The child often pictured beside Benjamin Franklin during the famous 1752 kite experiment was actually his 21-year-old son William, who would later run guerrilla operations against his father’s revolution. This episode explores William Franklin’s secretive birth, how closely his early life mirrored his father’s, and how Lord Bute engineered his appointment as royal governor of New Jersey in 1763.

We look at his surprisingly capable governorship, the 1774 humiliation of Benjamin before the Privy Council that radicalized the father, and the son’s refusal to abandon the Crown. After arrest, eight months of solitary confinement, and the death of his wife, William became a loyalist spymaster in New York. The rift never healed, ending in a cold final meeting and a will that cut him out.

• The theory that Deborah Read may have been William’s biological mother
• His achievements in New Jersey, including the charter for what became Rutgers and the Brotherton reservation
• Why faith, belief in British order, and his royal salary kept him loyal to the king
• The Asgill Affair, when Washington threatened to hang an innocent British captain in retaliation
• How Benjamin’s anger toward his son shaped his hard line on loyalists at the Paris peace talks