By promises of Governor Keith, he went to England in the expectation that letters of credit and recommendation from his patron would enable him to procure a printing outfit. Left in the lurch by the governor, he served for something over a year in two great London printing houses, kept free-thinking and rather loose company, and, in refutation of Wollaston's Religion of Nature upon which he happened to be engaged in the composing-room, published in 1725 his suppressed tract On Liberty and Necessity. Returning to Philadelphia in 1726, he reentered the employ of Keimer; in 1728 formed a brief partnership with Hugh Meredith, and in 1730 married and set up for himself. In 1728 he formed the famous Junto Club for reading, debating, and reforming the world—an institution which developed into a powerful organ of political influence. Shortage of money in the province prompted him to the composition of his Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of Paper Currency, 1729; a service for which his friends in the Assembly rewarded him by employing him to print the money—"a very profitable job and a great help to me." Forestalled by Keimer in a project for launching a newspaper, Franklin contributed in 1728–9 to the rival journal published by Bradford a series of sprightly "Busy-Body" papers in the vein of the periodical essayists. Keimer was forced to sell out; and Franklin acquired from him the paper known from October 2, 1729, as the Pennsylvania Gazette. To this he con-
