He is known to have written to the
Public Ledger and
Public Advertiser, as an advocate of the popular cause, on many occasions about and after the year 1763; he frequently attended debates in both Houses of Parliament, especially when American questions were being discussed; and between 1769 and 1771 he is also known to have been favourable to the scheme for the overthrow of the
Grafton government and afterwards of that of Lord North, and for persuading or forcing Lord Chatham into power. In January 1769 the first of the
Letters of Junius appeared, and the series continued till 21 January 1772. They had been preceded by others under signatures such as "Candor", "Father of Candor", "
Anti-Sejanus", "Lucius", and "Nemesis". The
authorship of the letters has been assigned to Francis on a variety of grounds, including a computer-aided analysis of the Junius texts in the 1960s. Comparing stylistic patterns from the letters with attributed writings of the period allowed a reasonable statistical conclusion to be drawn that Francis was by far the most likely author. Some evidence to support the claim of Sir Philip Francis is given in Macaulay's History of England in which Macaulay mentions the likely reference to
Henry Luttrell, who although obscure to the British of the 1770s, would have been well known to the Irish and particularly to Sir Philip Francis who spent the early part of his life near Luttrellstown. In March 1772 Francis finally left the war office, and in July of the same year he left England for a tour through France, Germany and Italy, which lasted until the following December. On his return he was contemplating emigration to New England, when in June 1773 Lord North, on the recommendation of Lord Barrington, appointed him a member of the newly constituted supreme council of
Bengal at a salary of 10,000 pounds per annum. Along with his colleagues Monson and Clavering he reached
Calcutta in October 1774, and a long struggle with
Warren Hastings, the governor-general, immediately began. These three, actuated probably by petty personal motives, combined to form a majority of the council in harassing opposition to the governor-general's policy; and they even accused him of corruption, mainly on the evidence of
Nuncomar. The death of
Monson in 1776, and of
Clavering in the following year, made Hastings again supreme in the council. But a dispute with Francis, more than usually embittered, led in August 1780 to a minute being delivered to the council board by Hastings, in which he stated that he judged of the public conduct of Mr Francis by his experience of his private, which he had found to be "void of truth and honor"; such an opinion was aggravated by the various affairs Francis had during his stay in Calcutta, including one with
Catherine Grand. A
duel was the consequence, in which Francis received a dangerous wound. The duel between Warren Hastings and Phillip Francis took place in the early hours of 17 August 1780 on the western edge of one of Hastings' summer houses in Calcutta. The two duellists, accompanied by their seconds, stood 14 paces apart with their pistols at the ready. It was at this point, Hastings' second noted, that 'both gentlemen were unacquainted with the modes usually observed on these occasions', in that Francis and Hastings were unfamiliar with how to operate their pistols. Francis stated he had never fired one in his life, while Hastings said he could only remember doing so once. As a result, both had to have their weapons loaded for them by their seconds and Francis had to borrow both a ball and a
primer from Hastings, who then allowed Francis the first shot. Francis, with some uncertainty, fired his pistol several times without success, his second again having to intervene. Eventually, Francis' pistol did fire at Hastings but missed, leaving his opponent unscathed. Following this, Hastings fired at Francis and pierced his right side. With Francis lying on the ground, the two then joined hands and expressed regret towards what had happened. Though Francis' recovery was rapid and complete, he did not choose to prolong his stay abroad. He arrived in England in October 1781, and was received with little favour. Little is known of the nature of his occupations during the next two years, except that he was untiring in his efforts to procure first the recall, and afterwards the impeachment, of his hitherto triumphant adversary. In 1783 Fox produced his India Bill, which led to the overthrow of the coalition government. In 1784 Francis was returned to the
House of Commons as Member of Parliament (MP) for the borough of
Yarmouth, Isle of Wight; and although he took an opportunity to disclaim every feeling of personal animosity towards Hastings, this did not prevent him, on the return of the latter in 1785, from doing all in his power to bring forward and support the charges which ultimately led to the
impeachment resolutions of 1787. Although excluded by a majority of the
House of Commons from the list of the managers of that impeachment, Francis was nonetheless its most energetic promoter, supplying his friends
Edmund Burke and
Richard Sheridan with all the materials for their eloquent orations and burning invectives. At the general election of 1790 he was returned member for
Bletchingley. He sympathised warmly and actively with the French revolutionary doctrines, expostulating with Burke on his vehement denunciation of the same. In 1793 he supported
Earl Grey's motion for a return to the old constitutional system of representation, and so earned the title to be regarded as one of the earliest promoters of the cause of parliamentary reform; and he was one of the founders of the
Society of the Friends of the People. ==Later life==