The demand in trade at first was for articles of the greatest utility, like mill and “grindle” stones, iron kettles, and hardware. One of the women ordered shoes, and stipulated that they should be stout and large. James Claypoole sent his silver-hafted knives to his brother in Barbadoes, and consigned to him some beaver hats for which he could find at home no sale. But in less than a year a trade sprang up with some of the West India Islands, and rum, sugar, and negroes were ordered, in exchange for pipe-staves and horses. The silver from a Spanish wreck and peltries furnished the means of an exchange with Europe, and soon word was sent out to send “linnen, serges, crape, and Bengall, and other slight stuffs; but send no more shoes, gloves, stockings, nor hats.” Before Penn sailed for England in 1684, Philadelphia contained three hundred and fifty-seven houses, many of them three stories high, with cellars and balconies. Samuel Carpenter, one of the most enterprising of the early merchants, had a quay at which a ship of five hundred tons could lie. Trades of all kinds flourished; vessels had been built; brick houses soon began to be seen; and shop windows enlivened the streets.
In 1685 William Bradford established his printing-press in Philadelphia, the first in the middle colonies of North America. Its earliest issue was an almanac entitled the Kalendarium Pennsilvaniense, printed in 1685 for the succeeding year.
By 1690 brick and stone houses were the kind usually erected, while only the poorer classes built of wood. Manufactures also began to flourish. That year William Ryttenhouse, Samuel Carpenter, William Bradford, and others built a paper mill on the Schuylkill. The woollen manufactures offered such encouragement that there was “a public flock of sheep in the town, and a sheepheard or two to attend them.” The rural districts were also prosperous. The counties were divided into townships of about five thousand acres, in the centre of which villages were laid out. In 1684 there were fifty such settlements in the colony. At first the cattle were turned loose, and the ear-marks of their respective owners were registered at the county courts. Roads were surveyed and bridges built. The first mill was started in 1683 at Chester by Richard Townsend and others. The reports regarding the crops show them to have been enormous for the labor bestowed, and the development of the whole country seems to have been correspondent to the increased wealth of Philadelphia, where, in 1685, the poorest lots were worth four times what they cost, and the best forty-fold. At the beginning of the year 1684 Penn wrote: “I have led the greatest colony into America that ever any man did upon a private credit, and the most prosperous beginnings that ever were in it are to be found among us.”
The early ecclesiastical annals of Pennsylvania are meagre. The wave of religious excitement which swept over England during the days of the Commonwealth spent itself on the banks of the Delaware. Men and women with intellects too weak to grasp the questions which moved them, or possibly instigated by cunning, wandered through the country prophesying or disputing. One declared “that she was Mary the mother of the Lord;” another, “that she was Mary Magdalen, and others that they were Martha, John, etc.,—scandalizers,” wrote a traveller in 1679, “as we heard them in a tavern, who not only called themselves, but claimed to be, really such.”
The Swedish congregations, neglected by the churches in Sweden, were in 1682 falling into decay. The congregations at Tranhook, near Upland, and at Tinnicum, were under the charge of Lars Lock, that at Wicaco under Jacob Fabritius. The former was a cripple, the latter blind. Their salaries were scantily paid, and they were miserably poor. The Dutch had but one church, which was at New Castle.
The first meeting of Quakers for religious worship in Pennsylvania was no doubt held at the house of Robert Wade, near Upland. William Edmundson, the Quaker preacher, speaks of such meetings in 1675. It was then that Wade came to America with Fenwick. In Bucks County meetings are said to have been held as early as 1680 at the houses of Quakers who had settled there. The first meeting near Philadelphia was at Shackamaxon, at the house of Thomas Fairman, in 1682; but it was soon removed to Philadelphia, where one was established in 1683. Early in that year no less than nine established meetings existed in Pennsylvania.
As early as 1684 or 1685 the Baptists established a church at Cold Spring, in Bucks County, about three miles above Bristol. The pastor was the Rev. Thomas Dungan. In 1687 they established a second congregation at Pennepeck, in Philadelphia County, of which the Rev. Elias Keach was the first minister. The Episcopalians and Presbyterians did not own places of worship until a later date.
The early political annals of the colony show a condition of affairs perfectly consistent with the circumstances under which the constitution was formed. While Penn remained in the country his presence prevented any excess such as might be expected from men inexperienced in self-government. In 1684, however, Penn was obliged to return to England, and he empowered the Provincial Council to act in his stead. Thomas Lloyd was the president of that body, and was also commissioned Keeper of the Seal. He was a man of prudence, and seems to have justified the confidence placed in him by Penn. Arrogance on the part of some of the other officers of the government soon awakened feelings of jealousy among the people, who were prompt to resent any violation of their rights. Nicholas More, the Chief-Justice, was impeached by the Assembly for gross partiality and overbearing conduct. He was styled by the Speaker an “aspiring and corrupt minister of state,” and the Council was requested to remove him from office. He was expelled from the Assembly, of which he was a member, for having thrice entered his protest against a single bill. Patrick Robinson, the clerk of the Court, refused to submit to the House the records of the Court in the case of More, and was restrained for his “divers insolences and affronts.” When brought before the Assembly, he stretched himself at full length on the ground, and refused to answer questions put to him, telling the House that it “acted arbitrarily” and without authority. The Council was also requested to remove him; but neither in his case nor in that of More were the prayers granted. “I am sorry at heart for your animosities,” wrote Penn, when he heard of these troubles; “cannot more friendly and private courses be taken to set matters to rights in an infant province whose steps are numbered and watched? For the love of God, me, and the poor country, be not so governmentish, so noisy and open in your dissatisfactions.” It was the love of government, the seeds of which Penn had himself planted, which caused these troubles, and he it was who was to suffer most in that period of political growth. Hundreds, he said, had been prevented from emigrating by these quarrels, and that they had been to him a loss of £10,000. His quit-rents, which in 1686 should have amounted to £500 per annum, were unpaid. They were looked upon as oppressive taxes, for which the Proprietary had no need; but the year previous he wrote: “God is my witness.... I am above six thousand pounds out of pocket more than ever I saw by the province.”
The want of energy shown by the Council in managing his affairs caused Penn to lessen the number in which the executive authority rested. In 1686 he commissioned five of the Council, three of whom were to be a quorum, to attend to his proprietary affairs. By the slothful manner in which the Council had conducted the public business, the charter, he argued, had again fallen into his hands, and he threatened to dissolve the Frame of Government “if further occasion be given.” Under these commissioners but little improvement was made, and in 1688 Penn appointed Captain John Blackwell his lieutenant-governor.