Meanwhile, Jackson and the two Franklins put their heads together and decided that the only answer to the Penns’ intransigence was an all-out assault. With William Franklin responsible for research and Jackson for the writing, they began preparing An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania. Again, how closely William was allied with his father in this project was evident in Franklin’s own words, when he proudly told a friend in Philadelphia that in the preparation of the book (which is what it eventually became) “Billy afforded great assistance and furnished most of the materials.” Franklin called Jackson “one of the best pens in England,” but there was one part of An Historical Review that was classic Benjamin Franklin, the slogan that appeared on the title page: “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
To the Penns, the Historical Review was a bombshell. Franklin wrote cheerfully to Isaac Norris, the Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly, shortly after it came out: “The Proprietor is enraged.”
In between these labors that absorbed the better part of a year, Franklin and his son vacationed in the English countryside. One of their more meaningful journeys was a pilgrimage to the village of Ecton, home of their English ancestors. The tour included a stop at the University of Cambridge, where Franklin admitted his “vanity was not a little gratified by the particular regard shown by the Chancellor and. Vice Chancellor of the University and the heads of colleges.” But Franklin mentioned this only in passing while he wrote pages to Deborah about the pleasure of retracing, with his son at his side, the quiet country roads and village bypaths which generations of Franklins had trudged before him. Together they examined the Ecton parish register that contained Franklin family records dating back 200 years. The wife of the rector at Ecton showed them the family gravestones in the little churchyard. They were so covered with moss that “we could not read the letters till she ordered a hard brush and basin of water, with which Peter scoured them clean, and then Billy copied them,” Franklin said.
Best of all, in nearby Wellingborough, they found Mary Fisher, a daughter of Benjamin’s uncle, Thomas Franklin. She clearly remembered when Benjamin’s father and his wife and two children departed for New England in the year 1685 and was able to tell them stories of Franklin’s father in the years before he emigrated. When she heard that Franklin had paid the rector of Ecton to copy off the names of all the Franklins in the county register, beginning with the first of the line in the middle 1500s, Mrs. Fisher told him, “You have taken more care to preserve the memory of our family than any other person that ever belonged to it.”
Franklin was vastly pleased to discover that the old stone building in Ecton where generations of his ancestors had lived was still known as the “Franklin house.” He was particularly fascinated by stories villagers told him of Thomas Franklin, Mary Fisher’s father. On a smaller scale, he undoubtedly bore comparisons to Benjamin himself. Thomas was “something of a lawyer, clerk of the county courts, and clerk to the Archdeacon in his visitations; a very leading man in all county affairs and very much employed in public business. He set on foot a subscription for erecting chimes in their steeple, and completed it, and we heard them play. He found out an easy method of saving their village meadows from being drowned, as they used to be sometimes by the river, which method is still in being; but when first proposed, nobody could conceive how it could be; but however they said if Franklin says he knows how to do it, it will be done. His advice and opinion was sought for on all occasions by all sorts of people, and he was looked upon she said by some as something of a conjurer.” Thomas Franklin died on January 6, 1702 - four years to the day before Benjamin Franklin was born. William was so struck by this fact, he gasped: “Had he died on the same day . . . one might have supposed a transmigration.”
From Ecton, Benjamin and Billy journeyed to Coventry and Birmingham. Along the way, they stopped to see some of Deborah’s relatives. Their favorite was Mrs. Salt, whom Franklin described as “a jolly, lively dame, both Billy and myself agree that was extremely like you, her whole face has the same turn, and exactly the same little blue Birmingham eyes.” To his sister, Jane Mecom, in Boston, Franklin reported that he met another relative Robert Page, widower of their cousin Jane Franklin. In an old letter from Boston dated July 4, 1723, Page pointed out to Franklin the words, “Your Unkle Josiah has a daughter Jane about twelve years old, a good-humour’d child.”
“So Jenny, keep up your character,” Franklin wrote, “and don’t be angry when you have no letters.”
Franklin sent gifts of Madeira and other presents to many of these relatives, by way of thanking them for their hospitality. The whole trip was obviously a profound experience, both for father and son. To see with one’s own eyes the deep roots of the Franklin family in the English soil and countryside, to hear a cousin such as Mary Fisher proudly say that the Franklin family had “acted that part well in which Providence had placed it, and for 200 years all the descendants of it have lived with credit, and are to this day without any blot in their escutcheon, which is more than some of the best families, i.e. the richest and highest in title can pretend to,” almost certainly deepened that strong sense of oneness with the mother country that was the inclination of both Franklin’s heart and head. Even more touching were Mary Fisher’s words: She was “the last of my father’s house remaining in this country” and the obvious pleasure she took to see “so fair hopes” of the family’s continuance “in the younger branches.” For William Franklin, the experience was perhaps even more momentous. It provided a powerful visceral connection to the mother country that he had already found highly attractive.
The following summer, the Franklins embarked on an even more arduous journey, this one to Scotland. By now Franklin had become convinced that these summer journeys were good for his health, not only because they relaxed him but because they enabled him to flee London’s endless smoke. Scotland was almost unavoidable as a Franklin stop for several reasons. His closest friend in England William Strahan was a Scotsman, and like all his countrymen who flocked to London by the thousands, he never ceased singing the praises of his native heaths. Even before Franklin came to London, Strahan had glorified Scotland so effulgently that Franklin good-naturedly remarked that if all that his fellow printer said was true, he might well move there. Two other close friends, Doctors John Fothergill and John Pringle, were Edinburgh men. Moreover, the University of St. Andrews had awarded Franklin a degree of Doctor of Laws early in 1759, no doubt at the instigation of one, or all, of these influential Scotsmen. He was eager to go to the school to collect the degree in person.
As Franklin and his son rode out of London on August 8, 1759, the guns of the Tower of London boomed, and from Westminster Abbey the massive bells pealed triumphantly. On street corners, swarms of citizens gathered to discuss the latest war news. English and German troops fighting in Europe under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick had routed the French Army at Minden. In spite of the fact that the day was clear and hot, victory bonfires were soon burning on almost every street. Drunken mobs celebrated by smashing and robbing the shops of the Quakers who had refused to support the war effort.
Up through Hertfordshire in their chaise rode the two Franklins, reveling in the beauties of the English countryside. Behind them rode Franklin’s slave Peter on horseback. At Birmingham, they saw the esteemed English printer John Baskerville who was just introducing his now famous typeface.
A few months later back in London, Franklin would defend the Baskerville typeface by hoaxing a fellow scientist, who insisted that Baskerville’s strokes were too thin and narrow, damage the eye, and would soon blind all the readers in the nation. The man insisted that he could not read a single line of Baskerville type without pain. Franklin stepped into another room, found a sample of an entirely different typeface, Caslon, ripped it out of the book and brought it back with him. Handing it to the complainant, he protested that he could not see a
ny of the disproportions he mentioned. The gulled critic went down the page pointing out one example after another of Baskerville’s supposedly too thin and narrow strokes. He even vowed that he could not read the specimen without feeling the acute pain he had mentioned. “I spared him that time the confusion of being told that these were the types he had been reading all his life with so much ease to his eyes . . .” Franklin told the delighted Baskerville.
On to Scotland rolled the Franklins, along the less traveled western road. The route carried them past the fishing village of Whitehaven, where a lad of twelve had just enrolled as a seaman’s apprentice for a trading voyage to Virginia. The son of a Scots gardener from Kirkcudbright, his name was John Paul. Later he would add a third name to give it an English flavor and call himself John Paul Jones. But the agent of Pennsylvania, not being a seer in spite of his reputation as a conjuror, jogged past without the smallest notion that someday in the unseen future, he would raise the money to allow this young man to humiliate the English flag which they both currently revered.
At Edinburgh, the city fathers made both Franklins “burgesses and guild brethren of this city in the most ample form.” But the Franklins soon left the dirty smelly Scottish metropolis, where each night at ten o’clock all the residents emptied their “Iuggies” containing the day’s garbage and human offal into the street with the historic cry, “Gardy loo” (Gardez l’eau), while below them frantic pedestrians shrieked, “Baud your hand!” Their destination was Prestonfield, the handsome estate of the famed Scottish doctor Sir Alexander Dick and his beautiful wife Janet. After a week in this lovely house at the base of Arthur’s Seat with its spectacular view of the Dudingston Loch, the Franklins continued their journey across Scotland to St. Andrews University. If they expected a second Oxford or the orderly bustle of Harvard or Yale, they were disappointed.
St. Andrews was in an advanced state of decay, and the town itself had grass growing in the streets. On all sides were dismal, wrecked houses where Scottish nobles had once held splendid court. The principal industry seemed to be getting drunk, there were no fewer than forty-two ale houses. The college, founded in 1413, and once the pride of Scotland, had dwindled to a mere twenty students. When Samuel Johnson visited it a few years later, he was appalled to discover that the library was locked, and no one could find the key. Fortunately, it was not missing for Franklin’s investiture, which took place in the library.
A later rector of St. Andrews has recreated the scene in the ancient room overlooking the school garden with its 200-year-old thorn tree planted by Mary Queen of Scots. The senior members of the university took their seats in chairs around the graduation stool in the center of the floor. Behind them stood a group of scarlet-gowned students. Franklin knelt on the graduation stool in front of the president of the Senate. While he recited the traditional Latin formula, he placed on Franklin’s head the school’s historic “graduation cap,” a “fragile square of black velvet” that had supposedly belonged to John Knox and was made the sign of admission to the university when the Reformation changed Scotland from Catholic to Presbyterian. Then the hood of scarlet silk lined with white satin was draped over the shoulders of the kneeling philosopher, and he stood no longer Mr. Benjamin Franklin but “Doctor Franklin.”
It was a title that Franklin’s friends religiously used for the rest of his life. This alone is evidence of how much it meant to him. Franklin moved in a world where so many men had titles handed to them at birth or had acquired them thanks to their good fortune in being able to afford an expensive education. There is a certain poignancy in the eagerness with which he grasped this tribute from a second-rate college, a hint that for all the honors be received, Franklin never forgot the days when he wandered the streets of Philadelphia and London, a homeless nobody with only his wits and his energy to recommend him.
From St. Andrews the Franklins returned to Edinburgh. There they met yet another remarkable Scotsman, Henry Home, Lord Karnes - a character so unique he attracted the biographical notice of his fellow Scotsman James Boswell before he became enamored of Samuel Johnson. Karnes was sixty-three when he first met Franklin in the Inner House of the Law Courts. Tall, lean, with barely a tooth in his head, he was a dedicated practical joker, with a wildly sardonic sense of humor. Once, he presided at the murder trial of Matthew Hay, a friend with whom he used to play chess. When the jury brought in a verdict of guilty, Lord Karnes roared from the bench: “That’s checkmate for you, Matthew!”
Like Franklin, Kames had been born poor and worked his way to fame, beginning as an indentured clerk. He was a remarkably determined man, who had educated himself by independently studying mathematics, logic, ethics, metaphysics, natural philosophy, as well as the law. He and Franklin immediately took to each other, and Karnes invited Franklin to spend a week with him at his country seat in Berwickshire on the road back to London. The lovely country house a few miles from the River Tweed and the English border is still standing in its beautiful park with its formal gardens rich in trees, including four that Franklin planted during his visit.
Karnes and Franklin found each other irresistible. They spent hours together on rides along the River Tweed and spent the evening hours demolishing the Karnes House wine cellar. They exchanged their bawdiest stories and tried a few practical jokes on each other. Franklin dazz1ed Karnes with a stunt that he reserved for a few select victims. As they neared the bottom of a bottle, one night, and Lady Karnes began to make dark looks in the direction of her husband, Franklin remarked that the world would be much better off if it followed the Bible’s teaching on tolerance.
Karnes cocked a Presbyterian-trained eye at Franklin and demanded to know what passage in the Good Book taught that. If anything, the Bible taught intolerance.
Franklin asked for a Bible, assuring Karnes that he would find the passage for him in a moment. A Bible was forthwith produced, and Franklin flipped the pages for a minute, then gave a satisfied exclamation, and began to read.
1. And it came to pass after these things that Abraham sat in the Door of his Tent, about the going down of the Sun.
2. And behold a Man, bowed with Age, came from the Way of the Wilderness, leaning on a Staff.
3. And Abraham arose and met him, and said unto him, Turn in, I pray thee, and wash thy Feet, and tarry all Night, and thou shalt arise early on the Morrow, and go on thy Way.
4. And the Man said, Nay, for I will abide under this Tree.
5. But Abraham pressed him greatly; so he turned, and they went into the Tent; and Abraham baked unleavened Bread, and they did eat.
6. And when Abraham saw that the Man blessed not God, he said unto him. Wherefore dost thou not worship the most high God, Creator of Heaven and Earth?
7. And the Man answered and said I do not worship the God thou speakest of; neither do I call upon his Name; for I have made to myself a God, which abideth alway in mine House and provideth me with all Things.
In the same carefully cadenced Biblical prose, the story told how Abraham, in a fit of righteousness, drove the old man out of his house. For this, he was sternly rebuked by God and warned that his seed would be afflicted “four hundred years in a strange land.”
Karnes’ long jaw sagged. Lady Karnes looked at least as bewildered. As good Presbyterians, they thought they knew every page of their Bible. Yet not a word of this was familiar to them. Frantically, the Scottish jurist demanded to know from what book of the Bible Franklin was reading.
William Franklin had been sitting quietly to one side with his eyes down while his father read. Now he looked up, and the two Franklins’ eyes met. They both burst out laughing.
In a spare hour Franklin had written this parable on persecution, perfectly imitating the style of the Good Book. He had then committed it to memory. Whenever he wanted to befuddle someone who was too dogmatic in his religious opinions or too extravagant in his knowledge of the scripture, he treated him to this little performance.
Before they parted, Lord Karnes begged
Franklin to send him the whole dossier of his collected works. Franklin was equally charmed by Kames and the other Scotsmen he had met. Back in London, he told Karnes, “On the whole I must say, I think the time we spent [in Scotland] was six weeks of the densest happiness I have met with in any part of my life.”
In the months between these excursions, Franklin continued his battle with the Proprietors. He took advantage of every opening no matter how small to attack their case. When the Assembly of Maryland got into a dispute with the descendants of Lord Baltimore, Franklin published an anonymous letter, attacking Proprietary government in that colony. He had his Philadelphia neighbor Charles Thomson write a history of the diplomacy of the Pennsylvania Proprietors with the Delaware Indian tribe. The heart of the story was the famous Walking Treaty of 1737. The Penns had purchased from the Delawares a tract of land that was to be one and a half day’s walk. Both the Indians and the agents of the Proprietor knew exactly what this distance meant - the average number of miles an Indian could travel on the trail, moving at a normal pace. The Penns hired two of the best athletes in Pennsylvania, put them through a rugged course of training, and then turned them loose to take the walk. They almost doubled the average distance, and the Indians, with considerable justice, felt they had been outrageously defrauded. In 1757, the Penns tried to take some of this disputed land in the Wyoming valley and began ousting the Indians from the district. In London, Franklin backed the Indians, and the Crown found in their favor.
In the face of this steady, aggressive pressure, the Proprietors began giving ground. From an arrogant refusal to allow either taxation or even an investigation into the net worth of their estates, they grudgingly agreed that Franklin had a right to find out their yearly income, and finally, by mid-1760, they were conceding that the estates could be taxed, and their only desire was to see it done “on the same calculation with the estates of other people.” This was in itself a significant retreat, but they obviously hoped to battle it out for years by quibbling over the legal process by which the value of their estates would be appraised.
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