The success of Franklin's first foreign mission was, therefore, substantial and satisfactory. During this sojourn of five years in England he had made many valuable friends outside of court and political circles, among whom Hume, Robertson and Adam Smith were conspicuous. In 1759, for his literary and more particularly his scientific attainments, he received the freedom of the city of Edinburgh and the degree of doctor of laws from the university of St Andrews. He had been made a Master of Arts at Harvard and at Yale in 1753, and at the college of William and Mary in 1756; and in 1762 he received the degree of D.C.L. at Oxford. While in England he had made active use of his remarkable talent for pamphleteering. In the clamour for peace following the death of George II. (25th of October 1760), he was for a vigorous prosecution of the war with France; he had written what purported to be a chapter from an old book written by a Spanish Jesuit, _On the Meanes of Disposing the Enemie to Peace_, which had a great effect; and in the spring of 1760 there had been published a more elaborate paper written by Franklin with the assistance of Richard Jackson, agent of Massachusetts and Connecticut in London, entitled _The Interest of Great Britain Considered with Regard to Her Colonies, and the Acquisitions of Canada and Guadeloupe_ (1760). This pamphlet answered the argument that it would be unsafe to keep Canada because of the added strength that would thus be given to any possible movement for independence in the English colonies, by urging that so long as Canada remained French there could be no safety for the English colonies in North America, nor any permanent peace in Europe. Tradition reports that this pamphlet had considerable weight in determining the ministry to retain Canada.