To Benjamin Franklin from David Barclay, 27 May 1782
From David Barclay
ALS: University of Pennsylvania Library
London 27th: of 5th: mo: 1782.
Respected Friend.
I embrace the opportunity of my Friend Baron Dimsdale6 to convey to Thee two attempts on the Character of our late valuable Friend Doctor Fothergill,7 another more at large is in the press—
I am—Thy respectful Friend.
David Barclay.
Addressed: Dr. Franklin
Notation: David Barclay 27. May 1782.
6. The Quaker physician Thomas Dimsdale, for whom see the DNB and Namier and Brooke, House of Commons, II, 325–6.
7. Fothergill died on Dec. 26, 1780: XXXIV, 260. We do not know what Barclay enclosed. An account of Fothergill’s life appeared in John Elliot, ed., A Complete Collection of the Medical and Philosophical Works of John Fothergill … (London, 1781), pp. i–xx. Tributes to Fothergill by Dr. William Hird and Dr. Gilbert Thompson were published in 1781 and 1782, while in 1783 Dimsdale printed privately his Tribute of Friendship to the Memory of Dr. Fothergill: R. Hingston Fox, Dr. John Fothergill and His Friends … (London, 1919), pp. 416–17.