The colonial militia arrived at William’s home in January 1776 and placed him under house arrest, where he remained for six months. One can only wonder how Benjamin Franklin felt as he was signing the Declaration of Independence. On the one hand, he knew that he was doing the right thing according to his beliefs. On the other, he was aware that his son would probably be detained as soon as he signed the paper. The Provincial Congress of New Jersey officially ordered William’s arrest after the Declaration of Independence was signed in July 1776. When William was arrested, he refused to recognize Congress’s authority. They took him into custody anyway, and he served two years in prison.
While he was in jail, William was caught gathering support for the British, and he was moved around often. He received some heartbreaking news when he found out that his wife of fifteen years, Elizabeth Downes Franklin, died in the middle of his prison sentence. In 1778, William Franklin was released from jail in a prisoner exchange and transferred to New York, which was still under British control. While in New York, William resumed his Loyalist activities. He joined the Board of Associated Loyalists and was active in supporting guerilla warfare against the Patriots. General Clinton, the British Commander-in-Chief, did not agree with him on this, and the two men disagreed intensely on this matter.
William Franklin became especially well-known as a die-hard Loyalist in his involvement in what became known as the Asgill Affair. In 1782, William was in charge of a raid in which a New Jersey militia officer named Joshua Huddy was arrested. Huddy was a known member of the Association of Retaliation, a group that violently attacked Loyalists and sometimes killed them. William was accused of ordering Officer Richard Lippincott to execute Huddy to avenge the execution of other Loyalists.
The Asgill Affair, and William’s role in it, had long-reaching effects on relations between the British and the Americans. The war was ending, and peace talks were beginning. General George Washington, furious when he heard of Joshua Huddy’s execution, demanded that the British give the Americans Officer Richard Lippincott for trial, or he would execute Captain Charles Asgill, a British officer captured at the Battle of Yorktown. The British tried Lippincott themselves instead of giving him to the Americans but found him not guilty and acquitted him of all charges associated with the death of Joshua Huddy.