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The Secret of St. Andrews podcast is for golf enthusiasts, history buffs and patriots.
You're listening to the Secret of St. Andrews podcast. Visit us at thesecretofstandrews.com, and while you're there, feel free to talk with Hamish, our AI-powered caddy.
We have many secrets of St. Andrews to reveal, but they all started with one historic event. In 1759, Benjamin Franklin visited St. Andrews for four days. While he was there, he accepted an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of St. Andrews, and the town granted him the freedom of the borough.
These were major public relations victories for the struggling town and its university, but this was just the beginning. Franklin's honors were engineered by founding members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, who also happened to share Franklin's practice of Freemasonry, but this was not an official act of either the Royal and Ancient Golf Club or the Scottish Freemasons.
His hosts also had strong ties to the defeated Jacobite movement, but this was not an act of rebellion. Franklin's hosts were focused on the future and not past grievances. During his visit, a meeting took place that opened diplomatic channels between American and Scottish patriots, and these channels remained open throughout the Revolutionary War.
Franklin was not acting in any official capacity or on behalf of the American colonies. Nor could his hosts speak for all of Scotland. Post-war tensions were still high, and the British government was concerned about additional Jacobite uprisings. Government forces had established a very sophisticated espionage network in Scotland, but little did they know the next threat wouldn't rise again out of Scotland.
It was brewing across the Atlantic in the American colonies. Franklin was well aware of the growing tensions between American colonists and the British government, but he was still committed to advancing peaceful solutions as part of the British Empire. His Scottish hosts were resigned to working through the British parliamentary system no matter how stacked it was against them.
To advance Scotland's best interests, including the Scottish Enlightenment, higher education, transatlantic trade, and Scotland's industrial revolution. These were all topics of great interest to Franklin, who found in Scotland kindred spirits, an older sibling, and part of the same dysfunctional British family.
The first diplomatic give-and-take was actually discussed before Franklin left St. Andrews. Franklin and his hosts each had pressing issues to address and they looked to each other for assistance. Franklin chose to focus on trade. The Scots had extended significant credit to the colonial plantation owners who had accumulated unmanageable debt and faced impossible inflationary forces.
The tobacco lords in Glasgow held all the leverage, and through pricing and currency manipulation, they had the colonial growers in a vice grip. Franklin's Scottish hosts chose to seek humanitarian aid. Many of their friends and family who had participated in the Jacobite rebellions had been captured and sent to the colonies as indentured servants.
Others had simply fled to America to escape capture and execution by the Hanoverian government. Franklin could only speak for the Pennsylvania Assembly, but agreed to advocate for the Scottish indentured servants, and in return, his hosts agreed to advocate in Glasgow for more manageable credit terms.
These would need to be unofficial and covert diplomatic efforts and could easily be viewed as treasonous by the Hanoverian government. These initial diplomatic channels and the agreements to follow would lead to the many secrets to come. Both Franklin and his Scottish hosts were under government surveillance, and the vast British espionage network required them to act in secrecy.
The Scottish Jacobite War had ended and the Revolutionary War was yet to come. But wartime tension permeated the day. Ben Franklin wasn't a golfer, but the game of golf, the best-known golfers of the day, and the town of St. Andrews played a central role in these diplomatic efforts. And it all started with Dr. Franklin's visit in 1759. Up next, how these Scottish golfers got Ben Franklin to St. Andrews.