In addition to Mr. Whitehead’s remarks regarding Gabriel Thomas’s Account of Pennsylvania (see chap. xi.), we will add that the portion relating to Pennsylvania covers fifty-five pages, besides eight pages which are devoted to the preface and title. A person by the name of the author, probably the same, was in America in 1702, and was then solicitous of a commission as collector of quit-rents, etc., within the county of Newcastle. In 1698 he inveighed against George Keith and his followers, and in 1702 sided with Colonel Quarry in his disputes with Penn. Most of the statements in his book can be relied on, but some passages are marked by exaggeration and others by satire. As some of the buildings in Philadelphia mentioned by Thomas were not erected until after he wrote, Mr. Westcott, in his History of Philadelphia, suggests that possibly there was more than one edition of the work bearing the same date.[814]
In 1700 was printed a Beschreibung der Provintz Pennsylvaniæ,[815] the work of Francis Daniel Pastorius, agent of the Frankfort Land Company, and the most active and intelligent of the first German settlers, which is of great interest, as it contains the views of one thoroughly identified with the German movement to America. The descriptions of the country and of the form of government, the advice to emigrants, etc., which it contains, are gathered from letters written to his father. A translation of portions of the work by Lewis H. Weiss is given in Memoir of Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vol. iv. part ii. p. 83. The original edition is generally found bound up with a German edition of Thomas’s Pennsylvania, printed in 1702, and the tract by Falkner hereafter mentioned. While the works bear different dates, there appears to have been some connection in the series. The information in Thomas, originally printed in 1698, supplements to a great extent what will be found in Pastorius, printed in 1700. The titlepage of the German edition of Thomas (1702) speaks of it, therefore, as a continuation of Pastorius, and the same shows Falkner’s tract to have appeared as a supplement to the German edition of Thomas.
An agent of the Frankfort Company, who was in Pennsylvania in 1694 and 1700, issued at Frankfort in 1702 a little book, Curieuse Nachricht,[816] which gives some information in the form of questions and answers, one hundred and three in number. The subjects touched upon are the country in general, its soil, climate, etc; the inhabitants, their manners, customs, and religions; the Indians; how to go to America, etc.
The last of the works to be considered as original authority is J. Oldmixon’s British Empire in America, as it is known that the author got some of his information from Penn himself.[817] It was first issued at London in 1708, and again in 1741. The editions differ materially in the sections on Pennsylvania, so that both need to be consulted.
The Rise and Progress of the Quakers.—As we have traced the history of Penn’s colony from the origin of the religious society which had such an influence on the formation of his character, and to which Pennsylvania owes its existence quite as much as to Penn himself, a few references must be made to the chief sources of information from which a history of the Quakers can be gathered. The most prominent of these is the Journal of George Fox,[818] the founder of the Quaker Church. It relates, in passages of alternate vividness and ambiguity, the experiences of his life. So different, however, are the opinions entertained, that while Macaulay says that “his gibberish was translated into English, meanings which he would have been unable to comprehend were put on his phrases, and his system so much improved that he would not have known it again,” Sir James Mackintosh, on the contrary, calls the Journal “one of the most extraordinary and instructive narratives in the world, which no reader of competent judgment can peruse without revering the virtues of the writer, pardoning his self-delusions, and ceasing to smile at his peculiarities.”
W. Edmundson made three voyages to America before 1700, the first with Fox, in 1671; his Journal[819] has been often printed.
Penn’s own statements about the sect’s origin were given in his Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People called Quakers, published at London in 1695, and in his Primitive Christianity Revived, 1696 and 1699.
Robert Barclay is considered the most able exponent of the Quaker belief among early writers of that sect, and his Apology[820] is his chief work. He was the son of “Barclay of Ury,” of whom Whittier has sung, and was governor of East Jersey (see chap. xi.).
The Sufferings of the People called Quakers,[821] by Joseph Besse, is, as its title indicates, an account of their persecutions in various parts of the world. It is written from a Quaker standpoint, but its accuracy can seldom be questioned. It has passed through two editions.