Loyally Defiant
William Franklin And His Loyalism Part 1
After he felt the velocity of a bullet discharged from a musket rip the air and soar an inch past his head, William Franklin would have soon comprehended what was going on. He didn’t have the time to be thankful to be alive as he looked at the party assigned to apprehend him. The guard said that the firearm had been shot by accident but the arrival of the sheriff and his men at Franklin’s Middletown rooms on the 2nd of May 1777 was not a random occurrence. Realising that rather kind, perhaps delicate methods had failed to restrain a loyalty that had become the essence of Franklin’s identity, Continental forces had come to arraign him again. This time he was assigned a captivity unsparingly abject, appalling, alone, atrocious.
An elm tree that served as a whipping post was close by Litchfield Gaol. A gallows stood outside a two-story log jail. This place was the scene of flogging, ear clipping, branding with hot red irons, and hanging. Franklin was taken to the top of a two-story building. After walking down a stinking hallway, he was placed in a diminutive room containing nothing but a chamberpot and straw sodden with the waste of previous inmates of this ghastly hole. Bars struck through a small window that allowed only miserly light. For eight months he would not leave this cell and have only flies, mice, and rats for company as he sat in the same underwear for months beside his own excrement. He was given grotesque gruel, passed to him through the same small hatch where his shit was passed out to be emptied. Franklin was denied decent food, denied exercise and air, denied visitors, denied newspapers and books, denied pens and paper, and denied dignity. As the smell, dim light, and darkness inside the hell to which he was ensnared engulfed him, and the sound of carousing rebels from the tavern below intercepted any respite he might have had from rats crawling on him, it would have been understandable if Franklin had started to have second thoughts regarding his steadfastness in the service of the British Crown. 1
In early 1776, the eyes of the American congressional authorities were increasingly watchful of Franklin. The American revolutionary war was well underway and the rebels could not allow the New Jersey Governor to communicate at will with British forces. His correspondence would be eagerly sought by colonists determined to snare his letters. Franklin was ordered to sign a formal letter of parole agreeing that he wouldn’t leave the province until further orders from Congress. He refused and wrote to Colonel Winds warning him that if the guards were not removed from outside his home, the Proprietory mansion in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, Winds would be exposing himself to a charge of treason. Winds ordered him to be transported to Elizabethtown and placed under house arrest there. Chief Justice Smyth managed to convince Winds to rescind the order. Franklin would remain unmolested for a time. 2
In May, Franklin defiantly called for a meeting of the New Jersey General Assembly announcing he had news of another peace commission being sent from England by Lord Germain. He aimed to reconcile the mother country and the colonies.
Franklin’s decision to recall the subverted imperial assembly led the New Jersey Congress (a rebel body) to resolve that Franklin must sign parole giving him a choice of detention in Princeton, Bordentown, or his own farm on Rancocas Creek. Again, he rejected the demands of Congress. Colonel Nathaniel Heard and Major Deare came to arrest him. Franklin again warned those apprehending him that they were running the risk of a treason charge. He also made it clear that the congressional authority was an illegal one. Franklin and his wife Elizabeth, who had been frighted and driven to hysterics by this visit and one before the prior arrest order was retracted, were told that Franklin should pack his belongings. He was taken away on a late June afternoon.
Franklin was permitted to stay one night with his cousin before being taken to the courthouse that stood at the intersection of Broad Street to stand before the New Jersey Congress. The President of this body, Samuel Tucker, addressed him as Mr Franklin, omitting his official title. Franklin refused to answer the question of whether he had called the General Assembly for the 20th of June because he was not inclined to cooperate with an illegal body. He was lured away from his taciturnity when asked what he had meant when he had said to Heard, ‘it is your turn now but it will be mine another day’. The answer was obvious. Franklin stood up and denounced the assembly as a ‘parcel of ignoramuses’ and demanded Heard be brought to him so that he could face his accuser. This request was denied as was Franklin’s willingness to step into a verbal bout of swordplay with his adversaries.3 Before he was led away, Reverend John Knox Witherspoon reportedly said, ‘On the whole, the governor’s performance was worthy of his exalted birth and refined education’. This was a flagrant swipe at Franklin for being born out of wedlock. 4 Franklin was placed in his cousin’s house while his fate was decided. On June 25, he was ordered to Connecticut and accorded parole commensurate with his social status after accepting a rented room in a Continental officer’s home in Wallingford rather than a smelly jail. On his way to his new abode, he was allowed to stop and dine with British officers in Middleton.5
Franklin’s detention was relatively benign. He obtained goods he wanted and was permitted to move to Middletown, where he was authorised to ride within a six-mile radius of the town by horse or carriage. He was able to meet with other Loyalist prisoners and send and receive correspondence, subject of course to the scrutiny of Continental officials who were meant to screen such letters.6 These pleasantries considered, there was no chance he would be content with passing the war by quietly in conditions of relative freedom and genteel luxury.
When the British captured New York in late 1776, both General William Howe and Admiral Richard Howe issued royal pardons for all who took oaths of loyalty to the British Crown. Franklin received copies of these pardons and issued them to loyalists in Connecticut. Being in possession of a pardon would ensure that the holder’s home and property would be spared when sackings ensued as the British forces progressed.7 Congressional authorities discovered that Franklin had been clandestinely engaged in supporting British efforts. For his endeavours, he was punished with consignment at Litchfield Gaol.8
Franklin had a lot of time to think about the events that had led him to be sitting in the sordid squalor of a dungeon. This vicissitude, probably like no other for him, contrasted most starkly with happier times. In solitude, he would likely have thought back to his halcyon days in London where he received his royal appointment and met and married his wife…
On December 9th, 1757, writing to his then fiancee Elizabeth Graeme for the first time in four and a half months, and for the first time since informing her of his arrival in London, Franklin rhapsodised on his experience of Britain:
It may seem strange, but it is not the less true, that one great Reason why I from time to time delay’d writing, was the Multiplicity of Things I had to tell you. I knew not to which to give the Preference, and all my Leisure would not permit me to mention. How have I long’d to inform you of the Pleasure I enjoy’d in visiting Windsor, its Castle, and its shady Retreats! Places you yourself recommended to me, and which I have often heard you rapturously speak of, tho’ your Knowledge of them was purely Ideal. The enchanting Scenes at Vauxhall, is another Theme on which I could dwell for Hours together. What would I not have given for a Power of instantaneously transporting you to that delightful Spot! The many agreeable Walks amidst Rows of beauteous Trees lighted with Lamps; the elegant Paintings and Sculpture with which the Boxes, the grand Hall, and Orchestra, are adorn’d; the curious artificial Fall of Water; the ravishing Musick, vocal and instrumental; and the Gaiety and Brilliancy of the Company; would have made you conceive yourself in a Situation beyond even the Elysium of the Ancients.9
Vauxhall Gardens imbued Franklin with wonder. This urbane setting was certainly a place to see and be seen. It showcased neo-classical roofed colonnades, a public art gallery, and a Roman-style piazza as a spot for entertainment. The Orchestra Pavillion was a famed musical locus, and from the 1730s Vauxhall showcased some of the most notable musicians of the eighteenth century. Song sheets highlighting the music on display spread the fame of Vauxhall throughout Britain and overseas.10 Perhaps this was one of the places Franklin mentioned that Elizabeth Graeme recommended to him, having read of its renown.11 At the venue, visitors could sit in supper boxes and consume fine food and drink. Aside from hearing music and viewing art, Franklin could promenade ensconced elegantly in verdant splendour, enjoy an eclat lantern display, and aristocratic company. Royalty frequented it, Canaletto painted it, Franklin savoured it.12
Britain certainly provided the scene for some of Franklin’s most enriching experiences and fondest memories. However, his journey across the Atlantic was not undertaken primarily for pleasure. The cause of his ocean crossing was entwined with his father Benjamin Franklin’s mandate from the Pennsylvania Assembly. It is inevitably to the influence of his father, and his upbringing, that we must look to for a meaningful understanding of William Franklin and his loyalism…
This piece is the first in a series about William Franklin and his loyalty to the British Crown. Part II will be published on the 1st of next month, to receive it for free in your email inbox press the subscribe button below.
Daniel Mark Epstein, The Loyal Son, The war in Ben Franklin’s House, 2018, 282-283
Ibid, 243-248
William Sterne Randall, A Little Revenge: Benjamin Franklin and his Son, 1984, 419
Ibid 420
Ibid 427
Ibid 436-437
Ibid 438-439
Ibid 442-444
William Franklin to Elizabeth Graeme, 9 December 1757, London, Benjamin Franklin Papers - William Franklin to Elizabeth Graeme - 7:288a, 2005
David Coke, Vauxhall Gardens, A Brief History, 2015, www.vauxhall_gardens.com/_briefhistory, Accessed 1st December 2021
William Franklin to Elizabeth Graeme, 9 December 1757
Coke, Vauxhall Gardens