The Autobiography of Ben Franklin | Page 4

old books met with them, and knowing me by my

sometimes buying of him, he brought them to me. It seems my uncle
must have left them here, when he went to America, which was about
fifty years since. There are many of his notes in the margins.
<2> Here follow in the margin the words, in brackets, "here insert it,"
but the poetry is not given. Mr. Sparks informs us (Life of Franklin, p.
6) that these volumes had been preserved, and were in possession of
Mrs. Emmons, of Boston, great-granddaughter of their author.
This obscure family of ours was early in the Reformation, and
continued Protestants through the reign of Queen Mary, when they
were sometimes in danger of trouble on account of their zeal against
popery. They had got an English Bible, and to conceal and secure it, it
was fastened open with tapes under and within the cover of a joint-stool.
When my great-great-grandfather read it to his family, he turned up the
joint-stool upon his knees, turning over the leaves then under the tapes.
One of the children stood at the door to give notice if he saw the
apparitor coming, who was an officer of the spiritual court. In that case
the stool was turned down again upon its feet, when the Bible remained
concealed under it as before. This anecdote I had from my uncle
Benjamin. The family continued all of the Church of England till about
the end of Charles the Second's reign, when some of the ministers that
had been outed for nonconformity holding conventicles in
Northamptonshire, Benjamin and Josiah adhered to them, and so
continued all their lives: the rest of the family remained with the
Episcopal Church.
Josiah, my father, married young, and carried his wife with three
children into New England, about 1682. The conventicles having been
forbidden by law, and frequently disturbed, induced some considerable
men of his acquaintance to remove to that country, and he was
prevailed with to accompany them thither, where they expected to
enjoy their mode of religion with freedom. By the same wife he had
four children more born there, and by a second wife ten more, in all
seventeen; of which I remember thirteen sitting at one time at his table,
who all grew up to be men and women, and married; I was the
youngest son, and the youngest child but two, and was born in Boston,

New England. My mother, the second wife, was Abiah Folger,
daughter of Peter Folger, one of the first settlers of New England, of
whom honorable mention is made by Cotton Mather in his church
history of that country, entitled Magnalia Christi Americana, as 'a godly,
learned Englishman," if I remember the words rightly. I have heard that
he wrote sundry small occasional pieces, but only one of them was
printed, which I saw now many years since. It was written in 1675, in
the home-spun verse of that time and people, and addressed to those
then concerned in the government there. It was in favor of liberty of
conscience, and in behalf of the Baptists, Quakers, and other sectaries
that had been under persecution, ascribing the Indian wars, and other
distresses that had befallen the country, to that persecution, as so many
judgments of God to punish so heinous an offense, and exhorting a
repeal of those uncharitable laws. The whole appeared to me as written
with a good deal of decent plainness and manly freedom. The six
concluding lines I remember, though I have forgotten the two first of
the stanza; but the purport of them was, that his censures proceeded
from good-will, and, therefore, he would be known to be the author.
"Because to be a libeller (says he) I hate it with my heart; From
Sherburne town, where now I dwell My name I do put here; Without
offense your real friend, It is Peter Folgier."
My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put
to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending to
devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church. My
early readiness in learning to read (which must have been very early, as
I do not remember when I could not read), and the opinion of all his
friends, that I should certainly make a good scholar, encouraged him in
this purpose of his. My uncle Benjamin, too, approved of it, and
proposed to give me all his short-hand volumes of sermons, I suppose
as a stock to set up with, if I would learn his character. I continued,
however, at the grammar-school not quite one year, though in that time
I had risen gradually from the middle of the class of that year to be