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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: FRA-GAE |
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FRANCIS, SIR PHILIP (174o-1818) , English politician and pamphleteer, the supposed author of the Letters of Junius, and the chief
Horace , Aeschines and Demosthenes. He received the rudiments of an excellent education at a free school in Dublin, and afterwards spent a year or two (17511752) under his father's roof at Skeyton rectory, Norfolk, and elsewhere, and for a short time he had Gibbon as a fellow-pupil. In March 1753 he entered St Paul's school, London, where he remained for three years and a half, becoming a proficient classical scholar. In 1756, immediately on his leaving school, he was appointed to a junior clerkship in the secretary of state's office by Henry Fox (afterwards Lord Holland), with whose family Dr Francis was at that time on intimate terms; and this post he retained under the succeeding administration. In 1758 he was employed as secretary to General Bligh in the expedition against Cherbourg; and in the same capacity he accompanied the earl
In 1761 he became personally known to Pitt, who, recognizing his ability and discretion, once and again made use of his services as private amanuensis. In 1762 he was appointed to a principal clerkship in the war office, where he formed an intimate friendship with Christopher D'Oyly, the secretary of state's deputy, whose dismissal from office in 1772 was hotly resented by " Junius "; and in the same year he married Miss Macrabie, the daughter of a retired London merchant.. : His official duties brought him into direct relations with many who were well versed in the politics of the time. In 1763 the great constitutional questions arising out of the arrest of Wilkes began to be sharply canvassed. It was natural that Francis, who from a very early age had been in the habit of writing occasionally to the newspapers
should be eager to take an active part in the discussion, though his position as a government official made it necessary that his intervention should be carefully disguised: He is known to have written to the Public Ledger and Public Advertiser, as an advocate of the popular cause, on many occasions about and after the year 1763; he frequently attended debates in both Houses of Parliament, especially when American questions were being discussed; and between 1769 and 1771 he is also known to have been favourable to the scheme for the overthrow of the Grafton government and afterwards of that of Lord North, and for persuading or forcing Lord Chatham into power. In January 1769 the first of the Letters of Junius appeared, and the series was continued till January 21, 1772. They had been pre-ceded by others under various signatures such as ," Candor,"Father of Candor," " Anti-Sejanus," " Lucius," Nemesis," which have all been attributed, some of them certainly in error, to one and the same hand. The authorship of the Letters of Junius has been assigned to Francis on a variety of grounds (see JUNIUS). In March 1772 Francis finally left the war office, and in July of the same year he left England for a tour through France, Germany and Italy, which lasted until the following December. On his return he was contemplating emigration to New England, when in June 1773 Lord North, on the recommendation of Lord Barrington, appointed him a member of the newly constituted supreme council of Bengal at a salary of 10,000 per annum. Along with his colleagues Monson and Clavering he reached Calcutta in October 1774, and a long struggle with Warren Hastings, the governor-general, immediately began. These three, actuated probably by petty personal motives, combined to form a majority of the council in harassing opposition to the governor-general's policy; and they even accused him of corruption, mainly on the evidence of Nuncomar. The death of Monson in 1776, and of Clavering in the following year, made Hastings again supreme in the council. But a dispute with Francis, more than usually embittered, led in August 1780 to a minute being delivered to the council board by Hastings, in which he stated that " he judged of the public conduct of Mr Francis by his experience of his private, which he had found to be void of truth and honour." A duel was the consequence, in which Francis received a dangerous wound (see HASTINGS, WARREN). Though his recovery was rapid and complete, he did not choose to prolong his stay abroad. He arrived in England in October 1781, and was received with little favour. Little is known of the nature of his occupations during the next two years, except that he was untiring in his efforts to pro-cure first the recall, and afterwards the impeachment of his hitherto triumphant adversary. In 1783 Fox produced his India Bill, which led to the overthrow of the coalition government. In 1784 Francis was returned by the borough of Yarmouth, Isle of Wight; and although he took an opportunity to disclaim every feeling of personal animosity towards Hastings, this did not prevent him, on the return of the latter in 1785, from doing all in his power to bring forward and support the charges which ultimately lad to the impeachment resolutions of 1787. Although excluded by a majority of the House
list
Among the later productions of his pen were, besides the Plan of a Reform in the Election of the House
Paper in Circulation and the Scarcity of Specie (1810), Historical Questions Exhibited (1818), and a Letter to Earl
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