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William Penn in
Pennsylvania
Text by Paul A.W. Wallace and James P. O'Rrien;
edited by Harold L. Myers
WHEN William Penn left England on his first voyage
to Pennsylvania, his head was full of visions and hopes for
this new Land of Promise "six hundred miles nearer the sun."
He wanted to see if he and his fellow Quakers could
establish here a new society based on wider freedoms than
the Old World knew; and he wanted also to see whether it was
true, as he thought, that men and women were better and
happier for this freedom. Believing good government to be
part of God's plan for man kind, he called his venture a
Holy Experiment.
He was in Pennsylvania only three and a half years. But
from 1681, when he received the King's charter at the age of
thirty-seven to 1718, when he died, Pennsylvania was one of
his chief preoccupations. The growth and well-being of his
colony was based on a tradition of religious toleration and
freedom under law, fundamental principles of American civil
life. Thomas Jefferson called Penn "the greatest law-giver
the world has produced."
Governor William Penn came to North America in 1682 and
stayed for two years, returning only for another short stay
from 1699 to 1701. Illness, financial worries and threats to
Pennsylvania's charter kept him from the tranquil enjoyment
of his beautiful home on the Delaware River. Since he was in
no position to take immediate charge of the government, it
is remarkable that he was able to exert the influence he did
on the development of the colony.
Penn was born on October 24, 1644. His father was a
famous English admiral, Sir William Penn. Young William grew
up during a stormy time of revolution and reaction in
England. For a short time he was a soldier, and so
successful a one that he thought of making a career in the
army. But seeing the effects of violence and persecution, he
was led to dream of a society in which war should have no
place, and in which a man might freely worship according to
his own conscience. He joined the Society of Friends (the
Quakers), who were pacifists, and threw his energies with
theirs into political battles for freedom of religion,
freedom of assembly, and the right of trial by jury.
In 1681 there came a golden opportunity to make his
dreams come true. King Charles II, out of "regard to the
memorie and merits of his late father," gave the younger
Penn a huge tract of land in North America and named it, in
honor of the Admiral, "Pennsylvania," or Penn's Woods.
The new proprietor advertised for settlers- "adventurers"
he called them: farmers, day laborers, carpenters, masons,
smiths, weavers, tailors, tanners, shoemakers, shipwrights,
and, in addition, merchants who understood commerce, and men
of administrative capacity to set the new community on its
feet.
At the same time, to reassure the Swedish, Finnish, and
Dutch settlers who were already in the Province, and who
provided a sturdy base for its coming population, he sent
letters bidding them not to be disturbed at the change of
government. He was not a grasping and tyrannical governor,
he said and he promised them freedom: "You shall be governed
by laws of your own making...."
Penn delayed his departure for the New World for more
than a year. He hoped to persuade his friend the Duke of
York (soon to become King James II ) to grant him title to
the three counties of Delaware, Lying south of Penn's
original grant, which would guarantee an outlet to the sea.
In late August, 1682, the Duke transferred his title to
Penn, and within a few days Penn left for America. Sailing
on a ship that was appropriately named the "Welcome," he
made the voyage in comparatively good time. He arrived at
New Castle in northern Delaware, October 27, 1682, less than
two months after leaving England. The next day he sailed
farther up the river to Upland, the most populous town in
what became Pennsylvania. He soon renamed the town Chester,
for the English city of the same name.
William Penn's first few weeks in the colony were busy
ones indeed. One of the matters which he had to attend to
right away was the arranging of a conference with Lord
Baltimore, the proprietor of Maryland, on the boundary
disputes between their two colonies. The charters granted to
Penn and to Lord Baltimore were hopelessly in conflict. Lord
Baltimore asserted that his charter properly included
Delaware and he also claimed so large a portion of southern
Pennsylvania that the site chosen for Philadelphia would
have gone to Maryland. Penn never succeeded in settling this
dispute during his lifetime, and in fact it was never
settled by anyone until the surveying of the Mason-Dixon
line in 1763.
The boundary question did not stop Penn from taking great
pride in the brand-new town of Philadelphia, which he
inspected soon after landing at Chester. While Penn had been
in England his agents had chosen the site for the new town
and had laid it out in accordance with his directions. Penn,
a man of classical learning, had called it Philadelphia, a
name which he interpreted to mean "the city of brotherly
love." Now, little more than a year old, the town was
already beginning to show signs of the prosperity and
culture that were to give it first rank among American
cities in the later colonial period. Penn himself,
describing his impressions of his first visit to the colony,
hailed the new city with this eloquent passage: "And thou,
Philadelphia, the virgin settlement of this province, named
before thou were born, what love, what care, what service,
and what travail has there been, to bring thee forth.... '
For the time being, however, Penn was not able to linger at
Philadelphia; with his chief assistants he hurried down the
river to New Castle for the opening of the first provincial
court. He invited all those settlers with questions about
land titles to be present at the next session of the court
and announced that until a provincial legislature could
meet. the colonists would be governed by the laws of the
province of New York wherever these did not conflict with
English law.
In the area of Indian relations, Penn's Quaker principles
were plainly stamped onto the life of the colony. Almost
immediately after arriving, despite his multitude of other
duties, he took steps to establish peaceful relations with
the Indians. Although he had accepted title to his land from
the English King, Penn respected the rights of the
bronze-skinned people who had been living on it. He was
careful to acquire the land from them by purchase, and to
this end he and his agents held frequent conferences with
the local Delaware chiefs and their retinue. He has
described these scenes: the chief seated in the center, his
council seated in a half-moon behind him, and beyond that
another half-moon composed of all the other Indians of the
community. Proceedings on both sides were grave and
courteous. It was Penn's courtesy on these occasions,
combined with his unfailing sense of fair play, that won the
Indians' respect and affection. He left behind him a
tradition of good feeling that saved Pennsylvania for
seventy years from the disaster of an Indian war.
The painter Benjamin West has immortalized a treaty of
friendship which, according to tradition, Penn made with the
renowned Delaware chief Tamanend soon after his arrival in
1682. Common belief has this treaty-one which Voltaire said
was "never sworn to and never broken"-taking place under the
"Treaty Elm" at Shackamaxon, half a mile north of the center
of Philadelphia. Whether the story is literally true or not,
it does symbolize the determination of the peace-loving
Quakers to deal justly with their neighbors.
Three weeks after his arrival Penn called for an election
of representatives to the first provincial Assembly, which
would meet with him in Chester early in December. These men
convened on December 4 and stayed in session four days-long
enough to pass several laws and to grant Pennsylvania
citizenship both to the Delaware residents and to the few
Swedes, Finns, and Dutchmen who had come to the area before
the start of English colonization. This was the first of
four sessions of the Assembly held during Penn's brief stay
in North America, and the laws passed during those sessions
embodied the humanitarian and tolerant spirit of Penn and
his fellow Quakers.
Among the laws passed by the Assembly in 1682-83 were
several which were accorded special status. These could not
be changed except by agreement of the governor and
six-sevenths of the members of the legislature. Heading the
list of these fundamental statutes was Penn's law protecting
freedom of conscience. Under this guarantee thousands of
members of unpopular Christian sects were able to escape
from the persecutions of the Old World. Unlike many people
who have suffered restrictions on their freedoms, the
Quakers had no wish to impose similar restrictions on others
once they had the power. The criminal code adopted by Penn
and the Assembly was also indicative of the Quakers'
idealism. Only two crimes, murder and treason. were made
punishable by death. At that time the laws in England
prescribed the death penalty for such offenses as
housebreaking, highway robbery, and all other robberies of
more than one shilling.
Between law-making, Indian councils, land sales, and
boundary disputes, Penn's stay in America was a strenuous
one. His wife Gulielma had stayed behind in England with
their children, the plan being that they would join Penn in
the colony as soon as possible. But Gulielma was destined
never to cross the ocean. In 1684 Penn learned that Lord
Baltimore was on his way back to England and would try to
persuade the King to give Maryland the lands that were in
dispute between the two colonies. Penn knew that he must
also go back if he were not to lose a large portion of his
land. A remark by one of Lord Baltimore's agents-that Penn's
beloved Philadelphia was "one of the prettiest towns in
Maryland"-could not have made Penn feel very happy. In
August of 1684 he hurriedly left for England to protect his
colony's interests. He was not to return for fifteen
years.
The boundary quarrel dragged on interminably, and,
although Penn was able to prevent a transfer of the disputed
lands to Maryland, he did not succeed in gaining a clear
title to them himself. Meanwhile, other events began to over
shadow this argument. Penn's benefactor,James II, the former
Duke of York, became King in 1685 and immediately began to
make enemies with his harsh policies. Although he disagreed
with the King on many points, and favored a much greater
degree of popular rule than James would permit, Penn stayed
loyal to their friend ship. As a result when the King's
troubled reign was abruptly ended in the "Glorious
Revolution" of 1688, Penn came under suspicion from the new
rulers William and Mary. For nearly six years he was either
in prison or in hiding. Then in 1694, when he had finally
succeeded in clearing his name, his beloved wife Gulielma
died after a lingering illness. That left Penn with the care
of their three children as well as with pressing financial
problems. Two years later he was married again, this time to
Hannah Callowhill an attractive and devout Quaker woman more
than twenty-five years younger than himself. When next he
returned to Pennsylvania it would be with Hannah.
Finally, Penn's desire to see the colony once again was
reinforced by the demands of the British government. The
Board of Trade, which supervised provincial affairs, had
heard reports that the Pennsylvania government, in Penn's
absence, was abetting the activities of pirates who preyed
upon ships off the Atlantic coast. Penn promised to return
at once to look into the reports and to take swift action if
it seemed to be justified. He landed at Philadelphia in
early December of 1699, accompanied by Hannah and his grown
daughter by the earlier marriage, Letitia. The piracy
question was disposed of with little difficulty, and Penn
was able to view with pride (and perhaps some bewilderment)
the other changes in the colony. Philadelphia, "named before
thou were born," was a bustling little city with a
population second only to Boston's in all of the New World.
Pennsylvania was exporting such raw material as lumber,
furs, hemp, tobacco, iron, and copper and receiving
high-quality British manufactured goods in exchange. The
population of the colony as a whole was increasing so fast
that, a year after his arrival, Penn obtained a deed from
the Iroquois, or "Five Nations," for the lands adjoining the
Susquehanna River that had belonged to the Susquehanna
Indians.
As often as official business allowed, Penn retreated to
the wilderness home he had created for his family. Pennsbury
Manor was across the Delaware River from the present city of
Trenton, New Jersey, some twenty-four miles north of
Philadelphia. Here, in a home that was set in heavy woods
and was conveniently accessible only by water, Penn spent
many happy days. It was a large house, full of servants,
handsome furniture, and good things for the dining table
-for Penn, though deeply religious, was not an ascetic. He
and his wife looked after the affairs of the house. From
Pennsbury, as his letters disclose, he sent to town for such
things as bricks, lime, locks, and nails, while she ordered
chocolate, flour, bacon, coffee, corn meal and (on one
occasion) a "parlor bell." Such commodities were delivered
by flatboat up the Delaware River.
When they were not living at Pennsbury, the family stayed
at the Slate Roof House, an ample Philadelphia dwelling
owned by Samuel Carpenter. It was in this house that his son
John Penn was born on January 29, 1700. The only one of
Penn's children to he born in North America, John always
carried the nickname of "the American."
Perhaps the most important achievement of William Penn's
second stay in the colony was the adoption of a new frame of
government, the Charter of Privileges, in October, 1701.
This constitution, which lasted three-quarters of a century,
or until the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, was a step
in the direction of self-government for the colony. Although
the governor retained his right to veto legislation, the
elected Assembly gained the power to initiate bills, rather
than merely to approve or reject those submitted to it by
the governor and his council. The bell cast in 1751 to mark
the fiftieth anniversary of the Charter of Privileges was
engraved with the words, "Proclaim liberty throughout the
land unto all the inhabitants thereof," from the Book of
Leviticus, Chapter 25, Verse 10. Today known as the Liberty
Bell, it hangs in Independence Hall in Philadelphia to
commemorate the signing of the Declaration of
Independence.
Penn, during this visit, was concerned not only with the
internal government of Pennsylvania but with the North
American colonies as a whole. At a meeting with Governor
Bellomont of New York and Governor Nicholson of Virginia in
1700 he got his brother officials to agree on a set of
proposals for greatly increased co-operation among all the
colonies. These plans were sent to the Board of Trade in
London, but nothing was done about them. Unity among the
colonies did not come until they had cut loose from
Britain.
As on his first visit, Penn found himself unable to stay
as long as he would have liked in the colony. A determined
movement was on foot in Parliament to place Pennsylvania
under the direct control of the Crown. Once again Penn had
to hurry hack to England. He sailed in November, 1701,
shortly after he had signed the Charter of Privileges.
Before leaving he also granted the request of the
inhabitants of Delaware that they be allowed to separate
from Pennsylvania. Although Penn succeeded in retaining his
colony, the remainder of his life was filled with much
unhappiness. One of his close associates had defrauded him
of a vast amount of money, and Penn was tied up for years in
the litigation that arose from this theft. By the time he
emerged from this ordeal he was an elderly man whose health,
especially after a severe stroke in 1712, would not permit
another ocean voyage. He died on July 30, 1718, at the age
of seventy-three. Except for two brief visits of less than
two years each, William Penn had never had a chance to enjoy
the colony for which he, more than any, one else, was
responsible.
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