John Dickinson (1732–1808) was one of the most significant, if least remembered, members of the group known as the Founding Fathers. Born in Maryland, he was trained as a lawyer in London at the Middle Temple, one of the four law schools that have trained barristers since the fourteenth century. He wrote the Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania as a way of explaining the legal position of the colonists and Parliament to a popular audience. The letters were published severally as they were written.