Francis Willes was the head of the British Deciphering Branch in 1773 and son of Bishop Edward Willes. Under his leadership, the Deciphering Branch quickly lost its ability to intercept and monitor French communications as British-Franco relations broke down[1]. The French intervention in the Revolutionary War caused the French embassy in London to be shut down and limited the flow of intelligence, about the French, to communications from spies in Paris. In 1780, Willes successfully decrypted a package of dispatches from La Lafayette to Vergennes. The dispatches included La Lafayette's opinions about the abilities of the combined French and American armies[2]. According to La Lafayette, "if French troops arrived in time, New York could be captured from Sir Henry Clinton [3]. King George III was worried about the dispatch, but ultimately believed it was false information. Despite the Deciphering Branch's best efforts, without the ability to easily intercept enemy messages, Britain severely lacked in intelligence compared to the French and Americans and exacerbated their situation by not acting on the naval intelligence they did receive.
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