Young Benjamin Franklin

by Nick Bunker

  4. Tresham family: Mary E. Finch, The Wealth of Five Northamptonshire Families, 1540–1640 (Oxford, 1956), Chapter 4, with references to Houghton Magna on pp. 73–76; and ODNB entries for Sir Thomas Tresham and his son Lewis.

  5. Baude to Sir Thomas Tresham, July 19, 1605, in BL Add. Ms. 39,829, fol. 188; and the Chancery lawsuit of 1605–6. Also: report of the depopulation commission for Northamptonshire, August 1607, at NAK, C205/5/5, with Houghton Magna on Membrane Four, with the statement that “this town of Houghton is dispossessed of two hundred persons or thereabouts.” More details can be found in a 1608 Star Chamber prosecution of Ferdinando Baude (or Bawde, an alternative spelling): Attorney-General v. Baude et al., at NAK, STAC8/8/12.

  6. Josiah’s letter, with anecdotes about the family: May 26, 1739, BFP 3, pp. 229–32. Henry Franklin’s imprisonment: I have found no contemporary record, but it would be surprising if one remained. It seems to me most likely that Baude and his allies pressed charges against Henry Franklin for trespass or criminal libel. If so, his trial would have occurred at the Northampton Assizes, but assize records rarely survive from this period. Baude’s Chancery lawsuit against Jones and Franklin must have been dropped, since the Chancery records show that it never came before the judges in London.

  7. Baude and the mob: NAK, STAC8/8/12. Enclosure and the Midland Rising: Joan Thirsk, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales (1500–1640), (Cambridge, UK, 1967), Vol. 4, pp. 232–36.

  8. “Improvement”: Paul Slack, The Invention of Improvement: Information and Material Progress in Seventeenth Century England (Oxford, 2015), especially pp. 4–8, 50–52 (referring to the Midland Rising), and Chapter 7.

  9. Chancery lawsuit (1622), Wade v. Jones and Franklin, NAK, C3/388/45; Northamptonshire assessments for Ship Money, 1628, at NAK, E179/157/414; and Joan Wake, ed., Quarter Sessions Records of the County of Northampton (Northampton, 1924), pp. 78–79. When the American writer A. B. Tourtellot was researching his book Benjamin Franklin: The Shaping of Genius (New York, 1977), dealing with Franklin’s early life and origins, he drew upon some unpublished notes about Henry Franklin’s period at Ecton after 1620 compiled by P. I. King, the county archivist at the Northamptonshire Record Office. King’s notes seem to have been lost, and so I had to start again from the beginning.

  10. Benjamin Franklin to Deborah Read Franklin, September 6, 1758, BFP 8, pp. 133–38.

  11. Landscape and history of Ecton: At Northants RO, Thomas Holmes’s map of Ecton in 1703, Map 2115, and the Sotheby (Ecton) Papers, especially Useful Memorandums Relating To My Estates (1743) in Box 1071. Also: Glenn Foard, “Ecton: Its Lost Village and Landscape Park,” in Northamptonshire Past and Present (Northampton, 1993–94), pp. 335–53; and David Hall, The Open Fields of Northamptonshire (Northampton, 1995), pp. 113–17. There is an old and unreliable village history by John Cole, The History and Antiquities of Ecton (Scarborough, 1825). More useful is the brief section on Ecton in L. F. Salzman, ed., A History of the County of Northampton (Victoria County History, London, 1937), Vol. 4, pp. 122–27. For a description of Ecton by Benjamin Franklin Sr., see his poem “On Ecton 1702” in his commonplace book: see note 10 to Chapter 2. Rector’s income at Ecton: £250 per annum, in H. I. Longden, Northants and Rutland Clergy from 1500 (Northampton, 1938–52), Vol. 1, p. 33. National average: Christopher Hill, Economic Problems of the Church (Oxford, 1956), pp. 108–13. By 1690, the value of the rectory had increased to £300 a year: see note 16 to Chapter 2. Further evidence of the village’s prosperity can be found in the records of the Parliamentary election of 1702, when out of an Ecton population of about four hundred no fewer than fifty-one men—about half the householders in the village—were affluent enough to cast a vote: Northampton Mercury, Northamptonshire Poll Books, 1702–1831 (Northampton, 1832), p. 27, at Northants RO.

  12. “Meddlers with the Bible”: W. J. Sheils, The Puritans in the Diocese of Peterborough (Northampton, 1979), pp. 13–18.

  13. The Catesbys and Puritanism at Whiston and Ecton: H. I. Longden, The Visitation of Northamptonshire, 1681 (London, 1935), pp. 43–44; V. A. Hatley and B. A. Bailey, Church of St Mary the Virgin, Whiston (Northampton, 1988); will of Isabel Catesby, proved February 16, 1581, at NAK, PROB 11/63/103; lands of Thomas Catesby, 1592, listed in his postmortem inquisition, NAK, C142/232; and Sheils, The Puritans in the Diocese of Peterborough, pp. 128–30. The Yelvertons, whose estate lay in the parish of Easton Maudit, Northamptonshire: Longden, The Visitation of Northamptonshire, 1681, pp. 43–44; Gyles Isham, Easton Maudit and the Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul (Northamptonshire Record Society, 1994), pp. 2–7; J. E. Neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons (London, 1963), pp. 343–49 and 362–63; and ODNB.

  14. On Samuel Foster: ODNB. He was the son of the Puritan clergyman Francis Foster, who in 1605 was fired by the authorities from his post at Whiston during James I’s purge of Puritans from the Church of England. Samuel’s ancestry is confirmed by Francis Foster’s will, proved July 25, 1622, at Northants RO (Archdeaconry Wills, AV/50/23). Also see Hatley and Bailey, Church of St Mary the Virgin, Whiston, and Sheils, The Puritans in the Diocese of Peterborough, Chapter 6.

  15. John Palmer’s career in the clergy: H. I. Longden, Northamptonshire and Rutland Clergy from 1500 (1938–52), Vol. 10, pp. 155–56. Palmer’s long friendship with the Catesbys and the Yelvertons is documented in his letter book (see note 7 to the next chapter) and in the Hatton-Finch Papers, BL, Add. Mss. 29,556 and 29,557.

  16. Palmer worked with a third astronomer, the physician John Twysden (1607–1688), whose ties to the Yelvertons were still closer. In 1630, his sister Anne Twysden had married Sir Christopher Yelverton, who chose Palmer as rector at Ecton. Brief accounts of Foster, Palmer, and Twysden can be found in E. G. R. Taylor, The Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, UK, 1954), pp. 206 and 212–13. Observations at Ecton and Easton: from Observationes Eclipsium, in Samuel Foster, Miscellanea: sive lucubrationes mathematicae (London, 1659); and John Palmer’s The Catholique Planisphere (London, 1658), pp. 209–13, including recollections of Palmer’s early life.

  17. Description of Thomas Franklin: BFSA (1717). Discovered by chance on a London bookstall in 1851, John Palmer’s account books were given to the Victorian sage Thomas Carlyle, who sent them on to a friend in Boston, where they have been ever since: Massachusetts Historical Society, Microfilm Reel P. 295. The second book refers to land agency and scrivening work done for the Palmers and the Catesbys by Thomas Franklin Jr. in the 1670s. The pages relating to Thomas Senior in the first book show him owing tithes as the owner of two “yardlands” at Ecton, meaning about twenty-eight acres of land altogether (the size of a “yardland” varied from one village to another: Hall, The Open Fields of Northamptonshire, p. 79), which fits in with the figure Benjamin Franklin gives in his autobiography. Thomas Senior also rented half a yardland from John Palmer. For Thomas Franklin Junior’s holding of land at Ecton ca. 1700, see note 14 to Chapter 3.

  18. “Ingenuity” in the 1650s: Slack, The Invention of Improvement, p. 93.

  19. Walter Blith: Ibid., pp. 106–8. Ingenuity and improvement in Northamptonshire: John Morton, The Natural History of Northamptonshire, pp. 61–63, 382–97, 486, and 495. Morton’s sources included Thomas Palmer, John Palmer’s successor as rector at Ecton.

  20. Cultural roots of the Industrial Revolution: Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Great Britain, 1700–1850 (New Haven, 2009), Chapters 3 and 5; and J. Mokyr, Michael Kelly, and Cormac Ó Gráda, Precocious Albion: A New Interpretation of the British Industrial Revolution (University College, Dublin, School of Economics Working Papers, 2013).

  21. Flooding by the Nene: Morton, The Natural History of Northamptonshire, p. 337. Examples of Thomas Franklin Jr.’s scrivening practice survive in the county archives at Northampton, in the form of legal documents that he drew up and witnessed. The file of his letters relates to his work
as land agent for Thomas Hackett of North Crawley, Buckinghamshire, who bought an estate at Ecton in 1678: Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Aylesbury, file D-X464/4.

  22. Bagley’s bell foundry: Morton, The Natural History of Northamptonshire, p. 65; Michael Lee, “Henry Penn, Bellfounder, 1685–1729,” in Northamptonshire Past and Present (2004), pp. 42–46. After the death of Thomas Franklin’s business client Thomas Hackett in 1689, Henry Bagley bought Hackett’s estate at Ecton for £1,380, further evidence that his bell-casting business was large and successful. Bagley and Thomas Franklin were very close, witnessing each other’s wills in 1697. See BL, Additional Charters 24,144; and Northants RO, Archdeaconry Wills.

  23. Importance of apprenticeships in English industrial and scientific history: Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy, pp. 116–21. High wages in London: Robert C. Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge, UK, 2009), Chapter 2.

  CHAPTER TWO: COATS OF MANY COLORS

  1. In his family memoir of 1717, Benjamin Senior said that Josiah was apprenticed in Banbury, which was not correct. Benjamin Franklin repeated the mistake in his autobiography. As a result, Josiah’s London apprenticeship has been overlooked by previous Franklin biographers, because they had no reason to search for evidence about him in the archives from the capital. Josiah’s apprenticeship and those of his brothers Samuel, John, and Benjamin are recorded in the Dyers’ Company registers at London’s Guildhall Library, Mss. 8171.1 and 8167.1. They show that Josiah was indentured as an apprentice dyer in London on June 22, 1671, six months before his fourteenth birthday, his employer being one Tobias Yates. As for Joseph Franklin, he was indentured to a member of the Armourers’ Company, Joseph Titcomb, who ran a joinery business: Guildhall Library, Ms. 12,080/1. Cost of apprenticeships: Richard Grassby, The Business Community of Seventeenth Century England (Cambridge, UK, 1995), pp. 65–70; and Roger A. Feldman, Recruitment, Training and Knowledge in the Dyers’ Company, 1649–1826 (PhD thesis, London School of Economics, 2005), Chapter 2. The reference to Samuel’s good looks and ingenuity comes from BFSA (1717). Also see note 14 to Chapter 2.

  2. English silk industry: Linda Levy Peck, Consuming Splendor: Society and Culture in Seventeenth Century England (Cambridge, UK, 2005), pp. 85–111.

  3. Benjamin Franklin Sr., Dyeing and Coloring, printed in Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Transactions, Vol. 10, 1904–1906 (Boston, 1907), pp. 206–25. English dyeing trade: Anon., The Whole Art of Dying, In Two Parts (London, 1705); Eric Kerridge, Textile Manufactures in Early Modern England (Manchester, 1985), pp. 163–68; but best of all is Sir William Petty’s report of his observations among the London dyers in the 1660s, An Apparatus to the History of the Common Practices of Dyeing, in Thomas Sprat, The History of the Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge (London, 1667), pp. 284–306. Sprat’s book is a huge compendium of sources for the cult of ingenuity and “improvement” in Restoration England.

  4. Josiah Franklin on his mother: Josiah to Benjamin Franklin, May 26, 1739, BFP 2, p. 231.

  5. Palmer in 1648–9: A. G. Matthews, Calamy Revised (Oxford, 1934), Appendix 1.

  6. John Palmer and Sir Henry Yelverton: John Palmer’s letter book, 1640–1679, Bodleian Library, Oxford, England, Ms. Eng. lett 210; also, the Yelverton entry in B. D. Henning, ed., History of Parliament, 1660–1690 (London, 1983), Vol. 3. Historical context: Tim Harris, Paul Seaward, and Mark Goldie, The Politics of Religion in Restoration England (Oxford, 1990), Harris’s introduction; and Ronald Hutton, The Restoration: A Political and Religious History of England and Wales, 1658–1667 (Oxford, 1985).

  7. Sir Henry Yelverton on Thomas Franklin Sr.: Yelverton to Palmer, January 2, 1662, in Palmer’s letter book at the Bodleian, with Yelverton’s comment about England being “torn in pieces.” Only one of the Franklins was an orthodox Anglican. This was Thomas Junior, who served two terms as churchwarden at Ecton (Northants RO, Archdeacon’s Visitation Book No. 6). Later he fell out with the Palmers and by the time of his death in 1703 he was thinking of leaving the official church: BFSA (1717).

  8. John Palmer as archdeacon: His letters to Joseph Henshaw, Bishop of Peterborough, 1665–1667, at BL, Add. Ms. 22, 576. Palmer’s correspondence with the Royal Society in the 1660s: A. R. and M. B. Hall, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg (Madison, WI, 1967), Vol. 4, pp. 3–4, 34–35, 71–73, 82–83, 202–3, and 224–25.

  9. Conventicles: John Palmer, An Account of the Conventicles, August 11, 1669, Northants RO, Fermor Hesketh Baker Papers, 708, fols. 73–75; Yelverton to Palmer, January 2 and January 16, 1662, in Palmer’s letter book; and ODNB. Also: David L. Wykes: The Church and Early Dissent: The 1669 Return of Nonconformity for the Archdeaconry of Northampton in Northamptonshire Past & Present, Vol. 8 (1991–92), pp. 197–208). The principal dissenting preacher who connected the Northampton-Wellingborough area with the capital was the ejected Presbyterian minister Vincent Alsop (1630–1703): ODNB.

  10. Benjamin Senior’s poems are in the two manuscript volumes of his Commonplace Book (BFSCPB), preserved at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts. The book appears to be a fair copy made in his old age in the 1720s in Boston from earlier manuscripts. Apart from “The Reflection,” many of his other poems contain autobiographical details, especially “The Report.” Also very useful is his list of other papers which were copied by his son Samuel, but which have not survived, because the titles allow us to trace the Franklin family’s connections in England; and—in Vol. 2—Benjamin Senior’s chronological account of his medical history and religious experiences.

  11. Thomas Vincent and his younger brother Nathaniel: Matthews, Calamy Revised, pp. 502–3; ODNB; Benjamin Senior’s preface to Nathaniel Vincent, A Discourse on Forgiveness in Three Sermons, printed in Boston in 1722 by James Franklin; and Nathanael Taylor, A Funeral Service Occasioned by the Death of the Late Nathaniel Vincent (London, 1697), Dedicatory Preface.

  12. Whig politics of Nathaniel Vincent and the Dyers’ Company: See Chapter 3, note 1.

  13. The Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis: Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and His Kingdoms (London, 2006), Chapter 3. For the consequences all of this had in America, the classic account is still Bernard Bailyn’s masterpiece, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 1967 and 1992), especially Chapter 2.

  14. The Child family: Landholdings and tithe payments in John Palmer’s account book at the MHS, and the Child family wills at Northants RO. Thomas Franklin witnessed the will of Ann Child, spinster, in October 1631. In January 1744, at the age of eighty-six, Josiah wrote a letter to a possible kinsman in England in which he said that he had lived with his brother John for eleven years (Tourtellot, Benjamin Franklin, p. 26). This is at variance with his London apprenticeship record, which clearly shows that Josiah was in the city in 1678 when he reached the end of his indentures. However, it may be that the eleven years included a period of rooming with his brother in London before John left the capital for Banbury. In the Freedom Book of the Dyers’ Company, Josiah signed his name as “Josias,” but there can be no doubt that this is our Josiah Franklin. The handwriting precisely matches later specimens of his signature collected in New England archives by Nian-Sheng Huang: see note 9 to Chapter 3.

  15. Textiles at Banbury: Kerridge, Textile Manufactures in Early Modern England, pp. 63–65. The Franklins: BFSA (1717).

  16. The clergyman who came to comfort Benjamin Senior was the eminent Presbyterian Richard Steele (1629–92): ODNB. His presence at the sickbed shows us just how close the Franklins were to the leading figures of the dissenting movement in London. Not only that: Steele may also have helped to shape the values that Benjamin Franklin would expound in the 1730s–50s in Poor Richard’s Almanack and The Way to Wealth. Mr. Steele wrote two widely read books, The Tradesman’s Calling and The Husbandman’s Calling, which celebrated “diligence” in business as
a Christian virtue.

  17. Politics and religion at Banbury: J. S. W. Gibson, ed., Baptism and Burial Register of Banbury, Part Two, 1653–1723 (Banbury Historical Society, 1968), pp. viii–xi; and Alan Crossley, ed., A History of the County of Oxford, Volume Ten, Banbury Hundred (London, 1972), pp. 71–89 and 89–95.

  18. Samuel Welles: Matthews, Calamy Revised, p. 520; and his will, proved September 24, 1678, NAK, PCC, PROB 11/357/493. Most of what we know about Welles comes from Benjamin Franklin Sr. In May 1705, he sent a brief account of Welles’s life to the dissenting historian Edmund Calamy, who included the material in his biographical dictionary of the ejected ministers of 1662. Benjamin Senior’s letter to Calamy was reprinted in The Gentleman’s Magazine in 1784 (Vol. 54, p. 248). The Doyley family: Harleian Society, Visitations of Oxfordshire (London, 1871), pp. 226–27; will of Edward Doyley, proved May 15, 1675, at NAK, PCC, PROB 11/347/538; and Mary Clapinson, ed., Bishop Fell and Nonconformity: Visitation Documents from the Oxford Diocese, 1682–3 (Oxfordshire Records Society, 1980), pp. 1–2, 44, and 48.

  19. Benjamin Senior’s employers in the 1680s and 1690s were the Light family, prominent members of the Dyers’ Company and generous donors to the Presbyterian clergy: will of Anthony Light, proved June 28, 1686, at NAK, PCC, PROB 11/383/414. Will of Dorothy Doyley Welles, with a bequest of £80 to Benjamin and Hannah Franklin: proved November 24, 1688, NAK, PCC wills, PROB 11/393/298. The Doyley family’s connections are documented in W. D. Bayley, A Biographical., Historical, Genealogical and Heraldic Account of the House of D’Oyly (London, 1845), pp. 26–33 and 46–48. They were especially close to Oliver Cromwell’s spiritual counselor, Dr. John Owen, who until his death in 1683 led a congregation that included Hannah Franklin’s cousin Ursula Doyley.