The defeat of Burgoyne at Saratoga in the fall of I777, the FrancoAmerican alliance of February I778, and the limited military achievements of the British army in the colonies throughout I778 forced many people in and out of government in Britain to reconsider the underlying assumptions that had guided British behavior toward the colonies since the Stamp Act crisis.1 Among these was William Knox, then one of two undersecretaries of state for the colonies and a close confidant of American secretary Lord George Germain. Born in Ireland in I732, Knox had had firsthand experience in the colonies as provost marshal of the infant colony of Georgia from I756 to I762 and had acted as agent for Georgia in London and one of the chief penmen for the Grenville faction prior to his appointment to the American Department in I770. An undersecretary for twelve years during the successive administrations of Hillsborough, Dartmouth, and Germain, Knox played a significant role as an architect of American policy.2 With sizeable property holdings in Georgia, he had a vested interest in retaining the American colonies under British dominion, and, as his pamphlets and numerous unpublished official memoranda attest, few people in power in Britain thought more seriously or more deeply about the quarrel with the colonies at any stage of its development.3