Franklin’s bastard son, who conspired to take control of the thirteen colonies in the name of King George. He’s one of many Tory figures you can play in Sons of Liberty.
For an illegitimate son born to Benjamin Franklin and a “low woman,” William Franklin has done rather well for himself. Applying the honest skills of his father to dishonest ends, he has flattered his way to wealth and prosperity, ascending to the governorship of New Jersey and reaching beyond. No colonial uprising is going to deprive him of what he’s spent his lifetime building. If he’s lucky, it will give him the opportunity of a lifetime.
A year after his birth, his father formally recognized William as his son. The elder Franklin and his common-law wife Mary Read raised him with their own two children. William was raised as well as his father could afford, educated in the best schools and a common sight in Philadelphia society. At 16, he enlisted in the 60th foot to fight in King George’s War and was recognized for bravery and promoted to captain of the grenadiers.
A long-time partner of his father’s many projects, William accompanied him to England. He left his fiancée behind, promising to return after he had assisted his father and gained his law degree. Plans, however, changed. His colonial tutor Joseph Galloway had given him names to look up in London. William, ever the social networker like his father, was quick to establish acquaintances with the Earl of Bute and John Pownell, the Secretary of Trade. He met, courted, and married a wealthy young woman named Elizabeth Downes, daughter of a sugar plantation owner. Their son William Temple Franklin was born scandalously soon after. Despite that, William became quite popular in London, and even more popular when he changed his politics from Whig to Tory. He sailed back to the colonies in 1763 with a commission as the new Royal Governor of New Jersey.
Franklin proved an able administrator, especially when it came to making connections with figures of wealth and power. As William’s network of Tory friends grew, his father pled with him to support the colonial, and then the revolutionary, cause. William played along long enough to discover intelligence on the patriots’ resistance. When he betrayed this intelligence to General Gauge, the two Franklins had an explosive conflict at the palatial estate of Joseph Galloway. Neither has spoken to the other since.
William maintains his hard line on the Stamp Acts and loyalist support as the Royal Governor for thirteen years in the face of increasing unrest. In June of 1776, he is placed under arrest and held in solitary confinement for eight months. Still he refused to recant his office and remains loyal.
When he is exchanged for patriot prisoners in 1778, he finds himself at home in British-occupied New York, filled with Tory refugees. Under a royal charter, Franklin organizes the Board of Associated Loyalists. This body bands together the disenfranchised colonists under a paramilitary jurisdiction separate from Clinton’s military forces. The Board is enjoined to harass, loot, and spoil the property of rebels throughout the colonies. They sponsor privateers and raiders whose depredations were so atrocious that American forces are ordered to execute them without trial. Franklin plans, after this uprising has been properly put down, for the Board to be granted administrative control over all thirteen colonies — with him at its head.
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