Philip Francis (politician)

For other people named Philip Francis, seePhilip Francis (disambiguation).

Sir Philip Francis,GCB(22 October 1740 – 23 December 1818) was a BritishWhigpolitician, pamphleteer and colonial administrator best known for being the possible identity the anonymous writerJunius.A strong opponent ofEast India CompanyofficialWarren Hastings,Francis' accusations against him led toHastings' impeachmentby theParliament of Great Britain.

Sir Philip Francis GCB
Portrait byJames Lonsdale,c. 1808
Councilor on theSupreme Council of Bengal
In office 20 October 1774 – 3 December 1780
Member of Parliament forAppleby
In office 1802–1807
Preceded by	Robert Adair
Succeeded by	Viscount Howick
Member of Parliament forBletchingley
In office 1790–1796
Preceded by	John Kenrick
Succeeded by	Sir Lionel Copley, Bt
Member of Parliament forYarmouth
In office 1784–1790
Preceded by	Sir Thomas Rumbold, Bt
Succeeded by	Edward Rushworth
Personal details
Born	(1740-10-22)22 October 1740 Dublin,Kingdom of Ireland(present-dayIreland)
Died	23 December 1818(1818-12-23)(aged 78)
Political party	Whig

Early life

Born inDublin,he was the only son ofDr Philip Francis(c. 1708–1773), a man of some literary celebrity in his time, known by his translations ofHorace,AeschinesandDemosthenes.He received the rudiments of an excellent education at a free school inDublin,and afterwards spent a year or two (1751–1752) under his father's roof atSkeytonRectory,Norfolk, and elsewhere, and for a short time he hadEdward Gibbonas a fellow-pupil. In March 1753, he enteredSt Paul's School, London,where he remained for three and a half years, 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 byHenry Fox(afterwardsLord 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 toGeneral Blighin theexpedition against Cherbourg;and in the same capacity he accompaniedthe Earl of Kinnoullonhis special embassyto the court ofPortugalin 1760.

In January 1769 Philip Francis returned to London from a 'riotous fortnight' in Bath where he lived as a 'raike';later that year he became one of the original shareholders in the project to build a new Assembly Rooms in the city.

Entry into politics

In 1761, he became personally known toWilliam Pitt the Elderwho, recognising his ability and discretion, made use of his services as private amanuensis from time to time. In 1762 he was appointed to a principal clerkship in the war office, where he formed a warm friendship with Christopher D'Oyly, Deputy-Secretary at War, whose dismissal from office in 1772 was hotly resented by Junius. On 27 February 1762 he married Elizabeth Macrabie, the daughter of a retired London merchant. His daughter, Catherine Francis (d. 11 September 1823) marriedGeorge James Cholmondeley(b. 22 February 1752, d. 5 November 1830), the son ofMary Woffington.

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.

Political career

Duel between Warren Hastings and Philip Francis.

He is known to have written to thePublic LedgerandPublic 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 theGraftongovernment and afterwards of that of Lord North, and for persuading or forcing Lord Chatham into power. In January 1769 the first of theLetters of Juniusappeared, and the series continued till 21 January 1772. They had been preceded by others under signatures such as "Candor", "Father of Candor", "Anti-Sejanus","Lucius ", and" Nemesis ".

Theauthorship of the lettershas been assigned to Francis on a variety of grounds, including a computer-aided analysis of the Junius texts in the 1960s. Comparing stylistic patterns from the letters with attributed writings of the period allowed a reasonable statistical conclusion to be drawn that Francis was by far the most likely author. Some evidence to support the claim of Sir Philip Francis is given in Macaulay's History of Englandin which Macaulay mentions the likely reference toHenry Luttrell,who although obscure to the British of the 1770s, would have been well known to the Irish and particularly to Sir Philip Francis who spent the early part of his life near Luttrellstown.

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 ofBengalat a salary of 10,000 pounds per annum. Along with his colleagues Monson and Clavering he reachedCalcuttain October 1774, and a long struggle withWarren 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 ofNuncomar.

The death ofMonsonin 1776, and ofClaveringin 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 honor"; such an opinion was aggravated by the various affairs Francis had during his stay in Calcutta, including one withCatherine Grand.Aduelwas the consequence, in which Francis received a dangerous wound. 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 procure 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 to theHouse of Commonsas Member of Parliament (MP) for the borough ofYarmouth, 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 led to theimpeachmentresolutions of 1787. Although excluded by a majority of theHouse of Commonsfrom the list of the managers of that impeachment, Francis was nonetheless its most energetic promoter, supplying his friendsEdmund BurkeandRichard Sheridanwith all the materials for their eloquent orations and burning invectives.

At the general election of 1790 he was returned member forBletchingley.He sympathised warmly and actively with the French revolutionary doctrines, expostulating with Burke on his vehement denunciation of the same. In 1793 he supportedEarl Grey's motion for a return to the old constitutional system of representation, and so earned the title to be regarded as one of the earliest promoters of the cause of parliamentary reform; and he was one of the founders of theSociety of the Friends of the People.

Later life

The acquittal of Hastings in April 1795 disappointed Francis of the governor-generalship, and in 1798 he had to submit to the additional mortification of a defeat in the general election. He was once more successful, however, in 1802, when he sat forAppleby,and it seemed as if the great ambitions of his life were about to be realised when the Whig party came into power in 1806. His disappointment was great when the governor-generalship was, owing to party exigencies, conferred onSir Gilbert Elliot(Lord Minto); he declined, it is said, soon afterwards the government of the Cape, but accepted aKB.Though re-elected for Appleby in 1806, he failed to secure a seat in the following year; and the remainder of his life was spent in comparative privacy.

Among the later productions of his pen were, besides the Plan of a Reform in the Election of the House of Commons, pamphlets entitled:

• Proceedings in the House of Commons on the Slave Trade(1796),
• Reflections on the Abundance of Paper in Circulation and the Scarcity of Specie(1810),
• Historical Questions Exhibited(1818), and
• Letter to Earl Grey on the Policy of Great Britain and the Allies towards Norway(1814).

His first wife, by whom he had six children, died in 1806, and in 1814 he married his second wife, Emma Watkins, who long survived him, and who left voluminous manuscripts relating to his biography. In his domestic relations he was exemplary, and he lived on terms of mutual affection with a wide circle of friends.

Bibliography

For the evidence identifying Francis with Junius see the articleIdentity of Junius,and the authorities there cited.

• Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis, with Correspondence and Journals,by Joseph Parkes andHerman Merivale(2 vols., London, 1867);
• The Francis Letters,edited by Beata Francis and Eliza Keary (2 vols., London, 1901);
• James Fitzjames Stephen,The Story of Nuncomar and the Impeachment of Sir Elijah Impey(2 vols., London, 1885);
• Lord Macaulay'sEssay on Warren Hastings;
• George Bruce Malleson,Life of Warren Hastings(London, 1894);
• G. W. Forrest,The Administration of Warren Hastings, 1772–1785(Calcutta, 1892);
• Leslie Stephen,article on Francis in theDictionary of National Biographyvol. xx.

For Francis's influence on Bengal and his rivalry with Hastings, see "Chapter 3: The Personality and Politics of Philip Francis" in Ranajit Guha,A Rule of Property for Bengal,Duke Univ. Press, 1996.

Arms

Coat of arms of Philip Francis

Notes Granted 24 November 1806 Crest Out of a ducal coronet Or a demi-lion rampant Sable charged on the shoulder with a shamrock Or holding in his paws a garb of the last. Escutcheon Per bend sinister Sable and Or a lion rampant counterchanged charged on the shoulder with a shamrock counterchanged of the field. Orders Order of the Bath(appointed Knight Companion in 1806, converted to Knight Grand Cross in 1815)

Sources

This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain:Chisholm, Hugh,ed. (1911). "Francis, Sir Philip".Encyclopædia Britannica.Vol. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp.941–942.

External links

Hansard1803–2005:contributions in Parliament by Sir Philip Francis