Boston 1775

Last month the History of Parliament blog shared Dr. Robin Eagles’s review of Benjamin Franklin ’s dislike and distrust of John Wilkes , ba...

In October 1772, Baron le Despencer hosted Benjamin Franklin at his estate at West Wycombe, Buckinghamshire (shown here). At the time, Fra...

Only a few pieces of correspondence between Baron le Despencer and Benjamin Franklin survive in the Franklin Papers, but they show a devel...

Sir Francis Dashwood, baronet , served as chancellor of the exchequer in the government of the Earl of Bute . That went poorly for both of t...

I’m returning to the question I started the month with , on the relationship between Benjamin Franklin and Sir Francis Dashwood, known afte...

As I’ve been discussing, Donald McCormick was the first author to present certain claims about Sir Francis Dashwood’s “Monks of Medmenham Ab...

Yesterday I quoted from books published in the late 1900s by Donald McCormick and Richard Deacon linking Benjamin Franklin to Baron le Desp...

In 1958 a British journalist named Donald McCormick published a book titled The Hell-Fire Club: The Story of the Amorous Knights of Wycombe ...

Over forty years ago I bought a paperback copy of Murder in the Hellfire Club by Donald Zochert. It was a historical murder mystery written...

This month’s research topics took me to this page at the History of Parliament site about the fabled “Monks of Medmenham Abbey.” John Wil...