Thomas Pownall - Revolution

Revolution

Following the Boston Tea Party in December 1773, Parliament passed a series of bills designed to punish Massachusetts. Pownall was unable to sway opinion toward more conciliatory measures. He was also implicated in the Hutchinson Letters Affair as someone who may have delivered private letters of Thomas Hutchinson to Benjamin Franklin, although Franklin never identified his source for the letters. Pownall was also unable to retain his seat: in 1774 he was voted out of office. Seeking to remain active, Pownall ended up appealing to Lord North, who secured a seat for him in a by-election, representing Minehead. This apparent turn towards Toryism alarmed a number of Pownall's colonial supporters; there is also some evidence that North may have engineered Pownall's defeat in order to gain his support.

Pownall supported Prime Minister North's attempts at reconciliation in debates leading to the start the War of Independence. However, once hostilities began in April 1775, his conciliatory views were dismissed by war-supporting Tories (who opposed them) as well as by Whigs (who saw his proposals as attempts to undercut their positions). Pownall remained nominally in support of North until 1777, when he openly made declarations in support of peace party. The entry of France into the war on the American side returned him firmly to the pro-war Tory position. His support was, however, nuanced: he continued to argue for some sort of conciliation with the Americans, while remaining resolutely patriotic with respect to the French. He was not alone among British politicians in being unable reconcile these positions, and refused to stand for reelection in 1780.

During the war years he published several revisions to The Administration of the Colonies, updating and expanding the work to reflect changing conditions. He also worked to update and revise the Evans map, soliciting data and updated maps from colonial correspondents. He withdrew to some extent in the later years following the death of his wife in 1777, but continued to appear in Parliament.