In the early autumn of the year 1682, a vessel with her bow pointing towards the west was making her way slowly across the Atlantic ocean. She was a small craft, rigged as a ship, and crowded with emigrants. The discomforts of a long and tiresome voyage, the very small accommodations, the horror of sea-sickness, were in this vessel aggravated by the breaking out of that most awful of all scourges, the small-pox. In a very short time, out of a population of one hundred, thirty passengers died. No record is left of the incidents of that voyage except this; but it is easy to imagine that all the circumstances were as deplorable as they could well be.
After a weary time of head winds and calms, in about seven weeks, this ship, the “Welcome,” came within the capes of the Delaware bay.
The most distinguished person on that little ship was William Penn. He had left his home in England, embarking with his trusty friends in a vessel only one-tenth the size of the ships of our American Line, to come to Pennsylvania. He had bought the whole province from the government of England for the sum of £16,000 sterling, which, measured by our money, is about $80,000, and this money was due to him for services rendered and money loaned to the government by his father, an admiral in the English navy.
About the 24th of October the vessel reached the town of Newcastle, where Penn landed and was cordially received by the people of that little village. Afterwards they came farther up the river to Uplands, now the town or city of Chester. Then, leaving the vessel here, they came in a barge (Penn and some of his principal men) to the mouth of Dock creek, the foot of what is now known as Dock street, where they landed, near a little tavern called the Blue Anchor.
There was already a settlement on the shore of the Delaware river, and the people, mostly Swedes, had built a little church somewhat farther down the stream. The entire land between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, and for a mile north and south, was owned by three brothers, Swedes, named Swen. Penn bought this tract from them, and at once proceeded to lay out his new city. When he bought the whole province from the crown he desired to call it New-Wales, because it was so hilly, but the king insisted on calling it Penn’s Sylvania, in memory of the admiral, William’s father. But when the new city came to be named, Penn having no one to dispute his wish, called it by that word, of whose meaning we think so little, Philadelphia—brotherly love. Two months after this he met the Indians, it is said, under a great elm tree in the upper part of the city, in what we now call Kensington, and concluded that treaty which has been said to be the only treaty that was ever made without an oath, and that was never broken. Shortly after this Penn proceeded to lay out the city, and, as a distinguished English author has said, he must have taken the ancient Babylon for his model, for this was the first modern city that was laid out with the streets crossing each other at right angles.
The charter which Penn received from Charles the Second, King of England (the original of which is in the capital at Harrisburg, on three large sheets of parchment), makes him proprietary and governor, also holding his authority under the crown. He at once therefore set about making a code of laws as special statutes, which with the common law of England should be the laws of the province. One of these special laws was this: “Every one, rich or poor, was to learn a useful trade or occupation; the poor to live on it: the rich to resort to it if they should become poor.” And I do not know what better law he could have enacted.
When the news of Penn’s arrival and cordial reception reached England and the continent of Europe, the effect was to arouse a spirit of emigration. Although Penn’s first thought and purpose was to found a colony, where he and others who held the religious views of the Society of Friends might worship without hindrance (which liberty was denied them in England), the people from other countries in Europe came here in great numbers for other purposes. The population therefore multiplied rapidly, and the people were generally such as had determined to brave the privations of a new country, to make themselves a home where life could be lived under better conditions than in the old countries, under the harsh government of tyrannical kings. This emigration was stimulated also by the very liberal terms which the governor offered to new-comers; for to actual settlers he offered the land at about ten dollars for a hundred acres, subject, however, to a quit-rent of a quarter of a dollar an acre per annum forever; and this may be the origin of that ground-rent instrument which is almost peculiar to Pennsylvania, and which is such a favorite investment for our rich men.
After a stay of two years Penn returned to England, where he had left his wife and children; the care of the government having been left with a council, of which Thomas Lloyd was president, who kept the great seal.
Not long after his return to England the king, Charles the Second, died, and having no son he was succeeded by his brother, James Duke of York, as James the Second. Although Penn was on the most cordial terms with the new king, as he had been with Charles, this did not secure him from the repeated annoyances and persecutions of those who detested his religion. So severe was the treatment to which he was subjected, and such was his personal danger from unprincipled men, that he escaped to France. But not being able nor willing to bear this exile, he returned to England, was tried for his offence against the law of the church and was acquitted. After this he came to America again, intending to spend the rest of his life here, but he remained only two years.
The rest of his life was spent in England, but it was a life broken by persecutions and trials at law and other annoyances, the expenses of which, added to the losses by the unfaithfulness of his stewards, were so great as seriously to involve him in financial embarrassments; and he was even compelled to mortgage his great estate in Pennsylvania to relieve himself; but the interest annually payable on such encumbrance was so heavy that he felt the necessity of relieving himself of the property entirely, and he offered to sell it to the crown. While the matter was under consideration, his health began to decline; however, the terms were agreed upon, but while the papers were in the course of preparation he died peacefully at Rushcombe, in Buckinghamshire, July 30, 1718, and was buried five days after in the burial ground belonging to Jordan’s meeting house.