Life of Count Rumford. in 



ficiousness in the service of King George III. in one 

 of the manuscript volumes in the British Museum in 

 London. That king showed a most commendable zeal 

 in collecting a library of all the books and papers which 

 came from, or which would throw light upon, the Ameri- 

 can Colonies from their first planting to his own time. 

 A large portion of this collection came through the 

 hands of George IV. into the national repository. In it 

 is a small quarto volume containing a series of letters 

 from Dr. Franklin to the Rev. Dr. Cooper, an eminent 

 minister in Boston, upon American politics;' from 1769 

 to 1774, with Dr. Cooper's answers; and also some let- 

 ters from Governor Pownall to Dr. Cooper. There is 

 added "a short history of those letters, or an account 

 of the manner in which they happened to fall into the 

 hands of the present proprietor of them," Mr. Thomp- 

 son. 



From this "account" it appears that when Dr. 

 Cooper left Boston, after the battle of Bunker Hill, 

 to find refuge in the country, as his effects, which he 

 took with him, would be subject to search, he committed 

 these valuable papers to the care of his friend, Mr. 

 Jeffries, one of the selectmen of the town, who was 

 then confined by sickness. Mr. Jeffries consigned them 

 to a trunk containing things of his own. When he too 

 left Boston, forgetting what had thus been intrusted to 

 him, he left the trunk in charge of his son, Dr. Jeffries, 

 who, remaining in the town, was in sympathy with the 

 royalist party. At the evacuation of Boston he took 

 the papers with him to Halifax. " From Halifax he 

 brought them with him to London in January last 

 [1777], and made a present of them to Mr. Thomp- 

 son, who now presumes most humbly to lay them at 



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