Bancroft, Edward

Related Category: U.S. History: Biographies

1744–1821, spy in the American Revolution, b. Westfield, Mass. While living in London, he became a friend of Benjamin Franklin and in the Revolution began to operate as an American secret agent. He reported to the American commissioners in France, but, unknown to them, he was a double agent and reported their movements to the British. Bancroft in 1778 gave advance information of the Franco-American alliance to the British. Evidence of his duplicity was revealed by Paul L. Ford in 1891.

See L. Einstein, Divided Loyalties (1933).