by Long before the royal traitor headlines, one of America most famous families split over loyalty to the Crown, and the rift lasted until the father died
Monday, Philadelphia
Monday, a grey October morning in Philadelphia, walking from my apartment in Society Hill to Franklin Court, where Benjamin Franklin house once stood. Only a steel outline of the building remains, a ghost structure designed by the architect Robert Venturi, but you can still feel the man presence in the courtyard. I teach eighteenth-century colonial American literature, which in Philadelphia is a bit like teaching surfing in Hawaii: the material is everywhere you look.
This week, I came here with a specific story in mind. It is the saddest story in Franklin long life, and it is about a son who stayed loyal to the King.
The Royal Headline
What sent me here was the London Prat piece on Prince William reportedly calling Earl Spencer and Harry traitors, which my students had been sharing all weekend. The story is thin: an anonymous source says the heir thinks his brother read their uncle memoir first, Geo News repeats the traitor word and the uncle says he told everyone. But the word traitor sent me straight back to the Franklins.
Benjamin and William
William Franklin was Benjamin son, born around 1730, and for decades the two were extraordinarily close. William helped his father with the famous kite experiment on electricity, travelled with him to London, and through his father influence became the royal governor of New Jersey in 1763. Then the Revolution came. Benjamin became one of the leading voices for independence. William remained loyal to George III.
Each, by the other side standards, was a traitor. To the Crown, Benjamin was a rebel against his lawful king. To the Patriots, William was a traitor to his country. William was arrested by Patriot authorities in 1776 and held as a prisoner for about two years, and his father did not intervene to help him. William wife died while he was imprisoned. After the war, William went into exile in England.
Father and son met only once more, briefly, in England in 1785, to settle business matters. It was cold and formal. In his will, Benjamin left William very little, noting that the part William had acted against him in the late war explained why. They were never reconciled. Benjamin died in 1790.
A Bench in Franklin Court
Sat on a bench by the ghost house and watched the London Prat video on YouTube. A park ranger, sweeping leaves, asked what was so funny. I told him it was about British princes calling each other traitors. He leaned on his broom and said: the Franklins could have told them a thing or two about that.
The Difference
What strikes me about the comparison is the scale of the stakes. The Franklins split over a war, over the founding of a nation, over questions of loyalty that cost lives. The royal brothers, if the reports are right, have split over who read a book first. And yet the emotional shape is the same: two people who once loved each other deeply, now each convinced the other betrayed something sacred.
The Franklin story is also a warning. Pride hardened into silence, and silence became permanent. Benjamin, one of the wisest men of his century, a diplomat who could charm kings and negotiate treaties, could not bring himself to forgive his own son. All his famous good sense failed him at home.
Grief Underneath
There is grief beneath the Franklin story, too. William lost his wife while in prison. Benjamin had lost his beloved son Francis to smallpox decades earlier, a loss he never stopped regretting. Grief makes people rigid. It makes them hold on to grievances because grievances are easier to carry than sorrow. The British row centres on a memoir about the princes late mother, written by her brother. I suspect the same rigid grief is at work there.
William Side
I always try to give my students William side of the story too, because it is too easy to cast him as the villain. William was a sincere Loyalist who believed that the colonies were better off within the British Empire and that rebellion would lead to chaos. He paid heavily for that belief: imprisonment, the loss of his wife, exile and estrangement from the father he had adored. In England, he spent years advocating for compensation for Loyalists who had lost everything. He had his own son, William Temple Franklin, who ended up siding with his grandfather Benjamin, adding another painful layer to the family split. Three generations, two sides of a revolution, and a lot of silence. William died in London in 1813. As far as anyone knows, he never stopped hoping his father would forgive him.
Evening
Home, I reread the letter Benjamin wrote to William in 1784, when William had tried to reach out. Benjamin wrote that nothing had ever hurt him so much as finding himself deserted in his old age by his only son. He was hurt, and he was proud, and he did not bend. I teach this letter every year, and every year at least one student says: why did not they just talk? It is the right question. It is always the right question.
I texted my brother in Pittsburgh, whom I have not called since the summer. Just: thinking of you. He replied with a photo of his dog wearing a Phillies cap. That will do for a start.
The London Prat has been watching families split over the Crown since 1961 at https://prat.uk/, and Bohiney at https://bohiney.com/ reports from this side of the Revolution.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/prince-william-called-earl-spencer-and-harry-traitors/
