For a time he devoted himself again to the work of the ministry. He went about, as in former days, preaching, sometimes in the market-hall, sometimes in the fields. Once, in Ireland, the bishop sent an officer to disperse the meeting, complaining that Penn had left him "nobody to preach to but the mayor, church-wardens, a few of the constables, and the bare walls."
His heart, however, was in his province. The affairs of Pennsylvania had been going badly. There had been a hot contention between the council and the assembly, and another between the province and the territory. The officials, too, whom Penn had appointed, had quarreled among themselves. William complained that they were excessively "governmentish;" meaning that they liked authority and that they took details very seriously. The situation, however, was inevitably difficult. In his relation to the king, the governor was a feudal sovereign; in his relation to the people he was, by Penn's arrangement, the executive of a democracy. Penn himself reconciled the two positions by his own tact and unselfishness, as well as by a certain masterfulness to which those about him instinctively and willingly yielded. He proved the motto of his book-plate, Dum Clavum Teneam; all went well while he with his own hands held the helm. But his deputies were not so competent. The colony fell into two parties, the proprietary and the popular, representing these two ideas. Then the governor whom the king had appointed during Penn's retirement was a soldier, and his un-Quakerlike notions as to the right conduct of a colony brought a new element of confusion into affairs which were already sufficiently confounded.
At last, in 1699, it became possible for the founder to make another visit to his province. He brought his family with him, evidently intending to stay. Philadelphia was now a city of some seven hundred houses, and had nearly seven thousand inhabitants. The people were at that moment in deep depression, having just been visited with a plague of yellow fever. The pestilence, however, had abated, and Penn was received with sober rejoicings. He took up his residence in the "slate-roof house," a modest mansion which stood on the corner of Second Street and Norris Alley; it was pulled down in 1867.
Now began a season of good government. The business of piracy had for some time been merrily carried on by various enterprising persons, some of whom lived very respectably in Philadelphia. William put a stop to it. The importing of slaves from Africa was at that time considered by most persons to be a good thing both for the planters and for the slaves. Already, however, at the Pennsylvania yearly meeting of Friends in 1688, some who came from Kriesheim, in Germany, had protested against it,
"Who first of all their testimonial gave
Against the oppressor, for the outcast slave."
And, in consequence, though slaves were still imported, they were humanely treated. Penn interested himself in the improvement of their condition. He was also concerned in the progress of the prison reforms which he had proposed in the original establishment of the colony. He employed a watchman to cry the news, the weather, and the time of day in the Philadelphia streets. Regarding the Constitution, about which there had been so much contention, he addressed the council and the assembly in terms of characteristic friendliness. "Friends," he said, "if in the Constitution by charter there be anything that jars, alter it. If you want a law for this or that, prepare it." He advised them, however, not to trifle with government, and wished there were no need to have any government at all. In general, he said, the fewer laws, the better. The result was a new Constitution. It provided that the council should be appointed by the governor, and that the assembly should have the right to originate laws. It was more simple and workable than the previous legislation, and lasted until the Revolution.
Meanwhile, Penn was journeying about the country in his old way, preaching. At Merion, a small boy of the family where he was entertained, being much impressed with the great man's looks and speech, peeped through the latchet-hole of his chamber door, and both saw and heard him at his prayers. Near Haverford, a small girl, walking along the country road, was overtaken by the governor, who took her up behind him on his horse, and so carried her on her way, her bare feet dangling by the horse's side.
Clarkson, the chief of the biographers of Penn, who collected these and other incidents, gives us a glimpse of him as he appeared at this time at Quaker meetings. "He was of such humility that he used generally to sit at the lowest end of the space allotted to ministers, always taking care to place above himself poor ministers, and those who appeared to him to be peculiarly gifted." He liked to encourage young men to speak. When he himself spoke, it was in the simplest words, easy to be understood, and with many homely illustrations. At the same time, on state occasions, as the proprietor of Pennsylvania and representative of the sovereign, he used some ceremony, marching through the Philadelphia streets to the opening of the assembly with a mace-bearer before him, and having an officer standing at his gate on audience days, with a long staff tipped with silver. Acquainted with affairs, and with a knowledge of the relations between government and human nature drawn from a wide experience, he knew the distinction, at which some of his Quaker brethren stumbled, between personal humility and the proper dignity of official station.
In the intervals left him by the demands of church and state, he busied himself with the improvement of his place at Pennsbury. Here he had a considerable house in the midst of pleasant gardens. He took great pleasure in personal superintendence of the grounds and buildings, planting vines and cutting vistas through the trees. "The country is to be preferred," he wrote in "Fruits of Solitude." "The country is both the philosopher's garden and library, in which he reads and contemplates the power, wisdom, and goodness of God." "The knowledge and improvement of it," he declared, is "man's oldest business and trade, and the best he can be of."
Within were silver plate and satin curtains, and embroidered chairs and couches. The proprietor's bed was covered with a "quilt of white Holland quilted in green silk by Letitia," his daughter. "Send up," he writes to James Logan, at Philadelphia, "our great stewpan and cover, and little soup dish, and two or three pounds of coffee if sold in town, and three pounds of wicks ready for candles." Mrs. Penn asks Logan to provide "candlesticks, and great candles, some green ones, and pewter and earthen basins, mops, salts, looking-glass, a piece of dried beef, and a firkin or two of good butter."