think some degree of learning was necessary to 

 have formed so very uncommon and pedantic a 

 style. He informs his worthy and honoured friend 

 Mr J, W. merchant in London, that the impend- 

 ing Civil Wars drove him from the university to 

 London; and if he was born about 1624 (James 

 died in 1625) he would be seventeen years of age 

 in the fatal 1641. 



Richard Franck seems to have resided at Not- 

 tingham, but in what capacity he give us no op- 

 portunity of conjecturing, nor whether it was be- 

 fore or after his expedition to Scotland ; he cer- 

 tainly served in the Parliament's cavalry during 

 the wars in Scotland, to which he makes repeated 

 allusion, and thence, probably, he derived the title 

 of Captain, given to him by Richard Johnson in his 

 commendatory verses. In religion, Franck appears 

 to have been an Independent, but upon a mystical 

 system of his own, which was no uncommon cir- 

 cumstance in that age. He censures occasionally 

 both Prelate and Presbyter, and throws out, from 

 time to time, his own peculiar tenets, which, in- 

 deed, he was at the pains to publish more at length, 

 though not more intelligibly, in a separate work, 



