[5] During Thomas's years at Cambridge, his younger brother John acquired a job at the Board of Trade, which oversaw British colonial affairs, and rapidly rose in the bureaucracy.

He was introduced into the highest circles of leadership and society in the colonies, and established relationships with a number of influential people, including Benjamin Franklin and Massachusetts Governor William Shirley.

[13] Franklin, who had unsuccessfully proposed colonial union at the Albany conference, may have contributed to Pownall's writings, although the exact nature of his influence is unclear.

[14] While in Philadelphia Pownall also established a close collaboration with cartographer Lewis Evans, both of whom recognized the need for accurate maps of the inland regions of North America then being disputed with New France in the French and Indian War.

A French force was reported to be moving toward Fort William Henry, in northern New York, and the military commander there had made an urgent call for militia.

Pownall was energetic in organizing the militia, but the call to arms came too late, since Fort William Henry fell after a brief siege that was followed by some of the worst atrocities by Indians of the war.

[30] In September 1757 Pownall travelled to New Jersey to attend the funeral of Governor Jonathan Belcher and stopped in New York to meet with Lord Loudoun.

Pownall objected to the interference of the military in civilian affairs, the threat of which Loudoun used to implement his agenda, by maintaining that it was necessary for the governor to lead, not drive, the provincial assembly.

[31] The meeting was acrimonious, and Loudoun afterward wrote a letter to London that harshly criticised Pownall's position and called his ideas on governance "high-handed".

[33] Pownall requested for the General Court to accede in some way to Loudoun's demands and eventually signed a bill authorizing the quartering of troops in inns and other public spaces.

[38] In January 1758, Pownall wrote several letters to William Pitt the Elder to outline the difficult issues surrounding relations between the colonial government and the military and civil administrations of the British establishment.

[42] Pownall was, however, successful in recruiting the province's full quota of militia, and his energetic assistance in the war effort earned him approbation from Pitt; the Board of Trade; and the new commander-in-chief, James Abercrombie.

[43] Flush with success, Pownall proposed to General Jeffery Amherst the idea of establishing a fort on Penobscot Bay to contest potential French movements in the area.

He assiduously saw to the needs of its many fishermen, successfully convinced the military authorities to eliminate burdensome red tape and courted local merchants.

[50] He successfully finessed contentious issues surrounding the recruitment, deployment, and provisioning of militia by negotiating compromises between military and provincial demands.

[47] The biographer John Schutz speculates that the underlying reason for Pownall's request was related to frustration with his exclusion from the major military actions of the later war years, which was possibly compounded br his desire to acquire a more significant post, such as a governor-generalship of the conquered New France.

[54] The historian Bernard Bailyn is of the opinion that Pownall's divisive dislike and distrust of Shirley supporters like Thomas Hutchinson and ensuing local political infighting contributed to the request, as did his difficult relationships with the military commanders.

[55] Whatever the reason, the Board of Trade engaged in a reshuffling of colonial positions after King George II died, and Pownall was given the governorship of South Carolina and permission first to take leave in England.

He characterised his term in Massachusetts as "arduous" and informed the colonial office in November 1760 that he would accept another governorship only if the recently-acceded King George III directly ordered it.

Although he feared that Britain was losing control of its colonies, he wrote that the Americans were entitled to the same rights of representative government as their fellow subjects in England, Scotland and Wales.

At the same time, he insisted that the military protection that the colonists received from Britain created equally extensive obligations to help pay for some of the cost.

He was also convinced of the need for a strong central legislature capable of making common policies that would be binding for every member of the British Empire, including the fractious provinces in North America.

When troops were sent to Boston in 1768 after protests against the Townshend Acts had turned violent, he took to the floor of Parliament to warn that the connections between Britain and the colonies were unraveling and that the end result could be a permanent breach.

[69] Pownall was opposed to Lord North's partial repeal in 1770 of the hated Townshend Acts in which the tax on tea was retained as a symbol of parliamentary power.

In debate on the act, Pownall pointed out that retention of the tax would be a "millstone" around English necks, rather than a yoke on American ones, and that it would lead to civil war.

However, once hostilities had begun 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.

The widely published document gained Pownall attention throughout Europe; the anonymity of its author was compromised by the use of extended passages from Administration of the Colonies.

[84] In his later years, Pownall was introduced to Francisco de Miranda, a Venezuelan colonial general who favoured Latin American independence from Spain.

His father had corresponded with William Stukeley about ancient finds in and around Lincoln, and Thomas Pownall's brother John was also a writer on archaeological subjects.

Many of the letters contained accusations of corruption and abuse of power on the part of British government officials,[96] subjects Pownall also spoke and wrote about.