Quote:
Originally Posted by Taltarzac725
The furor over the publication of the Hutchinson letters landed Ben Franklin into the Cockpit in January 1794. The Privy Council had summoned him into a room where Henry VIII had watched birds try to kill one another probably much like the fights between factions trying to present potential fertile wives to him had been. On the agenda of the Privy Council was the removal of Hutchinson from his post as Massachusetts Governor. What was really happening though was that they wanted a scapegoat for the whole Hutchinson letter mess and were looking at Ben Franklin to fit the role. Franklin did not even have legal representation in what to him looked like a trial. This made him awfully cranky. He figuratively knelt before the Council and requested time to find counsel and to prepare his case. He asked for three weeks during which time news of the Boston Tea Party reached England. News |
Silence was golden for Ben Franklin while he was in the Cockpit on January 29, 1774 facing the adder like tongued Alexander Wedderburn. Wedderburn even used a pun of stating that Franklin was the "prime conductor" of the anger against the British government because of the Hutchinson letters. Watching the roasting were all the
honey tongued courtiers as well as Franklin's arch enemy by that time Lord Hillsborough who wanted payback for his
removal from the grace of George III and the Prime Minister. They did not give Frankin much room to
pivot from the ire so he just remained stoic and took the barbs. Franklin did have a few friends on that January 29 day like Edmund Burke a
genius of a pragmatic political writer as well as the scientist Joseph Priestly and Lord Le Despencer (Francis Dashwood).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Priestley http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/histori...e_edmund.shtml http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/se...od&OConly=true