When, after four hours of selecting and changing and selecting again, the Penns finally accepted a design and placed their order, John had arranged that he was to dine with the Cox family and see the young beauty frequently. All went well until the day appointed for the visit to the home of the silversmith. John Penn presented himself before his father attired in his best red velvet coat with gold facings, white satin knee breeches, pumps with diamond buckles, his face much powdered, and sporting a pearl inlaid sword. The elder Penn demanded to know the cause of the youth’s magnificence, for ordinarily his Quaker blood showed itself in a distaste for fancy apparel.
“To dine with Mr. and Mrs. James Cox and their charming daughter, whom I much admire,” was the calm rejoinder.
“What, what,” fairly shouted the father, almost having an apoplectic attack on the spot; “dining with common tradespeople! You must be in a frenzy, son; we’ll have you in Bedlam.”
“I don’t see why you talk that way, father,” said John, retaining his composure. “Are we so very different? It was only a few generations back when the Penns were plain rural yeomen, and Madame van der Schoulen, or Grandmother Penn, your own mother, was she not the daughter of a Dutch tradesman?”
“Don’t speak that way, lad; the servants may hear, and lose respect,” said the father.
The lad had touched a sore subject, and he preferred to let him keep his engagement rather than to have an expose on the subject of ancestry.
The dinner and visit were followed by others, but at home John’s romance did not run smoothly, and he quickly realized that his father and Uncle Thomas, whose heir he was to be, would never consent to his marriage with the daughter of a silversmith. Consequently, a trip to Gretna Green was executed, and John Penn, aged nineteen, and Maria Cox, seventeen, were duly made man and wife.
When Richard Penn and his brother Thomas were apprised of what he had done they locked him in his room, and after night got him to the waterfront and on a ship bound for the French coast. He was carried to Paris and there carefully watched, but meanwhile supplied with money, all that he could spend. Temporarily he forgot all about Maria Cox, plunging into the gaieties of the French Capital, gambling and betting on horse races, the “sport of kings” having been only recently introduced in France, until he was deeply in debt. He became very ill, and was taken to Geneva to recuperate. There he was followed by representatives of his creditors, who threatened to have him jailed for debt–a familiar topic in family talk to him, for his grandfather, William Penn, despite his ownership of Pennsylvania, had been arrested for debt many times and was out on bail on a charge of non-payment of loans made from his steward at the time of his death.
John wrote frantically to his father in London, who turned a deaf ear to the prodigal; not so Uncle Thomas. He replied that he would save the boy from jail and pay his debts, provided he would divorce his wife and go to Pennsylvania for an indefinite period. John was ready to promise anything; a representative of the Penn’s financial interests settled all the claims in and out of Paris, and John Penn was free.
While waiting at Lille for a ship to take him from Rotterdam to Philadelphia, the young man was advised to come to London for a day to say good-bye to his relatives. The packet was expected in the Thames on a certain day, but got into a terrific storm and was tossed about the North Sea and the Channel for a week, and no one was at the dock to meet the dilapidated youth on his arrival at Fleet Street.