The first issue of James Franklin’s New-England Courant appeared on August 7, 1721, at the height of the inoculation controversy in Boston.9 Because the Mathers supported inoculation, the Courant opposed it; and the paper’s lively, combative essays and verses were soon directed also against the clergy, the magistrates, the postmaster, Harvard College, men of wealth and property—in short, against the whole Massachusetts Establishment. The Courant’s literary quality alone made the paper pay, for it carried very little advertising and James Franklin had no post office business. The original material was composed by the printer and his friends, a group of “ingenious Men” which included Dr. William Douglass, Captain Taylor, John Checkley, Matthew Adams, John Eyre, and a Mr. Gardner.