FRANCIS, SIR PHILIP. 



FRANCKLIN, THOMAS, D.D. 



003 



Lord Meudip, gave him an appointment of some consequence in the 

 War Office, over which he then presided. He retained this place till 

 March 1772, when he resigned in consequence of a quarrel with Lord 

 Barringtou, who had by that time succeeded Mr. Ellis. The remainder 

 of that year he spent in travelling through Flanders, Germany, Italy, 

 and France. 



In Juno 1773, soon after his return; he was appointed to the 

 distinguished place of one of the civil members in council for the 

 government of Bengal, with a salary of 10,000k He is said to have 

 owed this appointment to the influence of Lord Barriugton, whose 

 hostility therefore would appear to have been now converted into 

 very substantial friendship, or who must be supposed to have had 

 private reasons for such an exercise of his patronage. He set out for 

 India in the summer of 1774, and remaiued in that country till 

 December 1780, when he resigned his situation and embarked for 

 England, after having had a quarrel with the governor-general Mr. 

 Hastings, which produced a duel, in which Mr. Francis was shot 

 through the body. He had opposed Hastings, and for some time 

 effectually, from his entrance into the council, but the sudden death 

 of two of his colleagues by whom he had been generally supported, 

 had latterly left him in a helpless minority in his contest against the 

 policy of the governor-general. 



In 17*1 Mr. Francis was returned to parliament for Yarmouth in 

 the Isle <>t Wight, and goon began to take an active part in tho 

 business of the House of Commons, where, although he was not a 

 fluent speaker, the pregnancy of his remarks and the soundness and 

 extent of his information always commanded attention. He took his 

 side from the first with the Whig opposition, and to that party he 

 adhered while he lived. When it was resolved in 1786 to impeach 

 Mr. Hastings, it was proposed that Mr. Francis should be appointed 

 one of the managers of the impeachment; but all the eloquence of 

 Burke, Fox, and Windham (aided by his own) could not overcome the 

 feeling of the House against placing in this situation a man with 

 whom the accused had had a personal quarrel. The motion was 

 twice negatived by large majorities. Nevertheless there was much 

 force in what was mveil in its support, and the casuistry of the 

 question was not a little curious and perplexing. The benefit of the 

 talents and information of Mr. Francis was eventually secured to the 

 prosecution by a letter inviting his assistance, which was addressed to 

 him by the unanimous vote of the committee of managers; and bis 

 business occupied his chief attention for many years. When the 

 war with Franco broke out, Mr. Francis adhered to the party of Fox 

 and Grey, and was one of the first and most active members of the 

 famous association of the Friends of the People. At the new election 

 in 1798 he stood candidate for Tewkesbury, but failed in being 

 returned, and he did not sit in that parliament. In 1802 however he 

 was returned for Appleby, by Lord Thanet, and he continued to sit 

 tV>r that borough while he remained in parliament. The question 

 of the abolition of the slave trade was that in which he took the 

 keenest and most active part in the latter term of his parliamentary 

 career; and it is said that in advocating the abolition, he took a 

 course greatly opposed to his private interests. On the formation 

 of the Qrenville administration, Mr. Francis was made a knight of the 

 Buth, 29th of October 1806; and it is believed that it was at first 

 intended to send him out to India as governor-general. That appoint- 

 ment however never took place. He retired from parliament in 

 1807; and after this, the interest which he continued to take in 

 public affairs wai chiefly evinced by occasional political pamphlets and 

 contributions to the newspapers. 



Great attention was in 1816 drawn to Sir Philip Francis, by 

 Mr. John Taylor's ingenious publication, entitled 'Junius identified 

 with a distinguished Living Character,' the object of which was to 

 prove that Sir Philip Francis was the author of the celebrated 

 ' Letters of Junius.' The evidence adduced in this publication \ws 

 unquestionably very strong, and much additional confirmatory evidence 

 has since come to light. It may indeed be affirmed, that no case half 

 so strong has yet been made out in favour of any one of the many 

 other conjectures that have been started on the subject of this great 

 literary puzzle. Such well-qualified judges of historical evidence as 

 lords Brougham, Campbell, and Mahon, and Mr. Macaulay, with many 

 other high legal and literary authorities, have declared themselves 

 convinced that Sir Philip Francis wrote 'Junius ; ' and though Francis 

 himself persisted to the last in rejecting the honour thus attempted 

 to be thrust upon him, when strangers referred to the subject, yet 

 with his intimates he appears in his later years to have displayed no 

 such desire; while the communications of hia widow to Lord Camp- 

 bell and to Mr. Wade, the editor of Bohn's edition of 'Junius,' show 

 that Francis, while never directly asserting himself to be Junius, 

 certainly wished his wife to believe that he was that 'great unknown;' 

 knew that she did so believe, and took extraordinary means to 

 encourage that belief. His gift to her, after their marriage, it may 

 be added, was a copy of ' Junius,' " and his posthumous present, which 

 his son found in his bureau, was ' Junius Identified,' sealed up and 

 addressed to" his widow. In any ordinary case the evidence would 

 seem amply sufficient, but we would advise the reader who may take 

 in interest in the question, before accepting as conclusive the evidence 

 in favour of the claim of Sir Philip Francis (a claim by him it has 

 in fact become by the publication of the statement of his widow, and 



the ' New Facts' of Sir Fortunatus Dwarris), to examine carefully the 

 elaborate and singularly acute articles which appeared in the 

 'Athenseum' in 1S50, pp. 939, 969, 993, &c. ; aud for the whole 

 question of the authorship of 'Juuius,' the entire series of Junius 

 articles (of which the above formed only a portion) which have from 

 time to time appeared in the ' Atheuscum ' since 1848. The reader 

 would also do well before accepting Francis, or any other name yet 

 suggested as that of the author of 'Junius,' to look through the 

 references under 'Junius' in the general index to the first 12 vols. 

 of that useful work ' Notes and Queries.' 



The acknowledged publications of Sir Philip Francis (all of them 

 pamphlets) amount to twenty-six in number, according to a list 

 appended to the memoir of his life in tho 'Annual Obituary.' Ono 

 of the most curious of them is the last, entitled ' Historical Questions, 

 exhibited in the Morning Chronicle in January 1S18, enlarged, 

 corrected, and improved,' 8vo, 1818, which originally appeared in a, 

 series of articles in the ' Morning Chronicle." Sir Philip Francis died 

 after a long and painful illness, occasioned by disease of the prostate 

 gland, at his house in St. James's Square, 22ud of December 1818. 

 He was twice married, the second time after he had reached the age 

 of seventy, to a Miss Watkins, the daughter of a clergyman. By his 

 first wife he left a son and two daughters. 



FRANCIS DE SALES. [SALES.] 



FRANCIS XAVIER. [XAVIEB.] 



FRANCKE, a celebrated German philanthropist, whose life presents 

 a striking instance of the good which au individual may eifect Francke 

 was born at Lubeck in 1663. He made such rapid progress in learning 

 that at the age of fourteen he was fit to enter the university, where 

 he devoted himself with great application to the study of divinity and 

 the ancieut as well as modern languages. In 1691 he became professor 

 of oriental languages at the University of Halle, and soon afterwards 

 professor of divinity and pastor of the parish of Glaucha, a suburb of 

 Halle. The wretched state of his parishioners, who were sunk in the 

 most abject ignorance and poverty, gave the first impulse to his 

 philanthropic exertions. He began by teaching the children, whom 

 he supported at the same time by small donations. He took a few 

 orphans to educate ; their number rapidly increased ; and as he was 

 assisted by the contributions of many charitable persons, he gradually 

 extended the sphere of his beneficial activity, and formed several 

 establishments for the education of all classes. In 1693 he laid the 

 foundation of au orphan asylum, though he had scarcely any means 

 of completing the edifice, but the necessary funds were constantly 

 supplied by charitable persons. He was fortunate in finding not only 

 persons who contributed money to promote his undertaking, but many 

 who zealously assisted him in his labours. Francke was a man of 

 mild aud cheerful disposition, agreeable manners, and exceedingly 

 laborious. He punctually attended to his academical lectures, aud to 

 his clerical duties at Halle as well as in Glaucha : his affairs aud 

 extensive correspondence engrossed all the day, and it was only late 

 at night that he could occupy himself with his literary labours, the 

 earnings of which he always devoted to charitable purposes. The 

 greater part of his works were written in German, but he published 

 also some learned works on divinity in Latin. Fraucke died in 1727, 

 aud the following establishments, all of which we believe still exist at 

 Halle, owe to him their foundation aud bear his name : 1, the Orphou 

 Asylum, iu which poor orphans of both sexes are gratuitously educated ; 

 2, the Pedngogium, an institution for the education of young men of 

 the higher and middle classes, founded in 1696 ; 3, the Latin School, 

 established for the education of children not belonging to wealthy 

 families, and divided into nine classes ; 4, German or Burgher Schools 

 for boys aud girls ; 5, the East India Missionary Establishment ; and 

 6, the Cansteinian Biblical Institution. This last establishment was 

 the forerunner of Bible societies. It was founded by Baron Canstein, 

 a German nobleman, who, after having spent a part of his life in courts 

 aud camps, became by his intercourse with Francke religiously disposed, 

 and by his exertions aud the aid of subscriptions established the biblical 

 institution of Halle, in order to promote the reading and circulation 

 of the Scriptures among the poorer classes. The profits derived from 

 the sale of the Bibles and New Testaments which it prints and sells 

 go to the support of Fraucke's institutions, which also derive a con- 

 siderable income from lands and other charitable gilts bequeathed to 

 them chiefly by persons who have been educated there, as well as from 

 a bookselling, printing, and publishing establishment, which is tha 

 property of the above-mentioned institutions. 



FRANCK.LIN, THOMAS, D.D., was born at London in 1721. 

 Being the son of a well-known printer, llichard Fraucklin, who, for 

 his paper ' The Craftsman,' and other services to Walpole's enemies, 

 expected or had been promised a provision in the church for his son, 

 he was educated at Westminster School, and thence sent to Cambridge, 

 where he became a Fellow of Trinity College. Afterwards, while an 

 usher in Westminster School, he gained some reputation by translations 

 of Phalaris's ' Epistles,' and of Cicero's ' De Natura Deorum ;' and in 

 1750, after a contest, he was chosen Greek professor in the University 

 of Cambridge, an appointment to which he appears to have done as 

 little credit by the regularity of his deportment as by his literary 

 exertions. After having held lectureships in London, he was presented 

 by his college in 1758 to the livings of Ware and Thundrich in Hert- 

 fordshire. Although however several sermons of his were published 



