Penn married in 1672, and took up his abode at Rickmansworth, in Hertfordshire. In 1677 we find him removed to Worminghurst, in Sussex, which long continued to be his place of residence. His first engagement in the plantation of America was in 1676, in consequence of being chosen arbitrator in a dispute between two quakers who had become jointly concerned in the colony of New Jersey.
In these transactions he had the opportunity of contemplating the glorious results which might be hoped for from a colony founded with no interested views, but on the principles of universal peace, toleration, and liberty; and he felt an earnest desire to be the instrument in so great a work, more especially as it held out a prospect of deliverance to his persecuted Quaker brethren in England, by giving them a free and happy asylum in a foreign land. Circumstances favored his wish. The crown was indebted to him £16,000 for money advanced by the late admiral for the naval service. Accordingly, Penn received, in 1681, a grant by charter of that extensive province, named Pennsylvania by Charles himself, in honor of the admiral.
He immediately drew up and published "Some Account of Pennsylvania, etc.;" and then "Certain Conditions or Concessions, etc.," to be agreed on between himself and those who wished to purchase land in the province. These having been accepted by many persons, he proceeded to frame the rough sketch of a constitution, on which he proposed to base the charter of the province. The price fixed on land was forty shillings, with the annual quit-rent of one shilling, for one hundred acres; and it was provided that no one should, in word or deed, affront or wrong any Indian without incurring the same penalty as if the offence had been committed against a fellow-planter; that strict precautions should be taken against fraud in the quality of goods sold to them; and that all differences between the two nations should be adjudged by twelve men, six of each. And he declares his intention "to leave myself and my successors no power of doing mischief; that the will of one man may not hinder the good of a whole country." It was this constitution, substantially, which Burke, in his "Account of the European Settlements in America," describes as "that noble charter of privileges, by which he made them as free as any people in the world, and which has since drawn such vast numbers of so many different persuasions and such various countries to put themselves under the protection of his laws. He made the most perfect freedom, both religious and civil, the basis of his establishment; and this has done more toward the settling of the province, and toward the settling of it in a strong and permanent manner, than the wisest regulations could have done on any other plan."
In 1682 a number of settlers, principally Quakers, having been already sent out, Penn himself embarked for Pennsylvania, leaving his wife and children in England. On occasion of this parting, he addressed to them a long and affectionate letter, which presents a very beautiful picture of his domestic character, and affords a curious insight into the minute regularity of his daily habits. He landed on the banks of the Delaware in October, and forthwith summoned an assembly of the freemen of the province, by whom the frame of government, as it had been promulgated in England, was accepted. Penn's principles did not suffer him to consider his title to the land as valid without the consent of the natural owners of the soil. He had instructed persons to negotiate a treaty of sale with the Indian nations before his own departure from England; and one of his first acts was to hold that memorable assembly, to which the history of the world offers none alike, at which this bargain was ratified, and a strict league of amity established. We do not find specified the exact date of this meeting, which took place under an enormous elm-tree, near the site of Philadelphia, and of which a few particulars only have been preserved by the uncertain record of tradition. Well and faithfully was that treaty of friendship kept by the wild denizens of the woods; "a friendship," says Proud, the historian of Pennsylvania, "which for the space of more than seventy years was never interrupted, or so long as the Quakers retained power in the government."
Penn remained in America until the middle of 1684. During this time much was done toward bringing the colony into prosperity and order. Twenty townships were established, containing upward of seven thousand Europeans; magistrates were appointed; representatives, as prescribed by the constitution, were chosen, and the necessary public business transacted. In 1683 Penn undertook a journey of discovery into the interior: and he has given an interesting account of the country in its wild state, in a letter written home to the Society of Free Traders to Pennsylvania. He held frequent conferences with the Indians, and contracted treaties of friendship with nineteen distinct tribes. His reasons for returning to England appear to have been twofold; partly the desire to settle a dispute between himself and Lord Baltimore, concerning the boundary of their provinces, but chiefly the hope of being able, by his personal influence, to lighten the sufferings and ameliorate the treatment of the Quakers in England. He reached England in October, 1684. Charles II. died in February, 1685. But this was rather favorable to Penn's credit at court; for beside that James appears to have felt a sincere regard for him, he required for his own church that toleration which Penn wished to see extended to all alike. The same credit, and the natural and laudable affection and gratitude toward the Stuart family which he never dissembled, caused much trouble to him after the Revolution. He was continually suspected of plotting to restore the exiled dynasty; was four times arrested, and as often discharged in the total absence of all evidence against him. During the years 1691, 1692, and part of 1693, he remained in London, living, to avoid offence, in great seclusion; in the latter year he was heard in his own defence before the king and council, and informed that he need apprehend no molestation or injury.
The affairs of Pennsylvania fell into some confusion during Penn's long absence. Even in the peaceable sect of Quakers there were ambitious, bustling, and selfish men; and Penn was not satisfied with the conduct either of the representative Assembly, or of those to whom he had delegated his own powers. He changed the latter two or three times, without effecting the restoration of harmony; and these troubles gave a pretext for depriving him of his powers as governor, in 1693. The real cause was probably the suspicion entertained of his treasonable correspondence with James II. But he was reinstated in August, 1694, by a royal order, in which it was complimentarily expressed that the disorders complained of were produced entirely by his absence. Anxious as he was to return, he did not find an opportunity till 1699; the interval was chiefly employed in religious travel through England and Ireland, and in the labor of controversial writing, from which he seldom had a long respite. His course as a philanthropist on his return to America is honorably marked by an endeavor to ameliorate the condition of Negro slaves. The society of Quakers in Pennsylvania had already come to a resolution, that the buying, selling, and holding men in slavery was inconsistent with the tenets of the Christian religion; and following up this honorable declaration, Penn had no difficulty in obtaining for the negroes free admission into the regular meetings for religious worship, and in procuring that other meetings should be holden for their particular benefit. The Quakers, therefore, merit our respect as the earliest, as well as some of the most zealous, emancipators.
The governor returned to England in 1701, to oppose a scheme agitated in Parliament for abolishing the proprietary governments and placing the colonies immediately under royal control; the bill, however, was dropped before he arrived. He enjoyed Anne's favor, as he had that of her father and uncle, and resided much in the neighborhood of the court, at Kensington and Knightsbridge. In his religious labors he continued constant, as heretofore. He was much harassed by a lawsuit, the result of too much confidence in a dishonest steward; which being decided against him, he was obliged for a time to reside within the Rules of the Fleet Prison. This, and the expenses in which he had been involved by Pennsylvania, reduced him to distress, and in 1709 he mortgaged the province for £6,600. In 1712 he agreed to sell his rights to the government for £12,000, but was rendered unable to complete the transaction by three apoplectic fits, which followed each other in quick succession. He survived, however, in a tranquil and happy state, though with his bodily and mental vigor much broken, until July 30, 1718, on which day he died at his seat at Rushcomb, in Berkshire, where he had resided for some years.
His first wife died in 1693. He married a second time in 1696; and left a family of children by both wives, to whom he bequeathed his landed property in Europe and America. His rights of government he left in trust to the Earls of Oxford and Powlett, to be disposed of; but no sale being ever made, the government, with the title of Proprietaries, devolved on the surviving sons of the second family.[Back to Contents]
Footnote 1: Copyright. 1894. by Selmar Hess.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 2: Moses, the lawgiver of the Hebrew people, was, according to the Biblical account, an Israelite of the tribe of Levi, and the son of Amram and Jochebed. He was born in Egypt, in the year 1571 B.C., according to the common chronology. To evade the edict of Pharaoh, the King of Egypt, that all the male children of the Hebrews should be killed, he was hid by his mother three months, and then exposed in an ark of rushes on the banks of the Nile. Here the child was found by Pharaoh's daughter, who adopted him for her son, entrusting him to his own mother to nurse, by which circumstance he was preserved from being entirely separated from his own people. He was probably educated at the Egyptian court, where he became "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." At the age of forty years Moses conceived the idea of freeing his Hebrew brethren from their bondage in Egypt, and on one occasion, seeing an Egyptian maltreating an Israelite, he interfered, slew the Egyptian, and buried him in the sand. The next day, upon his attempting to reconcile two Hebrews who had quarrelled, his services were scornfully rejected, and he was upbraided with the murder of the Egyptian. Finding that his secret was known, he fled from Egypt, and took refuge with a tribe of Midianites in Arabia Petræa, among whom he lived as a shepherd forty years, having married the daughter of their priest Jethro or Reuel.