A new series exploring Benjamin Franklin’s time in Europe launches on streaming services this month, but how did the American ‘Founding Father’ respond to the politics in Britain during the 1760s? In this blog Dr Robin Eagles, editor of our House of Lords 1715-1790 project, looks at Franklin’s opinion of the British political agitator John Wilkes- a man who divided not just his own nation…
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) is celebrated as one of the foremost politicians, authors and thinkers of the second half of the 18th century. As one of the ‘Founding Fathers’ of the United States, he played a key role in shaping America’s constitution. Although a native of Boston and then of Philadelphia, he spent long periods overseas, including a formative period as the US’s first ambassador to Paris. Not least, however, he also knew England well. His father had hailed from Northamptonshire, and Franklin lived in London for almost two decades between 1757 and 1775, based at 36 Craven Street, now known as the Benjamin Franklin House. As such he was well placed to comment on the upsurge in popular politics surrounding the John Wilkes affair that captivated the politics of the 1760s.
National Portrait Gallery via Art UK
Franklin was no friend of Wilkes, who was ejected from his seat in the Commons following the infamous affair of North Briton number 45 and the printing of the scandalous Essay on Woman. They had much in common – both running newspapers and having voracious appetites for knowledge. They may also have coincided at the so-called ‘Hellfire Club’. Yet Franklin was repelled by Wilkes’s excesses. After Wilkes had fled overseas in December 1763 leaving his case to be tried by the Commons in absentia, Franklin followed his case closely, satisfied to see Parliament resolved to rid itself of someone he considered unsuitable. On 11 February 1764 Franklin, briefly back in America, responded to his friend, Richard Jackson, MP for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, that he was ‘pleas’d to find a just Resentment so general in your House against Mr. W.’s seditious Conduct, and to hear that the present Administration is like to continue’.
Franklin’s perspective may have altered somewhat when he became friendly with Wilkes’s brother, Israel. He was even invited to ‘eat his Christmas dinner’ with the Wilkeses at the family house in Red Lyon Square in 1766. [Mr and Mrs Israel Wilkes to Franklin, 23 December 1768] He remained, though, appalled by the disorder prompted by John Wilkes’s actions and recorded in detail the riots and destruction in London and beyond during the chaotic election year of 1768. That spring, Britain was overtaken with election fever and on 16 April Franklin wrote to his son, William, declaring:
Parliamentary Art Collection via Art UK
Since my last… nothing has been talked of or thought of here but elections…
He went on to describe in detail the violence of the contests – in particular that surrounding the Middlesex election, where Wilkes had stood and won in spite of still being an outlaw. Franklin commented on the:
Inconceivable mischief done by debauching the people and making them idle, besides the immediate actual mischief done by drunken mobs to houses, windows, &c. The scenes have been horrible. London was illuminated two nights running at the command of the mob for the success of Wilkes in the Middlesex election… even the small cross streets, lanes, courts, and other out-of-the-way places were all in a blaze with lights…
After all this, as Franklin put it ‘the ferment’ was not yet over and he marvelled ‘to see an outlaw and exile, of bad personal character, not worth a farthing, come over from France, set himself up as candidate for the capital of the kingdom’ and thence carry his election for ‘the principal county’. Franklin attributed the crowd being fired up by ‘numbers of different ballads sung or roared in every street’ and described them forcing passers by to cry out ‘Wilkes and Liberty’ and submit to having pro-Wilkite slogans chalked onto their carriages. It was not just in London, either, that this was the case. Franklin reported visiting Winchester and seeing the same details so that ‘there was scarce a door or window shutter next the road unmarked’ between the two cities – ‘which is 64 miles’.
Things did not quieten down in the aftermath of Wilkes’s election and in mid-May Franklin reported how London had become ‘a daily scene of lawless Riot and Confusion. Mobs are patrolling the Streets at Noon Day, some Knocking all down that will not roar for Wilkes and Liberty’. What was happening in London and beyond was not just about Wilkes, of course. Wilkes had tapped into many general social anxieties, and as Franklin observed, workers concerned about their wage levels and job security were also actively involved in demonstrations and rioting:
Coalheavers and Porters pulling down the Houses of Coal Merchants that refuse to give them more Wages; Sawyers destroying the new Sawmills; Sailors unrigging all the outward-bound Ships, and suffering none to sail till Merchants agree to raise their Pay; Watermen destroying private Boats and threatening Bridges; Weavers entring Houses by Force, and destroying the Work in the Looms…
Broadside satirical print, 1763,
British Museum
© The Trustees of the British Museum
The response to all of this was heavy-handed: with soldiers firing on the crowds, leaving men, women and children among the casualties, which Franklin considered had ‘produc’d an universal Sullenness’ in the country. In the meantime, members of the government seemed unable to decide on a course of action, caring only about shoring up their own individual popularities. [Franklin to Ross, 14 May]
By July, Franklin was able to report with more optimism that ‘the tumults and disorders’ had at last subsided in the wake of Wilkes being sent to prison and in October he was able to pronounce with confidence that ‘Wilkes is extinguished’. What troubled him was word that Wilkes’s cause continued to resonate in America. He was ‘sorry to see in the American Papers that some People there are so indiscreet as to distinguish themselves in applauding his No. 45’. He warned his son William, ‘It hurts you here with sober sensible Men, when they see you so easily infected with the Madness of the English Mobs’. [Franklin to William Franklin, 5 October 1768]
Franklin remained suspicious of Wilkes, even after Wilkes had served his time and matters appeared less charged. Despite that, he remained on good terms with Israel Wilkes, as reported in one issue of ‘The Cravenstreet Gazette’ – the private news-sheet distributed among Franklin’s friends in his London lodgings:
We hear that Mr. Wilkes was at a certain House in Craven Street this Day… The Report that Mr Wilkes the Patriot made the above Visit, is without Foundation, it being his Brother the Courtier.
[22 September 1770]
By 1774 when Franklin’s time in England was coming to an end, Wilkes’s career was back in the ascendant with re-election to Parliament and election as Lord Mayor of London. However, by then Franklin seems to have been less concerned about Wilkes the demagogue and more by Members of Parliament being so open to bribery. America, he thought, ought to learn the lesson but might also profit by it:
If America would save for 3 or 4 Years the Money she spends in the Fashions and Fineries and Fopperies of this Country, she might buy the whole Parliament, Minister and all.
[Franklin to Thomas Cushing, 10 October]
RDEE
Further Reading:
All quotations sourced from founders.archives.gov
The History of Parliament 