From Benjamin Franklin to Noble Wimberly Jones, 7 June 1770
To Noble Wimberly Jones
ALS: Bibliothèque Municipale de Nantes
London, June 7. 1770
Sir
I wrote to you sometime since that I had receiv’d your Orders to procure a Mace and Gowns suitable for your Assembly, and that I hoped to have them ready to go by this Ship.4 The Gowns are accordingly ready; but the Silversmith has not kept his Time. So I think it best to send the Whole together, which I shall do by the first Opportunity after the Mace is finished. Inclos’d I send the Silversmith’s Note of the Cost of one he lately made. I suppose his Bill for this will not differ very widely. The Gowns cost £19 4s. 9d.5 With great Respect, I am, Sir, Your most obedient humble Servant
B Franklin
P.S. With this I send you Copies of two Speeches made by a Member of Parliament who is a Friend of America, in the last Session. On the last, some Expectations were given by the Ministry that the Troops should be withdrawn.6 The Duty on Tea still remains.
N. W. Jones, Esqr
Endorsed: Dr. Franklin 7th. June 1770
4. See BF to Jones above, May 2.
5. BF bought the gowns from Stone & Schudell and the mace from William Pickett, a goldsmith and silversmith of 32 Ludgate Hill; the bill for the mace was £88 8s. See the entry of June 21, 1770, in BF’s Jour., p. 24; Kent’s Directory … (London, 1770), p. 138; and BF to Jones below, July 6.
6. The speeches were undoubtedly those of Thomas Pownall in the Commons on March 5, during the debate on repealing the tax on tea, and on May 8, when he moved to clarify the legal position of the military in Massachusetts. The ministry replied to Pownall’s motion through Lord Barrington, Secretary at War, who assured the House that the troops would be withdrawn because no civil authority in Boston would use them. Cobbett, Parliamentary History, XVI, 855–70, 979–95, 998. In fact the two regiments remaining in the town had withdrawn to Castle William in Boston harbor on March 10, five days after the Massacre. On June 12 Hillsborough approved Gage’s request to send the 29th, the regiment involved in the shooting, to New Jersey: Carter, ed., Gage Correspondence, I, 255; II, 103.