Francis, John (c.1661–1724), Church of Ireland clergyman, was born in Chester, son of John Francis, a citizen of the town. He was admitted to Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1678, taking his BA in 1681 and MA in 1685, and becoming a fellow in 1684. In August 1688, when the municipal government of Chester was purged by James II (qv), the displaced mayor and other officeholders of the city (including Sir Richard Levinge (qv), apparently a relative) made him their chaplain.
Levinge came to Ireland in 1690 and the following year sent for Francis, who lodged in his house for several years until he became established in the Church of Ireland. Among other appointments Francis was prebendary of Talpestown, Co. Down, from 1692, and of St Michael's, Dublin, 1695–1705; dean of Leighlin, 1696–1723; rector of St Mary's, Dublin, 1705–23; and dean of Lismore, 1723–4. A noted preacher with a strong female following, he was appointed one of the commissioners for the Vaudois protestant refugees in 1701 and belonged to the high-church party in Queen Anne's reign. The resolution in 1717 of a lengthy dispute in which Archbishop William King (qv) had opposed Dean Welbore Ellis (qv) and the chapter of Christ Church had the incidental effect of voiding Francis's appointment to St Mary's. In 1718 the lord lieutenant, the duke of Bolton (qv), planned to use this to turn him out in favour of his own chaplain, Charles Cobbe (qv), but King and Levinge interceded successfully on Francis's behalf. He died in 1724. With his wife, Anne, he had at least three sons and two daughters.
The second son, Philip Francis (1708–73), Church of England clergyman and political writer, was born 19 July 1708. He entered TCD in 1724, graduating BA in 1729. After ordination he was made curate of St Peter's, Donnybrook, Dublin, in 1740. In 1739 he married Elizabeth Rowe, who bore one child, Philip (see below), in 1740, and died not long afterwards. Neither the date of her death nor that of Francis's subsequent removal to London is known for certain, but he was superseded at St Peter's in 1744, and was made rector of Skeyton in Norfolk in the same year. He kept a school for a time at Esher in Surrey, where his pupils, in addition to his own son, included, briefly, Edward Gibbon, the historian, and Charles James Fox, the whig politician and most famous son of Henry Fox (later Lord Holland). He entered Henry Fox's employment, undertaking pamphleteering and other duties, was private chaplain to Fox's wife, Lady Caroline Fox, and tutor to Charles James when the boy went to Eton. With such patronage, further church preferment came to him: he was made vicar of Chilham in Kent in 1761, and was rector of Barrow in Suffolk, 1762–73, and chaplain of Chelsea Hospital, 1764–8. He was awarded a crown pension of £300 p.a. in 1764, but was said to have quarrelled with Fox because he had not been appointed an Irish bishop.
His translations of Horace acquired a considerable reputation, and were long reprinted (Fagan's anthology has a selection). His other literary efforts, which included a translation of Demosthenes and two plays for the London stage, did not have the same success. His anonymous political writings were probably considerable, but have not been satisfactorily established. Besides his activities for Henry Fox as a pamphleteer, he is said to have been employed by the Irish government to write for the press, and to have written for the Daily Gazette in London. A manuscript catalogue of the sale of his son's library (printed by Parkes and Merivale, ii, 426) attributes to him an item which appears to be A proposal for uniting the kingdoms of Britain and Ireland (1751), an anonymous work usually attributed to Wills Hill (qv), marquess of Downshire. He died 5 March 1773. His son, Sir Philip Francis (1740–1818), politician, diplomatist, and political writer, was born 22 October 1740 in Dublin, where he received his early schooling. His father took him to England, probably in 1751 or 1752, and taught him at his own school for a time before entering him at St Paul's School in 1753. In 1756, when aged fifteen, he was appointed a clerk in the office of the secretary of state by Fox, the first of a series of clerical and diplomatic appointments. He was in India from 1774 to 1781 as a member of the council of the governor general of Bengal, Warren Hastings, whom he bitterly opposed. On his return to England he allied himself with the parliamentary critics of Hastings, especially Edmund Burke (qv). They had a close association for some time, though their relations were later to sour. He sat in the English commons, 1784–96 and 1802–7, and was knighted in 1806.
He was a prolific political writer, of signed and unsigned pieces. The celebrated political tracts published in London between 1769 and 1772 under the name of ‘Junius’ were even in his lifetime sometimes attributed to him. The question of the identity of Junius agitated contemporaries and has exercised many subsequent scholars; though the controversy has never been conclusively settled, the ‘Franciscan’ theory has effectively driven out other contenders. He wrote little on Ireland, though in a piece published in 1816 he advocated abolition of the tithe and the payment of state salaries to the catholic clergy, while remaining non-committal on catholic emancipation. He died 23 December 1818. A large collection of papers of the Rev. Philip Francis and Sir Philip Francis is in the British Library (Add. MSS 40756–40765).