William Gordon, historian of the Revolutionary War, was born in Hertfordshire, England. A clergyman who sympathized with the grievances of American colonists, he resigned his pastorate and immigrated to Massachusetts. In 1772 he was ordained as a pastor at the Third Congregational Church in Roxbury, a neighborhood of Boston. Four years later, he began a history of the American Revolution. After returning to England in 1786, he married Elizabeth Fields (d. 1816) and continued work on his manuscript.