AGNES, LADY FRANKLAND.
Sir Harry Frankland, as he was familiarly called here, was heir to an ample fortune, and what added to his interest in this puritanical colony was that he was a descendant in the fourth generation from Oliver Cromwell, he came here in 1741 as Collector of the Port of Boston, preferring that office to the Governorship of Massachusetts, the alternative offered him by George II. The story of his marriage is romantic enough. Upon an official visit to Marblehead, he was struck by the radiant beauty of a young girl of sixteen, maid-of-all-work at the village inn, bare-legged, scrubbing the floor; inquired her name, and, upon a subsequent visit, with the consent of her parents, conveyed her to Boston and placed her at the best school. The attachment he conceived for her appears to have been returned, though Sir Charles did not offer her marriage. The connection between this high official and his fair protégé causing scandal, Frankland purchased some 500 acres of land in Hopkinton, which he laid out and cultivated with taste, built a stately country-house and extensive farm buildings, and there entertained all the gay companions he could collect with deer and fox hunts without, with music and feasting within doors, duly attending the church of his neighbor, the Rev. Roger Price, late of King's Chapel, Boston, of which Frankland had been, from his arrival, a member. Called to England by the death of his uncle, whose title he inherited as fourth baronet, he journeyed to Lisbon, and there, upon All Saints Day, 1755, on his way to high mass, he was engulfed by the earthquake, his horses killed, and he would have perished miserably but for his discovery and rescue by the devoted Agnes. Grateful and penitent, he led her to the altar, and poor Agnes Surriage, the barefooted maid-of-all-work of the inn at Marblehead, was translated into Agnes, Lady Frankland.
It was upon Sir Harry Frankland's return from Europe in 1756 that he became the owner of the Clark House, lived in it one short year, entertaining continually, with the assistance of his French cook, Thomas, as appears by frequent entries in his journal; was then transferred to Lisbon as Consul General, and so, with the exception of brief visits to this country in 1759 and 1763, disappearing from our horizon.
After his death at Bath, England, in 1768, his widow returned here with her son, but not until she had recorded her husband's virtues upon a monument "erected by his affectionate widow, Agnes, Lady Frankland,"—dividing her year between Boston and Hopkinton, exchanging civilities with those who had once rejected her, till the contest with England rendered all loyalists and officials unpopular.
At Hopkinton, May, 1775, she was alarmed at the movement of the revolutionists, her Ladyship asked leave to remove to Boston. The Committee of Safety gave her liberty to pass to the capital with her personal effects, and gave her a written permit, signed by Benjamin Church. Jr., chairman. Thus protected, she set out on her journey with her attendants; but was arrested by a party of armed men, who detained her person, and effects, until an order for the release of both was obtained. To prevent further annoyance, the Provincial Congress furnished her with an escort, and required all persons who had any of her property in their possession to place the same at her disposal. Defended by a guard of six soldiers, Lady Frankland entered Boston about the first of June, 1775; witnessed from her window in Garden Court street the battle of Bunker Hill, took her part in relieving the sufferings of the wounded officers, and then in her turn disappeared, leaving her estates in the hands of members of her family, thereby saving them from confiscation, which was the fate of her neighbor Hutchinson. Upon her death in England in 1782 the town mansion passed by her will to her family, and was sold by Isaac Surriage in 1811 for $8000 to Mr. Joshua Ellis, a retired North End merchant, who resided there till his death. Upon the widening of Bell Alley, in 1832, these two proud mansions, the Frankland and Hutchinson houses long since deserted by the families whose importance they were erected to illustrate and perpetuate, objects of interest to the poet, the artist, and the historian, alike for their associations with a seemingly remote past, their antique splendor, and for the series of strange romantic incidents in the lives of their successive occupants, were ruthlessly swept away.