by Nick Bunker
17. John Read’s housebuilding: AWM, August 18, 1720; and Benner Roach, “Benjamin Franklin Slept Here,” pp. 131–33.
18. John Leacock and Francis J. Dallett Jr., “John Leacock and the Fall of British Tyranny,” in PMHB 78, no. 4 (October 1954): 456–57; and the sources in note 14 above.
19. Economic growth between the 1720s and 1740s: James G. Lydon, “Philadelphia’s Commercial Expansion, 1720–1739,” in PMHB 91, no. 4 (October 1967), pp. 401−418; and James T. Lemon, The Best Poor Man’s Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania (Baltimore, 1972).
CHAPTER NINE: FORGETTING BOSTON
1. Quaker merchant: Thomas Lawrence of Philadelphia, writing to Samuel Storke, January 17, 1724, in Lawrence’s letter book (1718–1725), at Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Amb. 54. In general, the extensive collections of colonial letters from the 1720s to the 1740s at the HSP—especially those of Lawrence, James Logan, the Isaac Norris family, and John Reynell—are a superb resource for anyone writing about Franklin’s early life and seeking to place his career in its historical context.
2. John Smith, clockmaker, The Curiosities of Common Water (London and Philadelphia, 1723); and Thomas Chalkley, Letter To a Friend in Ireland (London, 1720, and Philadelphia, 1723).
3. Keimer’s Parable: AWM, December 17–24, 1723. Free Gift: AWM, January 7–14, 1724; and Thomas Woolston, A Free Gift to the Clergy, Or the Hireling Priests of What Denomination Soever (London, 1722, and Philadelphia, 1724), with the references to blockheads, dunces, etc. on p. 25 of the Philadelphia edition. The book ended with an allusion to a coarse English proverb about apples and horse turds, in which Woolston compared dissenting ministers to the latter. In London Woolston went on to become a popular author of anticlerical pamphlets expounding his very unorthodox views about Christian theology, until at last in 1729 he was sent to jail for blasphemy.
4. Sir William Keith: By far the best account of Keith is David Haugaard’s, in Horle et al., Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1997), Vol. 2, pp. 561–89, from which my quotations come unless noted otherwise.
5. Spotswood’s western policy and his iron business: Leonidas Dodson, Alexander Spotswood, Governor of Colonial Virginia, 1710–1722 (Philadelphia, 1932), pp. 227–33 and 296–98. Keith’s admiration of Spotswood: Sir William Keith, History of the British Plantations in America (London, 1738), Vol. 1, pp. 173–74.
6. Keith’s speech of January 22, 1723: In Gertrude Mackinney, ed., Pennsylvania Archives, Eighth Series (Harrisburg, PA, 1931–35), Vol. 2, pp. 1474–77.
7. Consequences of paper money: Theodore Thayer, “The Land-Bank System in the American Colonies,” in Journal of Economic History 13, no. 2 (Spring 1953): 145–59.
8. Excitement aroused by the Schuyler copper mine: Isaac Norris Sr. to Henry Gouldney, April 9, 1722, in HSP, Norris family letter book, 1716–1735, Norris Papers, collection No. 454, Vol. 2. As Norris puts it: “people here are bending their thoughts to get suddenly rich—mines, ore, gold, silver, copper are full in everybody’s mouth, since Schuyler’s success.” The Schuyler mine: Wayne Bodle, “ ‘Such a Noise in the World’: Copper Mines and an American Colonial Echo to the South Sea Bubble,” in PMHB 127, no. 2 (April 2003): 131–65.
9. “His designs…”: James Logan to Springett Penn, November 12, 1722, in Logan’s letter books, as transcribed by Deborah Norris Logan, Vol. 3, p. 271, at APS, B L82. As yet, there is still no full-length biography of James Logan, which is understandable. He left behind an enormous corpus of papers, chiefly housed at HSP, on which a researcher could spend an entire career. Nash, Quakers and Politics, p. 268, has a succinct appraisal of the man, but the principal secondary work is still Frederick B. Tolles’s condensed account, James Logan and the Culture of Provincial America (Boston, 1957). The most attractive route to an appreciation of Logan lies by way of a tour of Stenton, his country house in northwest Philadelphia, open to the public and maintained by the Colonial Dames of Pennsylvania. It has an excellent guidebook (2014) by the curator, Laura C. Keim. For Logan’s Whiggish views and his loathing of Tories and Jacobites, see his letters to George Barclay, December 3, 1733, and Alexander Arscott, May 1, 1734, in James Logan’s letter books, HSP, Coll. 0379, Vol. 8.
10. Keith and French at New Castle: Richard S. Rodney, “Delaware Under Governor Keith 1717–1726,” in Delaware History (Wilmington, DE, 1948–49), Vol. 3, pp. 12–19; and Constance J. Cooper, ed., 350 Years of New Castle, Delaware: Chapters in a Town’s History (New Castle Historical Society, 2001), pp. 41–56. A visit to New Castle’s historic district is another enjoyable way to experience Franklin’s colonial environment.
11. Onania: Advertised for sale by Phillips in The New-England Courant, May 4–11, 1724.
12. John Franklin (1690–1756): His will, January 22–24, 1756, mentioning his two-volume set of Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopedia, or Universal Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences; Boston Evening Post, October 6, 1755; and Jill Lepore, Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin (New York, 2013), pp. 96–98.
13. Samuel Vernon: C. Louise Avery, Early American Silver (New York, 1930), pp. 100–103; and regarding Vernon’s role as a pillar of the Congregational Church: Sydney V. James, The Colonial Metamorphoses of Rhode Island (Hanover, NH, 2000), pp. 171–72 and 290. A measure of Vernon’s importance in Rhode Island was this: that between 1729 and 1736 he served four times as a member of the elected assembly’s upper house: J. R. Bartlett, ed., Colonial Records of Rhode Island, Vol. 14 (Providence, 1859).
14. Keith and Spotswood: James Logan to Joshua Gee, October 1, 1724, in Logan’s letter books, at APS (B L82), Vol. 3. Spotswood arrived in England in November 1724 (Weekly Journal & Gazetteer, November 28) and far from being disgraced he was given a senior military post in Scotland. Disease on the London Hope: Isaac Norris to Joseph Pike, August 8, 1724, in Norris Family Papers, Coll. 454 at HSP, Vol. 2.
15. “Scandal and impertinence”: Quoted in Walker Lewis, “Andrew Hamilton and the He-Monster,” in WMQ 38, no. 2 (April 1981): 288. The most comprehensive appraisal of Andrew Hamilton is Craig W. Horle’s account of his career in LLP 2, pp. 416–48.
16. “The celebrated…”: Thomas Davies, Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick Esq (London, 1780), Vol 1, p. 224, with a character sketch of James Ralph on pp. 224–41. For an introduction to Ralph: Elizabeth R. McKinsey, “James Ralph: The Professional Writer Comes of Age,” in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 117, no. 1 (February 1973): 59–78. With regard to Ralph’s origins: The only genealogical detail that has so far been found is the marriage of a James Ralph—this is probably but not certainly our man—in Elizabethtown, New Jersey. His spouse, Rebecca Ogden, was the daughter of Jonathan Ogden (1639–1732), a member of the town’s First Presbyterian Church: see William Ogden Wheeler, The Ogden Family in America (Philadelphia, 1907). However, this source says nothing about Ralph’s birth or parentage. What we do know is that he had a sister in London: see Alan D. McKillop, “James Ralph in Berkshire,” in Review of English Literature, 1500–1900 1, no. 3 (Summer 1961), pp. 43-51, in which McKillop draws upon letters written by Ralph in 1726 to Strickland Gough, a Presbyterian minister, and now preserved at the British Library in London. A friend of Samuel Billingsley, a London bookseller who published Ralph’s poetry in 1727–28 (BL, Add. Ms. 4291, fol. 208), Gough belonged to a group of liberal, scientifically minded Presbyterian clergymen from the Bristol and Taunton areas of Somerset in western England. Their names and their ideas can be found in Nicholas Billingsley, A Sermon Occasion’d by the death of…Hubert Stogdon (London, 1728); see also the Gough and Billingsley entries in ODNB. Given that Bristol and Philadelphia had close trading connections, it seems likely that James Ralph came from the same region, and that he knew these ministers before going to America to work as a clerk.
17. “Agreeable, instructive…”: Davies, Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick E
sq, Vol. 1, p. 241.
18. Onion and Russell: Karl Pearson, The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton (Cambridge, England, 1914), Vol. 1, p. 38n.
19. Thomas Denham: for his birth at Bristol, England (September 1689), and parentage, see Society of Friends Registers, NAK, files RG6/1650 no. 252, and RG6/1423, p. 131. Denham’s career: Frederick B. Tolles, Meeting House and Counting House: The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia (New York, 1963), p. 249n; AWM, April 6–13, 1721; July 5–12, 1722; October 3–10, 1723; and Denham’s account book, at HSP.
20. Failed tobacco crop: Thomas Lawrence to Edward Foy, October 20, 1724, in Lawrence’s letter book at HSP. The London newspapers for that fall and winter refer many times to the bad Atlantic weather.
21. Walpole in 1722–26: J. H. Plumb, Sir Robert Walpole: The King’s Minister (London, 1960), Chapters 2 and 3; and G. V. Bennett, The Tory Crisis in Church and State, 1688–1730 (Oxford, 1975), pp. 223–91.
22. John Dunton, Religio Bibliopolae, or the Religion of a Bookseller (London, 1728), p. 1.
CHAPTER TEN: LITTLE BRITAIN
1. Little Britain, Smithfield, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and the surrounding area: Edward Hatton, A New View of London or an Ample Account of that City (London, 1708), Vol. 1, pp. 141–49, 164–65, and 759–61; and John Mottley, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster (London, 1733–35), Book 1, p. 180, Book III, pp. 619–29 and 748–53. Appearance of the houses: Washington Irving, “Little Britain,” in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent (New York, 1884), pp. 339–41; written by Irving in 1820 after a visit to London. However, to see London as Franklin knew it the indispensable resource is the array of pre-1914 photographs in Philip Davies, Lost London, 1870–1945 (London, 2009), with pictures of Smithfield and the area around St. Bartholomew’s Church and the hospital on pp. 42–49. The images come from the splendid photographic library at the London Metropolitan Archives. Franklin’s lodgings at the Golden Fan: the site can be identified from Franklin’s comment that the building was next door to John Wilcox’s bookstore. In the Little Britain rent book for 1724–25 at the St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Archives (file HB4/84), Wilcox is listed as a tenant on the south side of the street and to the east of Pilkington Place (also known as Pelican Place or Court). This means that the Golden Fan backed onto the churchyard of St. Botolph’s, Aldersgate.
2. “Perpetual emporium…”: A comment by Roger North, quoted in Walter Thornbury, Old and New London (London, 1889), Vol. 2, p. 225. The book trade and Little Britain: James Raven, The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade, 1450–1850 (New Haven, 2007), pp. 167–68.
3. Dickens on Smithfield: Great Expectations, Chapter 20, in which Pip visits Mr. Jaggers’s law office in Little Britain. Gin shops: London, What It is, Not What It Was (London, 1725), pp. 8–16.
4. William Hogarth’s upbringing in Smithfield, and the themes of his early work: Ronald Paulson, Hogarth: The Modern Moral Subject, 1697–1732 (Cambridge, UK, 1992), Chapters 1 and 8, with references to his mother and sister on pp. 232–33. Like Paula Backscheider’s biography of Daniel Defoe, Paulson’s penetrating account of Hogarth provides an illuminating context in which to view Franklin’s formative period. Franklin’s apparent friendship with Hogarth: John Nichols, Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth (London, 1785), pp. 93–94. Nichols says that on the day Hogarth died in 1764, he received “an agreeable letter” from Franklin (who was in America at the time), and that the painter had just drafted a reply when he suffered his last seizure.
I see no reason to doubt the truth of Nichols’s story. Three years later, Hogarth’s widow wrote to Franklin asking for his support for a bill in Parliament aimed at helping engravers such as Hogarth and their families to defend their copyright. As regards Franklin’s knowledge of Hogarth’s work, he was certainly aware of it by 1739 at the very latest, because his Philadelphia shop accounts show that in April of that year he sold a Hogarth print to the Swedish American painter Gustavus Hesselius. Also, the 1741 catalogue of the Library Company of Philadelphia includes the edition of Samuel Butler’s satirical poem Hudibras illustrated by Hogarth and published in 1732.
5. Tories in Farringdon Without: Anon, The Art of Managing Popular Elections (London, 1724); and Daily Journal, December 27, 1723, March 30, 1724, and March 29, 1725. Political allegiances of printers: John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1812), Vol. 1, pp. 289–312; and Daily Post, November 23–28, 1724, showing members of the Stationers’ Company who voted for the Tory candidate in a parliamentary by-election. Fewer than half of the printers in London were Whigs, the remainder being Tory, Jacobite, or simply unreliable. The City Elections Act: A. J. Henderson, London and the National Government, 1721–1742 (Durham, NC, 1945), Chapter 4.
6. Riddlesden act: Maryland Historical Society, Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly of Maryland, 1727–9 (Baltimore, 1916), Vol. 36, p. 569: with many references in other volumes of the same series. The British press followed Riddlesden’s career closely, with scores of stories about him appearing in 1723, when he was in Newgate prison awaiting transportation (for the second time) to the colonies. His life of crime had apparently begun during the reign of Queen Anne, when he stole a silver candlestick from the Chapel Royal: see for example Daily Post, January 28, 1723.
7. The Samuel: AWM, January 5–12, 1725.
8. Robert Wilks: Robert W. Lowe, ed., An Apology for the Life of Mr Colley Cibber, Written by Himself (London, 1889), Vol. 2, pp. 225–31; Samuel Johnson, “The Life of Richard Savage,” in Lives of the Poets (Everyman edition, London, 1925), Vol. 2, pp. 73–75. Harlequin Sheppard: Weekly Journal or Saturday’s Post, December 5, 1724.
9. Samuel Palmer: his manuscript treatise On the Practical Art of Printing (ca. 1729), at BL, Add. Ms. 4386; H. R. Plomer, A Dictionary of the Printers…in England etc., 1680–1725 (Oxford, 1922), pp. 228–29; and the sources in notes 6 and 7 to Chapter 11 below.
10. Quotations from William Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated (London, 1724 on the title page, but actually 1725), pp. 7, 73, and 122. Wollaston’s opening chapters in particular are very sophisticated, showing that he was a powerful thinker with a style that looks forward to British philosophers of the early 1900s. In places the book’s techniques of argument (but not its conclusions) strikingly resemble those of G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethica of 1903.
11. Defoe and Wollaston: Maximilian E. Novak, “Defoe, the Occult, and the Deist Offensive During the Reign of George I,” in J. A. Leo Lemay, ed., Deism, Masonry and the Enlightenment (Newark, DE, 1987), pp. 98–100.
12. Franklin to Benjamin Vaughan, November 9, 1779, quoted in the introduction to Franklin’s Dissertation in BFP 1, p. 57.
13. For example: See the article on “necessity” by “Diogenes” in The British Journal, December 29, 1722. The author was probably John Trenchard, one of those responsible for Cato’s Letters.
14. Mandeville and fatalism: Presentment by the Tory-dominated Middlesex Grand Jury, July 3, 1723, condemning the second edition of Bernard Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees; reprinted in F. B. Kaye’s edition of the Fable (Oxford, 1924), Vol. 1, pp. 383–86; and also see The British Journal, July 13, 1723; Evening Post, July 13–16; and Mandeville’s self-defense in The London Journal, August 10. Attacks on Spinoza: Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford, 2001), Chapter 8 and pp. 459–64.
15. French parallels to Franklin’s Dissertation: Jonathan I. Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity and the Emancipation of Man, 1670–1752 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 712–36. The relevant sections of John Locke are in Book 4, Chapter 3 of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
16. The career and the ideas of Franklin’s friend John Lyons can be pieced together from a wide variety of sources, published and unpublished. He came from King’s Lynn in Norfolk, which m
ay be significant because this was the borough for which Sir Robert Walpole sat in Parliament. This might account for what seem to have been Lyons’s close connections with the Whig leadership, who dominated the affairs of the county. Lyons’s Norfolk origins: John Lyons, The Principles of a Rationalist (London, 1721), title page, saying that he came from “Lynn Regis”; and a Chancery lawsuit, Lyons v. Moor (1720), NAK, C11/2650/30, which also gives some details of John Lyons’s marriage to a widow who had inherited some land nearby in Lincolnshire. His explosive scheme for preventing disease: John Lyons, A Prevention of the Plague (London, 1743); Daily Journal, December 1, 1721; and Applebee’s Weekly Journal, December 2. The record of his subsequent examination by a senior government official, Charles Delafaye, is in the State Papers of George I, at NAK, SP35/29/37-40, December 1721. With regard to Lyons’s imprisonment in Newgate in 1723, there is a long series of references in the State Papers between April 19 and August 7 of that year, chiefly NAK, SP35/42/184-5; SP35/43 Part 1/42; and SP35/44 pt 1/102. This last reference is a letter from Lyons in Newgate, addressed to the secretary of state, Lord Townshend, who was also Walpole’s brother-in-law. The letter complains about Lyons’s treatment in prison and it is the source of my quotation. Lyons’s release and his friendship with Richard Mead: John Lyons, The Infallibility of Human Judgement, fourth edition (London, 1723), Postscript, pp. 247–49. Lyons’s later career as a propagandist, tax collector, and informant for Sir Robert Walpole: letters from John Lyons to Walpole, October 15, 1734, and August 16, 1739, at Cambridge University Library, Cholmondeley (Houghton) Papers, Ch (H) Corr/2356 and 2912. In some modern biographies of Franklin or editions of his autobiography, John Lyons is referred to as “William” Lyons. This is incorrect. There was no William Lyons.
