by Nick Bunker
CHAPTER THREE: COMING TO AMERICA
1. Samuel Shute: ODNB. The principal sources for my description of the events of 1682–83 are the daily journal kept by the dissenting clergyman and Whig journalist Roger Morrice, in Mark Goldie et al., eds., The Entring Book of Roger Morrice, 1677–1691 (2007), Vol. 2, pp. 342–78, with many references to Shute and Nathaniel Vincent; Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs (Oxford, 1857), pp. 245–72; Gary De Krey, London and the Restoration, 1659–83 (Cambridge, UK, 2005), Chapter 7; and the State Papers of Charles II at NAK. Also: Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and His Kingdoms (London, 2005), Chapter 5.
2. Lists of dissenters: Clapinson, ed., Bishop Fell and Nonconformity (Oxfordshire Records Society, 1980), pp. xxx–xxxiv; and Bishop Lloyd of Peterborough, Account of the Present State of the Bishopric, 1683, at Bodleian Library, Rawlinson Ms. D.1163.
3. James West’s son Robert West: ODNB; for his New Jersey connection, John E. Pomfret, The New Jersey Proprietors and Their Lands, 1664–1776 (Princeton, 1964), pp. 36–42. The Raritan settlement (otherwise known as Perth Amboy): Proposals by the Proprietors of East Jersey…for the Building of a Town on Ambo Point (London, 1682). The dominant role of the West family in the politics of Banbury can be seen from the material collected in J. S. W. Gibson and E. R. C. Brinkworth, eds., Banbury Corporation Records: Tudor and Stuart (Banbury Historical Society, 1977), pp. 222–52, with biographical details on pp. 326–27 and a West family tree. The Wests first came to local prominence during the English Civil War, when Aholiab West—James West’s elder brother—served as mayor of Banbury between 1644 and 1646, with support from Parliament. Aholiab was mayor again in 1655–56, when he made common cause with Samuel Welles in suppressing the Quaker movement in the town: Alfred Beesley, History of Banbury (London, 1841), pp. 451–54 and 625n. James West then served as mayor three times between 1657 and 1681, while Aholiab’s son John West held the office in 1677–78 and 1690–91, when John Franklin was one of the town’s constables. The Franklin family’s acquaintance with the Wests is documented in Benjamin Senior’s Commonplace Book (BFSCPB 2), which refers to epitaphs composed by Samuel Welles for one of James West’s sons. These epitaphs formed part of the Welles family papers, which were in the possession of Benjamin Senior’s son Samuel Franklin in Boston.
4. Nathaniel Vincent’s Letter to His Congregation, dated June 24, 1683, and published as a broadsheet in London.
5. The Rye House Plot: Richard L. Greaves, Secrets of the Kingdom: British Radicals from the Popish Plot to the Revolution of 1688–89 (Stanford, 1992), Chapters 4–6, especially pp. 186–96.
6. Loading of ships for America in the summer of 1683: London Port Book (Exports), at NAK, E190/1170/1, with entries relating to the Richard between June 21 and August 4, and the Endeavour between August 14 and August 25.
7. Charles II’s attack on the colonial charters: Ronald Hutton, Charles II (Oxford, 1989), pp. 439–41.
8. Banbury Charter: Gibson and Brinkworth, Banbury Corporation Records, pp. 233–35. Dyers’ Company: Mark Knights, “A City Revolution: The Remodelling of the London Livery Companies in the 1680s,” in English Historical Review 112, no. 449 (November 1997): 1146–48. October arrival date: Justin Winsor, Memorial History of Boston (Boston, 1881), Vol. 2, pp. 270–71.
9. Samuel Willard: J. L. Sibley, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, Vol. 2, 1659–77 (Cambridge, MA, 1881), pp. 13–36, with the description of him as a moderate on page 17. Josiah Franklin’s early years in America: Nian-Sheng Huang’s excellent article “Franklin’s Father Josiah: Life of a Boston Tallow Chandler, 1657–1745,” in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series 90, no. 3 (2000): 12–85, which assembles the references to Josiah in Boston archives and Professor Huang’s amplification in his “Franklin’s Boston Years, 1706–1723,” in David Waldstreicher, ed., A Companion to Benjamin Franklin (Oxford, 2011).
10. The Folgers: Tourtellot, Benjamin Franklin, pp. 101–8; Lemay 1, p. 27; but the best source is now Jill Lepore’s Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin (New York, 2013), Chapters 3 and 4.
11. Historical context: J. M. Sosin, English America and the Restoration Monarchy of Charles II (Lincoln, NE, 1980), Chapter 14.
12. John Franklin as constable, and the return of the Banbury Whigs: Gifford and Brinkworth (1977), pp. 244–49. John Franklin’s property: Oxfordshire History Centre, Oxford, FC VIII/6, quitclaim dated January 9, 1689, and his will, proved May 20, 1692 (Banbury Peculiar Wills, Pec.38/5/5-6). Together with BFSA (1717), the Banbury probate file—containing a bundle of material relating to the execution of the will—documents not only the consequences of John Franklin’s death, but also his friendship with Banbury’s civic leaders. On Franklin’s English cousins and his attempts to help them: see the genealogy in BFP I, pp. li–lii, and the comprehensive portrait of Franklin in the 1760s and 1770s in George Goodwin, Benjamin Franklin in London: The British Life of America’s Founding Father (New Haven, CT, 2016), pp. 111–114.
13. Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax (1661–1715): ODNB. His wife was Anne, Countess of Manchester, born Anne Yelverton, the sister of the Sir Henry Yelverton of the 1660s who had been so close a friend of Archdeacon Palmer. Thomas Franklin Junior as tax inspector: William A. Shaw, ed., Calendar of Treasury Papers (London, 1931), Vol. 9, p. 267; Treasury Reference Book, 1689–1693, at NAK, T4/6, p.163; Treasury Money Book, T53/10, pp. 469–70; and Treasury Warrant Book, T54/13, pp. 102–3. On the taxes that he collected: E. A. Reitan, “From Revenue to Civil List, 1689–1702: The ‘Revolution Settlement’ and the Mixed and Balanced Constitution,” in Historical Journal 13 (1970): 571–88. Thomas Franklin as tax commissioners’ clerk: noted in his burial record, January 7, 1703 (not 1702, the date given in error by Franklin in his autobiography), in the Ecton parish register at Northants RO. Benjamin Senior overstates his rank by saying that Thomas was one of the commissioners, and not their clerk. This is another indication that BFSA (1717) cannot always be relied upon for accuracy.
14. The quarrel between Thomas Franklin and the Palmers in the 1690s makes for entertaining reading. Another John Palmer, the archdeacon’s son, now held the post of rector, entitled to the tithes of Ecton, but reluctant to perform the duty of collecting them. Thomas Franklin took a lease on the tithes, gave the rector £200 a year, assessed the tithe payers for a much larger sum, and then kept the difference. It was a cunning scheme, but Mr. Palmer thought he had been swindled. In 1698 Palmer called in his lawyers, and when the case came to the Court of Chancery it revealed the abrasive side of Thomas Junior. Determined to keep what was his, he refused to answer the writ, went on felling trees in the rector’s woods, and threatened to take the tithes by force next harvest time, or so it was alleged. When the judge heard that, he issued an injunction against Mr. Franklin, who had to obey: Chancery lawsuit (1698–99), Palmer v. Franklin, at NAK, C5/138/27; and Chancery Entry Book (1698-B), at C33/292, pp. 81, 367, and 452. In his legal defense, dated May 1699, Franklin describes himself as a “gentleman,” after calling himself a yeoman when he signed his will in September 1697 (Northants RO, Archdeaconry Wills, W.180, will of Thomas Franklin, proved April 17, 1703). According to Benjamin Senior, Thomas had built a fortune of £2,000 by the time of his death (BFSA 1717), but again this figure has to be treated with caution. Thomas Junior’s will indicates that at his death he owned only two yardlands at Ecton (presumably the same as those his father had occupied) and two tracts of pasture, making a total of no more than about thirty-five or forty acres at the most.
15. Defoe’s background and the Essay upon Projects: Paula R. Backscheider, Daniel Defoe: His Life (Baltimore, 1989), pp. 34, 7–8, and 67–71. His origins and early life had close affinities with those of Josiah Franklin and Benjamin Senior. Born in Northamptonshire in 1660, three years after Josiah, Defoe was the son of a tallow chandler who also worshipped at dissenting chapels in London, as did Defoe himself.
Indeed it is almost certain that in their youth Daniel Defoe and the Franklin brothers occcasionally attended the same congregations. The Defoe family’s pastor was Samuel Annesley (1620–96), another of the ejected Puritan clergymen of 1662. Annesley and the Vincent brothers (the Franklin mentors) were closely associated in the capital as radical preachers who defied the law against conventicles: De Krey, London and the Restoration, 1659–83, p. 120. Defoe was also an admirer of the work of the London Presbyterian friend of the Franklins Richard Steele: see note 16 to Chapter 2. Finally: Defoe was acquainted with Thomas Franklin’s patron, Charles Montagu, Lord Halifax, and indeed the Essay Upon Projects may have been intended to win Defoe his own post on the Treasury’s payroll.
CHAPTER FOUR: HIS HAPPY CHILDHOOD
1. Boston at the time of Franklin’s birth: Boston Newsletter, December 31, 1705–January 7, 1706; the opening chapters of G. B. Warden’s Boston: 1689–1776 (New York, 1970), Chapter 2; Michael G. Hall, The Last American Puritan: The Life of Increase Mather, 1639–1723 (Middletown, CT, 1988), pp. 326–38; and generally, Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 1979), Chapter 3.
2. Joseph Dudley, the carriers, and Cotton Mather’s pamphlet: M. Halsey Thomas, ed., The Diary of Samuel Sewall (New York, 1973), Vol. 1, pp. 532–35 and 539–40; and Cotton Mather, A Memorial of the Present Deplorable State of New England (Boston, 1707), p. 7.
3. The Holmes family: James and S. G. McConnell, Fasti of the Irish Presbyterian Church, Part II (Belfast, 1951), Entry 288A.
4. In December 1705, the month before Franklin was born, Massachusetts passed a law—the “Act for the Better Preventing of a Spurious and Mixt Issue”—that forbade marriage or fornication between white people and either “Negroes or mulattoes.” Although Judge Sewall managed to insert a clause allowing African American slaves to marry each other without their masters’ consent, they had no right to keep their children. Although masters could legally free their slaves, in practice this was unlikely to occur because a law of 1703 made it conditional on the master posting a £50 bond to guarantee that they did not fall into poverty and become a burden on the public purse. The town authorities were also given the power to press a freed slave into forced labor: The Acts and Resolves…of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, Volume I (Boston, 1869), pp. 519 and 576–79; and Sewall, Diary, Vol. 1, p. 532. On Benjamin Franklin and slavery: David Waldstreicher, “Benjamin Franklin, Capitalism and Slavery,” in Waldstreicher, ed., A Companion to Benjamin Franklin, pp. 215–27; and Professor Waldstreicher’s Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution (New York, 2004), especially pp. 17−25, pp. 32−36, pp. 79−83, and pp. 125−34, charting the evolution of Franklin’s attitudes to the subject until the end of the 1740s.
5. Pierre-Jean-Georges Cabanis, Notice sur Benjamin Franklin, in Oeuvres posthumes de Cabanis (Paris, 1825), pp. 219–28; and Franklin to Mme Brillon, November 10, 1779, BFP 31, pp. 69–77.
6. The Mill Pond and its surroundings: Nancy S. Seasholes, Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston (Cambridge, MA, 2003), pp. 73–76. Despite all the landfill and the modern buildings, it is still just possible, with the aid of Ms. Seasholes’s fine book and some patience, to trace on foot the layout of the area as Franklin knew it: in particular, the line of the creek that emptied the pond can be found along Salt Lane. Also very helpful is a Boston classic, Annie Haven Thwing’s The Crooked and Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston, 1630 to 1822 (Boston, 1920).
7. The Franklin miffiness, and the fish barrel: Lepore, Book of Ages, pp. 19−20.
8. Toland: quotations from John Toland, Christianity Not Mysterious (London, 1695–96), pp. xxx and 6. On the “deistical controversy”: the leading historian is Jonathan Israel, in his Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2001), especially Chapters 18 and 24, and his Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity and the Emancipation of Man (Oxford, 2006), pp. 202–14 and 344–55. For a more concise treatment, see John Redwood, Reason, Ridicule and Religion: The Age of Enlightenment in England, 1660–1750 (London, 1976), especially Chapters 1 and 2; and Margaret C. Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689–1720 (Hassocks, Sussex, UK, 1976), Chapters 5 and 6.
9. Cotton Mather, Reason Satisfied and Faith Established (Boston, 1712), p. iii.
10. Pierre Bayle: Israel, Radical Enlightenment, pp. 331–41, and Israel, Enlightenment Contested, pp. 66–71, 145–53, and 264–77. However, the best introduction to Bayle’s career is still the 1729 biography by Pierre Des Maizeaux, The Life and Works of Mr Bayle, in Vol. 1 of The Dictionary Historical and Critical of Mr Peter Bayle, Second Edition (London, 1734). In 1742, Franklin and his friends at the Library Company of Philadelphia listed this ten-volume edition of Bayle in the library’s catalogue.
CHAPTER FIVE: MR. PEMBERTON’S METHOD
1. Benjamin Senior’s misadventures are recorded in his long autobiographical poem, The Reflection, in BFSCPB 1, and in his Short Catalogue of the Afflictions wherewith it hath pleased God…to Exercise Me, in Vol. 2.
2. Samuel Franklin indentured as a London cutler’s apprentice, August 25, 1702: Cliff Webb, ed., London Livery Company Apprenticeship Registers (London, 2000), Vol. 35, p. 42.
3. Samuel Wright: Backscheider, Daniel Defoe, pp. 362–64; and Wright’s entry in ODNB. After Nathaniel Vincent’s death, Wright became Benjamin Senior’s favorite preacher and a personal friend. In 1713, the old man wrote an acrostic poem in the preacher’s honor to accompany a gift of candles: BFSCPB 1.
4. Ebenezer Pemberton: Biographical sketch in Clifford K. Shipton, ed., Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, Vol. 4, 1690–1700 (Cambridge, MA, 1933), pp. 107–13); Benjamin Colman’s funeral sermon, in Ebenezer Pemberton, Sermons and Discourses on Several Occasions (London, 1727), pp. 274–310; and M. Halsey Thomas, ed., The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674–1729 (New York, 1973), Vol. 2, p. 796 (August 18, 1715).
5. Pemberton’s library: A Catalogue of Curious Books Belonging to the Late Learned Ebenezer Pemberton (Boston, 1717).
6. Sir Henry Yelverton on the latitudinarians: Letters to Archdeacon Palmer, July 5, 1662, and January 20 and February 2, 1670 (see note 7 to Chapter 2). John Tillotson and the latitudinarian movement: Nicholas Tyacke, “From Laudians to Latitudinarians,” in G. Tapsell, ed., The Later Stuart Church, 1660–1714 (Manchester, 2013), pp. 49–57; and ODNB.
7. Tillotson on reason: Sermon 28, “Objections Against The True Religion Answer’d,” in John Tillotson, Works…Containing 54 Sermons (London, 1720), p. 296. Pemberton’s Old South sermons: Pemberton, Sermons and Discourses on Several Occasions, and (for his preaching on Isaiah) handwritten notes taken by Edward Bromfield, a member of Josiah Franklin’s prayer meeting: MHS, Ms. N-1936. The sermons on Isaiah were given in March and April 1714 when Benjamin Franklin was eight. The closest echoes of John Tillotson are in the homily dated April 25. On Tillotson’s influence in New England, see Norman Fiering, “The First American Enlightenment: Tillotson, Leverett and Philosophical Anglicanism,” in The New England Quarterly (September 1981), with a discussion of Pemberton and Colman and the Brattle Square church on pp. 320–22 and 329–31. Also: Mark A. Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Oxford, 2002), Chapter 2; and for Franklin’s admiration of John Tillotson, see BFP 3, pp. 405-7.
8. James’s visit to London: Lemay 1, pp. 54–56.
9. On Storke: William I. Roberts III: “Samuel Storke: An Eighteenth Century London Merchant Trading to the Colonies,” in Business History Review 39, no. 2 (Summer 1965), pp. 147–170.
10. “An agreeable miscellany:” Nathaniel Mist’s Weekly Journal or Saturday’s Post, April 26, 1718. On Mist and the weekly journals generally: James Sutherland, The Restoration Newspaper and Its Development (Cambridge, UK, 1986), pp. 32–37, 212–13, and 229–30; and Jeremy Black, “The Pr
ess, Party and Foreign Policy in the Reign of George I” in the journal Publishing History (1983), Vol. 13, pp. 23–40. For evidence that James Franklin corresponded with Nathaniel Mist: Weekly Journal or Saturday’s Post, July 20, 1723. It contains a detailed report on the attempt in the summer of 1722 by the Massachusetts Provincial Council to censor the Courant. The item is so sympathetic to James Franklin that he or one of his fellow writers of the Courant must have been the author.
CHAPTER SIX: FOR THE LOVE OF BOOKS
1. Context of The Spectator: Brian Cowan, “Mr Spectator and the Coffeehouse Public Sphere,” in Eighteenth Century Studies 37, no. 3 (Spring 2004): 345–66, with a full analysis of Addison’s ideas about literary style, gentility, and “politeness.”
2. Benjamin Senior on Elizabeth Franklin: His poem “An Acrostick Elegie on his son Samuel Franklin,” dated March 29, 1720, in BFSCPB 2, especially the very forthright stanzas 9–14.
3. Bishop Jonathan Shipley to Franklin, September 22, 1782, BFP 37, pp. 129–30.
4. For a discussion of the way adolescents channel their instincts into philosophizing, see a classic of psychoanalysis, Anna Freud’s The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (London, 1993), pp. 158–65, on “intellectualization at puberty.”
5. Tryon’s biography: Some Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Tryon, late of London, Merchant (London, 1705), with an account of his mystical beliefs on pp. 29–32.