On the 26th of September in the same year Franklin was chosen as commissioner to France to join Arthur Lee, who was in London, and Silas Deane, who had arrived in France in June 1776.
Again reappointed, he surrendered his seat, and after refusing a proffered election to serve as a commissioner with Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane in France, he entered again, in October 1776, the Virginia legislature, where he considered his services most needed.
Montanus claimed to have a prophetic calling in the very same sense as Agabus, Judas, Silas, the daughters of Philip, Quadratus and Ammia, or as Hermas at Rome.
He planned an appeal to the king of France for aid, and wrote the instructions of Silas Deane who was to convey it.
Marcy, Benjamin Franklin Butler (1795-1858) and Silas Wright were among the leaders; Thurlow Weed, their bitterest opponent and the man who gave them their name, declared of them that he " had never known a body of men who possessed so much power and used it so well."