Intelligence of Parliamentary affairs in the wake of the Stamp Act, tea taxation, etc.

These are miscellaneous documents relating to appointments, money acts, defense, etc., mostly addressed to Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, Secretary of State for the Southern Department. Contain signatures of important Englishmen, among whom are: Wm.Blathwayt, Jas. Craggs. Mitford Crow, Dartmouth, Herbert, Sir P.Meadows, Wm. Popple, Jr., Matthew Prior, John Smith, Stamford, Sunderland,etc.

The James S. and Frances M. Bradford Collection contains a wealth of letters to and from Polly Stevenson Hewson, intimate friend of Benjamin Franklin. At the heart of the collection are approximately 40 letters from Mary Stevenson to Franklin with a smaller number in return. Friendly, increasingly intimate, these provide a glimpse of the domestic life of Franklin and his warm personal relations with the Stevensons and Hewsons. Among the noteworthy individual items is the manuscript "Craven Street Gazette" (Sept. 22-26, 1770), the mock newspaper Franklin produced while in London. The collection also contains a series of unrelated miscellaneous manuscripts that includes correspondence from William Bradford, Patrick Henry, and George Washington.

The only son of Benjamin Franklin, William Franklin served as Royal Governor of New Jersey during the critical years between 1762 and 1776. An ardent Loyalist, William split with his father over their political differences in the early days of the Revolution, and after enduring two years of imprisonment, became a leader in the Loyalist cause. He settled in London in 1782, where he worked as an agent for Loyalist claims. The William Franklin Papers are a miscellaneous assemblage of letters and documents, dealing largely with Franklin's years as Royal Governor of New Jersey. The majority of the letters are perfunctory, however they provide some information on Franklin's land holdings in New Jersey and the Ohio country. The collection includes two letters relating to Franklin's imprisonment in Connecticut during the Revolution, two affectionate letters to his sister Sarah, and one to his son William Temple Franklin.

An important 18th century radical republican theorist and political writer, Thomas Paine was a leading figure in the American Revolution. Despite his humble beginnings and lack of formal education, his reasoned and persuasive writings not only influenced nascent American republican ideology, but profoundly affected the perception of government in England and France as well. His three most influential works are Common Sense (1776), The Rights of Man (1791-1792), and The Age of Reason (1794, 1795, 1807). The Richard Gimbel Collection is a heterogeneous mix of items connected only by the fact that they were all collected by Gimbel (1898-1970) and that most were written by, to, or about the revolutionary Paine. Of primary importance are the approximately sixty-five letters or manuscripts in Paine's own hand, including Paine's 1776 manuscript notes for Common Sense, his letter of January 10, 1781, in which he takes leave of his former commanding officer, Nathanael Greene, and his January 6, 1789 letter to Kitty Nicholson Few, in which he writes of his view of matrimony and other personal matters. The collection includes a series of correspondence between Thomas Paine and Samuel Adams, which were originally marked "forgeries," these appear instead simply to be the letters of two men bearing famous names.