to his friends and relations, of
which the following, sent to me, is a specimen.[2] He had formed a
short-hand of his own, which he taught me, but, never practising it, I
have now forgot it. I was named after this uncle, there being a
particular affection between him and my father. He was very pious, a
great attender of sermons of the best preachers, which he took down in
his short-hand, and had with him many volumes of them. He was also
much of a politician; too much, perhaps, for his station. There fell
lately into my hands, in London, a collection he had made of all the
principal pamphlets, relating to public affairs, from 1641 to 1717;
many of the volumes are wanting as appears by the numbering, but there
still remain eight volumes in folio, and twenty-four in quarto and in
octavo. A dealer in 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 remain