Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/131

XIII.

Though Mr. Martin had been secured for the Rectorship, there had been higher aims in view, and Franklin bent his energies to secure a clergyman of the Church of England, the Rev. Samuel Johnson, D. D. of Stratford, Connecticut, to undertake the general direction of the Academy; and it must have been with this design in view that Mr. Martin accepted the Rectorship. Under the Constitutions, the Rector was obliged, "without the Assistance of any Tutor, to teach twenty Scholars the Latin and Greek Languages, and at the same Time, according to the best of his Capacity, to instruct them in History, Geography, Chronology, Logick, Rhetorick, and the English Tongue; and Twenty-five Scholars more for every Usher provided for him, who shall be entirely subject to his Direction." He was to be in fact, the first professor in honor and rank, and no reference was made to his general governance of the institution or to any responsibility attaching to the office as head of the faculty. Such a person was needed, although not so stipulated in the Constitutions, and came to be known afterwards under the amended charter of 1755 as Provost, when the then Rector, Dr. Alison, was made Vice-Provost, and the Rev. William Smith being the first incumbent of the Provostship. Such an one Franklin believed he found in Dr. Johnson, whose eminence as a divine and a scholar in the Eastern Provinces had brought to him in 1743 Oxford's degree of Doctor of Divinity. They were both correspondents of Cadwallader Colden, and through this learned intermediary Franklin formed Johnson's acquaintance, and the more he knew of him the more did he desire to secure him for his new Philadelphia enterprise. So earnest was he in the pursuit of this object, that he and his associate Trustee, Tench Francis, journeyed to Stratford in the early summer of 1750, hoping to secure his acquiescence in their plans. It appears that some talk of a college for New York had been had in 1749, and Johnson had been consulted in regard to it. The knowledge of this, and the present lack of certainty in the New York movement, must have led Franklin to the belief that the