WILLIAM FRANKLIN, SON OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
William Franklin, Last Royal Governor of New Jersey, was a natural son of Dr. Benjamin Franklin. He was born about 1731. His father said of him: "He imagined his father had got enough for him; but I have assured him that I intend to spend what little I have myself, if it pleases God that I live long enough; and, as he by no means wants acuteness, he can see by my going on that I mean to be as good as my word." He served as Postmaster of Philadelphia, and as clerk of the House of Assembly of Pennsylvania. In the French war he was a captain and gained praise for his conduct at Ticonderoga. Before the peace, he went to England with his father. While there, Mr. Strahan wrote Mrs. Franklin, "Your son I really think one of the prettiest young gentlemen I ever knew from America. He seems to me to have a solidity of judgment, not very often to be met with in one of his years." While abroad young Franklin visited Scotland and became acquainted with the celebrated Earl of Bute, who recommended him to Lord Fairfax, who secured for him, as is said, the appointment of Governor of New Jersey, in 1763, without the solicitation of himself or his father. All intercourse between him and his father was suspended for more than a year before the actual commencement of hostilities. He was involved in a helpless quarrel with the delegates, and the people of New Jersey. In May, 1775, in a message he sent to the Assembly he said, "No office of honor in the power of the Crown to bestow would ever influence him to forget or neglect the duty he owed his country, nor the most furious rage of the most intemperate zealots induce him to swerve from the duty he owed his Majesty." On the 20th of May, the day this message was transmitted, the Assembly was prorogued, and Governor Franklin never communicated with that body again. Three days after the first Provincial Congress commenced their session at Trenton, and the Royal Government ceased, and William Livingston became Franklin's successor.
Congress ordered the arrest of Governor Franklin as an enemy to his country. He was accordingly placed in the custody of a guard commanded by a captain who had orders to deliver him to Governor Trumball in Connecticut. He was conveyed to East Windsor, and quartered in the house of Captain Ebenezer Grant. In 1777 he requested liberty to visit his wife who was a few miles distant, and sick. This Washington refused, saying, "It is by no means in my power to supersede a positive Resolution of Congress under which your present confinement took place." His wife was born in the West Indies and it is said that she was much affected by the severity of Doctor Franklin to her husband while he was a prisoner. She died in 1778 in her 49th year, and is buried in St. Paul's Church, New York. It is inscribed upon the monumental tablet erected to her memory that "Compelled to part from the husband she loved, and at length despairing of the soothing hope of his speedy return, she sunk under accumulated distresses, etc."
In 1778, after the arrival in America of Sir Henry Clinton, an exchange was effected and Governor Franklin was released, and went to England. In West's picture of the Reception of the American Loyalists, by Great Britain in 1783, Governor Franklin and Sir William Pepperell are the prominent personages represented. (See page 214.)
In 1784, the father and son, after an estrangement of ten years, became reconciled to one another, for Doctor Franklin writes, "It will be very agreeable to me, indeed nothing has ever hurt me so much, and affected me with such keen sensation, 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. You conceived, you say, that your duty to your king and regard for your country required this. I ought not to blame you for differing in sentiment with me in public affairs. We are all men, subject to errors, etc." In his will, dated June 23, 1789, a few months before his decease, he showed his shrewdness and craftiness for which he was always noted, in leaving his Nova Scotia lands to his son, the title to which was doubtful on account of the part he took in the Revolution. He says "I give and devise all the lands I hold or have a right to in the Province of Nova Scotia, to hold to him, his heirs and assigns forever. I also give to him all my books and papers which he has in his possession, and all debts standing against him on my account-books, willing that no payment for, nor restitution of the same be required of him by my executors. 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 endeavored to deprive me of."
Governor Franklin continued in England during the remainder of his life. He received a pension from the British Government of £800 per annum. His personal estate valued at £1800, which was confiscated, the government allowed him full compensation for. He had several shares in back lands and grants and real estate in New York and New Jersey, all of which he conveyed to his father, as he was indebted to him. He died in Nov., 1813. His son, William Temple Franklin, was Secretary to Dr. Franklin, and edited his works. He died at Paris in May, 1823.
ROYAL COAT OF ARMS.
The Royal Coat of Arms embossed on the outside cover of this work is an exact reproduction of the Coat of Arms that was formerly above the Governor's seat in the Council Chamber in the Old State House in Boston. It was made from a photograph taken from the original in Trinity Church, St. John, N. B., for a fuller description of same, see p. 436. The seal embossed on the outside back cover, is a reproduction of the seal of "The Colony of the Massachusetts Bay in New England" from which the present seal of the State of Massachusetts is derived. It was the seal that was used on all official documents down to the time of the Revolution.
This plan was made by Henry Pelham, the half brother of Copley the painter. It was made under permission of J. Urquhart, Town Major, August 28, 1775. It shows the lines about the Town and the Harbor, and is the most important of the early maps of Boston and the one upon which all subsequent revolutionary maps are based. It was printed in two sheets published in London, June 2, 1777, done in aquatinta by Francis Jukes. This copy is reproduced from the original in the Massachusetts Historical Society's Library and is drawn on a photographic print from which this engraving is made.