This letter is a mystery to which we have no solution. The hand we cannot identify, but Franklin’s endorsement makes us suspect that the bearer himself may have been the writer. The initials “C. W. K.” suggest nothing to us. “J. H.” may well be John Horne, better known later as Horne Tooke. In 1775 he had played a prominent part in raising a subscription in London for the dependents of Americans killed at Lexington and Concord, and two years later was tried and imprisoned for his part in that affair.6 All that can be said with assurance is that Horne, if this letter is not a complete concoction, would have been a logical backer for Potter’s mission to France.7

Israel Ralph Potter (c. 1744–1826) was a Rhode Islander who had fought at Bunker Hill. He then sailed in the Continental brig Washington, Captain Sion Martindale, and was captured at sea and imprisoned in England. After his escape he went to London, as mentioned here, and then made two visits to Paris. On both of them, according to his later account, he saw Franklin, who promised that if he returned he would be given passage to America; but the outbreak of war between France and Britain prevented this third trip.8 His story is consonant with the suggestion in the present letter that he was in Paris to further, in some way not explained, the American cause in Britain. The crucial difficulty, however, is two entries in Franklin’s accounts that February, both apparently covering the same disbursement of 120 l.t.: in one it was to “Potter, an American Prisoner escap’d from England, to help him home”; in the other it was to “Israel Potter and Edward Griffis, to bear their Expenses to Nantes.”9 Franklin believed, these entries indicate, that Potter was homeward bound; but how could he have believed so when he had this letter in his hands? That is part of the mystery.