Here, for a time, the fate of Pennsylvania certainly trembled in the balance. It was quite within the outraged admiral's power to make the ban permanent. If he had done so, there would never have been a Quaker-German commonwealth in America.
It is known that the son accepted his banishment as permanent. But his mother did not. She pleaded with the father for his forgiveness. She reminded him of the boy's great natural goodness, his brilliancy, his affectionateness. He would, Lady Penn maintained, recover from his distemper of Quakerism. She begged her husband, before it was too late, to relent and recall him.
At length, moved by this appeal and the promptings of his own heart, the admiral called the young man home. Once or twice afterwards he was on the point of a more radical banishment of him. But, fortunately for the New World, Sir William's heart was soft after all. The son was reëstablished in his good graces. After the admiral's death, in 1670, it was found that he had bequeathed all his wealth to the son, and, owing to the son's influence, the Quakers improved their position not a little, and in due time Penn organized and put through the Pennsylvania experiment. But King Charles took good care to inform him that the name "Pennsylvania," officially bestowed on the colony, was not in honor of the founder, but in compliment to the admiral, his father.
Narrow as this contingency may have been, since so great an event depended on the impulse of one man, it was after all a moral contingency, and not due of physical accident, as so many others have been. It is the more impressive for this reason. It is good to know that a few heartbeats the more, in the breast of a man who can be kind as well as hot-tempered, may create a mighty empire.
CHAPTER XI
IF THE BOY GEORGE WASHINGTON HAD
BECOME A BRITISH MIDSHIPMAN
One summer day, in 1746, a British ship of war lay in the Potomac River below the place where the city of Washington now stands. The officers of the ship had been visiting at Mount Vernon, which was the residence of Major Lawrence Washington, adjutant-general of Virginia.
No vessel of the royal navy entered the Potomac River without a visit on the part of its officers to Major Washington's house. He had been in the king's service at the siege of Cartagena and elsewhere. Admiral Vernon was his friend; Major Washington's estate on the Potomac had been named after the admiral. Lawrence Washington's acquaintance with the men of both army and navy was wide, and his popularity among them great. A visit to his hospitable residence, where he entertained them with true Virginian lavishness, was always a bright spot in any naval officer's life at that day.