As Francesco Cordasco puts it, "while the Franciscan theory has recently enjoyed new life, it remains contested and impossible to demonstrate categorically".
[3] Joseph Parkes, author with Herman Merivale of the Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis (1867), gave a list of more than forty persons who had been supposed to be Junius.
[8] In 1816 John Taylor was led by a study of Woodfall's edition of 1812 to publish The Identity of Junius with a Distinguished Living Character Established, in which he claimed the letters for Sir Philip Francis.
His family maintained that Sir Philip addressed a copy of verses to a Miss Giles in the handwriting of Junius.
"[12] Edward Turner Boyd Twistleton employed Chabot to report again on the handwriting, based on manuscripts in the British Museum.
[15] At the time of publication, a leading candidate (with Edmund Burke) for Junius; Sir William Draper was confident that the author was one of the two.
"The evidence in favour of Sackville's authorship, collected by J. Jaques, will be found among the Woodfall letters in the British Museum (Addit.
"Would to Heaven that I could have written them" was his reputred reply on being accused of being the author' The ide was killed by the publication on 19 December 1769 of Letter XXXV addressed by Junius to the King ... That letter was replete with scorn for the popular hero .... Junius advised the King that the best way to deal with Wilkes would be a contemptuous pardon' P. D. G. Thomas, 'John Wilkes: A Friend to Liberty' (Oxford University Press, 1996), 126.
In 1830 James Falconar published an ingenious work entitled 'The Secret Revealed,' in which he made out a plausible case for the identification.