William Penn (1644-1718)

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BURDETTE, R. J. William Penn (1644-1718).
By Robert J. Burdette. New York : Henry Holt &
Co., 1882. i6mo, pp. 2>^(i. (Lives of American
Worthies,)

PENN, WILLIAM, (1644^1718). By Robert J.
Burdette. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1882.
i6mo, pp. 366. (Lives of American Worthies.)

BIOGRAPHY. William Penn (1644-1718). By
Robert J. Burdette, New York : Henry Holt & Co.,
1882. i6mo, pp. 366, (Lives of American Worthies.)

HISTORY. William Penn (1644-1718). By
Robert J. Burdette. New York : Henry Holt & Co.,
1882. i6mo, pp. 366. (Livesof American Worthies.)

Lives of American Worthies.

NO IF PUBLISHED,
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, (1440-1506),

By W. L. Alden, {of the New York Times)
Author of " The Moral Pirates ;' etc.
CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH, (1579-1631),

By Charles Dudley Warner, Author of
''My Summer iti a Garden" etc.
WILLIAM PENN, (1644-1 715),

By Robert J. Burdette, of the Burlington
Hazvkeye.
IN RAPID PREPARATION,
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, (1706-1790),

By
GEORGE WASHINGTON, (1732-1799),

By John Habberton, Author of '' Hele^i's
Babies," etc.

THOMAS JEFFERSON, (1743-1826),
By

ANDREW JACKSON, (1767-1845),

By George T. Lanigan, Author of '•'•Fables
out of the World:'
New York, May, 1882.

LIVES OF AMERICAN WORTHIES

William Penn

(1644— 1718)

BY

ROBERT J. BURDETTE

yy^

NEW Y O R' K^,^^ nr v, ,^u ,v\6;^J^
HE NY HOLT AND COMPANY
1882

COPYRIGHT, 1882,
BY

HENRY HOLT & CO.

WILLIAM PENN,

CHAPTER I.

HE PUTS ON HIS HAT.

IT riLLIAM PENN was born in London, on
• • Monday morning, October 14, 1644. He
was not born with his hat on, but this is
the only time he was ever seen in his bare head.
The fact that he was born on wash-day was
regarded by the augurs as an indication that
he would be a man of peace, loving quiet and
determined to ^have it, if it cost him a life-time
of contention and dispute.

He came of an old family. The Penns dated
their back numbers away into the earlier years
of the 1 6th century. In Penn village, Bucking-
hamshire, the first William Penn on record, the
great-grandfather of our William, died in 1591,
and he now lies before the altar of Mintye
church, in Wiltshire. Even in those old days,
the Penns were mightier than the sword. They

2 WILLIAM PENN. [1644.

were merchants, and brought much wealth
from the loud-sounding sea.

The father of the great Quaker, also William
Penn,— for this thrifty family was very econom-
ical in the matter of names, — was a sailor.
His father before him, Giles Penn, was captain
of a merchantman, and young VViUiam shipped
before the mast on his father's vessel. In those
o-ood old times the traffic of the sea was about
equally divided between the merchants and the
pirates; so the honest merchant, who robbed
nobody save his customers, carried his purse in
one hand and a pistol in the other, as he sailed.
The pirate of the time was a most avaricious
wretch. Whatever he saw he wanted, and
what he wanted he got, unless the owner car-
ried the longest cutlass and the heaviest guns.
So the young sailor was well trained in all the
ways of trade. He bought in the cheapest and
sold in the highest market, and thumped the
pirates, until, loving fighting better than trad-
ing, he entered the royal navy.

It is evident that this WiUiam Penn did not
inherit the Quaker principles of his renowned
son. Before he was twenty years old he was a
captain in the royal navy, not by purchase, but

^t. I.J A FIGHTING PENN. 3

by rapid promotion on his merits. Having now
a secured position which would keep him away
from home the greater part of the time,— for
only officers of the United States navy are com-
pelled to live ashore,— Captain Penn married a
Dutch girl, Margaret Jasper, daughter of John
■ Jasper, a merchant of Rotterdam. Margaret
was very wealthy, but Captain Penn did not
consider this a bar to their union. '' No," said
the frank, honest-hearted sailor, '' I would marry
you if you had ten times so much money." His
father-in-law was deeply affected by this unself-
ish declaration, and on the 6th of January, 1643,
the young people were married, and took hand-
some lodgings in London, living near the Tower,
which was then the fashionable quarter for naval
men. Captain f enn was a good liver ; he wore
good clothes, drank good claret and better
sack, was fond of gay society, and took good
care of William Penn. He was ambitious, but
his ambition was tempered Avith caution, and he
was led more by interest than principle. " So
long as I get the interest regularly," he said, ''I
will not trouble you for the principle," and this
feeble joke affords a key to his motives in life.
In the quarrel between the King and the Com-

4 WILLIAM PENN, [1644.

mons, in 1643, Captain Penn calmly but firmly
established himself upon the fence until he could
see in which cart the melons were loaded.
Those were stirring times. Charles was more
than ever absolute, the people more than ever
republican ; the quarrel was deepening in its
intensity and bitterness. One of the first trials
of strength, the dispute over the command of
the navy, was settled in favor of the Commons
by the appointment of Lord Warwick as Lord
High Admiral; and when Captain Penn saw
the melons loaded into the people's cart, he
came down from his high seat on the fence and
said that he too was a reformer, and cast his lot
with the strongest side. " It is a frosty day," he
said, " when I happen to be shut out with a mi-
nority." He was placed in command of a twen-
ty-eight-gun ship, the " Fellowship; •" slipped
anchor and dropped down the river Saturday
morning, October 12th, and the Monday morn-
ing following he was telephoned from the city:

'' Hello, Fellowship !"

*' Hello, Central !"

" Boy — 'smorning — blue eyes — eight-pounder.
Good-bye."

And without another word he rushed ashore

^t. lo.] CLIMBING UP. 5

and chased the first street-car all the way to his
lodgings.

Stormy times for the young Quaker, passing
his childhood in Essex, while his father sailed
the seas over, sweeping St. George's Channel
like a cyclone, threshing the French wherever
he found them, winnowing the seafaring royal-
ists like chaff, chasing the dashing Rupert all
along the coasts of Portugal, and first carrying
the terror of English arms into Italian waters ; a
captain at nineteen years, rear-admiral at twenty-
three, admiral of the Irish Sea at twenty-five,
and vice-admiral " to the Streights" at twenty-
nine. There was a model fighting father for a
peace-loving Quaker son. The arm of the peo-
ple had torn away the crown of Charles Stuart,
and his head c^me away with it ; the Protector
succeeded Parliament, and Vice-Admiral Penn
was one of the first naval officers to send in his
adhesion to the new government. For Crom-
well he smote the navy of Holland, and fairly
drove his wife's relations off the seas; he added
Jamaica to the British dominions, and suffered
his first defeat at Hispaniola.

Never at heart devoted to Cromwell, and
always loyally and devotedly attached to the

b WILLIAM FENN. [1654.

interests of Admiral Penn, Admiral Penn de-
manded compensation of the Protector for the
losses his family suffered in Ireland during the
civil war, and received all he demanded,
** lands of full value of 300 pounds a year, near
to a castle or fortification for their better pro-
tection, with a good house upon them for his
residence." Furthermore, Cromwell made it a
special personal request that *' this order should
be so obeyed as to leave no cause of trouble to
the Admiral and his family in the matter ; but
so that they might enjoy the full benefit of the
estate while he was fighting his countrj^'s bat-
tles in foreign lands."

And having thus got out of Cromwell all he
could reasonably expect, and seeing the Penn
family well provided for so far as the Protec-
torate was concerned, the thrifty Admiral, De-
cember 25, took his pen in hand and wrote his
Christmas present to Charles Stuart, at Cologne,
offering to place the whole of the fleet under
his command at his disposal, and run it into any
port he might designate. '' It will be a lively
administration," said Admiral Penn, " that can
change quicker than I can," and he smiled to

^t. 10.] LAID BY THE HEELS. y

think how easily a true statesman can get
around civil-service reform.

Cromwell knew of the Admiral's treason
almost as soon as Charles, but he said not a
word, until the failure of the attack on His-
paniqla, when in his wrath he stripped General
Venables and Admiral Penn of their commands
and dignities, and shut them up in separate dun-
geons of the Tower, to think about it. Here the
Admiral subsisted for some time on liberal ra-
tions of humble-pie, an English dish very similar
to the American '' crow." He ate all that was
sent him, and passed his plate for more. He
addressed a very humble petition to Cromwell,
confessing his faults, at least those of which he
supposed Cromwell was already informed, and
threw himself on the Protector's mercy. Crom-
well at once generously restored him to home
and liberty, and the grateful Admiral imme-
diately resumed his treasonable correspondence.
He retired to his Irish estates, that with the
greater security he might plot for the return
of the exiled princes and the overthrov/ of the
man who gave him those estates. He prefaced
this step in the usual manner by announcing, as

8 WILLIAM PENN. [1659.

all politicians do when about to concoct some
unusual piece of rascality and dishonesty, that
he had gone out of politics forever.

Then came the night of September 2d ; there
was awe and unrest and fear, conflicting hopes
and anxious thoughts in the hearts of men. The
day went drearily out on London town, and the
darkness of a night settled down upon it such
as no man's remembrance could parallel. The
storm came with the darkness. Through the
clouds that tossed, a sea of inky fury in the skies,
came no gleam of light, no ray of any star. The
wind came on in sullen, sobbing gusts. Then
in wailing cadences it swept over the darkened
town, wilder and louder as the night wore on,
a shrieking gale that rose at midnight to the
madness of a hurricane ; chimneys toppled and
were hurled headlong in the streets, and the
roofs were torn crashing from the houses.
Ships dragged their anchors, and their hawsers
parted at the wharves. In the parks at the
Protector's palace the uprooted trees were
hurled to the ground. In the horror of the con-
tending elements in all that long night of dark-
ness and storm, Cromwell lay dying, praying for
his enemies. With the next morning dawned

^t. 15.] DEATH OF CROMWELL. 9

the anniversary of the battles of Dunbar and
Worcester, and the hand that smote the ene-
mies of the Commonwealth on these fields was
stilled and nerveless forever-more.

At this time, and for a year thereafter, the
Penns remained on their Irish estates, but the
Admiral was busy with his intrigues. But in
the Protectorate, mediocrity succeeded genius ;
one year of the feeble Richard sufficed. With
his deposition, Admiral Penn promptly de-
scended the fence on the safe side ; declared for
Charles ; brought the fleet over to the Restora-
tion ; personally, on board his own ship, wel-
comed the King to his navy ; and for all this he
was promptly knighted by Charles and was
made, at different times. Commissioner of the
Admiralty and Navy, Governor of the town
and fort of Kingsale, Vice-Admiral of Munster,
member of the Provincial Council of 1664, and
Great Captain Commander under his Royal
Highness, James, Duke of York, with the un-
derstanding that he was to be made several,
more things as soon as the Secretary of State
could invent names for them. And the Admi-
ral, Commissioner, Governor, Vice-Admiral,
Councillor, and Great Captain Commander,

10 WILLIAM PENN. [1659

Sir William Penn, called his son to his side
and said, " William, my gentle boy, there is
nothing like seeing the melons loaded on the
cart before you climb in."

In the mean time, William Penn, Junior, was
at home, taking more interest in the measles
than in politics, and getting his lessons and
floggings with equal regularity, in accordance
with the educational system of that day. He
first attended a free grammar school at Chig-
well in Essex; at twelve years of age he was
sent to a private school in London, on Tower
Hill, and at the age of fifteen, about the time of
the Restoration, he was sent to Oxford, where
he matriculated as gentleman commoner at
Christ's Church. Pie was a hard student,
and could row a boat in French, German,
Dutch, and Italian, and in later life he learned
to sell glass beads in two or three Indian dia-
lects; but as base-ball was not then invented,
his hands were not deformed, nor Avas his nose
backed like a camel, but his college advantages
were somewhat limited. He was tall and slen-
der, but very athletic and fond of out-door
sports ; a boy of earnest religious convictions.
The only outburst of natural depravity that has

^t. 15.] SOME RELIGIOUS PEOPLE. II

been placed on record against his college life is
the fact that he wrote a Latin poem for the
Duke of Gloucester, with all the jokes in Italics.
All about this boy — whose mind had from
earliest childhood been deeply impressed on the
subject of rehgion ; who, at the age of eleven
years, *' Avhile sitting alone in his chamber, was
suddenly surprised with an inward sense of
'comfort and happiness, akin to a strong religious
emotion ; the chamber at the same time appear-
ing as if filled with a soft and holy light;" who,
in his first year at Oxford, found his greatest
delight in reading the doctrinal discussions de-
veloped by the Puritan idea — the air was fairly
tremulous with religious excitement and doc-
trinal debate. Puritanism and the profligate,
gay, irreligioys court of Charles were fighting
with other weapons than Roundhead and Cava-
lier had wielded on Marston Moor. There was
a madness in the world on the subject of re-
ligion, or rather religions, for every man seemed
to have more religions than Colonel Ingersoll
has none, and Familists, Anabaptists, Libertines,
Puritans, Arians, Brownists, Antinomians, Ran-
ters, Antitrinitarians, Independents, Calvinists,
Arminians, Baptists, Perfectists, Presbyterians,

12 WILLIAM PENN. [1660.

Antiscripturists, Enthusiasts, Levellers, Papists,
Fifth-Monarchy men, Muggletonians, Sceptics,
Seekers, and Socinians wrangled and pelted
each other with pamphlets. Atheists swarmed
all over the kingdom ; one sect arose, holding as
one of its tenets that a woman has no sovd ; St.
Paul's Cathedral was used as a stable for horses ;
hogs were baptized according to the established
ritual, by the soldiers, at the consecrated fonts ;
*' one man was found with seven wives," a
species of religious observance which was even
then considered abominably wicked, and is now
only followed and permitted in some portions
of South Africa and the United States ; prophets,
lunatics, preachers, martyrs, fools, knaves, and
dupes disturbed and distressed the poor old
world with new and old doctrines, predictions,
denunciations, dreams, revelations, and visions.
Not only the ignorant and vulgar, but the edu-
cated and refined had visions, and Lady Sprin-
gett, Penn's mother-in-law, ''twice saw and
spoke with the Son of God in her ecstatic
dreams."

Just at this time came George Fox, an illiter-
ate shoemaker, plain and unlettered, read only
in the pure diction of the English Bible, waging

iEt. i6.] AN UNPOPULAR SECT. 1 3

relentless war against all existing creeds, teach-
ers, and doctrines, asking no quarter and giving
none, preaching a divine light concealed in every
man, a spark of the infallible Godhead, which
was the highest guide of human conduct; a
light free of all control ; every man and woman
was supreme ; even the Scriptures, Fox said, are
to be judged by the Light, — without it they are
useless. As he preached, the established church,
the government, the rabble, and the members of
other denominations sought, by the usual means
employed in those days, to modify his teaching,
and turn him from the error of his ways. He
was beaten and stoned, pilloried, imprisoned,
set in the stocks, fined, passed the greater part
of his time in jail, but the more he was perse-
cuted the more boldly he preached ; men flocked
to his belief, and the Children of Light, as they
called themselves, or Quakers, as their less re-
spectful neighbors called them, grew in number
and multiplied and kept the jails and stocks so
full that for some time the martyrs of the other
denominations were unable to be accommodated
even with standing-room by the authorities.

And now in Oxford, Thomas Loe was preach-
ing the new doctrmes taught by George Fox,

14 WILLIAM PENN. [1660.

and Penn and a few fellow-students were at-
tracted by the neglect of forms and ceremonies
in the services, and regularly neglected chapel
to hear Thomas Loe. For this they were
promptly brought up and given ten days or
ten dollars, for non-conformity, a crime which
at that time was considered a trifle less odious
than high treason, but infinitely more wicked
than murder.

The punishment had the usual effect upon the
young men. They now declared they would
never attend chapel again ; they would not wear
the gown themselves, and they would make it
warm for any person who did. They publicly
declared that any man who would take a book
to church to pray out of, would use a pony for
his Latin translations. Whenever these inde-
pendent young men met students wearing the
hated rubric, they pursued after them, and en-
compassed them roundabout, and smote them
sore, and tore the vestments from their courtly
shoulders, and entreated them roughly ; and in
all these reformatory movements William Penn
was the chief reformer. He was promptly
brought up for judgment, and without cere-
mony the faculty suspended him.

^t. 17.] RECEIVES THE G. B. 1 5

When William returned home, his father did
not see him while he was yet a long way off, and
run to meet him and fall upon his neck. And
when William told him that he had gone through
college ahead of his class by several years, the
Admiral did not appear very glad. He received
the information with a cold silence that must
have been very discouraging to his son. He
could have forgiven anything but this. The
Admiral w^as fond of recreation and fighting
himself, went to the theatre, '' loved to dine at a
tavern with a set of jovial companions, and was
addicted to all the genial weaknesses of a busy
man," says Pepys, — whatever the "genial weak-
nesses of a busy man" may be. But conscience
was a complaint that never troubled Sir William
very much. If ever he was vaccinated for a
conscience, it didn't take. He had, in his busy
and ambitious life, always managed to get down
on that side of the fence where the greater mul-
titude was assembled, and he took his conscience,
if he indulged in such a dangerous non-con-
formist sort of luxury, with him. And to find
his eldest and favorite son, the son on whose
head he had builded so many bright dreams
and plans of gayety and worldly greatness and

1 6 WILLIAM PENN. [1664.

Splendor, cultivating an independent unbiased
conscience, a non-conformist at seventeen, with a
leaning- toward Quakerism, — it was too much.
He immediately sent the young man to Paris,
accompanied by a select assortment of college
friends.

They were not Quaker college friends. Ah,
no! They were ''howling swells," who wore
purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously
three times a day and once or twice at night.
Penn joined in the recreations of the time. He
was presented to Louis Quatorze, he wore a
rapier, he fought in the streets one night and
disarmed his man, he " sassed " the police, called
the waiters by their first names, wore his watch-
chain outside of his coat, danced the racket, and
was " one of our kind of boys."

In this whirl of fashionable Hfe and the bril-
liant society of the French court, he temporarily
went out of the Quaker business, put up the
shutters, discharged the boy, and rented the
shop for a sail-loft. But he was not altogether
absorbed in Parisian revelry ; he was not frivo-
lous. Even while he shared in the recreations
of the time, he continued his studies under the
learned Moses Amyrault, and with this eminent

^t. 21.] EVIL COMMUNICATIONS. \J

scholar he read theology and pored over the
Fathers. Leaving Paris, he travelled through
France and Italy with Lord Robert Spencer,
and made the acquaintance and won the friend-
ship of Algernon Sidney, who was then living
in exile rather than compromise his political
faith.

After an absence of two years, Penn was re-
called by Sir WiUiam. His father was pleased
with him. The young man was tall, graceful,
and handsome, with an almost womanly beauty ;
wore stylish clothes, was an especial favorite
with the ladies, parted his hair in the middle,
wore it long and curled it ; a rapier dangled at
his side, and it was believed by the cook that he
carried a razor in his boot ; and, to crown all, he
wrote poetry, French poetry — chansons d' amour,
a kind of poetry so unfit to read that it is kept
in duplicate in all public libraries.

In order the more fully to crush out his
Quakerism, the Admiral kept his son employed
on the King's business, which brought him in
continual contact with the irreligious and profli-
gate court of Charles; he entered the young
man as a student at Lincoln's Inn, with the in-
tention of making him a lawyer, thereby de-

1 8 WILLIAM PENN. [1665.

stroying the last vestige of anything like a con-
science the young man might possess ; took him
to sea on his own ship, and let him see some
sharp fighting between the Dutch and the Eng-
lish ; sent him to the King with despatches, and
just when he thought he had knocked his son's
broad-brim into a cocked hat, the plague broke
out in London and tumbled the Admiral's airy
castles all about his ears. In the horror of the
pestilence that walked in darkness and the de-
struction that wasted at noon-day,* the mind of
the young courtier turned back into its old chan-
nels of rehgious fervor. When people fell dead
in the streets and the death-rate ran up to 10,000
cases in a single day, when the dead-cart rum-
bled through the streets, and the dismal cry
"■ Bring out your dead !" rose like a wail on the
night, the young man became more serious than
ever. He swore off going to court, bought more
religious works, and oft as he heard a dead-cart
rumble by, he buried himself in the Fathers and
filled himself with tough old rugged theology
that it would plague the plague to understand.
When Sir William perceived with pain that the

* David. Now do you know where to find it ?

^t. 21.] AMONG THE LAND-LEAGUERS. I9

Quakerine idea with which Thomas Loe had
inoculated his son was taking again worse than
ever, he sent him off to Ireland to look after the
estates which the worldly-wise old Admiral had
secured from Cromwell and the Commonwealth.
He thought if he could get his son settled on
the Irish estates, the excitement of being Boy-
cotted, evicting tenants, and dodging the land-
leaguers would divert his mind from Quaker-
ism.

Alas for the careful Sir William's plans ! His
son went to Ireland willingly enough, but Ire-
land at that time was so full of Quakers that
their feet stuck out of the dormer windows.
Their familiar accents fell upon the young man's
ears like words of welcome when he reached
Dublin. " Con,^avick, dost thee know the gos-
soon in the ruffled shirt an' the cocked hat? Ah,
tundher an' turf, look at the murdherin* plume
ov him !"

"Verily, friend Murphy, acushla, sorra the
wan ov me knoweth. Will thee make a rush
wid me fur the baggage ov him, do ye mind?"

And so once more the dreams of the ambi-
tious Sir William were frustrated. He thought
when his son got to Shangarry Castle in the

20 WILLIAM PENN. [1666.

barony of Imokelly, and met with the fox-hunt-
ing roisterers of the KillataHcks of Killmanaisy
and the Barrynahagles of Ballymachanshara,
and learned the taste of peat whiskey, he would
forever-more be a man of the world. The Lord
Lieutenant, the Duke of Ormond, maintained
a brilliant court. The Ormonds were soldiers,
and their talk of war infected Penn. He
marched away with young Lord Arran to sup-
press an insurrection of the soldiers at Carrick-
fergus. In the siege he so distinguished himself
that he won favorable mention in Lord Arran's
despatches and praise from all the soldiers, for
he inherited his father's fighting qualities. The
Viceroy proposed that Penn should join the
army, and offered him a company of foot. Penn
himself, fired with military ardor, eagerly fell in
with the idea, and earnestly besought his father
to comply with this proposal.

Here at last was an open road leading straight
away from George Fox and Thomas Loe and
the much-dreaded Quakerism, and WiUiam him-
self was anxious to walk right down that road
to worldly ambition and fame, when the Ad-
miral deliberately put up the bars, resolutely

^t. 22.] A WARLIKE PORTRAIT. 21

refused his son permission to join the army,
and planted his own unyielding will in opposi-
tion to the one possible plan of carrying- out his
long-cherished desires. Surely the Fates intend-
ed that William Penn should be a Quaker. He
regretfully gave up his dream of a military
career, and, proud of his uniform and war re-
cord, had his portrait painted, '' the only time in
his life," says Dixon, " in his military costume.
It is a curious fact that the only genuine por-
trait of the great apostle of peace existing repre-
sents him armed and accoutred as a soldier."
There were two original copies of this portrait,
and one of them is now in the hall of the Penn-
sylvania Historical Society. The portrait bore
the motto, '' Pax quseritus bello," and the war-
like inscription, ^' Friend of Liberty, Justice, and
Peace."

William took off his armor, laid down his
Quaker gun, and resumed the business of look-
ing after the Irish estates, devised by his shrewd
father to turn his mind away from the Quakers.
In less than a year after his military career was
closed, he went to Cork on this business, because
nobody ever goes to Cork save on compulsion,

22 WILLIAM PENN. [1667.

heard by accident that Thomas Loe was preach-
ing there, went in one night and heard him de-
liver a sermon on the text, '^ There is a faith
that overcomes the world, and there is a faith
that is overcome by the world," and walked out
of that meeting-house a Quaker ; in conviction,
in principle, in scu^ and intellect, body, bones,
breeches, and hat, a Quaker.

On the 3d of September he was worshipping
in Cork, when he was arrested with the rest of
the congregation by a body of soldiers, and
dragged to the Mayor's court on a charge of
" riot and tumultuous assembling." The Mayor
recognized him, and knowing him to be a friend
of the Viceroy, offered to turn him loose on his
own recognizance ; but William '' would not go
back on the crowd," and so went to prison.
The Lord President of Munster ordered his
immediate discharge, of course, but all Dublin
and the rest of the world knew that William
Penn soldier, courtier, son of Admiral Sir Wil-
liam Penn, had joined the Quakers.

There was wrath in the house of the Penns
when the glad news reached London. William
was ordered home, and when he met his father
the debate was opened before the speaker had

^t. 23.] THE HA T. 23

time to put the question. William did not look
like a Quaker, — at least, not a broad-brim, thirty-
button-coat, long-weskit Quaker. He was a
lardy-dah Friend, with lace ruffles, rapier, long
plume, and curls ; but he was a Quaker all the
same, as Sir William soon learned.

After a very stormy session the Admiral made
a test question of the hat. His son, in common
with all Quakers, had hat on the brain. He ate,
walked, lived, moved, and had his being in his
hat. The Admiral asked if he would wear his
hat in the presence of his own father. William
said he would. H^ would wear his hat to bed, if
anybody slept with him, rather than take it off in
the presence of mortal man. He might take off
all the rest of his clothes, but his hat, never!
You had to draw the line somewhere, and he
drew it at the hat. Then the Admiral wanted
to know what he would do with his hat in the
presence of the King ? And WilHam, Avith the
calm confidence of a man who has one ace in
his hand ana three in his sleeve, said he would
wear his hat over his right eye, aslant and
defiant, turned up in front and slouched down
behind, in the presence of all the kings in the
deck.

24 WILLIAM PENN. [1667.

The Admiral, stunned with amazement that
any man could vSet his conscience above good
breeding, faced his peace-loving but rebellious
son toward the front door and gently but firmly
eliminated him.

CHAPTER II.

AND GETS INTO PRISON.

'T^HROWN thus suddenly upon the country,
■^ William boarded around for a few months,
explaining- to his astonished relatives that he had
had his resignation handed in to him. The houses
of his Quaker friends were open to him, and his
mother, eluding Sir William's vigilance, sent
him money. It was impossible for the Admiral
to continue the siege when the besieged kept up
unbroken communication with his base of sup-
plies, and aftei*" a few months' banishment the
young Quaker was recalled, and came joyously
home, put on a clean shirt, and passed his plate
for another slice of the fatted veal.

But the Admiral was still nursing his wrath,
although it was a large, healthy wrath, that re-
quired no nursing to keep it alive. He refused
to speak to or even see his son. William stuck
to his hat, and, reciprocally, his hat stuck to him.
He graciously thee'd and thou'd everybody he

26 WILLIAM PENN. [1668.

met ; but Sir William refused to recognize either
of them, and obstinately ignored his son, his hat,
and his grammar.

The Quaker was the most perfect democrat
the world had ever known. He acknowledged
no superior. He was the peer of any man ;
hence he could not descend to the servility and
hypocrisy of what the gentle Friends called '' hat
worship," he would uncover in the presence of
no man. He believed he was as good as any
other man.

There is nothing new or remarkable, however,
in that doctrine. Many people who are not Qua-
kers believe it. That is no test of our democ-
racy. Of course we all believe we are as good
as other men. But do we believe that other
men are as good as ourselves ? Did the Friends
of those days believe that ? Did George Fox
believe the priests who persecuted and the
magistrates who imprisoned him were as good
as himself? Did William Penn believe Rupert,
his father's enemy, as good a man as his father ?
Did he think the tyrannical recorder who so
unjustly fined him as good a man as himself?
Certainly, we are as good as other men, and we
doff our hats in servility to no man. But are

JEt. 24.] A LITTLE PAMPHLET FOR A CENT. 27

other men as good as we ? Of a verity, we be-
lieve they are.^"

Penn now entered upon his Quaker life with
all earnestness and began his life-long wrangle
for universal peace and general equality. To
show people that he was not a man who stopped
at any expense, and that he cared nothing what-
ever for money, he wrote a book. He wrote the
title first : *' Truth Exalted, in a short but sure
Testimony against all those Religions, Faiths,
and Worships that have been formed and fol-
lowed in the darkness of Apostasy ; and for that
glorious Light which is now risen and shines
forth in the Life and Doctrine of the despised
Quakers, as the alone good old Way of Life and
Salvation." Having, with some difficulty, found
a publisher for the title, it was an easy matter to
smuggle the book in after it.

Matters began to look alarmingly peaceful
after the publication of this book. Jonathan
Clapham rushed into print with an opposition
book, "A Guide to the True Religion," in which
he held, with the utmost Christian consideration
peculiar to his times, that if ever a Quaker got

Not.

28 WILLIAM PENN. [1668.

into heaven, it would be by guile and false pre-
tence, and that he never could get in with his
hat on, and that no Quaker was capable of sal-
vation, anyhow.

Penn came back at him with " The Guide Mis-
taken," and there was nothing mild and luke-
warm about Penn's books and pamphlets. A
Quaker was permitted to fight only with his pen ;
and when the great apostle of peace spitted an
opposition theologian on his gray goose-quill,
there was weeping and gnashing of teeth, in
which everybody on the opposition benches
joined, while the unfortunate man writhing in
the agony of his impalement sustained the lead-
ing part and could be heard above the full
strength of the entire chorus.

During his preaching that year, for Penn
preached when he wasn't writing books, two
members of Rev. Thomas Vincent's Presby-
terian church were converted to the doctrines
of George Fox, and joined the Quakers. Brother
Vincent was profoundly agitated by this event.
He announced a special sermon, and the church
in Spitalfields was crowded. He pounded the
sawdust out of his pulpit cushion in his savage
denunciation of the Quakers, and when in the

iEt. 24]. THE FIRST WIND FIGHT. 29

fierceness of his wrath he smote upon the floor
with both feet and shrieked aloud that the doc-
trines of the Quakers were worthy of damna-
tion, every window in the wigwam rattled.
These sermons attracted much attention ; for
Mr. Vincent, being able to shout in an exceeding
loud voice and preach eight hours at a stretch,
with no other refreshment than a barrel of water
and a dozen handkerchiefs, was accounted a
most eloquent man. Consequently Penn and
George Whitehead challenged him to a joint
discussion, which it was agreed should be held
in Vincent's church. These wind-fights on
denominational questions were very popular
in those days.

But Rev. Mr. Vincent packed the convention,
and, long before the hour for the discussion ar-
rived, the church was so crowded with Presby-
terians that the Quakers had to be content with
curbstone seats, only a few being able to wedge
their way into the house. Vincent opened the
discussion by asking a great many hard ques-
tions that he couldn't answer himself, and Penn
and Whitehead answered them so readily, or
objected to them with such subtlety, that Vin-
cent lost his temper, and springing to his feet

30 WILLIAM PENN. [1668.

abused the Quakers in a long prayer which
lasted till midnight ; then he tacked the bene-
diction on his '' Amen," announced that he had
overthrown and defeated the Quakers at all
points, put out the lights, and ordered the peo-
ple to go home. Indignant at such unfair treat-
ment, Penn loaded his Quaker gun with another
pamphlet, '' The Sandy Foundation Shaken,"
and for the manner in which he treated the
doctrine of the Trmity in this book he was
promptly arrested and committed to the Tower,
where he was given eight months for sentiment
and reflection.

His enemies tried to wear him out. A forged
letter was picked up near the place of his arrest,
containing matters which, had they been proved
against Penn, would have taken off his hat and
all the appurtenances thereunto appertaining.
He was confined in a solitary dungeon. No one
save his father was allowed to visit him, and he
and his father were not on visiting terms. The
Bishop of London was resolved that he should
recant, or die in prison. But there was enough
manhood in the Quaker for a dozen bishops. He
declared " he would weary out his enemies by
his patience ; " that '' the prison should be his

^t. 24]. A DISHEARTENING PICTURE. 3 1

grave before he would renounce his just opin-
ions ; " "the Tower is to me the worst argument
in the world." Then he turned to his ink-well
for comfort ; they could stop his preaching, but
he would write, and he added '' one more glori-
ous book to the literature of the Tower."

"No Cross, no Crown," Hke Bunyan's mas-
ter-piece, grew out of the author's own persecu-
tions. Not only does this work defend the
peculiar opinions of the Friends, but it contains
many truths that are laid in the common founda-
tion of all Christianity, and passages that are
even eagerly accepted by atheists and scoffers,
and were applauded by Voltaire. Penn never
wrote with the gloves on, and when he had oc-
casion, in the earlier days of his Quaker zeal, to
reprove or denounce any man or creed or de-
nomination, he went at it with all the joyous
energy of a newspaper showing up the vices of
a rival village. In " No Cross, no Crown," he
draws a very gloomy picture of this much-
abused old planet. " As the world is older," he
says, " it is worse. The people of this day seem
improvers of the old stock of impiety, and have
carried it so much farther than example that, in-
stead of advancing in virtue upon better times,

32 WILLIAM PENN. [i663.

they are scandalously fallen below the life of
heathens. Their highmindedness, lascivious-
ness, uncleanness, drunkenness, swearing, lying,
envy, back-biting, cruelty, treachery, covetous-
ness, injustice, and oppression " (here he appears
to have run out of breath) '' are so common, and
committed with such invention and excess, that
they have stumbled and embittered infidels and
made them scorn that holy religion to which their
good example should have won their affections."
Truly, they were a hard lot of Christians in
Penn's time, if he told the truth about them.
But that isn't all. " This miserable defection
from primitive times," he says, "■ I call the second
and worst part of the Jewish tragedy upon our
Lord. ... The false Christian's cruelty lasts
longer ; they have first, with Judas, professed
him, and then for these many ages most basely
betrayed, persecuted, and crucified him, by a
perpetual apostasy in manners from the holiness
and self-denial of his doctrine." Christendom
has become *' a cage of unclean birds, a den of
thieves, a synagogue of Satan, and the receptacle
of every unclean spirit." '' We find a Christen-
dom now that is superstitious, idolatrous, per-
secuting, proud, envious, malicious, selfish.

^t. 24.] LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS. 33

drunken, lascivious, unclean, lying, swearing,
cursing, covetous, oppressing, defrauding, with
all other abominations known in the earth, and
that to an excess justly scandalous to the worst
of heathen ages, surpassing them more in evil
than in time." '' I shall conclude this head "
(Chapter VI L), says this meek and lowly-minded
non-combatant, " with the assertion that it is an
undeniable truth, where the clergy has been most
in power and authority and has had the greatest
influence upon princes and States, there have
been most confusions, wrangles, bloodshed,
sequestrations, imprisonments, and exiles. . . .
The worship of Christendom is visible, cere-
monious, and gaudy ; the clergy ambitious of
worldly preferments under the pretence of spir-
itual promotior^^s, making the earthly revenue of
churchmen much the reason of their function,
being almost ever sure to leave a smaller incum-
bence to solicit and obtain benefices of larger
title and income."

This last charge is important, if true. Good
people who are worried overmuch about the ex-
ceeding wickedness of our own times may find
some comfort in looking at the world as WiUiam
Penn judged it to be in his day.

34 WILLIAM PENN. [1668.

Still, it is encouraging to see, amid all this
madness of universal wickedness and exceeding
iniquity, a handful of good Quakers who were
the lonesome leaven that was going to leaven
the whole lump, if they had to quarrel with
every denomination in England to do it.

The second part of this prison book showed
the wide range of Penn's reading, and breathes
a more hopeful and cheerful spirit. He calls a
jury of the wise and illustrious men of all times,
Jew and Gentile, bond and free, Greek, Roman,
and barbarian, from Solomon down to Paul,
Ignatius to Augustine, cardinals, bishops, kings,
and princes. Christian and pagan, all testifying
" that a life of strict virtue, to do well and suffer
ill," is the way to everlasting happiness.

His next work in the Tower was a pamphlet,
'' Innocency with her Open Face," and shortly
after its publication he was released, having
worn out persecution with his pamphlets before
it could wear out his neck with an axe. His re-
lease was unconditional, for Penn was not a man
to make concessions, recantations, or promises.

The Penn family was in a sea of trouble at
this time. Since Admiral Penn ceased to com-
mand the fleet, defeat and disgrace had attended

^t. 26.] WELCOME HOME.

35

the English arms on the sea, and the King was
anxious to replace the conqueror of Van Tromp
at the head of the navy. But his wishes and
Sir William's ambition were defeated by the
malice and enmity of Rupert and Monk.
Rupert had never forgiven the sailor who
chased him up and down the coast of Portugal,
and, in the intrigues which now placed the
dashing cavalier in command of the fleet, Sir
William narrowly escaped joining his son in
the Tower. His health began to fail, and he
longed to see his son, the manliness, honor, and
beauty of whose character he was beginning to
understand and appreciate. Exile from home,
imprisonment, injustice, the horrors of the
Tower, loss of worldly position, ridicule, perse-
cution, all failed to move him from his convic-
tions, and in spite of himself the Admiral was
proud of such a son, and loved him. So when,
long after his release from the Tower, and after
an eight months' residence in Ireland, William
returned home, his father, then living quietly at
his country-seat in Essex, met him with open
arms and a loving heart.

However, it was about time for William Penn
to get into prison again. The Conventicle Act,

36 WILLIAM PENN. [1670.

prohibiting dissenters from worshipping God
in their own way, was renewed in April, and
the Quakers of course went on with their ser-
vices without paying any attention to ParHa-
ment or its enactments. On the 14th of August,
they went to their meeting-house in Grace-
church Street, and found it closed, and a com-
pany of soldiers guarding the doors. William
Penn immediately took off his hat and began to
preach, and the constables at once arrested him,
together with Captain WiUiam Mead. They
were committed to prison, treated with indig-
nity, and placed in the dock for trial on Sep-
tember I.

It was a N^ry important trial. The indict-
ment was read, and it set out the crime of the
accused after the usual temperate and laconic
manner of indictments. All the world knows
that a Quaker meeting is a synonym for an
hour of profound quiet and decorous solemnity.
And this indictment went on to describe that
Quaker meeting, on Gracechurch Street, as a
place where WiUiam Penn and WiUiam Mead
and three hundred other people "• with force
and arms did unlawfully and tumultuously as-
semble and congregate themselves together, to

^t- 26.] A SOLID JOKE. 37

the disturbance of the peace of the said lord the
King;" and that " William Penn did take upon
himself to preach and to speak," "by reason
whereof a great concourse and tumult of peo-
ple in the street aforesaid, then and there, a
long time did remain and continue, to the great
disturbance of the peace of the King, and his
law, and to the great terror and disturbance of
many of his liege people and subjects." His-
tory contains no more thrilling and direful
picture of a Quaker meeting than this.

About all the decency and fairness in this
trial was confined to the jury-box and the pris-
oners' dock. Certainly there was none in the
court. The prisoners were compelled to plead
before they heard the indictment. "Plead
first," said the Recorder, "and we will show you
then what you are pleading to." An official
rudely tore their hats from their heads.

"How dare you," he said, "come into court
with your hats on?"

''Put those hats on the prisoners again,"
shouted the Lord Mayor.

This was done, and then the prisoners were
fined forty marks apiece for contempt of court
in wearing their hats.

38 WILLIAM PENN. [1670,

" Shoot the hat," said the Recorder, smiling
to think he had made a remark that would pass
into history.

When Penn was brought into court after re-
cess, the bailiff again attempted to remove his
hat.

" If you take off my hat," said Penn, *' you
will be sorry for it."

The bailiff sneered, and snatched off the hat,
and a cannon-ball weighing thirty-two pounds
fell on his feet with dreadful effect.

*' I am no slouch," said the Quaker, '' if I do
have fits, and I don't wear a two-story hat for
nothing."

And as the bailiff went to the hospital he re-
membered what Penn said.

Two or three witnesses only wxre examined.
They testified that they heard Penn preach, but
couldn't hear what he said. Throughout the
trial the prisoners talked back at the court, to
the great discomfort and wrath of the Recorder,
who besought the Lord Mayor to stop Penn's
mouth. They were finally put in the bale-dock,
where they could neither see nor be seen by the
bench, jury, or public, and from this seclusion
Penn shouted more vigorously than ever, ap-

iEt. 26.] A BRAVE JURY. 39

pealed to the jury, contradicted the Recorder,
and objected, and took exceptions, until the case
was closed and the jury retired.

Eight of the jurors came in, after being out
an hour and a half, saying they could not agree.
The four obstinate jurymen were then brought
into court, roundly abused, and ordered to go
out and bring in a verdict. Then they all came
in with a verdict of " Guilty of speaking in
Gracechurch Street," which the court refused
to receive, and the jurors refused to bring in
any other. The Recorder ordered them *' locked
up without meat, drink, fire, or tobacco."

** We will have a verdict," said this sagacious
lawyer, "or you shall starve for it."

The prisoners were taken back to Newgate,
Penn shouting to the jurors, *'You are Eng-
lishmen ! Mind your privileges ! Give not away
your rights !"

Next morning, Sunday, the jury was brought
in once more, and returned the same old verdict.
The court again abused the jury savagely, Ed-
ward Bushel coming in for the greatest share.
The verdict in the case of Penn was " Guilty of
speaking in Gracechurch Street," and in Wil-
liam Mead's case, " Not guilty."

40 WILLIAM PENN. [1670.

" I will have a positive verdict," said the Re-
corder, " or you shall starve."

Again the jury was sent out, and a third time
came in with the same verdict. The wrath of
the court was unbounded. The Recorder longed
" for something like the Spanish Inquisition in
England." Penn defended his jury, and the Lord
Mayor threatened to slit the jurors' noses, and
to stake Penn to the ground with fetters, which
only elicited ringing defiance from the fearless
Quaker. The jury, famishing from a fast of
thirty hours, refused to retire again, and were
dragged away by force.

Next morning, after another night of imprison-
ment, a night without food, or fire, or water,
weak .from fasting, wearied by loss of sleep,
feverish from thirst, twelve haggard, suffering
jurors, — Thomas Veer, Edward Bushel, John
Hammond, Charles Milson, Gregory Walklet,
Joen Brightman, William Plumstead, Henry
Henley, James Damask, Henry Michel, William
Lever, and John Baily — "good men and true,"
if ever twelve good men and true there were,
came into the court-room. The sea of faces
turned to them anxiously, and every ear was
strained to catch the verdict.

/Et. 26.] ALL LV PRISON. 4 1

*' How say you," said the clerk, '' is William
Penn guilty or not guilty ?"

''Not guilty," said the foreman, and all the
jurors concurred.

The Lord Mayor immediately fined every
man on the jury forty marks (about 27 pounds
sterling) for contempt of court, and on Penn's
demanding to be set at liberty on the verdict of
the jury, immediately imposed the same fine on
the prisoners. They all refused to pay the fines,
and went to prison. At Penn's suggestion.
Bushel and his fellow-jurors brought action
against the Lord Mayor and Recorder fCr false
imprisonment, and on their trial the Court of
Common Pleas gave them a verdict and set the
prisoners at liberty in open court.

Before this ajDpeal, however, the fines of the
two prisoners had been paid by some unknown
friend, for they refused, as a matter of conscience,
to pay them, and William Penn hastened from
Newgate prison to Wanstead, the country-house
in Essex, to the bedside of his dying father.

This son had disappointed all the ambitious
plans of the worldly-minded father; all his
dreams of worldly advancement and political
preferment had been for this boy, who would

42 WILLIAM PENN. [1670.

have none of them. The King had even offered
to make Sir WiUiam a peer, with the title of
Lord Weymouth, but this Quaker son, to whom
the honor and title would descend, and for
whom it was sought, refused it. But now the
dying man turned to his first-born and said,

" Son William, I am weary of the world ; I
would not live my days over, could I command
them with a wish, for the snares of life are
greater than the fears of death."

He sent for the King and the Duke of York,
and begged them to continue toward his son
the royal kindness and protection he feared he
might sorely need in those troubled times, and
the royal brothers pledged their favor to the
son of their Admiral, and James certainly most
faithfully remembered his promise to the dying
man. And then, with his family well provided
for under royal favor and protection, himself
crowned with wealth and honors, the titled
sailor looked at the times in which he lived,
and called it vanity.

*' Let nothing in this world," he said to the
son whom he had turned out of doors for obey-
ing the dictates of his conscience, *' let nothing
in this world tempt you to wrong your con-

^t. 26.1 THE QUAKER'S INHERITANCE. 43

science ; so you will keep peace at home, which
will be a feast to you in the day of trouble."

In his last hours he talked much with this
Quaker son, not only forgiving him, but approv-
ing his course.

^' Son William, if you and your friends keep to
your plain way of preaching, and also keep to
your plain way of living, you will make an end
of priests to the end of the world." For him-
self, however, he died a member of the Church
of England.

''Bury me near my mother; live all in love;
shun all manner of evil. I pray God to bless
you all, and he will bless you."

And on the i6th of September, 1670, in the
forty-ninth year of his age, he slept with his
fathers.

He left all his property, with only a life inter-
est in the estate reserved to Lady Penn, to his
Quaker son. The estate, with claims on the
state for money loaned and for arrears of salary,
was worth about ;£" 1,500 a year. And a man
with an income of ;^ 1,500 could afford to be a
Quaker if he wished, although there was no
money and lots of trouble in the business at that
time.

CHAPTER III.

THE BATTLE OF THE WIND-MILLS.

" T ET me write the pamphlets of the people,"
^ said Penn, '' and I care not who writes
their laws." So he sat down and wrote a little
one, and called it " The People's Ancient and
Just Liberties Asserted in the Trial of William
Penn and William Mead at the Sessions held
at the Old Bailey in London, on the ist, 3rd,
4th, and 5th of September, against the Most
Arbitrary Procedure of that Court." Some-
how or other, the pubhcation of that pamphlet
failed to get him into trouble or prison, and the
gentle Quaker lived for a few weeks in dis-
tressing tranquillity, at the end of which time a
Baptist preacher named Ives knocked a chip
off his shoulder by preaching a sermon reflect-
ing upon all Quakers in general, and William
Penn in particular. No sooner did Penn hear
of this than he exclaimed, '^ I am a man of
peace," and putting on his hat sallied forth to

^t. 26. j HE LICKS A BAPTIST. 45

find this man Ives and demand a meeting for
the usual wind-mill.

Rev. Mr. Ives said he was not a fighting
Baptist himself, but he had a brother Jeremy
whom he would put up against any Quaker
that ever put on a pamphlet. In this en-
counter, Penn smote Jeremy hip and thigh,
talking nearly three hours to his enemy's one.
The Baptist, accustomed to run by water, was
very deficient in wind.

Lest any incredulous Baptist should have
any doubts regarding the result of this en-
counter, we may say that it is indisputably
established, on the best Quaker authority.
Penn looked around for somebody else to fight,
but the dissenting parsons being afraid of him,
he fired a pamphlet at Rome, entitled '' A
Seasonable Caveat against Popery."

As he had now been out ot prison three
months, it was about his time to go back, and
toward the close of the year, when he stood
up, according to his custom, to preach, in a
church on Wheeler Street, a sergeant, with a
file of soldiers, remarking that such preaching
as that was a violation of the laws against
cruelty to animals, arrested Penn, dragged him

46 WILLIAM PENN, [1670.

out of church, and took him to the Tower.
The last time he had been in Newgate, and
it was thought a change ot prisons would be
beneficial.

This time the Quaker's persecutors deter-
mined to take no risks on a jury. He was
tried before the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir
John Robinson, who was the original Jack
Robinson, and inventor of the great American
circus. During this examination Penn refused
to take the oath of allegiance, which was a trap
frequently used by the magistrates against the
Quakers, and for this, and for his preaching, he
was sentenced to six months' imprisonment in
Newgate.

" Your father was my friend," said Sir John
Robinson, before pronouncing sentence, '' and I
have a great deal ol kindness for you."

'' But thou hast an ill way of expressing it,"
replied Penn, and he was glad that his grand-
father also had not been Sir John's friend, else
that grateful magistrate had given him two
years.

When a corporal with a file of musqueteers
was ordered to escort the prisoner to his apart-
ments, " No, no, send thy lacquey," said Penn,

^t. 27.] AN EPIDEMIC OF PAMPHLETS. 47

*' I know the way to Newgate." Indeed he
did. There wasn't a prison of any prominence
in London that Penn couldn't find in the dark,
with one hand tied behind him.

Being in prison and unable to hold any joint
discussions with the benighted preachers of
other denominations, the peace-loving Quaker
bombarded them from the grated windows of
his dungeon-cell with pamphlets. In his peace-
ful, unruffled way, he called the Vice-Chancellor
of Oxford '' a poor mushroom," which must
have been a pleasant revelation to a dignitary
all unaccustomed to hear people speak the
truth about him.

Penn was not the man, in his earlier days, to
dissemble his thoughts and feelings in print.
When his pamphlet was out, no man ever came
to the author to inquire into the meaning of
any ambiguous sentence or misleading phrase.
One of the tracts he published during this im-
prisonment was entitled ** A Brief Reply to a
mere Rhapsody of Lyes, Folly, and Slander,"
and it must have been some comfort to the par-
ties assailed by it that Penn didn't know how
to spell " lies" nearly so correctly as they could
tell them.

48 WILLIAM PENN. [1671.

Then he wrote another pamphlet with the
brief but conciliatory title, '' A Serious Apology
for the Principles and Practices of the People
called Quakers, against the Malicious Asper-
sions, Erroneous Doctrines, and Horrid Blas-
phemies of Thomas Jenner and Timothy Tay-
lor, Two Presbyterian Preachers." This was
very soothing to the Presbyterians, insomuch
that grave-looking men, with broad blue
streaks running up and down their spines,
stood furtively behind lonely corners for
weeks thereafter, hoping that some happy
chance might put them in the way of wearing a
Quaker scalp at their belts.

One day when Penn was feeling unusually
good and peaceful, having worn his hat for
three consecutive days and nights and received
a great and renewing sense of virtue and gene-
ral pacification therefrom, he sat down and
wrote '' Plain Dealing with a Traducing Ana-
baptist." He fired away at Thomas Hicks, a
Baptist preacher, with two books, *' Reason
against Railing" and '' The Counterfeit Chris-
tian Detected."

Religious and theological pamphlets were not
mild-mannered mouthings in the good old days.

yEt. 28.] AMONG THE TEN BROECKS. 49

Besse tells how one of William Penn's oppo-
nents "vexed himself to death" over one of the
gentle Quaker's savage pamphlets, being the
original man who w^as talked to death. No
man laid down a pamphlet in his presence, that
Penn did not instantly see his little tract and go
him one better. Or worse, as the case might
be, and generally was.

When his term of imprisonment expired,
Penn immediately resumed his labor of preach-
ing, and went over into Holland, which had
been captured by the Dutch. He preached the
new gospel of peace and good-will through that
country and Germany. But he did not make
many converts. The idea of wearing the hat all
the time was pleasant to the Hollanders, but it
did not go far enough. If Penn had insisted, in
addition, that every man of his followers should
wear, at all times and seasons, a green knitted
scarf of some woollen material, and a red wors-
ted comforter, and a white (originally white)
v^^oollen scarf about the neck, and one canvas
vest, one flannel vest, one woollen vest, one vest
of sail-cloth with horn buttons, one knitted vest,
and one vest of tanned leather, and four pairs
of pantaloons, all the year round, Holland

50 WILLIAM PENN. [1672.

would have stood up as one man and said,
" Here, at last, is a man who can interpret the
Fathers."

Returning from this missionary tour, Penn
put on his hat one morning and was married in
it to Guli Springett. Penn met this charming
girl, several years before his marriage, in the
little village of Chalfont St. Giles, in Bucking-
hamshire. Guided, apparently, by his Quakerly
instincts and that peace-loving spirit which
breathed such an air of conciliation, and rattled
the English language around in hard knots in
his theological pamphlets, he married into a
fighting family. Gulielma Springett's grand-
father was Sir John Proud, a colonel in the ser-
vice of the Dutch republic, who was killed at
the siege of GroU, in Guelderland Her father,
Sir WiUiam Springett, was a Parliamentary
captain who fought at Edgehill and Newbury.
He was an uncompromising, iconoclastic Puri-
tan, and whenever he found a saint in marble or
fresco, the saint had to go. '• Be they ever so
rich," writes Lady Springett, '* he destroyed
them and reserved not one for its comeliness or
costly workmanship." He did right. It is a
great pity he didn't find more of them. At the

JEt. 2S.] A FIGHTING FAMILY. 5 1

siege of Arundel Castle he was stricken with a
fever that cost his life. Gulielma's mother,
with wonderful fortitude and heroism, hastened
through appaUing perils and hardships to her
husband's side, and the gallant soldier died in
her arms. Only a few weeks after her father's
de^th, Gulielma Springett was born. Thus,
from both sides, the Penn family is descended
directly from families distinguished for courage,
endurance, and fighting qualities, and there
could be no better material for making good
Quakers.

After Sir William Springett's death, his lonely
widow tried the gay world, and '' went after
recreation," she says, '*into many excesses and
vanities, as foolish mirth, carding, and dancing."
Then she sought the consolations of religion,
and tried, it is said, " the whole round of the
popular sects of the day." But this is hardly
probable or even possible, for Methuselah's self
could not have tried them all, had he only
lingered a month or two in each one. Finally,
after much '' weary seeking and not finding,"
she found the proper prescription for her woes
and heart-ache, and married the famous Isaac
Pennington. Soon after their marriage they

S2 WILLIAM PEMN. [1572.

both became Quakers, and William Penn was a
welcome visitor at Chalfont.

And here at Chalfont, too, was Thomas Ell-
wood ; and John Milton resided here in 1655.
Here was the '' pretty box" Ellwood found for
him in Chalfont St. Giles when the plague
grew hot in the city and the blind poet felt that
he needed a change of air and location. Here,
too, it was that " Paradise Regained " was sug-
gested. Milton had given to Ellwood the
manuscript of '' Paradise Lost," asking for his
judgment.

*' I pleasantly said to him," writes the Quaker,
in his Life, '' ' Thou hast said much here of
** Paradise Lost," but what hast thou to say of
*' Paradise Found." ? ' He made me no answer,
but sate some time in muse; then broke off
that discourse, and fell upon another subject.
After the sickness was over, and the city well
cleansed, he returned thither; and when after-
ward I went to wait on him there, he showed
me his second poem, called ' Paradise Re-
gained,' and in a pleasant tone said to me,
* This is owing to you ; for you put it into my
head by the question you put to me at Chal-
font, which before I had not thought of.' " So

^t. 28.] PLEASANT DAYS IN CHALFONT. 53

the Quakers are responsible for *' Paradise
Regained."

Indeed, this part of the country was a very
hot-bed of Dissent. " General Fleetwood lived
at the Vache, in Chalfont, and Russell on the
opposite hill; and Mrs. Cromwell, Oliver's
wife, and her daughters at Woodrow High
House ; so the whole country was kept in awe
and became exceedingly zealous and fanatical."

The centre of the circle at Chalfont St. Giles
was Guli Springett, young, beautiful in form
and feature, highly accomplished, and a bril-
liant musician. She had many suitors ; Thomas
Ell wood himself was, as the quaint chronicler
of the time states it, " clean gone" on Guli ; but
when William Penn came along, in that snuff-
colored coat, long weskit, and phenomenal hat,
the rest of the boys had no kind of show.
William fell hopelessly in love on sight. They
drove out in a buggy with a seat scarce wide
enough for one, and every time he went to the
house the roomy pockets of that wide-skirted
snuff-colored coat were vast magazines of gum-
drops and caramels. Oft by the dim religious
light of a parlor lamp that turned down, Guli
sat and coaxed him to raise a mustache. The

54 WILLIAM PENN. [1672.

Penningtons kept a parrot at that time, and one
day in early spring, when the nights were still
frosty and sharp, that miserable bird, which
had been dozing all the previous evening in the
parlor, did nothing the whole day long but
wander about the house saying, '■' Oh, William,
your nose is cold as ice ! William, your nose is
cold as ice!" It was the parrot's last joke.
Next morning it was found with its neck
wrung, and it was supposed, in view of its
strange remarks, to have died of cerebral aber-
ration. Hsec fabula docets that reformers are
very much like other people.

Guli Springett became Mrs. William Penn
that spring, and until the following autumn
Penn remained at his home in Rickmansworth,
Hertfordshire, writing no pamphlets, abusing
no one, and only preaching occasional sermons.
It does not appear that he called any Baptist
preacher a liar all this summer, and he ran no
unhappy Presbyterian through with a pam-
phlet.

But this quiet home life, with its simple
pleasures and domestic joys, was too slow for a
peace-loving Quaker, and soon Penn called for
his two-handed pen with the terrible name, put

^f 28.] DESICCATED MISSIONARY. 55

on his trusty ink-well, and sallied forth with a
pamphlet that went singing- through the star-
tled air like a hat full of hot shot. He began to
have trouble with his own people now. Qua-
kerism had not then attained its present state
of perfection, and there, were some Quakers
who Quaked not wisely but too much, Quake
they never so Quakely.

Two of these enthusiastic converts set off to
Rome to convert the Pope, with many yeas
and nays and much hat. The Holy See, with
that promptness and firmness which was a pro-
minent characteristic of the Roman Church,
turned in and converted the missionaries. John
Love was sent to the Inquisition, and by the
use of new and improved machinery, that had
just been put ^ in the torture-chamber at great
expense by the management, was converted
into a material that looked like a doubtful com-
promise between sawdust and sausage-meat,
while John Perrot was sent to an asylum for
the insane, as the preliminary step to his con-
version into a lunatic.

Perrot was afterward set at liberty, and re-
turned to England, where he was more trouble
to his brother Quakers than all their enemies.

56 WILLIAM PENN. [1672.

He advocated the hat doctrine with a broad-
ness that startled all good Friends, claiming
that the hat should not be removed even in
prayer, except by divine revelation. Penn was
alarmed. There was no telling to what lengths
this hat business might not go. By and by
some earnest brother would claim that it was
wicked, impious, and blasphemous for a man
to take off his hat when he went to bed ; then
it would be argued that a man should wear his
hat when he died, that he might be buried in
it ; then it would presently follow that the wo-
men should wear hats like the men, same style
of hats, just as women of all other denomi-
nations wear to-day ; then the next step would
be to have all hats made not only precisely
alike, but of one uniform unvarying size, so
that all ages, classes, and conditions ol men,
women, children, and babies should wear a 7I
hat, and if the hat didn't fit it was the fault of
the head. Evidently, it was time to sit down
on the hat, before the hat fell, like a beaver
extinguisher, upon the Quakers and their doc-
trines.

A church meeting was called, the matter was
kindly but sensibly discussed, and Perrot was

yEt. 28.] PVAJ^S OF THE TALKING THINGS. 5/

fired out of the society, his license was revoked,
and he was forbidden to Quake any more under
pain of prosecution for infringement of copy-
ripfht. Perrot drowned his sorrow and morti-
fication in a flowing pamphlet, called " The
Spirit of the Hat," and Penn joyously mauled
him with a bigger one, " The Spirit of Alex-
ander the Coppersmith." For some time there-
after he bombarded the expunged Quaker with
pamphlets, until Perrot wished he was back in
the Roman insane asylum.

Charles issued his " Declaration of Indul-
gence" this year, and the oppressive penal laws
against all non-conformists being suspended,
the dissenters had plenty of time to fight one
another, and the pale air was streaked with
hostile pamphlets, until it wasn't safe for a man
to go out of doors without a pamphlet um-
brella. Many of these pamphlets were very
valuable, bringing as high as 2\ and even 3
cents a pound at the paper-mill. Penn made a
desperate effort to write two pamphlets to
every other man's one. This was impossible,
but Penn came as near to it as any man could.
His tongue was not permitted to rust in these
stirring times. He had a long and exciting

58 WILLIAM PENN. [1672.

wind-mill with the Baptists, to which six thou-
sand persons listened, and the meeting well-
nigh broke up in a tremendous row over the
question, " If Christ was the inner Light, where
was his manhood ?"

It was customary in those days for some one
to get hurt with a bench whenever there was a
religious discussion, but beyond a great deal of
tumultuous talking and irrepressible clamor,
and breaking down the doors and tearing up
the seats, no harm was done on this occasion.
The Quakers came off victorious at all points
in this contest,* while the Baptists, as usual,
routed their broad-brim opponents, horse, foot,
and dragoons, f

Penn also had a public discussion with the
celebrated Thomas Baxter, who regarded the
Quakers " as so many lost people," and desired
to preach to them '' that they might once hear
what could be said for their recovery." The
discussion lasted seven hours, before an audi-
ence including noblemen, knights, and clergy-
men of the established church. Penn whipped;
so did Thomas Baxter.

■^ Quaker histories and memoirs.

f Baptist and other non-Quaker authorities and narratives.

JEl 29.] THE WIFE'S INFLUENCE. 59

The non-conformists had very little respite
from persecution under the Declaration of In-
dulgence, and they occupied all that time in
wrangling with one another. And while they
were at it hammer and tongs, the disgraceful
Test Act was passed, and petty magistrates and
tyrants began to make it so warm for them
they had no time to denounce one another as
worse than heathen, or -to break the doors and
benches of the meeting-houses.

Penn continued to write pamphlets, but they
were milder in tone, and could be laid on an
oak plank without blistering it. This modera-
tion is largely due to the gentle influence of the
loving Guli, and many of Penn's old adver-
saries wished he had married ten years earlier.
At this timg he writes to Justice Fleming, a
magistrate who was filling all the prisons in his
jurisdiction with Quakers, '' I know no religion
which destroys courtesy, civility, and kind-
ness." Penn was beginning to imbibe the true
Quaker spirit, and it was even a comparatively
safe thing now to shake a pamphlet at him, if
the man was a good swift runner and the fence
wasn't too far away.

Penn had been five years away from court.

6o WILLIAM PENN. [1673.

He visited Whitehall at this time, with his old
friend and fellow-sufferer, Captain William
Mead, to plead for the liberation of George
Fox, who was passing the greater portion of
his life in prison. Penn was warmly welcomed
by James, who carried his business to the Kin^,
and secured the release of Fox. James mildly
rebuked his ward for staying away so long, and
told him whenever he wanted anything to
come around. " Don't knock," he said, ''come
right in like one of the family. You'll find the
hat-rack in the hall."

CHAPTER IV.

WILLIAM BUYS A FARM.

AMERICA was the refuge of the non-conform-
ists. Six weeks of sea-sickness was prefera-
ble to six months' imprisonment or five minutes'
beheading. The wild Indians were kinder and
less to be dreaded than the English magistrates
and the preachers of the established church.
Penn had heard a great deal about America, es-
pecially while he was in Holland, and colonies
of Quakers had already gone out to the land of
the free, settHng in Jamaica, along the Delaware,
and in New England. He -was first interested
in the affairs of that portion of New Jersey
which then included the region lying between
the Hudson and the Delaware. It belonged to
Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, having
been given to them by a man who didn't own a
foot of it. As it cost him nothing, it occurred
to Lord Berkeley that he could make a good
thing by selling his half to the Quakers, and as

^2 WILLIAM PENN. [1676.

the Quakers weren't getting something for no-
thing in those days, they were glad enough to
buy anything when they could get it cheap.

So John Fen wick, agent and trustee of Ed-
ward Byllynge, bought half of the state of New
Jersey, including all the dips, spurs, leads, an-
gles, and sinuosities thereunto appertaining,
with all apple-jack privileges and mosquito
ranges, for five thousand dollars. This was
more than it was worth, but the purchasers
contemplated getting even on the Indians. Fen-
wick and Byllynge quarrelled over the bargain.
Friend Fenwick brought in a bill for commis-
sions which just about absorbed all the profits
and most of the land. Friend Byllynge said he
would take the commissions himself, and let his
agent have the land. But Friend Fenwick said
he was a poor real-estate agent who couldn't get
out of a land-deal more money than the seller
and more land than the buyer. The matter was
finally referred to William Penn, and this wise
arbitrator managed to reconcile the two warring
Quakers. Friend Fenwick at first demurred to
the arbitration, Avhich gave Friend Byllynge
quite or even more than half the land he had
bought and paid for, and the Real Estate Agents'

JEt. 32.] D/^OrS INTO POLITICS. 63

Mutual Benevolent and Protective Association
supported the agent, and said such an unusual
and greedy allowance to a grasping purchaser
was unjust and unbusinesslike, and could not be
accepted as a precedent. Fenwick and a num-
ber of Quaker colonists sailed for New Jersey,
and Byllynge remained in England, over-
whelmed by debts, and was compelled at last
to make an assignment; his right and title in
New Jersey was made over to three trustees —
Gawen Lowrie of London, Nicholas Lucas of
Hertford, and William Penn.

Penn at once made arrangements with Sir
George Carteret for a division of the province,
and on July i, 1676, East New Jersey, or all the
province northeast of a line from Little Egg har-
bor to a poii^t on the most northern branch of
the Delaware river, latitude 41° 40', passed to
Carteret, and West New Jersey to the trustees
of Byllynge— the first great purchase made by
the Quakers in America.

Penn was now at hberty to put into practice
his dreams of a model state, his ideas of a free
government. He prepared a constitution for the
new territory, by which he secured the rights
of free worship ; every man of mature age and

^4 WILLIAM PENN. [1676.

free from crime was declared an elector, but
woman suffrage was not even hinted at ; a secret
ballot was provided for, thus avoiding bulldoz-
ing by factory superintendents, section foremen,
and ward bosses; juries were made interpreters
of the law and had the sole right to pronounce
verdicts, and although it was and is a very sim-
pie word to pronounce, yet the juries, from
Penn's time to our own day, have pronounced
some that were fearful and wonderful ; no man
could be imprisoned for debt, although a collec-
tor was permitted to chase a man all over town
and follow him to dinner with a bill, and dun
him in a crowd, twenty times a day, which was
far more distracting and annoying than a quiet
imprisonment. West Jersey was divided into
one hundred parts. Fenwick immediately took
ten parts for his commission, and became the
pioneer American land-grabber; Byllynge's
Yorkshire creditors took ten more in settlement
of their claims, and the colony v/ent into busi-
ness with what was left. The members of the
legislature were paid one shilling a day during
the session of the Assembly. 'They come
high," said Penn, "but we must have 'em."
The province was a success from the start.

.Et. 32. j THE QUAKER'S USUAL LUCK. 65

The doors weren't open ten minutes before the
house was crowded, standing-room all gone, and
the last man who got in had to leave his cane
outside. Several hundred persons went over
this year. In March, 230 Friends sailed in the
Kent, and King Charles visited the ship and
blessed the colonists before they sailed. It did
not sink the ship. ^

The good ship Kent reached New York in
August, and found Fenwick in prison, of course.
A prison without a Quaker in it in those days
would have been the play of "• Hamlet" with
Hamlet left out. Fenwick had denied Gover-
nor Andros's right to collect customs duties and
other taxes, and Governor Andros had cast the
peaceful Fenwick into prison, to prove the
legality of his^ acts. The new-comers acted
like prudent Quakers. They kept out of quar-
rels with Sir Edmund Andros, and let him and
the colonj of East Jersey wrangle and discuss
politics while they attended to their knitting ;
so West Jersey prospered as East Jersey quar-
relled and got into trouble and debt, until in a
few years (1682) the Friends saw their opportu-

* The blessing of a man like Charles should have been stuffed
and kept under glass, as a curiosity.

66 WILLIAM PENN, [1677.

nity, and ten West Jersey proprietors, William
Penn being one of them, bought East Jersey.
The Friends made themselves solid with the In-
dians at the start, and the Indians were pretty
friendly, for Indians.

The affairs of the Friends in America at this
time were lovely, and the goose warbled at an
unusual altitude, and, taking advantage of the
general peaceful aspect of all things Quakerly,
Penn, leaving his family in their new home at
Worminghurst, sailed for Holland with George
Fox and Robert Barclay, and held large meet-
ings at most of the towns along their route.
This missionary tour was eminently success-
ful. Penn wrote to England that '' the Gospel
was preached, the dead were raised, and the liv-
ing were comforted."

The Quakers were warmly welcomed at Her-
werden by the Electress Elizabeth, daughter of
Frederick, Prince Palatine of the Rhine. She
was a sister of Prince Rupert, Admiral Penn's
old enemy and rival. Between Rupert's sister
and William Penn a warm friendship existed to
the day of her death. At Kirchheim, Penn's
preaching and his description of the new-world
refuge for the persecuted both fell on listening

JEt. 33.] A SEI^^IOUS COUNTESS, 67

ears and eager hearts ; and the first colonists in
America who declared it unlawful for Chris-
tians to buy and hold negro slaves were the
Quaker emigrants who came to Pennsylvania
from Kirchheim.

Having been informed by the Princess Eliza-
beth that the young and beautiful Countess von
Falckenstein und Bruch, living near Mulheim,
was "serious," the missionaries went to that
town. They were warned that the Graf was far
more serious than his beautiful daughter, and
that he would make it very serious for any mis-
sionary he caught hanging around. The merry
Graf, indeed, had a weakness for setting his
dogs, of which he kept a large and unruly as-
sortment, on unsuspecting strangers, and oft-
times he had^ his soldiers beat the wayfarer who
strayed into the castle grounds. These things
made the missionaries seriously incline to hover
around the orchard, rather than go up to the
front door, sending word to the Countess, in the
mean time, that they were as near to her bower
as their exaggerated respect for a strange dog
and an irritable father would permit. In about
an hour back came their messenger with word
from the Countess that she would be glad to see

68 WILLIAM PENN. [1677.

them, but not at the house, as Pa was always
nosing around. She thought it would be best
to cross the river and meet at the house of her
friend, the clergyman.

But while the missionaries talked with the
messenger, the Graf himself, with his attend-
ants, rode forth from the castle, and began to
ask them questions. He was not pleased with
the strangers. He was indignant because they
refused to take off their hats, and when they
said they wore them in the presence of their
own king, the Graf intimated that that was all
well enough in England, and was about the
treatment a king of England deserved, but they
did those things better in Mulheim. He then
called a file of soldiers, who marched the mis-
sionaries out into a thick forest, got them lost
in the dark, and then, presenting them with the
freedom of the woods, turned them loose and
left them. They got back to Duysburgh about
ten o'clock, but the sentinels would not let them
in, and there were no houses outside the walls.
So they wrapped the drapery of the sidewalk
about them, and lay down to pleasant night-
mares.

During the journey to Wesel on this mission-

JEt. 33.] STUMPS THE STATE FOR SIDNEY. 69

ary tour, Penn was greatly annoyed because
some persons in the wagon in which they trav-
elled indulged in vain and "profane" conversa-
tion during the day, and then sang Luther's
hymns at evening. He wanted them to give up
either family prayers or swearing, he didn't
seem to care very much which. However, it
may be the hymn-singing reprobates were not
so shockingly wicked after all. " Profane" con-
versation as defined by Penn was not what is
called profane^ to-day. It is difficult, indeed,
to understand just what the gentle William did
mean by "' profane" language. Idle talk about
the crops, predictions as to the weather, politics,
conundrums, and all manner of jokes were prob-
ably classed as profane and vain babbling by
this good man, who denounced the sermons of
Presbyterian preachers as *' horrid blasphem-
ies." William Penn was a good man, but occa-
sionally he would rake with the teeth up.

Returning to England, Penn went into poli-
tics for a season. Algernon Sidney, his bosom
friend, and the republican from whose life and

*I.e. that energetic and immoral adornment of colloquial
speech with expletives and objurgations generally included in
Arkansas under the designation of "cussin' and swarin'."

70 WILLIAM PENN. [1679.

teachings Penn had imbibed many poHtical
ideas, was a candidate for Parliament, standing
for the constituency of Guilford. Penn went
into the campaign with a hat full of pamphlets ;
there was nothing like pamphlets for Penn.
One of these had the tone of a modern cam-
paign document. It began, '' All is at stake !"
— which meant that there was a chance that
Sidney might not be elected. Then he went
into the canvass in live earnest. He stumped
the district for his friend. He *' viewed with
alarm" to-night, and he "pointed with pride"
the next night. He denounced the machine,
and he deprecated '' bossism," and said the
watchword was "■ reform." Csesarism loomed
like a black and awful cloud, no bigger than a
man's ear, upon the horizon. Sidney was the
friend of the poor man, and the champion of the
people against monopolies; he was for cheap
money and plenty of it. He was in favor of a
revenue for tariff only. Down with the third
term! Penn's eloquence prevailed, and Sidne}/
received a majority of the suffrages, but the
Court knew something worth two of that, and
the commonwealth candidate was promptly
counted out.

^t. 37.] PRESENTS HIS LITTLE BILL. 71

Once more Algernon Sidney went in ; this
time he stood for the town of Kent, and the
Court put up his brother Henry against him.
Again Algernon was elected, and a second time
the royalists counted him out. Disgusted with
politics and England, Penn turned his face and
his thoughts toward America.

The Government owed him, in claims in-
herited from his father, about ;^ 16,000—'' equal
to more than three times that amount of present
money." Indignant at the treacherous manner
in which his friend had been treated, Penn felt
like foreclosing his little mortgage and forcing
the Government into the hands of a receiver.
But he decided instead to take out his judgment
in unoccupied Crown lands in America. That
suited everybody. It was the only way the
King could or would ever pay his debt ; it was
the only way Penn could ever get a dollar of
his account. So in consideration of all the
claims he held against the Government, and in
further consideration of two beaver-skins an-
nually, and one fifth part of all the gold and
silver* that might be mined in the new pro-

* It would have been money in Charles' pocket had he stipu-
lated for petroleum instead of gold. But his most gracious

'^'^ WILLIAM PENN. {;i68i.

vince, the King granted Penn a territory of
40,000 square miles, and the charter, drawn up
bj Chief Justice Worth, was signed March 4,
1681, in order to have it go into effect on In-
auguration-day. The Merry Monarch, when he
made Penn a deed of the territory and paid the
notary, said:

" Here, I am doing well granting all this wild
land to such a fighting man as you. But you
must promise entire toleration to all members
of the Church of England, and never take to
scalping."

And Penn assured the King that he most
assuredly would, and indeed and double he
wouldn't. It was all right as to toleration.
Members of the Church of England were toler-
ated,* barely, but the scalping proviso didn't
hold quite a hundred years, for in 1 764 a grandson
of WilHam Penn offered a bounty of $134 for
every adult male Indian's scalp, and $50 for every
female Indian's scalp.f But this grandson was

majesty didn't know a "spouter" from a " dus^^^V^^i^^^^
not the sudden ways of a "wild-cat."

* Which must have flattered the Episcopalians immensely.

t The woman's rights party fought fiercely against this unfair
discrimination in the price of scalps, claiming that a squaw's
scalp had the longest and finest hair, and should be rated as
high as a man's.

^t. 37-] THE CHRISTENING SERVICE. 'Jl

not a Quaker. And there had arisen a tribe of
Indians, also, which knew not Penn, and didn't
stop to ask a pale-face, when they *' got the drop
on him," whether he was a Pennsylvanian or
pitched his tepee in the wilds of New Jersey.

When Penn appeared to receive his charter,
he came into the royal presence in his usual
easy manner with his hat on and his hands in
his pockets. Charles at once removed his own
hat.

" Keep on your hat, young- man," said Penn,
"keep on your hat, and people won't know
you're bald."

** It is the custom of this place," the King re-
plied, " for only one person to remain covered
at a time."

** Queer custom," said Penn, " but I don't lay
my hat around loose in a strange house unless I
get a check for it. I've travelled, I have."

Penn had decided to call his province New
Wales, but the King, who seems to have had
some sense in the matter of names, and did not
wish the new continent to be sprinkled over
with a junk-shop assortment of second-hand
names that had already been in use for centuries,
christened it Pennsylvania — for which, if it isn't

74 WILLIAM PENN.

[i6Si.

too late, God save the King! Penn objected
to the prefix of his own name, and suggested
plain, unadorned Sylvania, but the monarch in-
sisted on the Penn, against which the Quaker's
modesty still protested. A reporter who was
present suggested that, in compliment to the
profession, he might spell it Pencilvania, but
WiUiam conveniently failed to hear him, and
the wretched scrivener was cast into the deepest
dungeon beneath the castle moat.

A duplicate copy of the original charter, writ-
ten on rolls of strong parchment, in Old English
text, every line underscored with red ink, the
borders gorgeously emblazoned with heraldic
devices, and a portrait of his most gracious and
distressingly ugly majesty at the top of the first
page, now two hundred years old— the charter,
not his majesty— is still preserved in the office
of the Secretary of State, at Harrisburg, Penn-
sylvania.

Penn and Algernon Sidney drew up the con-
stitution. '' Give a province a good strong
constitution," said Penn, '' and it will never cost
you a dollar for a hver-pad," The constitution
recognized liberty of conscience, and right of
suffrage for " every inhabitant, artificer, or other

^t. 37.] THE RUSH BEGINS. 75

resident that pays scot and lot to the govern-
ment." Compulsory attendance at church was
not enforced ; if a man wanted to stay home and
sleep all the morning or mend his trout-rod in
the back yard, all right. Lying was punished
as a crime, so that very few lawyers went to
Pennsylvania in Penn's time. Going to the
theatre and getting drunk were placed in the
same category ; as also were card-playing, bull-
baiting, and cock-fighting. Trial by jury was
established, an Indian to be allowed six Indians
on a jury in all cases where his interests were
involved. As the Indians never read the news-
papers, they made the best of jurymen, and
have served the courts as models of proper and
acceptable jurors down to the present time.
Only two crimes, murder and treason, were
punishable by death. There was no gallows in
Pennsylvania so long as Penn Hved ; but then
Penn didn't have the Mollie Maguires to pacify.
Penn advertised his land at forty shillings per
hundred acres, and a little quit-rent, and the
tide of immigration set in. Franz Pastorius
came over at once with a company of Germans,
and bought 15,000 acres, and invented the Penn-
sylvania-Dutch language, of which anybody

76 WILLIAM PENN. [1681.

can, without any instruction, understand three
fifths, and nobody can understand the other two
fifths.

Three vessels came over during this year.
One of them was frozen in at Chester, then the
Swedish settlement of Upland, and here the
immigrants passed the winter, living in caves
which they dug in the river-bank.* Colonel
Markham, Penn's cousin and lieutenant, came
out to take charge of the colony. He also
brought a long letter from Penn, to read to the
Indians, to see how they would stand that sort
of thing. The reading was not attended with
any fatal results.

In the mean time Penn was settling the clash-
ing interests of proprietorship between himself,
the Duke of York, and Lord Baltimore. These
differences were temporarily adjusted, as usual
in these little deals, in Penn's favor and to his
great advantage. The thermometer was a foot
and a half below zero when Penn missed the
train. But this adjustment did not stay ad-
justed, and eventually Penn got left.

*Why they did not go to the hotels, of which there are
several in Chester, or go up to Philadelphia by rail, does not
appear. It is very probable the immigrants were out of money
and were waiting at Chester for remittances.

^t. 37.J PENN PICTURES. 77

This year his mother died. Penn's affection-
ate nature so keenly felt this blow that for seve-
ral days he was ill and unable to bear the light,
and it was many weeks before his usual habits
of activity returned to him. But when the edge
of the great Quaker's sorrow was blunted, and
life and its duties called him from his grief, all
his heart went out again to the " Holy Experi-
ment," his model republic in the new world, his
colony where the government and the people,
the law and religion, should go hand in hand,
mutually dependent and mutually helpful.
And the sound of the Indian wigwam was
heard in the distance.

CHAPTER V.

GO WEST, YOUNG MAN.

'' pRIEND WILLIAM," remarked the Merry
Monarch, if the historian of the Third
Reader is to be credited,* " I suppose you are
going to make sure the Indians will not shed a
drop of your Quaker blood, by remaining in
England, where it is far more Hkely to be shed
by the headsman of the established church."

" Which," replied the Quaker chieftain, with
mild sarcasm, '^ is where thee is away off thy
base. I am even now ready to sail, and am
come to bid thee ta-ta."

"What! venture yourself among the sava-
ges of North America? Why, man, what se-
curity have you that you'll not be in their war-
kettle in two hours after setting foot upon their
shores?"

"The best security in the world," replied
Penn, calmly,—'' a first mortgage on every foot

* Which he is not.

^t. 38.] THE SCIENCE OF INDIAN-TAMING. 79

of ground my particular savages own ; a regular
cut-throat, that I can shut down on them any
time I please."

'' Nixie weeden," replied the King, " I have no
idea of any security against those cannibals but
in a regiment of good soldiers with their mus-
kets and bayonets. And I tell you beforehand,
with all my good-will to you and your family,
now there is no more prospect for my borrow-
ing money of you, I'll not send a single soldier
with you. If things keep on as they are now, I
shall need them all myself pretty suddenly."

*' I want none.of thy soldiers," answered Penn,
pleasantly ; " if I need troops, I can call out the
State Fencibles and wipe the ground with any-
thing that ever wore a scarlet coat. But I de-
pend upon something better than thy soldiers."

The King wanted to know if he meant peace
commissioners.

" Why, no, I depend upon themselves," replied
Penn, " on their own moral sense and inward
goodness."

" That's all well enough," rephed the King,
" but Phil Sheridan says the only good Indian
is a dead one."

*'Phil Sheridan is a man of war," said the

80 WILLIAM PENN. [1682.

Quaker. "When thy subjects first went to
North America they found these poor people
the fondest and kindest creatures in the world.
Every day they would watch for them to come
ashore, and hasten to meet them and feast them
on their best fish and venison, and corn, and
oysters so big that it took two men to swallow
a small one. In return for this hospitality of
the savages, as we call them, thy subjects, termed
Christians, seized their best hunting-grounds and
opened them up to preemption under the Home-
stead and Bounty acts, located mining-claims
all over their mountains, and, in open disregard
of all treaty obhgations, forced them upon
wretched alkali reservations not fit for a goose-
pasture, until in desperation these much-injured
people followed Captain Jack to the lava-beds
and rode over the border with Sitting Bull, and
went into the human-hair business with limited
capital but unbounded enthusiasm and enter-
prise."

" Well, then, I hope, friend William, you will
not complain when * Old - Man-Down-on-the-
Quakers' hfts your flowing locks and makes
you at once a subject for the hatter, the wig-
maker, and the coroner."

^t. 38.] THE RIGHT OF MIGHT. 8 1

"Mighty clear of the murder," said Penn.
" When I come back to England I shall have
hair of my own to sell. "

'* In your mind you will," replied the King,
with his ready wit, " but I suppose you mean to
jump their hunting-grounds, like the rest of us ?"

''Yes, but not by any swindling act of Con-
gress or miserable land-grab," said the honest
Friend ; " I mean to buy their lands of them."

The King looked at William in a tone of as-
tonishment for a moment, then he compressed
his lips firmly, bulged out his cheeks, protruded
his chin, and sank down on a cracker-box, smit-
ing his knees and swaying to and fro with sup-
pressed laughter. When he recovered from this
burst of royal merriment, he said,

" Why, man, you have bought their lands al-
ready, of me !"

"I know that," replied the gentle Quaker,
" but that was because I knew I could never get
a dollar of my just claims out of thee in any
other way. I only paid for thy good-will. What
right had thee to the land ?"

''Right?" exclaimed his most gracious ma-
jesty,—"the cleanest title you ever saw on
parchment; runs clear back to a government

82 WILLIAM PENN. [1682.

patent. Here: beginning at the northeastern
bound of the Ashburton treaty, thence running
southwest to a port in Key West, thence west-
erly to a tree at the mouth of the Rio Grande,
thence across the country and so on up and
around back to the place of beginning. You
find a flaw in that title, and I'll give you a stock-
farm in Iowa. Of course it's my land. I dis-
covered it. Or at least some other man did, and
I took it away from him."

" The right of discovery," said Penn, " doesn't
hold good in this court. Suppose, friend Charles,
some canoe-loads of these Indians should cross
the sea and discover thy islands of Great Britain ?
What would thee do, sell out or vacate?"

To which the King very truthfully replied
that he would sell out his whole kingdom any
time to the first man that bid high enough, and
if the Indians were big enough and strong
enougli he would vacate by the first steamer
that sailed for France. *' That is the kind of
monarch I am," he added, "but you needn't tell
people I said so. But," he continued earnestly,
** I have heard the Indians are great thieves,
and will steal anything they can carry away, if
it doesn't grow fast to the ground. Look after

^t. 38] A FURLONG OF ADVICE. 83

your doors and keep your hand on your
lock."

" What lock ?" asked the unsuspecting Friend.

"Scalp-lock!" shouted the witty monarch in
a burst of merriment, — "tra-la-la, William !"

" See you later," muttered the discomfited
Quaker, as he followed his precious hat out of
the royal apartments.

Penn bade his family an affectionate farewell,
and wrote his wife and children a long letter,
containing nearly four thousand words, which
filled them plumb full of good advice and com-
mercial and moral and practical instruction.
He bade Mrs. Penn " be diligent in meetings
for worship and business; stir up thyself and
others herein ;" '* make thy family matters easy
to thee ;" to have regular hours '' for work,
walking, and meals," and "grieve not thyself
with careless servants ; rather pay them and let
them go," — which shows that the housekeeper's
struggle with the queen of the kitchen was rag-
ing and wearing out mothers and wives and
breaking crystal and chipping fine china and
scouring silver with sand and yellow soap even
in the wealthy families away back in Penn's
time. " Cast up thy income, and I beseech thee

84 WILLIAM PENN. [1682.

to live low and sparingly till my debts are paid.' ^
He lays out her amusements for her. '' Guard
against encroaching friendships, . . . and let thy
children, good meetings, and Friends be the
pleasure of thy life."f He bade her "■ spare no
cost" in the education of the children, " for by
such parsimony all is lost that is saved." '' Let
my children be husbandmen and housewives."
He preferred they should have a private tutor,
who could toot in the house, '' rather than send
them to schools," where they would learn too
many things he didn't want them to know. %
He bade his children "obey, love, and cherish
your dear mother ;" if they marry, to do so with
her consent. " I charge you, help the poor and
needy ; let the Lord have a voluntary share of
your income for the poor, both in your own
society and others." There was never anything
small or narrow about William Penn. § " Love
not money or the world," he told them ; '* use

* In many respects Penn was very like other men.

\ Once in a while she might go out to see her grandmother's
grave, or one of the children might have a tooth pulled, or some
innocent fun like that, but no excessive levity and vanity was
permitted.

X Which they would find out anyhow.

§ Not even his hat.

^t. 38.] SCOURGED BY THE SMALL-POX. 85

them only, and they will serve you." '' In mak-
ing friends, consider well first, and when you
are fixed, be true, not wavering- in reports, nor
deserting in affliction." "As for you who are
Ifkely to be concerned in the government of
Pennsylvania, I do charge you that you be
lowly, diligent, and tender, fearing God, loving
the people, and hating covetousness. Keep upon
the square." * " Finally, my dear children, love
one another and your dear relations on both
sides, and take care to preserve tender affection
in your children to each other, often marrying
within themselves, so as it be without the
bounds forbidden in God's law, that they may
not grow out of kindred and cold as Strangers."t
On the 1st of September he sailed in the good
ship Welcome With one hundred passengers,
nearly all Friends, and his old neighbors of
Sussex County. They enjoyed a very miser-
able voyage. It lasted six weeks, and the small-

*Can it be possible that William Penn was the man who
killed Morgan ? It seems that he was a Mason and a goat- rider.

f Penn realized how much easier it would be for his boys to
marry their cousins, and arrange matters with their uncles,
whose peculiarities they knew, and with whose dogs they were on
friendly and speaking terms, than to meet strange fathers-in-
law and brindle terriers that they knew not of, and to whom
an mtroduction would be fraught with perilous formalities.

86 WILLIAM PENN, [1682.

pox broke out. Of the hundred passengers
thirty died at sea, and before the voyage was
half completed every passenger on the Welcome
was sick. For thirty hours, on one occasion, the
burial service never ceased. With no fear and
no thought for himself, Penn moved through
the dark, narrow cabins, crowded with death
and suffering, and the brightest qualities of his
manhood and Christianity shone forth in the
presence of that loathsome pestilence.* At
length, after the horrors of disease and death
had made the weeks drag their weary lengths
along like slow-moving months, the Welcome
dropped anchor off Newcastle, and the Dutch
and Swedes welcomed the new Governor most
cordially when he stepped ashore.

Having hired a hall, Penn unloaded a long
speech upon the defenceless inhabitants, a cus-
tom that prevails with American Governors
even unto the present day, with the exceptions,
indeed, of the Governors of North Carolina and
South Carolina, one of whom is reported as
being very brief but very pointed in his remarks,
while the speech of the other has never been
reported.

* This was before the discovery of vaccination.

JEt. 38.] M^J/AT'S IN A NAME? 8/

The commissions of all the magistrates at
Newcastle were renewed, whereupon the incum-
bents passed resolutions advocating civil-service
reform and endorsing the administration, while
the citizens who had expected commissions and
didn't get them viewed with alarm the growing
power of the " machine," and grieved to see
that the new administration was making itself
solid with the " bosses."

Penn then went to Chester, where he must
have been surprised to see the Crozier Theo-
logical Seminary for Baptists, and the Pennsyl-
vania MiHtary Academy.* The town was then
settled by Swedes, who called their village Up-
land. Penn, however, changed the name to
Chester, because that was the town his friend
Pearson came^from. The wonderful strength
of will and marvellous unselfishness in Penn's
character is shown in the fact that he refrained
from changing the name to Pearsonborough
or Pennholder or Williamville, after the usual
American plan.

While he waited in Chester the Assembly of
Pennsylvania held its first session, which lasted

* As he says nothing about them, it is probable that he didn't
see them.

88 WILLIAM PENN. [1682.

only four days. This brevity was owing in great
measure to an excellent rule adopted by both
houses, "that none speak but once before the
question is put, nor after, but once, and that
superfluous and tedious speeches may be stopped
by the Speaker." *

Among other important laws that they passed
after adopting Penn's constitution was one that
every child twelve years of age, rich or poor,
should be instructed in some useful trade or
skill, all work being honorable, and idleness a
shame.

Having founded a great state with less noise
and talk than is usually occupied in organizing
a debating society, the Assembly adjourned, and
the honorable members collected their per diem
and went back to their farms at their own ex-
pense, the duty of distributing annual passes to
the members having not yet occurred to the
Pennsylvania Railroad.

After the adjournment of the Assembly
Penn visited the Governors of New York and
Maryland, delivering a few sermons here and
there, as occasion offered. He was well satis-

*This rule is not now in force in the legislative assemblies
of the United States.

JEt. 38.] A MODEL EMIGRATION CIRCULAR. 89

fied with his own colony and province. The
soil was fertile, " provision good and easy to
come at," he writes; the woods were full of
game and the rivers full of fish ; *' oysters were
six inches long," and still growing ; wild tur-
keys flew so low and in such crowds " they
could be killed with a stick," and some of the
big ones " weighed 46 pounds." * A deer sold
for two shillings ; " wild pigeons were also killed
with sticks ;" there were " plenty of swans," and
" peaches by cart-loads." An enterprising pro-
prietor of a summer hotel, at that time, embodied
these facts in his circular. That same circular
has been used by all summer hotels since his
time, and the copy has never been changed. f

Penn now looked around for a good place for
the capital of his province. There was a strong
lobby in favor of Chester, the oldest town in
Pennsylvania, but all the best town lots in
Chester were already sold or in the hands of
speculators. Penn's cesthetic eye was caught
by the beautiful country at the junction of the
Schuylkill and Delaware. Some one told him
that the Indian name of the Schuylkill was Man-

*The small ones didn't weigh more than 30 pounds, probably,
•j; But the tariff has, and so has the bill of fare.

90 WILLIAM PENN. [1682.

ajung, to which the noble Friend replied that
he was Manajung this thing himself, and he'd
call the creek anything he pleased. Three
Swedes owned the land Penn wanted for his
capital, and hearing that he was very anxious
to buy, they told him that real estate was away
up and still booming, and they unloaded their
farms on him at a margin that made them laugh
in their sleep for a week afterward.

Then Penn laid out his city.* " Keep on the
square," he had written to his sons, and he was
determined to make it a very hard matter for
them to get off it, whenever they came to town.
He took a straight ruler and a sheet of paper
and laid out his city. He drew a parallelogram
two miles long and one mile wide. ''There,"
he said proudly, '* if you want to see something
pretty in the way of a city, look at that." In
the centre of this parallelogram he located a
square of ten acres, and in each of the four
quarters one of eight acres, for public parks,
wisely foreseeing that some accommodations

* It seems he didn't know that Harrisburg is the capital of
Pennsylvania. Penn had a great deal to think about, it is true,
but such ignorance in the Governor of the province was inex-
cusable.

.Et. 38.] THE GERM OF A CITY. 9 1

would have to be provided for the tramps,
along in 1882. Two wide streets fronted the
rivers; running from the Schuylkill to the Del-
aware nine streets were laid out, crossed by
twenty-one running north and south. Of the
nine east and west streets, High Street was a
broad avenue, one hundred feet wide ; it is now
called Market," and the ^' lines of trees" that
were to fringe it in lasting ornament and shade
have given place to double tracks of street rail-
ways.* The streets running parallel to High
were named Vine, Sassafras, Mulberry, Chest-
nut, Walnut, Spruce, Pine, and Cedar. Sassa-
fras is now called Race, and Mulberry answers
to the name of Arch. Broad Street, one hun-
dred and thirteen feet wide, crossed Market at
right angles, ^and divided the city in two, north
and south. All other streets were to be fifty
feet in width.

Penn thought he had plenty of room for a
large city, with a small forest in front of every
man's house and a kitchen-garden in the back
yard. His dreams of Philadelphia were the only
small things about him. The incorporated city

" Fare, six cents.

92 WILLIAM PENN. [1682.

of Philadelphia grew out of Penn's little paral-
lelogram, two miles long and one mile wide,
until it included the entire county, a territory
twenty-three miles in length with an average
width of five and a half miles, an area of \2<^\
square miles, and a population of 800,000 inhabi-
tants. One part of his beloved city did not
grow, however. The ten-acre park at the inter-
section of Broad and High streets did not catch
the boom. It began to dwindle and fade away ;
shrank down to Penn Square at last, and has
finally been entirely obliterated and filled up
with the new city buildings, which will be com-
pleted about 1892. The other four squares still
exist, while the pride of Penn's city is Fairmount
Park, which Penn forgot to lay out, now unsur-
passed by any public park in America, contain-
ing nearly three thousand acres. There were
several other things Penn forgot to put in his
city, which the descendants of his colonists have
since attended to for him.

But Penn's town grew and prospered. The
Indians called it *' Co-a-que-na-que," but Penn
didn't want to feel as though he was giving out
hard words at an Indiana spelling-school every
time he spoke the name of his city, so he called

^t. 38.] FENN'S GENIUS FOR NAMES. 93

it Philadelphia.^ He displayed his originality
and versatiHty in the christening- of his towns.
He guarded his government carefully against
the errors of the New England codes and in-
tolerance, and he avoided with equal care the
New England system of nomenclature. But for
this, after he named the first town in his prov-
ince Chester, he would have called Philadelphia
New Chester, and the succeeding settlements
North Chester, South Chester, Chester Centre,
Chester Upper Falls, East Chester, West Ches-
ter, Chester Corners, Chester Lower Falls,
Chester Port, Port Chester, Chester Village,
Chester Station, Chesterville, Chestertown,
Chester City, Chester Court House, Chester
Cross Roads, Chester Land, Chester Siding,
Chester Intersection, Chester Landing, Mount
Chester, Chester Bridge, and Chest-around-the-
corner. Happily for posterity, Penn saw where
that sort of a thing was liable to run if it once
got started.

* " Why do you call your town Philadelphia?" asked Charles,
on Penn's return to England. " Because that is its name,"
answered the thoughtful Quaker. The King looked at him
steadfastly, and then remarking, " That's on me," left the room
to conceal his emotion, while Penn threw himself on the floor
and laughed till his hat fell off.

94 WILLIAM PENN, [168!..

Immigrants crowded to the Quaker City long
before there was any place to put them. The
new-cgmers lived in caves on the banks of the
Schuylkill, or abode and made their soup under
the broad canopy of heaven until they could
build houses. The Blue Anchor Tavern was
the first building completed in Philadelphia,
built by a man named Guest, who was its first
landlord. This house had twelve feet front on
the river and ran back twenty-two feet, to Dock
Street, and was tavern, corn-market, board of
trade, ferry-house, post-office, steamboat wharf,
Pennsylvania depot, and Centennial buildings,
in its time. There was a cottage already stand-
ing on the site of Philadelphia, built some years
before by a man named Drinker,* but it wasn't
built in Philadelphia, Philadelphia was built
around it. Other houses were built near
Guest's. Twenty-three ships, freighted with
colonists, came up the Delaware the year of
Penn's landing, and more were continually
arriving. Stone houses were built, " with
pointed roofs, balconies, and porches ;" a post-
ofiBce and a star mail-route, " unexpedited,"

* Temperance lecturer.

^t. 38.] ms COLONY A SUCCESS. 95

were established within a year. Enoch Flower
opened school in December, and taught boys
and girls to " read for four shillings a quarter ;
to write, six shillings ; boarding, washing, lodg-
ing, diet, and schooling, ten pounds the whole
year,"— flogging, gratis and regular.

The colony was a remarkable success. "I
must, without vanity," Penn wrote to Lord
Hahfax, " say I have led the greatest colony into
America that ever any man did on private
credit."

And though he said it who should not say
it, it was the truth.

CHAPTER VL

UNDER THE BIG ELM.

JUST about this time the curtain was rung up
for the grand transformation scene, and the
full strength of the entire ballet, with William
Penn as premier, appeared in the great Treaty
Act. The date is a little indefinite. One au-
thority places it on October 14, 1682; another
says it was near the close of November, 1682 ;
still another says it was in 1682, but with cau-
tious self-restraint ventures on no particular
date ; one writer also allows this famous treaty
the liberty of the entire year ; yet another his-
torian generously gives his readers the privilege
of dating it to suit themselves, any time between
the destruction of Babylon and the completion
of the Washington Monument. The Pennsyl-
vania Historical Society, the best of all authori-
ties, with the one exception of the valuable and
accurate volume now in the hands of the de-
lighted reader, fixes the date of the treaty in
October, 1682. .

.Et. 38.] THE OLD AND THE NEW. 9/

It will be borne in mind that, prior to 1752,
the innumerable insurance calendars and count-
less tons of American medical almanacs for gra-
tuitous distribution by all respectable druggists
were not printed, and the English people, both
in the mother-country and the colonies, had no
knowledge of the proper division of the year,
and lived and died under the ghastly illusion
that New Year's day fell on the first of March,
and the year beginning at that time threw the
Fourth of July on the fourth of September. In
one ''Life of Penn" this appalling ignorance of
our ancestors has evidently bothered the bi-
ographer, who speaks of the ''6th month" in
Penn's time as June, and in consequence has
him "saihng before the midsummer's smoky
breeze" along ^in October or November. In
this present work, it being the official standard
of the Pennsylvania Historical Society and the
Society of Friends, the greatest attention has
been paid to dates, and people who discover any
errors in it are earnestly requested to correct
them by annotations on their own copies of the
biography, and not to trouble the pubHsher or
author about them, or to rush into the news-
papers with wrathful cards signed " Constant

98 WILLIAM PENN. [1682.

Reader" and " Old Subscriber/' which no man
ever reads save only the proof-reader, — and he
has to be paid for it, or he wouldn't.

There are no contemporary accounts of this
treaty. Bearing this fact in mind, remembering
that no historical record of what was said and
done at this treaty, nor where it was held, nor
when, was made at the time, the reader is often
surprised at the vast amount of information
possessed on these points by modern history.
But that is a way modern history has. Indian
legends and Quaker traditions, handed down by
word of mouth from one generation to another,
have given historians all the suggestions and
data from which their lively imaginations could
manufacture the necessary facts. However,
some valuable old manuscripts, quite recently
discovered, and, in fact, written by the able and
painstaking author of this work for the express
purpose of throwing light and trustworthy in.
formation upon this subject, have added largely
to our hitherto meagre array of established facts
in connection with this treaty.

As to the place, although there are men who
claim that the treaty was held at Chester and
various other points, the better authorities

vEt. 38.J THE PLACE OF THE TREATY. 99

locate it on the spot now marked by an alleged
" monument," in Kensington. Kensington is
English for Shackamaxon. '' Colonel Markham
had already appointed this locality for his first
conference with the Indians," says Dixon, ''and
the land commissioners wisely followed his ex-
ample. Old traditions had made the place
sacred to one of the contracting parties, and
when Penn proposed his solemn conference, he
named Shackamaxon as a matter of course for
its locality." *

Wherever and whenever this treaty was made
and signed, it is well known that Penn had been
posing for it from the day he landed at Chester.
He made himself popular f with the Indians.
He sat at their feasts, passed his plate for more
baked dog, and affected to like Indian cookery.
He ate parched acorns and hominy. And
when any man, not being impelled thereto by
the pangs of starvation, can, deliberately and in
cold blood, eat hominy, that man is too much
for an acre of Indians. The Indians were over-
joyed when they saw him eat hominy, it being

* Penn did not know that the proper name of this suburb was
Kensington,
•f In Lenni-Lenape dialect, "solid."

lOO WILLIAM PENN. [1682.

the first time any white man had been able to
devour that luxury and live.* After this in-
human repast, the savages began to jump, and
Penn joined them in this pastime. He made a
few easy jumps, until he spurred the longest-
legged man in the tribe to do his best. Then
William arose. He took off his long single-
breasted cut-away coat with many buttons, but
kept on his hat. He toed the mark carefully
and, with a brick in each hand, began swinging
his arms to and fro with measured rhythm. The
guileless Indians had never before seen a man
jump with the weights, and these swaying
bricks were a novelty to them. While they
gathered close around him, they could see, by
the superhuman gravity of his severe counte-
nance and the measured manner in which he
lifted himself on his toes every time the bricks
came back, that he was getting ready for the
'■^ boss jump." f Suddenly the stately figure
crowned with the broad-brim hat rose in the

* From this one can judge of the awful strength of Penn's
stomach. His long experience with English prison diet prob-
ably prepared him for hominy; an article of alleged diet "about
as fit to eat as beer is to drink.

f "Boss," a Lenni-Lenape colloquial expression, meaning
great, supreme, superlative.

J£l, 38.] A MIXED REPORT. lOI

air like a premature balloon ascension, and the
two bricks went flying into the unsuspecting
crowd, knocking down a sachem and two
medicine-men and creating the most intense ex-
citement and wildest confusion, taking advan-
tage of which Penn ran two or three steps after
he jumped, then balanced himself on his heels
and cried, " Looky ! looky here ! " The untu-
tored children of the forest marked the break of
his heels, and his supposed jump measured 37
feet 8i inches. The Indians were wild with ad-
miration and amazement. One envious brave,
indeed, offered to bet a wampum and a half he
couldn't do it again without the bricks, but it
afterward appeared that he had been hit in the
eye with one of them, and was accordingly
prejudiced.

Shackamaxon, with its elm-tree and its great
treaty, has been the theme of bard and chroni-
cler and painter, and, faithfully painted from
the various historical descriptions of the scene,
the picture would indeed be impressive and
varied as a mince -pie -and -cider nightmare.
From various well-known, careful, and widely
accepted authorities I quote :

''After sailing this day, as aforesaid, about

102 WILLIAM PENN. [1682.

forty miles before the midsummer's smoky
breeze, ... he beheld two Indian villages near
the water." *' It is near the close of November,"
on which day, " October 14th, a scene took
place which history has made memorable."
"As if purposely formed to be the theatre of
that memorable event, an elm-tree of extraordi-
nary size lifted high its towering top, and from
its giant arms threw far and wide a refreshing
shade over many a grassy acre." * '' Under the
wide-branching elm the Indian tribes are as-
sembled, but all unarmed." " Marching to and
fro in their military dresses, armed with bows
and arrows." " The Indians threw down their
bows and arrows, and seated themselves around
their chiefs," for '' they came in large numbers,
armed and painted."

Out of an this confusion and contradiction, it
is refreshing to walk into the light of more pains-
taking, elaborate, and modern research. Un-
doubtedly it was in November, 1682, when this
treaty took place. The elm-tree was there, but

* A refreshing .shade on a grassy acre was a very necessary
concomitant of an out-door meeting on the Delaware late in
November. To this shade we owe the fact that no one was
sunstruck at this treaty.

^t. 38.] ''RICH AND RAREr IO3

its shade was not necessary. Penn could keep
shady enough in a land trade, without thj5 assist-
ance of any elm-tree. He was there, and Solo-
mon in all his glory never wore such Quaker
clothes. A " hat of the cavaher shape, but
without the feather," a coat that reached to his
knees and was " covered with buttons," a vest
only about two sizes smaller than the coat, also
suffering from an irruption of buttons ; " trous-
ers extremely full, slashed at the sides and tied
with strings or ribbons ;" " a profusion of shirt-
sleeves and ruffles," and a " sky-blue sash tied
round his waist." He wore his hair long and
curled, as usuar, and was in his thirty-eighth
year, " the handsomest, best-looking, most lively
gentleman," Mrs. Preston says, she had ever
seen. All Penn's biographers agree in denounc-
ing Benjamin West's portrait of him, in his
painting of this scene, as a wretched burlesque,
in which Penn appears as an " ugly fat old fel-
low, with the costumes half a century out of
date."

William was accompanied by Colonel Mark-
ham, his friend Pearson, and a company of
Friends and sailors bearing post-sutler stores
and trader's goods. For the first and about the

I04 WILLIAM PENN. [1682.

only time since so-called Christian monarchs
and alleged Christian commanders had occupied
America, unarmed Christians showed their trust
in God and their belief in his word by meeting
his savage children with the extended hand of
amity, without a smell of powder on it, and a
proffer of friendship uncoupled with a demand
for all the land between New Jersey and the
Mississippi river.

The Indians were there. Three tribes at
least were represented by delegates who were
present in the convention — the Lenni Lenape,
the Mingoes, and the Shawnees. Letters of re-
gret, conveying their cordial sympathy v/ith
the object of the convention, and expressing
their entire willingness to serve in any posi-
tion to which the voice of the people might call
them, were received from '' Old-man-holding-
his-land-for-a-rise," " Sitting Hen," " Young-man-
with~a-farm-in-the-Oil-Country," " Theeanthou-
nobody," " Dontchuwishucould," '' Man-with-
his-eye-on-a-rail-road," and *' Old-man-who-sold-
land-to-white-people-once-before." Several of
the absent statesmen did, indeed, say they had
no land to sell, but they had a fine assortment
of flint spear and arrow heads they would gladly

^t. 38.] OPENING CHORUS. IO5

exchange for undressed human hair of Euro-
pean brands— English preferred.

The Indian delegates who were present were
largely arrayed in paint and feathers, and as
they squatted on the ground around their
chiefs they looked like the front door of a
Western wagon-shop— a breathing nocturne in
red and yellow. Approaching Penn with the
easy grace of a man who has had his own way
all his life, the Sachem-in-chief, the great Tami-
nend,^ whose name, in the Lenni-Lenape lan-
guage, signifies '' Man-who-puts-on-a-good-deal-
of-dog," extended his hand and said,

"How?"

He then withdrew his hand, and appeared
very much surprised on finding nothing in it.
The stately ravage retired a few paces, sat
down, and put his hand around to his hip.

''Look out," said Colonel Markham, "he's
feeling for a pistol." And then he stepped be-
hind his stately cousin, remarking, "We will
die together."

Instead of a pistol, however, the Sachem
drew from his pocket a sort of head-stall or

* The author of Tammany Hall, New York, and the patron
saint of a great political party.

I06 WILLIAM PENN. [1682.

chaplet, on which was fastened a small horn,
the efnblem of sovereign power and authority,
the wearing of which made the occasion and
the locality sacred and inviolate.

'' I always take a horn before I make a
trade," said the Sachem. This was his little
joke, at which all Indians owning his sover-
eignty were compelled to laugh twice a year.

Penn having caught the eye of the Speaker
now obtained the floor, and addressed the house
on the subject of the Pennsylvania land bill.
He held in his hand a roll of parchment pur-
porting to be the treaty of amity and purchase,
but which was really the manuscript of his ex-
tempore speech. A deathhke stillness pervaded
the assembly, only broken by the mellow notes
of the distant war-whoops that the little Indian
children were trundling in Fairmount Park.
Penn cleared his throat, chewed a troche, and
said,

'' Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen—"

At this point he was interrupted by a Mingo
sachem, who rose to a point of order and said,

" Mr. Speaker, does not the honorable gentle-
man speak the Mingo language ?"

Penn replied that he knew the tune very well,

^t. 38.] THE NORA TION. IO7

but he didn't know the words. The Court
then informed him that he would have to pro-
vide an interpreter at his own expense, as the
Mingoes were there first, and held the age on
the language.

An interpreter was then secured, and Penn
resumed :

" Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen : I am—
er ah — I am — ha, h'm— I am not— I am— I am
sensible — ha, unaccustomed as I am to — ha, pub-
lic speaking— ha. Er ah — Brothers, listen."

O Id-man- with-cotton-in-his-ears to Interpre-
ter— '' What is he saying ?'*

Interpreter — '' Blowed if I know."

William Penn— *' But again! Brothers, lis-
ten ! We are all brothers !" (Derisive laughter
from the squa\^s.) ''That is — er um — and sis-
ters." (Derisive laughter and cries of "Oh,
oh !" from the braves.) " To resume ! We are
all children together, of one family, and we
must love one another."

Interpreter — " He is now giving us confec-
tionery."

William Penn — " There is no need for us to
quarrel. The world is big enough for us all ;
for the red brothers and the white brothers,

I08 WILLIAM PENN. [1682,

too. And there is fish, and deer, and turkeys,
and corn, and oysters, and planked shad, and
soup, and beans, and beef, for us all."

Young-man-not-afraid-of-the-vial to Interpre-
ter— " Didn't he say anything about rum ?"

Interpreter — ''Don't talk back. No, he
hasn't got down to business yet."

William Penn — '' Therefore, if at any time
the red men or the white men — "

A Shawnee delegate — " Ask him if this is a
chess problem he is giving us?"

WilHam Penn, corrected by the Interpreter —
" If the red brothers see anything the white
brothers have that they want, or vice versa"
(loud cries of "Construe! construe!"), ''they
must not fight and take it away. Oh no, that
would be very naughty. And, besides, before I
get through with thee, I'll show thee how to
get all thee wants from an Indian without fight-
ing about it."

" What does he mean by that, and why does
the brother lay the palm of his forefinger on
the side of his nose and close one eye ?" asked
a delegate from the Delaware nation.

" He says," replied the Interpreter, " that you
will understand him better when you grow

yEt. 38.] GIVING IT TO THEM EASY. ICQ

older, and he holds his finger that way because
his memory is poor."

" Ugh ! Tell him to go on with the racket."

William Penn resumed : '' Moreover, if we
fight, thee will get left."

A Mingo delegate — " Please ask him to de-
monstrate that hypothesis."

William Penn — '' With pleasure. Thy own
eyes see our canoes yonder." (Cries of *' Oh,
oh !" and caustic requests for the Speaker to ex-
plain to the gentleman the difference between a
ship and a canoe.) '' Now, you see our canoes
are bigger than thy canoes, and our bows and
arrows — "

Interpreter — " He means guns, but he seems
to be a little off in his vocabulary to-day. He
means all right/'

William Penn — *' Our bows and arrows send
out thunder and lightning. Nothing can stand
before them."

Old-man-with-his-arm-in-a-sling — " No, and no-
body could stand behind those Dutch muskets
we took away from the Swedes last winter.
Tell him Fd rather be shot at with some of his
thunder and lightning than touch it off."

William Penn — *' We could easily kill thee

I lO WILLIAM PENN. [16S2.

with our bows and arrows, and take thy
land."

Interpreter — '*Young-man- with -a- patch -on-
his-eye wishes me to say that perhaps you
would like to come out to the lava-beds and try
that on, if you think it's so easy. He says he's
heard white men talk that way before, but they
took good care to keep off the reservation all
the same."

William Penn — " That's all right ; but my red
brother is here, and I am not going to the lava-
beds. Brothers, I and my people are not
mouth-slappers and bad men from Oshkosh.
We do not carry razors in our boots. We are
not come to hurt thee."

Interpreter — " The big Indian with the bear-
claw necklace and his ears painted black says,
' You're right, you don't look very dangerous.*
He's an awful bad Indian. Cut a man at a
dance last Friday night, and has served two
terms in Moyamensing."

William Penn — *' We are met on the broad
pathway of good faith and good will, so that
no advantage is to be taken on either side. I
will not call you children or brothers, as the
Marylanders did, for Heaven forbid I should do

^t. 38.] A FAR-FETCHED EXAMPLE. Ill

anything like a Mary lander, because it's a wise
father in these days that can keep even with his
son or prevent his daughter from marrying the
hostler. Neither will I compare the friendship
between us to a chain, which the passing tramp
or the casual Indian may bear away to the
nearest junk-shop. But I will consider you the
same flesh and blood with ourselves, just as
though one man's body were divided into two
parts,"

" Tell him," remarked an old Indian painted
in three colors, and wearing only one ear and
no scalp, " Tell him I have seen, and not far
away from this pleasant land, down here in
Virginia, one man's body divided into as many
parts as there were Injuns in the crowd who
could get at him, and he didn't seem to be a
very happy man either."

*' And tell him," said a young sachem in his
bare head and with three bear-skin patches in
the epilogue of his buckskin ulster, " to open
his kiesters and show up his samples. We can
talk when it's too dark to do anything else."

*'And now, in conclusion," said WilHam
Penn, " for time flies and money is twelve
per cent, I'll tell thee what I'll do with thee.

112 WILLIAM PENN. [1682.

We didn't come here to rob thee, and I didn't
come here to-day to deal in real estate at all.
but if thee has any land thee wants to sell, I'll
make thee an offer as square as a horse-trade.
I don't want to beat thee out of a foot of
ground, and I don't want to buy to-day, but if
thee is anxious to sell, I'll give right here, cash
and goods right down on the counter, five
hundred dollars for the state of Pennsylvania,
with all the dips, spurs, angles, leads, sinuosi-
ties, stock, fixtures, good-will and other appur-
tenances thereunto appertaining."

" They want you," explained the Interpreter,
'' to make it five hundred and a half."

'' Couldn't do it," replied Penn. '' I won't
make a dollar out of it at five hundred dollars.
I've paid sixteen thousand pounds for it now, to
a man that never owned a foot of it."

*' He wants to know, Onas," ^' said the Inter-
preter, when a sachem finished speaking, ''■ if
you paid sixteen thousand pounds for the state
to a land-grabber who couldn't give you a deed,

*" Onas" was the nearest the Indians could get to Penn's
name. Onas, in their own sweet tongue, meant a quill, and
quill-pens were the only kind in use among the Indians.
Although why it wasn't just as easy to say Penn, even with
two n's, "as Onas. no one but an Indian could tell.

^t. 38.] AN AWKWARD QUESTION. II3

if you think it's a square deal to offer the right-
ful owners only five hundred dollars to quiet
title?"

And the silence that fell on the assembly was
so profound you might have heard a gumdrop.

CHAPTER VII.

THE PIONEER LAND-OFFICE.

RECOVERING from the momentary em-
barrassment into which the irrelevant ques-
tion of the untutored savage had thrown him,
William hastened to explain that he hadn't
really paid one continental dollar for the pro-
vince as yet. That a man — his most gracious
majesty the King, in fact — owed him 16,000
pounds, and he knew he was never going to get
a shilling of it. And, somehow, the King had
the same kind of presentiment, and when Penn
took this land for that debt, it was tacitly under-
stood on both sides that the King hadn't lost a
nickel, while it was the softest thing for the
Quaker that could happen. Moreover, Penn
assured the sachems that he didn't come there
to make a real-estate deal. He had royal letters
patent, right there in his pocket, conveying to
William Penn, himself, his heirs, executors, ad-
ministrators, and assigns, to have and to hold,

^t. 38.] THE FLA T. 1 1 5

for better or worse, be the same more or less,
all and several, that part of North America
lying between New Jersey, Maryland, the Ohio
river and lake Erie, as hereinafter described by
metes and bounds as follows, to wit, namely,
viz. ; being a tract or parcel of land 300 miles
long and 160 miles wide, and containing 47,000
square miles, being a trifle smaller thart the
kingdom of England.

The Indians weakened when they heard this,
and said they wouldn't stay in, but Penn again
assured them it was not his intention to take a
mean advantage of them. He did not come
over in the Mayflower, but he believed in paying
an Indian for his land before you converted him
with a musket and then took his land because
he died intestate. He just wanted them to sign
this treaty of friendship, which would relieve
both sides from the expense of a standing army,
and ratify the purchases already made and the
legal validity of the King's letters patent in
order to quiet his title, and they would talk real
estate some other time. This was satisfactory
to the Indians ; with much perspiration and
many blots and smears, and much thrusting out
of the tongue, the Indians signed the treaty, and

Il6 WILLIAM PENN. [16S2.

quit-claimed the Keystone State to William
Penn for $515.50, with the understanding that
they should have the privilege of selling it all
over to him again, from time to time, in sepa-
rate tracts. Among the articles for which the
Indians quit-claimed their rights to the state,
Friend Weems enumerates "20 guns," worth
$7 each, a $7 gun being considered the safest
possible kind of gun for the white man, in the
hands of an Indian.* Then followed " 20 fath-
oms of match coat," whatever that is, and *' 20
fathoms of stroud water," supposed to be some-
thing for the hair or handkerchief ; " 40 toma-
hawks," to be used in kiUing other Indians only ;
" 100 bars of lead," to afford youthful Indians
the means of securing admission to the circus ;
"- 100 knives," worth 25 cents each, and therefore
presumably "Barlows;" ''30 glass bottles ;"t
'* 30 pewter spoons" (not marked ; probably
from the groom's mother) ; " 100 awl-blades"
(accompanied by a copy of " Every Indian his

* We are kinder to the Indians now. No respectable scalper
will look at a gun tendered by the government, less expensive
than a $47 Winchester. Our Indians are much better armed
than the regulars.

f Dear, dear, dear! This was before Mr. Hayes was Presi-
dent.

^t. 38.] MORE LEGAL TENDER. \\^

own Shoemaker") ; "■ 300 tobacco pipes," with-
out instruction ; '' 100 hands of tobacco," Lan-
caster County best ; " 30 combs," * which were
used by the gentle savages as implements of tor-
ture on their unhappy prisoners of war ; " i
barrel of*beer;"f "20 hoes" for the women ;
** 100 Jews-harps," — just paint in your mind the
astonishing spectacle of one hundred sons of the
forest, sitting on a stake-and-rider fence, their
faces drawn into contortions of ecstasy, their
teeth firmly set on the jaws of the loud-sounding
Jews-harps, their right hands swinging with the
rhythm of an orchestral movement, pelting the
lambient air with the melting strains of " Camp-
town Races," better known in their own soft
dialect as " doo-dah." Truly, William Penn's
head was not hilly when he put in those Jews-
harps. " Music hath charms to soothe a sav-
age," he said, and so we put a brass band around
the bulldog's neck. There were, furthermore,
" 100 strings of beads" and " 30 wooden screw-
boxes ;" X^l'^ skipple of salt;" § " 40 pairs of stock-
ings," which the proud savages wore for gloves ;

* ! ! ! f For three tribes of Indians! % ?

§ A skipple was twice as much as a boodle, and two bongles
made a boodle, A skipple of salt was therefore half a dingle.

Il8 WILLIAM PEKN. [1682.

"• 20 tobacco tongs/' the finiky Indians having
the most intense dishke to handling tobacco
with their fingers.

In addition to the articles above specified,
there were blankets, kettles, powder, flints,
steels, red lead, tobacco-boxes, gimlets, molasses,
(five gallons !), needles, wampum, and " 30 pairs
of scissors." No mention is made of rocking-
chairs, glove-stretchers, or shoe-buttoners, and it
is probable that the poor savages of Penn's time
were compelled to drag out a lingering existence,
uncheered by the presence of these common
necessities of life.

Sachem Taminend, Tamanen, or Taminent, as
the case may be, made a brief address at the
close of the treaty, which was marked with the
beautiful imagery and natural thrilling eloquence
that are so characteristic of Indian orator3^
He assured Penn that he was a very large Indi-
an. *' I am," he said, pumping his right arm
up and down like a walking-beam, — an effec-
tive and graceful gesture taught him by a mem-
ber of the British Parliament, — '' I am half hoss
and half alligator ; I am a raging volcano of
wrath when anybody pulls my hair, and I will
strike the side of a mountain if the soup is

iEt. 38.] INDIA X FIDELITY. I IQ

burned. I am a bad Indian, and I carry a gun.
I hunt in the mountains, stranger ; I sleep on
the prairie ; I eat raw buffalo, and I drink out
of the Mississippi. Wagh !"

And the famous treaty was consummated —
so famous, so much written about, so little
known; unrecorded and undying: imposing
with the grandeur of simplicity ; kingly in the
majesty of pure manhood ; glorious in the white
raiment of practical Christianity ; the Sermon
on the Mount embodied in the Quaker's treaty.
There needs no record of its details to make it
live in history. The simple fact that the treaty
was made, the plain, Quaker-like truth, una-
dorned by flowers of rhetoric or clinging ten-
drils of speech, is enough to hand down to all
posterit}^ the beautiful story of " the only treaty,"
says Voltaire, *' made without an oath and never
broken."

It has been the proud boast of the followers of
William Penn, and the fact is even recorded by
Bancroft, that " no drop of Quaker blood was
ever shed by an Indian in Pennsylvania." Ah,
if only some red-skinned Bancroft, painting in
weird hieroglyphs, in brilliant coloring and

I20 WILLIAM PENN. [1682.

doubtful perspective, on the buckskin walls of
his smoky tepee the history of this treaty for his
race, could but say so much for the fidelity of
the white man ! Alas ! forty years after pale-
face and red-skin declared ** their friendship
should endure while waters ran down the
rivers and the sun and stars endured," an un-
worthy follower of Penn murdered the first In-
dian slain in Pennsylvania, and even then, faith-
ful to their pledge given at that treaty, the
Indians interceded for the murderer, and begged
that, as he was a child of Onas, his life might
be spared. The Indians have got over that
feeling now, and so oft as opportunity presents
they lift the hair of their white brother without
any investigation into his standing in the relig-
ious community. In fact, the Indian of to-day
rather prefers fighting a man who won't fight
back.

The great elm-tree at Kensington stood until
1 8 10, when it was blown down, having lived to
see the treaty which made it famous broken into
as many fragments as there were white men in
Pennsylvania. It lived through the years of
bloodshed and murder that rolled up and down
the beautiful valley of Wyoming ; it lived to see

JEt. 3^-1 STRICKEN IN- YEARS. 12 1

the scalping-knife and tomahawk of the Indian
allies of his most gracious and Christian majesty
George III,, defender of the faith, make life a
burden to the Pennsylvanian, and then relieve
him of the burden ; it lived to see William Penn
wronged, swindled, and almost beggared by his
pretended friend, his trusted secretary, a Friend
of his own faith ; it lived to see the great Quaker
cast into prison in his old age ; it lived to see his
son disgrace the name of his honored father and
die a victim of his own excesses and wickedness,
and it had seen enough. It was 283 years old,
24 feet in girth, and its main branch was 1 50 feet
long. During the British occupation of Phila-
delphia, in the Revolutionary war, this tree was
still held in such reverence that the Enoflish
General Simcoe placed a guard about it, to pro-
tect it from parties of soldiers sent out after
fire-wood.

When the old tree fell, it was utilized after
the American fashion. A few cords of it
were sent to the Penn family in England ; an
arm-chair was made from it and placed in the
Commissioners' Hall in Kensington. Hundreds
of thousands of work-stands, vases, paper-
weights, knife-handles, paper-cutters, etc., were

122 WILLIAM PENN. [16S2.

made from the remainder of it. During the
Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876,
a new impetus was given to the manufacture of
the great elm relics, and several planing-miils
had all they could do to supply the demand.
Probably there never was a tree so remarkable
k)r its versatility. Pretty and useful articles of
pine, maple, walnut, oak, ash, and cherry were
made from the great elm and sold at remunera-
tive prices to the reverential tourists from all
parts of the great republic. It is estimated by
the careful statistician who compiled the facts
for this work that not less than six cords of
hickory walking-sticks, w^ith the bark on, were
made from the great elm and sold to Centennial
pilgrims from the city. All the ground in the
immediate vicinity of the Treat}^ Monument is
now occupied by extensive lumber-yards, which
appear to be stocking up with a great variety
of seasoned hard wood.

The site of the *' great elm" is not unmarked.
Ah no ! The people of Pennsylvania feel for
that treaty and the site that it made immortal a
profound and lasting reverence. In 1849 the
legislature of Pennsylvania appropriated $5000
for the purchase of the treaty ground.

^t. 38.] A GRACEFUL SHAFT. 1 23

To-day, on Beach Street, Kensington, a three-
cornered patch of ground, of the general shape
of a piece of pie, and about the size of an army
blanket, is notched out of the lumber-yards
above mentioned. Two sides of this plat are
shielded by a high, rough board fence, placed
there to protect, not the monument, but the
lumber-yard. The monument is of granite. It
towers up to the height of a short man. It
bears the inscription on one face, " Treaty
ground of William Penn and the Indian nation.
1682. Unbroken faith." On another: ''Penn-
sylvania, Founded 1682. By deeds of peace."
It bears various other inscriptions. The youth
of Kensington use it for a target when they
have their brickbat practice. The reverential
tourist has scribbled his obscure name all over
it in fading pencil-marks. The more patient
tramp has scratched his ubiquitous real or stage
name on it with rusty nails. Some humble
artist, on his way to paint the householder's
window-shutters, has smeared a streak of green
paint across the top of the graceful shaft. No
stranger can find it alone, for the ways of mod-
ern Philadelphia are not of the original rectan-
gular design, and the man who seeks to find the

124 V/ILLIAM PENN. [1682.

Treaty Monument alone is lost. 'Ihe citizens
will not aid him. To their undying honor be
it recorded, they try to lose him, so that he may
never find it. But before another year rolls
round, as other years are in the habit of doing,
a nobler shaft will mark this historic spot.

After the treaty, Penn went for a few days to
his country-house in " Pennsbury," on the Dela-
ware, opposite Burlington. It was a very com-
fortable hovel for a man of quiet tastes, and
cost, with the grounds, between seven and ten
thousand pounds, for the Governor was not the
man to throw away a lot of money on a fine
house. " Any sort of hut," he said, ^' is good
enough for me." It was built on an island, " a
treble island," says one biographer, '■' the Dela-
ware running around it three times." When a
river gets around the same place three times,
you may safely set that place down for an
island, whether the book says so or not."^

About this time, also, the first child of English
parents was born in Pennsylvania, and Penn
gave the infant, whose name was John Key, a

* The branch of the river that used to "run around Penns-
bury three times" doesn't run around it at all now. It is
dried up.

^t. 38.] THE FIRST-BORN PHILADELPHIAN. 12$

tract of land. There had been plenty of Dutch
and Swede children born before this, but they
didn't count. This act of marked partiality, if
it was intended to discourage the birth of chil-
dren of other nationalities, and throw the man-
tle of a high protective tariff about new English
children, failed in its purpose. Dutch children
continued to be born with great regularity and
frequency, unstimulated by the hope of any
farm, until at length they owned and farmed
about three fifths of the state of Pennsylvania,
and held the other two fifths on long lease. In
1755 this first native-born Philadelphian, " First-
born ' Key, laid the corner-stone of the Pennsyl-
vania Hospital.

In March, 1683, the Governor met the As-
sembly and PTOvincial Council in Philadelphia.
Having a great deal more important business
to attend to, the Assembly, with the natural in-
stinct of a legislative body, began to tinker with
the Constitution and Charter. It was all well
enough, but they wanted to change it, for no
man ever yet went to the legislature who did
not want to change all the laws any other men
had made, before he attended to any pressing
business. The Assembly wanted a new charter,

126 WILLIAM PENN, [1683.

and Penn did not stand in the way of their de-
sires. A joint committee of the Provincial
Council and the Assembly drew up the new
charter, in which the Assembly gave to itself
whatever power it wanted, and generously in-
vested the Governor and Provincial Council
with the rest. This w^as the beginning of the
tinkering with Penn's Constitution, and it has
been kept up until to-day there is not one of
Penn's original sixty-one laws on the statute-
books of the state he founded.

The Assembly of 1683, among other things,
voted an impost on certain goods exported or
imported, for the Governor's support, which
Penn refused to accept. He was the first great
Pennsylvania free-trader ; * he would let them
impost him no imposts, and for years, it is said,
the tax-gatherer slowly starved to death in
Pennsylvania.

After a harmonious session of three weeks —
harmonious because the Assembly wanted every-
thing and Penn wanted nothing — this body
collected its per diem, exaggerated its mileage,
and, charging by the longest way, went home
by the shortest.

* And last.

JEi. 39.] T//JS CITY OF HIS HEART. \2J

Penn was a Governor without personal ambi-
tion. He saw, and without a regret, the legis-
lature of his own creation deprive him of his
rightful and reasonable political powers until
he couldn't so much as appoint a janitor or a
policeman. " I propose," he said, '' 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." His very
life was wrapped up in the city and colony he
had founded, and when, during this same year,
important matters called him back to England,
he left his great loving heart in Pennsylvania —
*'And thou, Philadelphia," he writes on ship-
board, "the virgin settlement of this province,
named before thou wast born, what love, what
care, what service, and what travail hath there
been to bring thee forth and preserve thee from
such as would abuse and defile thee ! My soul
prays to God for thee, that thou mayest stand
in the day of trial, that thy children may be
blessed of the Lord, and thy people saved by
his power."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE GO-AS-YOU-PLEASE WALK.

TT was about time to buy more land, or rather
■'■ to buy over again some that had already
been bought and paid for. There is a deed
dated June 23, 1683, by which, for the consider-
ation of a certain amount of money and junk to
them in hand paid, Tamanen and Metamequan
parties of the first part, conveyed to William
Penn, party of the second part, all their land
between Neshaminy Creek and Pennypack, and
another, dated July 14, in the same year, con-
veys to William Penn certain lands extending
from the Chester to the Schuylkill River, and
as far back as a man could walk in three days.

The true story of the measurement of this
land is a little mixed, but it is certain beyond
all doubt or debate or dispute that the red
brothers got caught on a falling market, and
were most dreadfully left on the deal. " Tra-
dition" steps in to protect William Penn from

^t. 39-] LEISURELY MEASUREMENTS. 1 29

any obloquy in the matter, and relates how
the Governor himself, with several of his friends
and a number of Indian chiefs, '' began to walk
out this land at the mouth of the Neshaminy,
and walked up the Delaware," it being the cus-
tom, doubtless, for ''a man" to go in a crowd
when he was going to walk out all the land he
could cover in 72 hours. Moreover, "• it is said,"
by this same trustworthy Tradition, that "they
walked leisurely,^ after the Indian manner,f
sitting down sometimes to smoke their pipes,
to eat biscuit and cheese, and drink a bottle of
wine." There is a general air of truthful sim-
plicity about this traditionary narrative that at
once challenges the belief of the most credulous.
And ''it is certain," Tradition resumes, ''that
they arrived at^a spruce-tree near the mouth of
Baker's Creek in a day and a half, the whole
distance being less than 30 miles."

That certainly was not a very large walk for
a day and a half, and the " leisurely" Indians
in the crowd were, up to this point, quite well

* Which sounds extremely reasonable. Part of the time, it
may be, they walked backward.

f It depends a great deal on what or whom the Indian is
walking after how " leisurely" he walks.

130 WILLIAM PENN. [1683.

satisfied with their bargain. It may be, indeed,
that on an occasion of this kind the Indians did
walk in a " leisurely manner," and no doubt
they felt the unconquerable and terrible long-
ings of the destroying '* biscuit-and-cheese"
habit, to which they seem to have been ad-
dicted, at every mile. There was a great
temptation in that walk to make the Indians
*4eisurely." When they reached the spruce-
tree at Baker's Creek, William Penn said that
would include about as much land as he wanted
just then, so '' they run the line from that point
to Neshaminy, and the remainder was left to be
walked out when it should be wanted for settle-
ment."

So far tradition clears the skirts of William
Penn of any attempt to overreach the red
brothers. And tradition is strongly supported
by the whole life and character of the Quaker,
who lived from boyhood to old age like a man
with a soul above deceit or trickery.

But on the 20th of September, 1733, we get
out of the realm of tradition and come into the
record. On this day the remainder of the line,
as provided and described in that deed, was
walked out, fifteen years after Penn had passed

^t. 39-] THE USUAL PREPARATIONS. I3I

away from all this care and trouble and bicker-
ing, to the reward of the righteous man. It
was another impressive scene, the completion
of this old transaction, the measuring of the
land deeded to the man now sleeping in the
Friends* burying-ground in the far-away English
meadows. The Indians were on hand again
with the usual rations of biscuit and cheese,
which should mark the numerous halts for
lunch. They had their pipes and plenty of
tobacco with them, indicating how pleasant
and "■ leisurely" would be the stroll, "after the
Indian manner." It doesn't appear, by the rec-
ord, that there were any bottles of wine to
drink, as in the good old days of Onas, but
that was because the Indians were more civil-
ized, and had ^become enlightened by contact
with the white men.* The Governor of Penn-
sylvania was not there, but he sent a hand. He
said he wasn't much of a pedestrian himself,
but he sent three men that he would back for
the Astley belt and all the gate-money against
any human being that ever ambled over the
tan-bark. When these three men — Edward

* That is, they hadd learned to carry each mann his private
flaske in his breaste pocquet.

132 WILLIAM PENN. [1683.

Marshall, James Yeates, and Solomon Jennings
— put on spiked shoes, and began to remove the
greater portion of their garments, one of the
Indians begged to remind the honorable gen-
tlemen that they were going to take a walk,
not a bath.

" Did you think of accompanying this over-
land surveying expedition?" asked Edward
Marshall, in behalf of the Pennsylvania com-
missioners.

To which the Indian chieftain proudly re-
plied that he contemplated keeping up with
the procession, if he broke a trace.

**Then,'* said Edward Marshall, tightening
his belt and gripping a corn-cob in each hand,
'' throw away your blanket and climb on your
pony, and if I happen to fall asleep this side
of the Ohio River, just wake me up and tell
me of it, will you?"

The walk began at a chestnut-tree below
Wrightstown. The men tramped gayly away,
until they reached where Solomon Jennings
said he felt aweary and lay down in the cool
shade to rest. He rested well enough ; but
when he tried to get up, to his amazement
there wasn't a solitary joint in his body, from

^t. 39.] WALKING FOR KEEPS. 1 33

his neck to his heels. So he was off the tan-
bark, and got more rheumatism than glory for
his walk. James Yeates kept along with a per-
severing gait until they reached the foot of
Blue Mountain, when he was taken sick while
crossing a stream, and Edward Marshall had to
help him back.

*'Now," said Edward, '' I believe I will finish
this walk and take first money myself"

And then that man set out to walk. And he
did walk. *' There is no funny business about
this match," he said, and his panting red broth-
ers began to believe it. Three white men
started in for the walk, but after the first four
laps it was evident that Edward Marshall pos-
sessed not only speed but staying powers, and
he was the fayorite with everybody except the
Indians. When the *' leisurely" savages sug-
gested that it was about time to drink a bottle
of wine, he said his trainer wouldn't let him
touch it. But he intimated that he would drink
a cup of beef-tea as he walked, if they would
bring it him.

When the time came at which William Penn
would have halted to eat the ''biscuit and
cheese" which cheers but does not inebriate

134 WILLIAM PENN. [1683..

or excite any great enthusiasm for walking,
Edward Marshall said he had breakfasted on
some lean mutton-chops, strong green tea, and
calves'-foot jelly, and felt as though he could
walk four hundred miles without a lunch. And
when the Indians suggested pipes, the pedes-
trians all declared they wouldn't walk another
step if any smoking was allowed in the gar-
den.

So on they went, and Edward Marshall piled
up the miles and tossed the broad acres over his
shoulders like a man who is walking for first
money. When he felt a little tired and the In-
dians urged him to take a little resl, expressing
great concern lest he should break down and
be unable to come in with the crowd at the
finish, he merely fell into a regular heel-and-
toe walk, and said that was the way he
always walked when he went to sleep. Then
when he woke up he would lengthen his stride
and set the milestones down behind him in a
reckless way that kept the scorer busy and
made the Indians feel that walking had degen-
erated from a pure, health-giving exercise into
a trade of the gamblers, fit to rank with base-
ball and the agricultural horse-trot of the county

^t. 39.] CLEANED OUT OF THE POOL. 1 35

fair. At the close of the day and a half, Edward
Marshall passed the judges' stand at a seven-
mile gate, and the scorer marked up 86 miles on
the board.

And the maddest crowd of Indians you ever
saw came up to look at the score. They de-
nounced the whole scheme as a swindle, de-
clared they wouldn't pay any side bets, and said
it was no way to walk anyhow, and no one but
a white man would be guilty of walking that
distance in a day and a half* They admitted
that the man walked ; he did not run, and he
did not ride, he walked, fair and square, but he
walked too fast and too far. Any one who has
ever noted the patient endurance with which an
Indian at Niagara Falls can sit still on the curb-
stone fourteeiv hours a day, will readily under-
stand the amazement and wrath of the " leisure-
ly" Indians at Edward Marshall's extravagant
restlessness.

The Governor pacified the Indians of 1733 by
presents of rum and molasses and pie and other

*They were only silenced when, on demanding that the
ground should be walked over again, the Governor showed
them Rowell's record of 150 miles in 24 hours at Madison
Square Garden, New York, and said the next walking for
ground he did, Rowell was to walk for him.

136 WILLIAM PENN. [1683.

intemperate beverages, but held on to the Z6
miles of land all the same.* As for Edward
Marshall, he said, when quite an old man, that
he never got anything for this walk except a
promise, a coin largely issued and circulated by
Governors.

But the first half of this walk, where Penn
strolled over the ground with the tranquil haste
of a boy sent on an errand in a hurry, was free
from heart-burnings. It is related, indeed, that
Tamanen gave a dinner on the occasion, at
which he feasted Penn on app'Je - dumplings,
which was the only attempt ever made on Penn's
life by the Indians. The Governor was a strong
man, however, and the would-be assassin failed
in his dastardly purpose. Penn suffered from
a terrible nightmare that night. He dreamed
that he was on his way back to England, sail-
mg across the Atlantic in his hat, with a party
of friends, when they were attacked by a pirate
hat, a three-decker of vast dimensions, which
sunk his hat and all on board. And while he
was trying to remember whether his hat was

* It is said the first murder of a white man by an Indian in
Pennsylvania took place on this ground, 21 years after it was
Stepped off by Marshall.

JEt 39 ] AN ANCIENT FINANCIER. 1 3/

insured, he woke in an agony of fear that it was,
and it would therefore cost his widow five times
the amount of the insurance to collect half of it.
But beyond this one fearful night, he suffered
no evil from the boiled dumplings, and affirmed
off from the habit the next day, fearing it might
grow upon him.*

During this year the colony made rapid strides
toward an old and cultured civilization. Charles
Pickering was indicted by the grand jury for
coining "Spanish bitts and Boston money."
The trouble with Pickering's money was that
it was too big for its size,t and contained more
copper than silver. Pickering was sentenced
to redeem, at face value, all his light money,
which was immediately called in by proclama-
tion, and pay a^fine of £a,o toward the building
of the new court-house, to be committed to jail
until it was paid, and give bonds for his good
behavior.ij:

* It is said the Indians taught the white men to eat boiled
apple-dumplings, in revenge for the introduction of rum and
croquet into this country by the pale-faces.

f This was the original 92-cent dollar, afterward very popular
among the more barbarous tribes of the United States.

:j: Some of Pickering's descendants are still living in Phila-
delphia, but they are not given to boring company with anec-
dotes about " When grandpa went to see William Penn."

138 WILLIAM PENN. [1683.

There the Provincial Council sat in its first
trial for witchcraft. In those good old times
a colony without a witch would have been a
rare novelty. The best families in Boston kept
their own private witches, the best scholarship
of Massachusetts accepted them ; Cotton Mather
hunted more witches than he preached sermons,
and after a woman reached the age of seventy
and lost her teeth, her life was safer among the
pirates of Penzance than it was in Salem. Not
alone the Puritans, who at this time made a be-
lief in witchcraft a part of their religion, but
learned divines of other denominations, on both
sides of the Atlantic, not only believed in
witches, but published pamphlets declaring
their belief, that we of to-day might know that
our good old fathers were no better than they
ought to be, and didn't know a line more than
the law allowed them. Richard Baxter in Eng-
land believed just as Cotton Mather did in Mas-
sachusetts ; and George Fox, the first Quaker
and founder of the Society of Friends, not only
believed in witches, but believed that he had
the power to subdue them. Those were glo-
rious old times, the good old times of our
ancestors, when they boiled men alive in Ger-

JEt. 39.] * THE GOOD OLD TIMES. 1 39

many and England for making counterfeit
money ; and they boiled them slowly, by a re-
finement of cruelty, letting the man down into
the seething caldron feet first, so that he might
enjoy it himself and feel good, when his feet got
warm. When in Scotland they burned an old
woman and her child at the stake for creating
a storm of thunder and lightning simply by
pulling off their stockings.* When in our own
favored land the zealous colonists jabbed an awl
through a man's ears if he was a Quaker, and
hanged him if he didn't quit it. When they slit
a man's tongue if he was a Presbyterian, and
pulled it clear out by the roots if he was a
Methodist. And they tried to drown him if he
was a Baptist ! It wasn't really safe for him to
be anything, bacause, no matter what he was,
somebody could prove that he was a heretic,
and burn him alive and take his farm. These
'' good old times," when a steamboat was a
mud-scow, with a mainsail as big as a circus-
tent, and a bar every fifteen feet in the river.f
When a man went to bed at dusk, and got up

*In our more Christian civilization to-day you can't shoot
a man even when he pulls off his boots in a sleeping-car.
t And none on the boat.

140 WILLIAM PENN. [1683.

in the night to eat breakfast, and struggled with
the kitchen fire an hour and a half with a piece
of cold, sullen, fireless flint and a wet tinder-
box.* When fashion compelled even a bow-
legged man to wear tights and knee-breeches.
And the poor wretch had to wander about
through life and in society, looking like a
pair of parentheses with clothes on. And
every time a girl danced with such a man,
she felt as though she was waltzing in brack-
ets. When a young man, if he went up Sun-
day night to see his sweetheart, as the cus-
tom was in the good old times,t had to
sit the whole long evening through, over on
one side of the room, betAveen the girl's
father and mother, while the girl sat on the
opposite side of the room, beside the parson,
who tenderly held one of her hands in both
his own, to amuse the young man, while he
earnestly warned her against all earthly vanities
in general, and that young man in particular.

In such good old times as these, Pennsylvania
could not hope to get along without at least one
case of witchcraft. But the Pennsylvania witch

* Now we start the kitchen fire and the kitchen roof in one
time and two motions with a simple tilt of the kerosene-can.
f A custom that has since become entirely obsolete.

JEt. 39.] FE/^y TAME WITCHES. I4I

was a very tame affair.* She was a Swedish
witch. Her name was Margaret Mattson.
There was another witch, tried at the same
time, but as this witch's name is handed down
as the astonishing compilation of Yeshro Hen-
drickson, its sex is to be guessed at. Margaret
was accused of having bewitched several cows
some twenty years prior to the date of her
trial. One witness was called to prove this,
and he testified that somebody told him so.
Then he stepped down, and a female being,
groaning through this vale of tears with the
awful name of Annaky Coolin, testified that
Margaret was guilty of high treason, felony,
contributory negligence, and blasphemy, be-
cause when Annaky's husband was boiling the
heart of a calf that had died by witchcraft, the
prisoner at the bar came along, and learning
that they were '' boiling of flesh, she said they
had better they had boiled of the bones, with
several other unseemly expressions."

Nevertheless, in the face of this damning evi-
dence, which in Massachusetts would have

* At that time. There are witches in Pennsylvania now,
but they are more dangerous to the peace of heart than was
this one. They have brown eyes and dimples, and are rated by
the insurance companies as "extra hazardous" when under the
age of twenty-four.

142 WILLIAM PENN. [1683.

hanged her in a minute, the Pennsylvania jury
merely found her " guilty of the common fame
of being a witch, but not guilty in manner and
form as she stands indicted." The witch was
not punished ; she was merely placed under
bonds to keep the peace, and turned loose to
torment the kine of Knud Christofffiferssson
and Niels Nieddderssenn by her dreadful arts.
That was the first and (with the exception
noted on p. 141) only witch in Pennsylvania.

It is to be regretted that Penn's charge to the
jury in this case is not on record. It would be
interesting to know just what he thought of
witches at a time when so many leading minds
believed in them. But no doubt he thought
with his usual good sense, and was as much
ahead of his times as some of his colleagues
were behind them. William Penn was a shrewd
observer and a man of broad experience in
courts and prisons, and he doubtless knew that
in a case of witchcraft the major part of the
meanness, ignorance, and malice was repre-
sented by the prosecution. In those days
men's passions were very strong. But then
their morals were very weak, so they could
mix them and make a very good average.

CHAPTER IX.

THE LAND OF CORN AND WINE.

npHIS year, among other things the busy
■*• little Legislature did, they ordered that
an anchor be the seal of Philadelphia. Absent
members of the house were fined 12 pence sterl-
ing, which shows that the early Pennsylvanian
didn't know how to get elected to the Legisla-
ture, draw his salary and stationery allow-
ances, collect his mileage both ways, and
gather in a goodly allowance for a committee
clerk, and nev^r go near the capital. A bill
was introduced prescribing that " two cloaths"
only be used for clothing, one for winter and
one for summer, but it was lost, as was also
the bill fining all young men who failed to
marry at a specified age.

And this year also cometh " Indian Ben,**
saying that he is an African slave of genuine
Indian parentage, and that he is the bounden
slave of Friend Ewer, and he prays for his free-

144 V/ILLIAM PENN. [1683.

dom. But he didn't get it all the same. His
owner said, '' What's Ewer's is mine, and what's
mine is my own," and held on to his slave. It
was five years later that the first protest against
human slavery came from the lips and hearts
of Quakers. And they were not English Qua-
kers then.

The grand jury this year presented *' that all
trees that are offensive in this city may be cut
down." It may have been necessary to have
the trees destroyed, but still one cannot help
washing that the members of this grand jury
had been first hanged on them.

The attention of the Council was also called
to a very grave matter. John White^ came
before it with the information that the Mar}^-
landers had reenforced their fort at Christiana,
and would not let him cut hay. Nay, further-
more, they pointed their guns at him and cast
what hay he already had cut into the swiftly
flowing river. Moreover, " Major English came
into New Castle with forty armed men on
horses, and told him that, as to the case of his
hay, he might peaceably cut it, if he would only

■*Son of old White, of Whiteville, White County.

JEi. 39.] T//E OLD SETTLER'S UNION. 1 45

say to them, '' Thou drunken doggred IngHsh,
let me cut hay." It doesn't appear whether he
said it or not, but this shows what vast and
tangled questions of diplomacy and statecraft
our fathers wrestled with.

This year and those following it abound in
old settlers' stories, of cold weather, unprece-
dented high water, big yields of corn, the com-
fort of the cave houses, abundance of game, and
tame Indians. A boy was sent out by an im-
provident white family to beg corn of some in-
dustrious Indians. One of the Indians, seeing
the boy had nothing to put the corn in, and
knowing a great deal better than to lend a bas-
ket, or anything else, to a white man, took off
the boy's trousers, tied the ends of the legs to-
gether, filled them with corn, and hanging the
laden bifurcated garmenture about the boy's
neck, sent him home.

Again, some most excellent Indians, meeting
some white boys in the woods in the afternoon,
fearing they might get lost, sent them home,*
then came to the house late at night, unable to
sleep for anxiety, to ask if the boys got home

* Knowing that was the very way to make any boy go farther
into the woods.

14^ WILLIAM PENN. [1683.

all right. They seemed very much disappointed
on learning that they did and were then sound
asleep in bed, and went away profoundly de-
jected, the elder of the Indians remarking to
his comrades '' that a scalp in the bush is worth
six in the house."

Richard Townsend was very much annoyed
by a deer which came to look at him while he
was mowing. Richard did not mow very well,
having a habit of plunging the point of the
scythe into the ground and then falling for-
ward over the heel thereof, abrading his shins
and ruining his temper as he went over. The
deer followed him round and round, until its
scrutiny became so embarrassing that Friend
Townsend hung his scythe in a tree and made
a rush at the deer. The fleet-footed monarch
of the glen made a bee-line for the mountains.
Richard Townsend had no gun, but he gave
chase, and taking off his boots ran the deer
down and kicked it to death. One of Rich-
ard's neighbors " had a bull so gentle that he
used to bring his corn on him instead of a
horse." This may have been a very remark-
able thing in those days, though we cannot see
why a bull that would carry a horse to mill

^t. 39.] INDIAN NURSES. 147

without protest shouldn't be perfectly willing
to carry a sack of corn.

In those days when the Friends went to
yearly meeting, it was the custom of some fami-
lies to leave the children at home, and the
Indians always came over to the house, washed
the youngsters' faces, brushed their hair until
they cried, just as vigorously as their own
mothers could, and would have clawed their
tender scalps, pulled their hats down to their
necks, and with a final whack on the crowns,
so that not even a cyclone could lift the hat,"^
sent them to school. Then they fed the baby,
rocked it to sleep, swept and dusted the rooms,
brushed the fender, and scoured the hearth
with Venetian red, pocketed a handful of but-
tons, some spoons, and a case-knife, slid the
grindstone under their blankets, gathered up
the axe, smelt around the pantry for rum, and
went away into the pathless forest without
waiting to receive the thanks of the grateful
parents.

When John Chapman's daughter wanted

^ It was only by closely observing a white Christian mother
put her own boy's hat on his defenceless head that the Indians
could catch this graceful knack.

148 WILLIAM PENN. [1683.

venison, she just went out into the woods, found
a big fat buck, took the halter off her horse
and slipped it over the buck's head, and led
him home.

William Penn writes in a long letter to the
Free Society of Traders that '' the kings,
queens, and great men of several Indian tribes
visited him ;" * he found the land to contain
" divers sorts of earth, sand, yellow and black,
and gravel, loamy and dusty, and in some
places a fast fat earth," not to mention the kind
he could fall down in on the cross-walks ; and
with the unfailing instinct of an old settler he
says as to weather, '' I have lived over the
hottest and coldest that the oldest liver in the
province can remember." f He also discovered
that the "natural product of the country, ol
vegetables, is trees, fruits, plants, flowers."

This information was received with great joy
by the Royal Geographical Society, which had
previously supposed that the vegetable pro-
ducts of Pennsylvania were limited exclusively

* William always managed to get into the best society wher-
ever he went.

f Penn hadn't been here long, but he wasn't going to sit
around and let any "old subscriber" or "oldest inhabitant"
hold over the proprietor.

^t. 39.] ANCIENT COLONIAL LIVER PADS. I49

to clams, planked shad, Philadelphia squab,
waffles and catfish, crude petroleum, and the
Standard Oil Company. Peaches, Penn said,
were in great quantities, and '' made a pleasant
drink," from which we infer that they didn't
waste many peaches in pies or canning establish-
ments. He also declares that he is going into
the wine business with some of the native
grapes, and " hopes the consequence will be
as good wine as any European countries of
the same latitude do yield." Never in his life
had *' he tasted such duck and veal." He
found divers plants which were medicinal, and
'* all of great virtue, suddenly curing the pa-
tient." From these wild plants, of such supe-
rior virtue, is made the wonderful and infalli-
ble medicine the proprietors of which offered
the publishers of this work $65,000 for the in-
sertion of its name in this connection.*

He found the Indians numerous, ''tall,
straight, well built, and of singular proportions;
they tread strong and clever, and mostly walk

* But the publishers refused. They said they were not
publishing books for money, but simply for the diffusion of a
higher knowledge, the elevation of literary taste, and the
gratuitous dissemination of a broader information on histori-
cal, speculative, and scientific problems.

150 WILLIAM PENN. [1683.

with a lofty chin." He did ** see some as
comely European-like faces among them of
both sexes as on your side of the sea," — a style
of Indian that has forever passed away ; Feni-
more Cooper used them all up.

" For their original," continues Penn, speak-
ing of the Indians, '* I am ready to believe them
of the Jewish race, I mean of the stock of the
ten tribes, and that for the following reasons:
they were to go to a land not planted or
known ;" " their eye is little and black, not un-
like a straight-looked Jew ;" '' their language is
lofty and narrow, but like the Hebrew in
signification, full ;" *' I find them of the like
countenance, and their children of so lively
resemblance that a man would think himself in
puke's Place or Berry Street, London, when
he seeth them ;" ''they agree in rites; they
reckon by moons ; they offer their first-fruits ;"
'* they have a kind of feast of tabernacles ; they
are said to lay their altar upon twelve stones ;
their mourning lasts a year."

He loved their language : "■ I know not a
language in Europe that hath words of more
sweetness or greatness, in accent or emphasis,"
to prove which he cites Octocockon, Shak,

yEt. 39-] VOLUMINOUS LEGISLATION. 15I

Poquesian, Passijon, * Secatareus, Runcocas,
and Oricton. He praises their liberality, and
mourns over their love of rum. At least one of
their characteristics has been handed down to
their children, and has developed and grown
strong with age. For it is so that the for-
bidden fire-water which the honest trader sell-
eth in these days to the children of the forest
is even so craftily qualified that when a white
man, even a blue-tempered cowboy from the
ranges of the Arkansaw, drinketh but one drink
of it, he straightway turneth about and looketh
for a clean place where he may have a fit. f

The Swedes, who were in the province be-
fore Penn's arrival, taught the Indians to drink
not only rum, but raw whisky, alcohol, high-
wines, camphene, aqua fortis, burning fluid,
non-explosive kerosene, and other mild north-
ern exhilarators.

Penn w^as proud because his two general
assembhes passed seventy bills in two weeks,
though but sixty-one of them went on record

* William seems to have omitted the syllables " demi" be-
tween i and j in this word.

f He may not find the clean place, but he has the fit, with-
out any postponement on account of the weather.

152 WILLIAM PENN. [1683.

as laws, as though he foresaw that their suc-
cessors would take seventy weeks to pass two
laws, and both of them private bills embodying
land-grants or railroad franchises. He says
there was room in the Schuylkill — which in his
plain way he spells Sculkil — to '' lay up the
royal navy of England." It is still large enough
to lay up occasionally the American ice-man,
who is a much larger man than the royal navy
of Great Britain, and it costs a great deal more
to keep him up. The Schuylkill, Penn said,
" was a hundred miles boatable above the falls,"
but he wisely refrained from saying what kind
of boats. There were fourscore houses in Phila-
delphia, and no end of caves, wherein the peo-
ple were behaving themselves about as well as
could be expected of people who live in caves,
which was very well.* The saw-mill and the
timber for the glass-house were placed by the
river side, for convenience of shipments, with-
out any regard for the interests of the Pennsyl-
vania Railroad; ''the tannery hath plenty of
bark." f Two whale-ships were fitted out, and
a company was going to lay a pipe-line to Nan-

* Considering they lived in caves,
f So had the quinine.

^t. 39.] STILL THE MARYLAND BOUNDARY. 153

tucket, and charge tankage for every whale
struck outside of Pennsylvania waters; Penn
urged the Society of Traders to promote
" whatever tends to the promotion of wine and
the manufacture of linen in these parts," even
while he mourned over the growing fondness
of the intemperate savage for- rum. Penn was
a teetotaler, but he wasn't bigoted.

The Friends by this time had a few meeting-
houses in the country. There were three in
Pennsylvania, one at Falls, one at Pennsbury,
the Governor's house, and one at Colchester,
''all in the county of Bucks;" one at Phila-
delphia, one at Tawcony, one at Ridley, at J.
Simcock's, and one at Wm. Rure's, at Chiches-
ter; the Dutch had a meeting-house at New
Castle, and tlje Swedes had three— at Christina,
at Tenecum, and at Wicoco— within half a mile
of Philadelphia.

This summer went Colonel Markham to Eng-
land on business for Penn. Lord Baltimore and
the proprietor of Pennsylvania were still wrang-
ling over the boundary question. Each man
owned more land than he could walk over if he
tramped all the rest of his life, but he wanted
more. In fact, a provincial proprietor never

154 WILLIAM PENN. [1683.

did know when he had enough. He knew that
he never had so much that he couldn't hold a
little more, if he could lay his hands upon it.
This Maryland boundary question was the first,
and for a time the only serious annoyance that
troubled Penn in the '' Holy Experiment." Col-
onel Markham, as his agent, had held interview
after interview with Lord Baltimore and his
agents, without reaching any satisfactory con-
clusion. Penn met Lord Baltimore, in all
formal state and decorous cordiality, at Colonel
Failler's mansion in Anne Arundel County, and
once again in New Castle, to discuss this bound-
ary. But nothing came of it. The complete and
appalling ignorance of the English people in re-
gard to the geography of America at that time
was even greater than it is to-day.* This was
partly owing to the fact that in those days very
few people came from England to America,
unless they were driven to it by persecution
and threats of death, and when a British travel-
ler did come over for the purpose of making ob-

* This startling statement has been challenged by many of
the leading minds of the day, among others the proof-reader
and the author of Webster's Dictionary. I reassert the state-
ment, however, and stand prepared to prove it.

^t. 39-] AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY ABROAD. 1 55

servations and gathering materials for a book,
he probably bought a through ticket in Boston
for San Francisco, crept into a Pullman car,
and slept for six days and nights, woke up
in San Francisco, went on to England by the
Pacific steamers and the oriental overland route,
and published a " History of the American colo-
nies, with an account of the manners, customs,
and national characteristics of the inhabitants ;
political organization, and religious peculiari-
ties ; with a complete glossary of the language ;
embellished with numerous illustrations and
most accurate maps, and a portrait of General
Assembly, commander-in-chief of the state of
Philadelphia."*

Owing to this lamentable state of ignorance
on the part of the Government, the boundaries
of all the colonies, from North Carolina to
Connecticut, were so inaccurately and loosely

* Even the most sceptical will admit that matters are not
quite so bad to-day. Very few English maps now locate Erie,
Pa., on the Canadian side of Lake Erie, and Illinois is usually
set down as the capital of Nebraska. It used to be located
and described as the capital of Faneuil Hall. Chicago, also,
is now located as the sea-port town of Texas ; whereas older
English geographers used to say there was no such state as
Chicago ! !

156 WILLIAM PENN. [1683.

described that the proprietor of any province
could, with all color of right and law, claim as
much of any other province as he wanted.
Lord Baltimore's patent for Maryland named
the fortieth degree of latitude for the northern
boundary of his province. Penn's charter for
his province also included *' the beginning of
the fortieth degree of latitude," and further-
more the charter settled the location of his
fortieth degree of latitude by saying that it ran
twelve miles north of New Castle. For eigh-
teen years Lord Baltimore had been claiming
all or a part of this disputed territory on the
Delaware from the Dutch, but the Dutch, who
had defeated the Swedes and taken it away
from them, refused to give up a foot of it, and
Lord Baltimore did not care to fight about it,
as the Dutch had pretty much their own way
on the ocean blue, until the English finally con-
quered the New Netherlands and took posses-
sion of the Dutch settlements and all the lands,
industries, chattels, and effects.

Then when the King and the Duke of York
granted these lands to William Penn, Lord
Baltimore smote upon his chest and said he was
a man of war, he would assert his rights, and

^t. 39.] RECKONING WITHOUT HIS HOST. I 57

he could whip any non-combatant Quaker that
ever went out without his gun. Having none
but Quakers to oppose him, and knowing they
would not fight, he bristled up, made a formal
demand for all the country in Pennsylvania and
its annexed territories south of the fortieth
degree of north latitude, and in the spring of
1684 sent a miUtary column, under Colonel
Talbot, to occupy several plantations in the
lower counties, and immediately after his last
conference with Penn wrote to the Marquis of
Halifax and Secretary Blaythwarte, in London,
an account of the meeting, very naturally and
properly telling the true statement in the man-
ner best calculated to count the most for Balti-
more. *' My motto in this boundary war," he
wrote, '' is the.old war-cry of our fathers, ' Fifty-
four forty or fight.'"* Lord Baltimore felt
very easy over the boundary dispute now. " I
am a little ashamed to fight a Quaker," he said,
'' it is so safe and so easy, but PU have to throw
him if he won't lie down."

* But then remembering that his fathers who raised that cry
were not fathers until long after his son was a grandfather, he
scratched out that sentence.

158 WILLIAM PENN. [1683.

Alas for Lord Baltimore ! Other men had
lelt just that way about it before him. But
they never felt that way after William Penn let
go of them.

CHAPTER X.

IN THE COURT OF THE KING.

pENN landed in England in October, and met
-■■ a cheerful and exhilarating welcome. His
wife was convalescent, but still poorly ; the
children had all been sick, but were now con-
sidered out of danger ; his old friend Algernon
Sidney had been beheaded, the persecutions of
all non-conformists had begun again with new
and harsher violence, the prisons were full of
his brethren the Friends, as usual, and society
and political circles were full of all sorts of
malicious slanSers and libellous stories and
rumors about himself. Penn was deeply im-
pressed. He hummed a few strains of " Home,
sweet home," before he remembered that song
had not yet been written.

He visited with his family a few days, and
then went straight to court to see the King and
the Duke of York and get in his best work in
the boundary business. Lord Baltimore was

l6o WILLIAM PENN. [1684,

there ahead of him, and while Penn was re-
ceived very cordially, he " found things in gen-
eral with another face than when he left them ;
sour and stern, and resolved to hold the reins
of power with a stiffer hand than heretofore,
especially over those that were observed to be
state or church dissenters." No wonder the
Quaker Governor thought that "to keep fair
with a displeased and resolved government, that
had weathered its point upon Penn's own party,
" humbled and mortified them, and was daily
improving all its advantages upon them, was a
difficult task to perform."

The solution of the boundary question dragged
along, with very little attention. Charles's health
was failing rapidly and he did not take so much
interest in the far-away colonies of the new
world as in another foreign country, an un-
known realm, that was a great way farther off
from him than Pennsylvania. So the two Gov-
ernors waited patiently for a change of kings,
Penn engaging all his time and influence in suc-
coring distressed Quakers, interceding for par-
dons, and getting people out of prison, so that
others might be put in ; for the prison cells were
always kept warm, and usually with Quakers,

^t. 41.] CHARLES BLESSES THE WORLD. Ibl

SO long as there were enough of them to go
around. He settled the flying rumors derog-
atory to his own character as a man and a
Friend. It was even reported that he was an
iron-clad Quaker, armed to the teeth ; that he
built a fort at New Castle and mounted a lot
of guns, in casemates and en barbette, with in-
tent to do bodily harm to some belligerent Pres-
byterian or stray Baptist hunting for a sandy
beach and waist-deep water. But Penn knocked
all this terrible fort about his enemies' ears with
a letter. He said there were some old cannon
lying on the ground or swinging in broken car-
riages at New Castle when he went there, but
there wasn't a round of shot nor an ounce of
powder, " and had not been since he landed ;
and he could no more be charged with warlike
propensities on their account than could a man
who happened to buy a house with an old
musket in it." " Because," said this skilful
pamphleteer, " I find a blonde hair in my butter,
I do not shriek out that there is a woman in the
churn."

On the 6th of February Charles the Second,
feeling that humanity rather expected something
good of him, benefited mankind by dying. It

1 62 WILLIAM PENN. [1685.

was the last act of his life, and about the one
solitary good deed he ever performed. After a
reign in which unblushing vice and the immo-
rality of the time were illustrated in the charac-
ter of the King — a King who was nicknamed
" Old Goat" by one who best knew him — a reign
in which "■ the caresses of harlots and the jests
of buffoons regulated the manners of a govern-
ment which had just ability enough to deceive
and just religion enough to persecute" — the
King died in a fit, the result of his horrible ex-
cesses and vices.* Thus the world was happily
quit of a " hcentious debauchee, persecuting
sceptic, and faithless ruler."

For such a good man, William Penn was de-
cidedly unfortunate in his royal friends and
acquaintances. He said in a letter to Thomas
Lloyd, '' He was an able man for a troubled and
divided kingdom," probably the worst thing
Penn ever said.

* It is very singular that he should have died, because Penn
writes : " As he sat down to shave, his head twitched both ways
or sides, and he gave a shriek and fell as dead, and so remained
for some hours; they opportunely blooded and cupped him, and
plied his head with red-hot frying-pans'''' I And yet the patient
died. One would suppose such treatment would cure a para-
lytic in a minute.

vEt. 41.] A MIRACLE-WORKING MONARCH. 1 63

During the reign of Charles more than fifteen
thousand famiUes had been ruined for opinion's
sake, in the name of the Church ; four thousand
of these victims of persecution died in loathsome
prisons. And, think of it! in five years this
monarch " touched 23,601 of his subjects for
the scrofula, or king's evil ; the bishops of the
Church of England invented a sort of heathen
service for the occasion ;" the '' unchristianlike,
superstitious ceremony was performed in pub-
lic ;" and Dr, Wiseman, an eminent physician of
that time, writing of scrofula, says : "• However,
I must needs profess that his Majesty cureth
more in one year than all the chirurgeons of
London have done in an age."

Be it said to the credit of James, — so few things
can be said to his credit, — that while he was Duke
of York he had often protested against some
of the vices and the persecutions which marred
his brother's reign, if a reign without one redeem-
ing quality can be said to be marred by any
particular vice. And now that he was King, he
was moved to be more indulgent. Penn waited
upon him very promptly in behalf of the im-
prisoned Quakers, and James, avowing himself
a Catholic, promised to do what he could to

164 WILLIAM PENN. [1685.

secure toleration for dissenters. He told Penn
he was going to be open and above-board.
Penn expressed his approval of his frankness,
and further hoped that " we should come in for
a share." The King smiled, and said '' he
desired not that peaceable people should be dis-
turbed for their religion." Not a great while
after, by releasing persons confined in prison
merely for refusing to take the oaths of alle-
giance and supremacy, 1,200 Quakers were set
at liberty. James was inclined to be very in-
dulgent. He had been a sufferer from perse-
cution himself, and knew what it tasted like.
It may barely be that his motives in opening
the prison-doors were manly and honorable.
But he was a Stuart, and it was more likely that
some lurking meanness impelled him to acts of
simple justice and common decency. But an
honest man was such a rarity in those times*
that people were disposed to magnify and cele-
brate the smallest acts of common humanity
without questioning the motives that led to
their commission.

James had been the friend and guardian of

* Except in the prisons.

^t. 41.] PENN'S INFLUENCE AT COURT. 1 65

William Penn, ever since the dying Admiral
committed his Quaker son to the care and good
offices of his royal patrons. The acquaintance
and intimacy then begun ripened rapidly now,
and the Quaker spent a great deal of his time at
court. His enemies made the most, and the
worst, of this favor with which he was received
at the court of a Catholic monarch, who
dropped on his knees before the Papal nuncio,
went daily and publicly to mass at Whitehall,
and permitted the Jesuits to build a college in
London.

But there were still hundreds of poor Qua-
kers kept in jail for non-payment of jailor's fees,
it being an ancient English idea that if a man had
no money, and you kept him where he couldn't
by any possibility get any, he would by and by
pay you in full. Penn felt that it was for their
suffering sakes he was now placed near the
throne. Then, too, while he pleaded with James
for religious liberty and the release of the suf-
fering Quakers, he could now and then prod his
Majesty a little on that Maryland boundary
business, and so open the prison-doors, and
crowd Lord Baltimore down south of the
fortieth degree of latitude. He moved his fam-

1 66 WILLIAM PENN. [1685.

ily to town that he might be always at the King's
elbow, and every day found him at White-
hall. Be it said that he used his influence with
the king tor good, and was earnest in his efforts
not alone for his own society of Friends, and his
own personal interest, but for other Christian
denominations suffering persecution. His in-
fluence upon James was undoubtedly of the
best. But James's influence upon Penn was not
likely to improve the Quaker's morals to any
alarming extent.

As Penn was known to have considerable in-
fluence with the administration, large numbers
of people who could not reach the King, but
could crowd in on Penn, thronged his house in
Kensington, and overwhelmed him with pe-
titions and recommendations and applications
and addresses and advice and all the usual
diversity of documents that flow in upon a new
government.

Among the first favors he asked of the King
was a pardon for John Locke, whom Charles
had meanly stripped of his honors and dignities
and cast out of the University of Oxford, " of
which he was the chiefest ornament." The
exiled philosopher went to the Hague, where

^t. 41.] A GENERAL UTILITY MAN. 167

he busied himself with his great work on the
" Human Understanding." James had been a
consenting party to Locke's banishment, but, at
Penn's intercession, he readily granted the par-
don. Like George Fox, however, the philoso^
pher refused to accept a pardon when he had
committed no crime, and he remained steadfast
to this view of his duty.

Penn seems to have been a general mediator
for everybody at this time. He assisted Pop-
ple, Locke's personal and political friend, out of
some serious troubles in France. Retired and
exiled Whigs came or sent to him, and found a
friend in him. He interceded for everybody in
trouble, and sometimes got into startling scenes
with his royal patron on this account. On one
occasion, at the request of a prominent Whig,
Penn asked for a pardon for Aaron Smith, a
man to whom he had never spoken. At the
mention of his name the King flew into a terri-
ble rage ; angrily declared that he would do no
such thing; said that six fellows like Smith
would put the three kingdoms in a flame ; de-
clared there were too many Smiths anyhow,
and threatened to turn Penn out of the room.
He was only temporarily silenced, and the

1 68 WILLIAM PENN. [1685.

next time he preferred his request, he found the
King in a better humor and got the pardon he
wanted.

Of course Penn's enemies — and a man of his
force of character had plenty of them — made the
most of this close intimacy between the CathoKc
monarch and the Quaker, and the report was
rapidly circulated that Penn himself was a
Papist, a Catholic of Catholics, a Jesuit, edu-
cated at St. Omer's, the great Jesuit seminary.
Even Dr. Tillotson, afterward Archbishop of
Canterbury, whom Penn esteemed as "first of
his robe," was troubled and filled with doubts
by these rumors. Day by day the stories grew,
until it was said that Penn " had matriculated in
the Jesuits* college, had taken holy orders at
Rome, and now regularly officiated in the ser-
vice of mass in the private chapel at Whitehall."
Many began to believe that he was the Pope in
disguise and carried the Holy Inquisition around
in his hat. Such an opportunity to write a pam-
phlet was not to be thrown away. Penn printed
a little one, " Fiction Found Out," but it was not
very interesting. It had lost the old ring of the
early days when his pamphlets were shod with
fire and tempered in aqua fortis. The womanly

iEt. 41.] THE INSINUATIONS REPELLED. 169

influence of Guli was evident in his preaching
and his pamphlets, and his enemies and friends
fared better because of his gentle Quaker wife.
But then, his pamphlets were not such" interest-
ing reading for the general public as they used
to be when he drew blood or blisters every time
he hit. He wrote a letter to Dr. Tillotson,
which satisfied him, and their old friendship
was renewed. The Doctor himself set to work
to deny the stories of Penn's Jesuitism, but this
only made matters worse, for people now said
he was more of a Jesuit than ever, and they
could prove it by Dr. Tillotson. The grade of
public intelligence was at a very high ebb at
that time. You had to put a man in prison,
and in some instances cut off his head, before
you could get him to understand what you
meant.

All this time the boundary dispute, that
brought Penn to England, dragged along like a
Congressional investigation. James was natu-
rally well disposed to Governor Penn, but all
these disputes of boundaries and rights, the petty
and annoying disagreements between the colo-
nies and the Crown, the quarrels and collisions
between the all-pervading royal tax-collector

170 WILLIAM PENN [1685.

and the tax-hating colonist, were damaging the
interests of all the proprietors in America, and
the home Government sometimes half wished
America had never been discovered.

When Penn presented his formal petition, a
council was at once called to take the subject
into final consideration, and the King himself
was present at the meeting of the board. It
appeared that a considerable portion of the
peninsula between the Chesapeake and the
Delaware was included in both charters, and
both proprietors wanted all of it. After the
claims were gone into with great minuteness,
James settled the dispute very promptly. He
divided the debatable ground in two equal
parts ; the eastern half he gave to Lord Balti-
more, as his right, and the western half he kept
himself, to keep it out of future litigation. As
there were only two halves, William Penn was
left, and as he went home after that council he
kept repeating to himself as he went along,
*'What do 1 see in this for Jones?"* James
always intimated that he was going to give his
half of the peninsula to Penn, some time when

* Penn wrote a very affecting pamphlet upon this decision,
entitled "Scoop Tout."

iEt. 41.] MASON AND DIXON'S LINE. I7I

Lord Baltimore had forgotten all about it, but
then he always acted as though he was going
to keep it himself also, — which he did, so long as
he kept his kingdom. For all the new land on
the peninsula he got, William Penn might as
well have remained in Pennsylvania, and indeed
it would have been money in his pocket if he
had. He didn't find much of anything but
trouble in England. As for this Maryland and
Pennsylvania boundary, it was a baleful seed of
trouble and troubles to come, for not until 1762
was it finally settled, and then it was surveyed
by two engineers sent for that purpose from
England, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon,
and became the famous Mason-and-Dixon's line
that bred much grief for the states of the union
that succeeded the colonies.

He received official information from his
province that the Quakers had held several re-
ligious meetings with the Indians, and the In-
dians had listened with great patience to v/hat-
ever was said, were deepty affected by the
meetings, always seemed to be very glad when
they were over, and the same Indians never
came back to another one.

The citizens who still resided in caves were

1/2 WILLIAM PENN. [1685.

this year disciplined, because these holes in the
ground were sinks of iniquity, and for general
depravity and freedom of conduct were proto-
types of modern beer-dives. And the Council
had therefore ordered these caves to be de-
stroyed, as Philadelphia was by that time so
prosperous that every man could live in a house,
and have some front steps to scrub every Satur-
day morning and fall over every Saturday
night. The Indians had been called together
and informed that they could have rum, subject
to the same pains and penalties that were in-
flicted upon the white people when they tarried
too long at the jug, a condition which the In-
dians joyfully accepted. All the early* history
of the great republic, indeed, appears to be
most intimately and inseparably connected with
rum. This year several Indians came before
the Council with grave complaints against the
servants of Jasper Farman, who, the Indians
averred, had made them drunk. A warrant
was immediately issued for these unfaithful and
bibulous servants, but the constable who under-

* And later.

^t. 41.1 REFORM IS NECESSARY. 1 73

took to serve it got lost in the woods, or himself
succumbed to the potency of the rum on Far-
man's place, it isn't certain which, and the trial
was postponed until the next day. At that time
Jasper Farman's servants appeared and were
ready for trial, but the prosecuting witnesses
were not on hand, and a messenger being sent
for them, they were found at home, filled with
fire-water even unto the eyes, and so drunken
they could not remember their own nor each
other's names.

Penn, among other things, sent peremptory
instructions to Thomas Lloyd, President of the
Council, that the number of drinking-houses in
Philadelphia should be reduced, without respect
of persons ; he deprecated the heavy charges to,
which people buying lands had been subjected,
and denounced ^' three warrants for one pur-
chase" as ''an abominable thing." He was
grieved and displeased with T. Holme for im-
proper charges in his department ; especially
on the score of drinking-collations, a bill of
twelve pounds, amounting to one quarter of the
whole purchase of the land, having been sent in
to a purchaser for expenses incurred in this

174 WILLIAM PENN. [1685.

way.* And the absent Governor mourned be-
cause animosities had begun to creep into the
government, and made up his mind that he
would come back to his province in the follow-
ing autumn, unless something happened to pre-
vent. And the very next mail which came
wandering along some time that year brought
him the reassuring news that Nicholas Moore,
one of his most trusted officials, president of the
Free Society of Traders, whom he had appointed
one of the provincial judges, had been by the
Assembly impeached, on ten counts, of divers
high crimes and misdemeanors.

Penn's presence was more and more needed
in his province every day, the boundary question
was settled so far as he was concerned, all the
prison-doors had been unhinged that he could
open ; dissensions, bickerings, jealousies were
growing in his province, and still he lingered in
England and went to court every day, although
he hadn't a case on the docket and not a ghost
of a show for being drawn on the jury.

The flames of civil war were kindled in Eng-
land as soon as James was fairly seated on the

* Poor Governor Penn! he had never seen the itemized ex-
pense account of a Congressional delegation at a funeral.

^t. 41. J A HARD CROWD FOR A CHRISTIAN 1/5

throne, but the insurrection was ahnost instantly
crushed. Monmouth and Grey were taken pris-
oners, and then began the rule of the infamous
Jeffreys, the judge who had condemned Alger-
non Sidney to the block; the judge ''after
James's own heart," who *' was not redeemed
from his vices by one solitary virtue." England
flowed with blood, and Jeffreys wreaked his
own bloodthirsty malice and the vengeance of
his royal master on hundreds of unfortunates
who were unable to purchase pardons ; for when
James did not behead a rebel he robbed him, and
after the robbery generally transported him so
that he couldn't annoy him by complaining
about it. Penn protested against all this cruelty
and waste of life. He was ever outspoken and
fearless in his denunciation of Jeffreys, even in
the hour of that bloodthirsty judge's greatest
power, openly speaking of him as ''that butcher"
and protesting against the "run of barbarous
cruelty" due to " Jeffreys' cruel temper." His
protests appear to have been useless, his connec-
tion with the court laid him open to suspicion
and calumny, and it is at this very time the Ma-
caulay charges are laid against him. James and
Jeffreys, — it would be wonderful indeed if any

176 WILLIAM PENN. [1685.

man could stand near to those two and escape
censure. William Penn was a good man, but
when he was at court he had to mingle with a
hard crowd.* Still in all his intercourse with
James, and amidst all the venality, cruelty, and
heartlessness of the court, Penn's character
shines out of its base surroundings, a diamond
in a setting of brass. There was never a time
when the Quaker's voice and influence were not
for mercy and religious toleration, and in spite
of the malicious slanders of his enemies, the cor-
ruption of the court he frequented left no stain
on his hands. Well was it for the persecuted
non-conformists, — Baptist, Methodist, Presby-
terian, and Quaker alike — that in such perilous
times, in that long dark night of proscription
and persecution, the dungeon, the fagot, and
the block, they had one friend of influence at
the Stuarts' elbow. It may be true that Penn's
colony suffered while he was at court, but none
the less did he suffer, and the loss of free Penn-
sylvania was the gain of English dissent.

* He was very good. Even his best friends and apologists
admit this. On one occasion while he was preaching, some of
his enthusiastic admirers in the congregation made a rush at
him, shouting, "Oh, kill him, kill him! He is too good to
live!"

^t. 41.] THE GALLOWS AND THE FAGGOT. IJJ

But James and his court were deaf to all
promptings of humanity, and punished the de-
feated rebels with malignant cruelty. In trans-
porting them, they sent the poor Whigs and
dissenters to the High Tory and Catholic owners
of unhealthful West India islands, where the
exiles would find the climate and their rulers
equally uncomfortable. Not more than twenty
were permitted to go to Pennsylvania, or any
other settlement tinctured with humanity. Cor-
nish, an ex-sheriff of London, was gibbeted be-
fore his own house, as the accomplice of Sidney
and Russell. Penn vainly begged for his life,
and stood near him when he died, and after his
death boldly vindicated his memory from the
savage accusations made against him. Through
his influence the mutilated limbs of Cornish,
scattered about after his execution, were gathered
up and restored to his friends. From the exe-
cution of the ex-sheriff, Penn went to Tyburn to
see Elizabeth Gaunt burned at the stake for
harboring a rebel in her house. Until the pit-
iless flames silenced her, she declared her inno-
cence, and Penn, who had interceded with all
hi^ power for her life, could only stand near
her to catch her protestations and carry them

1/8 WILLIAM PENN. [1685.

back to the King, there to quote them as argu-
ments against other executions.

But for all these words and works of mercy
the court and the creatures of James did not
love Penn, and to punish him for what they
deemed his interference with executions, banish-
ments, and the general extortion of ransoms,
the Crown lawyers, under direction of the min-
ister, issued a quo warranto'^ against his pro-
vince of Pennsylvania, and compelled him to
vacate his charter. These proceedings, how-
ever, were summarily stopped by the King.

Meanwhile, the more James expressed his op-
position to all penal laws against religious of-
fences, the more the Church of England sus-
tained and approved them. The repeal of the
Test Act meant toleration for Catholics as well
as dissenting Protestants, and it was apparent
to the churchmen that James, caring nothing
for the Baptist, Methodist, or Quaker, was only
paving the way for the subversion of the estab-
lished church and the reintroduction of Popery

* A dreadful thing. It had a big knob at one end, and a
sharp point at the other, with great lumps and spikes all the
way between, and was as long as a stick of wood It was much
used in the time of James.

iEt. 41.] TOO MUCH TOLERATION. I/Q

as the state religion, and then — -the liberal, un-
fettered toleration which the Catholic Church,
in countries where it was in power, granted all
Protestant denominations would be enjoyed in
England. The churchmen, seeing James sur-
rounded by ultra-papists and Jesuits, were al-
ready looking to the Prince of Orange, and
James, seeing this and knowing its significance,
told William Penn that if he was going on a
missionary tour through Holland by and by, he
had a message he wished him to carry to the
Hague.

CHAPTER XI.

THE WAY OF THE MACHINE.

IT THY CERT'NLY," said Penn, - and it is a
^ • most singular coincidence. I was just this
minute thinking I would run over to Holland and
rub up my Dutch a little. I understand a tribe
of Pennsylvania-Dutch Indians have been dis-
covered out near Doylestown m my province,
and I want to be able to talk to them like a
Kansas land-agent when I go back." And he
cleared for Holland the next day, with a mixed
cargo of religion and politics, — largely politics,
with enough religion in the hold for a good
moral ballast. As the informal envoy of James,
he was to tell William of Orange that his good
father-in-law was a liberal man and a Christian ;
that he opposed all religious tests and penal
laws ; he believed in perfect religious liberty
and an unfettered public and private conscience,
and he wanted to know what opinions the gen-
tleman from the Hague held on these matters,

iEt. 42.] A PRINCE ON THE TEST ACT, l8l

and also what he would take to aid this liberal
king to pass an act of toleration for all creeds
and opinions, and obtain a repeal of the Test Act.

The gentleman from the Hague thought he
rather understood his father-in-law. He had
ge-married once into dot femilies already, und
of he was his beesness geknowen, it was taken
a bigger man than his fader-un-law und diesen
archiquaecker to puUen de eyes over his wool.
He intimated that if his father-in-law ever did a
good thing, it was from a bad motive ; he knew
the family all through, his wife was a Stuart,
and he could see clear through James's little
game. As for himself, he declared '' dot he was
an Englander ge-born, und he vas opposet auf
some foreign dominations on English affairs,
und he would^ not haf some of it. Dot's bees-
ness," said William of Orange firmly, like the
bold Briton that he was, *' und when I was over
de Shannel ge-kommen you was wish you will
leave me alone dot Test Axes."*

When he had discharged his cargo of politics,

* Penn corrected the inflexible Englishman, saying, "Test
Act." "Oh," replied the other William, "is it only one? I
dhought it was a dozens of it. Exes or hetchets, it makes me
no difference."

1 82 WILLIAM PENN. [1686.

William Penn turned his attention to the Eng-
lish exiles for conscience' sake, the native
Quakers, and worked up a good emigration-
scheme for the province of Pennsylvania. Penn
was a man literally and zealously "diligent in
business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord."
He had his account of Pennsylvania, a document
built on the same ground-plan as a Nebraska
B and M land circular of to-day, translated into
Flemish and circulated among the farmers; he
travelled through Holland and the Rhineland,
and told the people that Pennsylvania was as big
as a prairie, and that Germantown was next to
Philadelphia and easily accessible by the street-
cars and two lines of railroad.

When he returned to London, he sought the
ear of the King, and found it,* and filled it with
petitions for the pardon of exiled Presbyterians
and other dissenters. When Penn entered into
controversy with an opponent, he was pitiless.
When he hit a Presbyterian preacher with a
loaded pamphlet, that Presbyterian went right
off into the woods and lay down and died.
But when he found a Presbyterian or any other

* Right on the King, between the temporal bone and the
back of the neck.

JEt. 42.] A DISTRESSED BARONET. 1 83

non-conformist in trouble, he had oil for his
wounds, balm for his hurts, and money for his
hotel-bill. Through his influence many exiles
were brought back to their homes. Many
of these men and their children remembered
the Quaker most gratefully for his goodness
of heart. Others repaid him in the usual coin
of the world. They kicked him and told lies
about him, and were only pleased with him
when he got into trouble. Indiscriminate
goodness is sometimes a mistake. There are
some men whom, if you see them drowning,
it is best to let drown, without interference.
If you pulled them out of the river, they would
sue you at law for laying violent hands upon
them. This is especially true in poHtics.

Among others for whom he ^ecured pardons
was Sir Robert Steuart of Coltness. Penn met
him in London after his return, and congratu-
lated him in very difficult Latin, at which Sir
Robert burst into tears, knowing he could not
construe it, and fearing he would be flogged or
kept in after school.

"Ah, Mr. Penn," he sighed, ''the Earl of
Arran has got my estate, and I fear my situa-
tion is now about to be worse than ever."

1 84 WILLIAM PENN. [1686.

"What, man !" exclaimed Penn, " is thee going
to lose thy job ? Come to my house to-morrow,
and I will set matters to rights for thee."

Penn went directly to Arran. " What is this,
friend James," he said to him, '' that I hear of
thee ? Thou hast taken possession of Coltness's
estate. Thou knowest that it is not tJiine''

" That estate,** says Arran, " I paid a great
price for. I received no other reward for my
expensive and troublesome embassy in France
except this estate ; and I am certainly much out
of pocket by the bargain."

'' All very well, friend James," said the Qua-
ker, '' but of this assure thyself, that if thou dost
not give me this moment an order on thy cham-
berlain for two hundred pounds to Coltness to
carry him down to his native country, and
a hundred a year to subsist on till matters are
adjusted, I will make it as many thousands out
of thy way with the King."

Arran instantly complied, and Penn sent for
Sir Robert and gave him the security. After
the revolution Sir Robert, with the rest, had
full restitution of his estate ; and Arran was
obliged to account for all the rents he had re-

^t. 42.] THE LAY OF THE QUIT RENTS. 1 85

ceived, against which this payment only was
allowed to be stated.

This authentic narrative from the Earl of
Buchan's writings beautifully illustrates Wil-
liam Penn's fine sense of honor and justice when
another man took an estate from one of his
friends to reward himself for political services.
Just why it never occurred to him to apply this
principle to the estates of the Penn family
in Ireland, acquired in a similar manner alike
from the commonwealth and the monarchy,
from Cromwell and Charles, for political in-
trigues and hard fighting on both sides, — is a
question which lack of space forbids us to dis-
cuss. But perhaps he didn't have time. And
then, Penn was an Englishman and his confis-
cated estates were in Ireland and naturally didn't
count, at that time — nor at any other time.

All was not well at this time over in the
province he loved, and his heaviest troubles lay
in the city that was nearest his heart. The
province was prosperous, and well able to sup-
port its Governor; certainly it could well afford
to pay its honest obligations. But so long as
Penn had plenty of money, he had supported

1 86 WILLIAM PENN. [1686.

himself and family, and maintained the provin-
cial court at his own expense, and the freemen
of the province were disposed to let him go on
in the same way the remainder of his term.
And at any rate, they were not going to pay
any "quit-rents." The original terms on which
Penn sold his lands in Pennsylvania were forty
shillings in money and an annual quit-rent of
one shilling for every hundred acres. Cheap
enough, it would seem, but the thrifty Pennsyl-
vanian protested against such an excessive tax
as the quit-rent of one shilling a year for one
hundred acres of land.

They wouldn't, or at least they didn't, pay
William Penn a shilling, nor yet a penny, of his
quit-rents. On this very subject, writing back
to the province, the Governor sayeth: "that
his quit-rents were then at least of the value of
five hundred pounds a year, and then due,
though he could not get a penny. God is my
w^itness," said he, " I lie not. I am above six
thousand pounds out of pocket more than ever
I saw by the province ; and you may throw in
my pains, cares, and hazard of life, and leaving
of my family and friends to serve them." " Be-
sides," he writes again from London, " the coun-

JEt. 42.] THE GOVERNOR WANTS THEM, 1 87

try think not of my supply (and I resolve never
to act the Governor, and keep another family
and capacity on my private estate), if my table,
cellar, and stable may be provided for, with a
barge and yacht, or sloop, for the service of
Governor and government, I may try to get
hence ; for, in the sight of God, I am six thou-
sand pounds and more behindhand, more than
ever I received or saw for land in that province.
— There is nothing my soul breathes more for
in this world, next my dear family's life, than
that I may see poor Pennsylvania again — but
I cannot force my way hence, and see nothing
done on that side inviting."

It is estimated that by this time Penn had
sold about one million acres of land, for which
he had receiv;ed ^^"20,000, all of which, and i^6,ooo
out of his own pocket, he had spent in and on
the province, in presents for the Indians and
payments for their land, and in other public
matters, and now he could not collect his quit-
rents from the colonists. This shows what kind
of people were the early settlers of Pennsyl-
vania. If Penn tells the truth, not one solitary
beggar of them, Quaker or Gentile, Jew, Greek,
or barbarian, paid up his quit-rent, for he declares

1 88 WILLIAM PENN. [1686.

he " could not get one penny," No wonder he
could not see anything on this side " inviting."
The early settlers of Pennsylvania did not be-
lieve in quit-rents. There was an air of feudal-
ism about that sort of thing which they resented.
They were the original land-leaguers, and they
Boycotted their own Governor and benefactor,
not for meanness, but on principle.

Worse than all this, his agents loaded sight
drafts upon the poor man, and, as usual in such
cases, timed them so they would reach him just
when he was so short that if the whole State of
Pennsylvania were offered at public vendue for
a cent, he couldn't buy the village of Kittan-
ning.

" Now,* he writes to James Harrison. " I
pray thee to draw upon me no more for one
penny." Then he gets his back up and talks just
as a Baptist would talk if he were a little mad.
After complaining, and with justice, that the
Council and Assembly omits all mention of his
own name and the King's in its official acts, he
says : " Next, I do desire thee to let no more
mention be made of the supply, though *tis a
debt, since a plain contract in the face of au-
thority for a supply. I will sell my shirt off my

^t. 42]. PENN ELEVATES HIS SPINE. 1 89

back,* before I will trouble them any more. I
shall keep the power and privileges I have left
to the pitch, and recover the rest as their mis-
behavior shall forfeit them back into my hands ;
for I see I am to let them know that 'tis yet in my
power to make them need me as much as I do
their supply : though the disappointment of me
in that, with above i^ 1,000 bills I paid since my
return, have kept me from Pennsylvania above
all other things, and yet may do. Nor will I
ever come into that province with my family to
spend my private estate, to fill up and discharge
a public station, and so add more wrongs to
my children. This is no anger, though 1 am
grieved, but a cool and resolved thought."

It is just as well that William explained that
he was not angry, for he talked as any man
not a Quaker talks when he is, so to speak, a
"leetle riled." And nobody could blame him
for setting up his bristles a trifle, under the
circumstances. At any rate, he put his foot
down, changed the form of the executive de-
partment of his government, appointing five
commissioners to act in his behalf, and in-

*This indicates that Penn did not wear shirts that buttoned
behind.

190 WILLIAM PENN. [1686.

structed them to keep an eye on the Council
and Assembly, to abrogate all that had been
done in his absence at the ver}- next session
of the Assembly, and dismiss it immediately,
then at once call it together again and re-
enact such laws as they saw fit ; look closely to
the qualifications of members of both houses,
and enact, disannul, or vary any laws, the Gov-
ernor himself reserving his right of confirma-
tion, and all his '' peculiar royalties and advan-
tages."

That is the kind of repubhcan William Penn
was when the Assembly of his own creation
tried to leave him out. There was something
of the old pamphlet fire still left in him, and he
thought it was bad enough to be beat out of his
quit-rents, without being crowded out of the
government. And with all these perplexities
and troubles on both sides of the Atlantic
weighing upon him. Governor Penn felt how
true was the remark of Friend Shakespeare,
" Uneasy lies the head that *has to manage a
mixed colony of Quakers, Baptists (Deep-water
and Hard-shell), Presbyterians (Old School,
New School, Cumberland, United, and Blue),
Methodists (P. E., M. E., North, and South),

^t. 42.] DECLARATION OF INDULGENCE. IQI

Ranters (Jumpers and Jerkers), Episcopalians,
Puritans, Catholics, English, Irish, Dutch, Ger-
mans, Swedes, French, Norwegians, negroes,
Welsh, and nineteen kinds of Indians." But
still he did not lose his faith in Pennsylvania.

Once more we turn from the troubles of the
distant province to merry England, where mat-
ters were reaching a crisis. James, supported
by the opinions of his judges, on the i8th of
March, 1687, issued the royal proclamation sus-
pending all penal laws against religious offences,
and forbidding the application of any test or
the offer of any oath to persons who were ap-
pointed or elected to office under the govern-
ment.

Had this declaration of indulgence come
from any but a Stuart, the people of England
might have received it with more unanimous
grace. But the better James acted, the people
argued, the worse he really was, and this was
perhaps the correct estimate of this monarch.
That he was sincere in his efforts to estabhsh
the religion of Rome in England, no one doubts ;
but as this w^as about the only piece of sincerity
in his character, his declaration of indulgence
was received with a great variety of emotions

192 WILLIAM PENN. [1687.

and sentiments. There were also grave ele-
ments of civil danger in the declaration, and
the English people generally looked upon the
act with distrust.

But all the same the poor dissenters who had
been spending their valuable time in prisons
and looking out upon the glad free sunshine
between iron bars, thought the declaration
that flung open their prison-doors was the
very document needed to fill a long-felt want.
And the poor creatures swarmed up to the
throne witTi long, tiresome " addresses," by
reading which they evidently hoped to kill the
King, and thus be able to enjoy their freedom
without the distressing encumbrance of being
grateful to anybody for it. They thanked the
King who had '' heard the cries of his suffering
subjects for conscience' sake," after the afore-
said sufferers had been howling in his ears
nearly two years, and " since it pleased the King
out of his great compassion to commiserate
their afflicted condition," when the very dogs
in the street pitied them and the dumb stones
of their prisons cried out against their persecu-
tion, and since " he gives his dissenting subjects"
that they may say their prayers without taking

iEt. 42.] HATS OFF ALL ROUND. 193

a book to church to read them from, and be-
cause " his most gracious Majesty the King
had," for some inexplicable but undoubtedly
selfish and wicked reason, performed an act
of ordinary humanity and common decency,
so unusual in his family, — then they were for-
ever more his obliged, peaceable, loving, and
faithful subjects, who had rather be kicked by a
lord than shake hands with an honest carpenter,
any day, and were going to show their eternal
and supreme gratitude to their most gracious
King just as soon as they could get a good
whack at him, which would be when that
gallant English prince, Wilhelm von Orange,
arrived.

In the excess of their joy and gratitude, when
they went up with their address, the Quakers
even agreed to " waive the ceremony of the
hat," and, headed by William Penn, the deputa-
tion entered the royal presence bareheaded.

Penn felt so good over this declaration, in the
proclamation of which he is said to have had
great influence, that he wrote a pamphlet, and
called it '' Good Advice to the Church of Eng-
land, Roman Catholic, and Protestant Dissen-
ter, In which it is Endeavored to be Made Ap-

194 WILLIAM PENN. [1688.

pear that it is their Duty with a big D, princi-
ple with a large P, and Interest with a capital I,
to Abolish the penal Laws and Tests." The
title was originally much longer and covered
both backs of the pamphlet, and people thought
the good old times were come again. William
Penn's pamphlets must have been a source of
unfailing joy to the printer, for he wrote a free,
easy, untrammelled hand, like the clambering
woodbine as it corkscrews up an erratic water-
elm. Something like Mr. Greeley's copper-
plate text when he was in a hurry and didn't
feel very well.

When Penn wasn't at court, he was preach-
ing, and as he wasn't away from court much of
the time now, he took advantage of his attend-
ance on the King in his progress through Berk,
Gloucester, Worcester, Shrop, Che, Stafford,
Warwick, Oxford, and Hamp Shire, to hold a
few meetings by the way, one of which, at
Chester, the King attended.*

Penn now '' viewed with alarm" the situation
at Whitehall, where the Jesuits had a control-
ling and growing interest, and if he was influen-

*It did not appear to do him any good, however.

^t. 43.] A MUTUAL FRIEND. I95

tial in bringing about the Declaration of Indul-
gence, he began to see that he had invoked
a spirit, so to speak, "as wouldn't curry nor
skeer," and he didn't know what to do with it.
In vain he approached the King with his boldest
expostulations, and told him the nation was not
only alarmed, but indignant. His influence
was overborne by the Jesuit friends of James,
who pressed him to obtain for Cathohcs a
footing in the Universities. With this object in
view, a pretext was easily found for prosecuting
and dismissing Dr. Peachey from his office in
Cambridge, and when the presidency of Mag-
dalen College was vacant James named An-
thony Farmer for election, and the Fellows
promptly elected Dr. Hough. James censured
the heads of .colleges for disobedience, and
ordered a new election, which the Fellows did
not hold. Both parties continuing obstinate,
Penn casually dropped in to the quarrel as
mutual friend and arbitrator. The Quaker was
convinced that the Fellows were in the right:
they could not yield without an evident breach
of their oaths. The King's mandates were a
force on conscience, and contrary therefore to
the King's own intentions. Thus he wrote to

196 WILLIAM PENN. [1688.

the King-, and the collegians themselves de-
livered the letter to his majesty, to save postage.

His majesty was obstinate, and believed it
impossible for churchmen to oppose the royal
will. And, indeed, they would not when it
coincided with their own. Oxford preached
passive obedience when the axe and the Tower
waited only for dissenting and commonwealth
subjects. It was another thing when her own
privileges were threatened. Penn still made
efforts to reconcile the opposing forces. But
while he felt the Fellows were right, and would
not advise complete submission, he did insist
that the King's self-love should be gratified a
little; that his majesty did not like to be
thwarted, and the dispute had gone on so long,
they could not hope to be restored to the
royal favor without making some concessions.
Hough and the Fellows declared they had done
all that was consistent with honesty and con-
science, and besides they had a religion to de-
fend. The Papists had already gotten Christ-
church and University colleges. The present
struggle was for Magdalen, and in a short time
they threatened they would have the rest.

''That," says Penn, *' they shall never li:ivc.

JEt. 43.] MAGDALEN COLLEGE IN TROUBLE. 1 97

assure yourselves. If once they proceed so far,
they will quickly find themselves destitute of
their present assistance. For my part, I have
always declared my opinion that the prefer-
ments of the church should not be put into any
other hands but such as they at present are in ;
but I hope you would not have the two Univer-
sities such invincible bulwarks for the Church of
England that none but they must be capable of
giving their children a learned education. I
suppose two or three colleges will content the
Papists. Christchurch is a noble structure ;
University is a pleasant place, and Magdalen
College is a comely building."

The Fellows opposed Penn's more liberal
ideas, and then the King most graciously re-
lieved him from any further mediation by
ejecting the Fellows from the college, and
stripping them of their honors and preferments.

James, confident that Oxford and the church
would loyally adhere to the doctrine of passive
obedience taught by themselves, renewed the
Declaration of Indulgence in April, and prom-
ised that Parliament should meet in November.
Ke issued an order in council, directing that the
Declaration should be read in all churches.

198 'WILLIAM PENN. [1688.

Half a dozen bishops disobeyed the royal
order, in violation of their own tenet of passive
obedience, and were committed to the Tower.
When they came up for trial they were trium-
phantly acquitted, and the country applauded.
That gallant English prince, William of Orange,
came over w^ith a large assortment of armed
Dutchmen. James sat down to count his friends
on his fingers, and finding he had about four
thumbs more than were necessary for a full
tally-sheet, stayed not upon the order of his
emigrating, but got him hence and into France
with great speed and utter disregard of the
customs proprieties.

CHAPTER XII.

ANOTHER LIE NAILED !

'TPHE historian and biographer of to-day, as
-*■ in all times, find it much easier to locate
the beam in their grandfather's eyes than to ex-
tract the mote from their own or their neigh-
bor's optics, although the mote of to-day con-
cerns the present world far more than does the
beam of yesterday. We look with horror and
indignation at the wickedness, cruelty, super-
stition, and general depravity of the courts of
the Stuarts, when we write or read our his-
tories, and forget, in the contemplation of by-
gone evils, the dishonesty of our own day, the
scheming tricker}^ that too often dishonors poli-
tics and degrades statecraft to the level of the
pot-house caucus. We remember Jeffreys, and
forget the vile assassin who slew our own Presi-
dent; with unutterable loathing we read how
the bones of Cromwell were dragged from the
sacred rest of the grave by the cavaliers whom

200 WILLIAM PENN.

[1688.

he had winnowed like chaff while he lived, and
forget the viler wretches who in our own day
snarl in ghoulish hate about the grave of Gar-
field, and with shameless malice seek to blacken
his character before the crape is taken from the
doors of the Capitol.

So Macaulay, writing in his time, found it an
easy matter to bring startling charges against
William Penn. Penn was a good man, honest,
conscientious, brave, and rather unfortunate in
having for his friends such rascals as Charles
and James. And yet, while his enemies have
urged this against him, there were some reasons
for this friendship, especially between Penn and
James. When James, then Duke of York, was
commander of the fleet, Penn's father was his
bravest and best sailor, his trusted Admiral.
Penn's father was intriguing for the restoration
of Charles all the time he was drawing pay and
begging estates from Cromwell, and he was the
first man to welcome the graceless Stuart to his
fleet. And for all this faithful service to them,
the royal brothers loved Admiral Penn, and
borrowed money of him as long as they could
tap him. For his sake they loved his son, and
when they owed him ^16,000, they made him

JEt. 43-] * THE MACAULAY CHARGES. 201

take his pay in wild lands in Pennsylvania, that
Penn himself declares cost him more than he
ever got out of them. The brothers loved him,
and swindled him, and if any one can see where-
in Penn was under any obligations to James, or
why he should be a bosom friend of that mon-
arch, his keen insight into human motives should
be a great comfort to him.

Macaulay himself, like the pugilist who shakes
hands with his antagonist before he breaks his
head, says :

" To speak the whole truth concerning Penn
is a task which requires some courage ; for he
is rather a mythical than a historical person.
Rival nations and hostile sects have agreed in
canonizing him. England is proud of his name.
A great commonwealth beyond the Atlantic
regards him with a reverence similar to that
which the Athenians felt for Theseus, and the
Romans for Quirinus. The respectable society
of which he was a member honors him as an
apostle. By pious men of other persuasions he
is generally regarded as a bright pattern of
Christian virtue. Meanwhile, admirers of a
very different sort have sounded his praises.
The French philosophers of the eighteenth cen-

202 WILLIAM PENN. • [1688.

tury pardoned what they regarded as his super-
stitious fancies in consideration of his contempt
for priests, and of his cosmopolitan benevolence,
impartially extended to all races and to all
creeds. His name has thus become, through-
out all civilized countries, a synonym for prob-
ity and philanthropy.

" Nor is this high reputation altogether un-
merited. Penn was without doubt a man of
eminent virtues. He had a strong sense of re-
ligious duty, and a fervent desire to promote
the happiness of mankind. On one or two
points of high importance he had notions more
correct than were in his day common, even
among men of enlarged minds ; and as the pro-
prietor and legislator of a province, which, be-
ing almost uninhabited when it came into his
possession, afforded a clear field for moral ex-
periments, he had the rare good fortune of
being able to carry his theories into practice
without any compromise, and yet without any
shock to existing institutions. He will always
be mentioned with honor as the founder of a
colony who did not, in his dealings with a sav-
age people, abuse the strength derived from
civilization, and as a lawgiver who, in an age of

iEt. 43.] THE MACAULAY CHARGES. 203

persecution, made religious liberty the corner-
stone of a polity. But his writings and his life
furnish abundant proofs that he was not a man
of strong sense. He had no skill in reading the
characters of others. His confidence in persons
less virtuous than himself led him into great
errors and misfortunes. His enthusiasm for
one great principle sometimes impelled him to
violate other great principles which he ought to
have held sacred. Nor was his integrity alto-
gether proof against the temptations to which
it was exposed in that splendid and polite but
deeply corrupted society with which he now
mingled. The whole court was in a ferment
with intrigues of gallantry and intrigues of am-
bition. The traffic in honors, places, and par-
dons was incessant. It was natural that a man
who was daily seen at the palace, and who was
known to have free access to majesty, should be
frequently importuned to use his influence for
purposes which a rigid morahty must condemn.
The integrity of Penn had stood firm 'against
obloquy and persecution. But now, attacked
by royal smiles, by female blandishments, by
the insinuating eloquence and delicate flattery
of veteran diplomatists and courtiers, his resolu-

204 WILLIAM PENN. [1688.

tion began to give way. Titles and phrases
against which he had often borne his testimony
dropped occasionally from his lips and pen. It
would be well if he had been guilty of nothing
worse than such compliances with the fashions
of the world. Unhappily, it cannot be con-
cealed that he bore a chief part in some transac-
tions condemned not merely by the society to
which he belonged, but by the general sense of
all honest men. He afterward solemnly pro-
tested that his hands were pure from iUicit gain,
and that he never received any gratuity from
those whom he had obliged, though he might
easily, while his influence at court lasted, have
made 120,000 pounds. To this assertion full
credit is due. But bribes may be offered to
vanity as well as cupidity, and it is impossible
to deny that Penn was cajoled into bearing a
part in some unjustifiable transactions of which
others enjoyed the profits."

Thus we see how Penn was impaled on the
quill of the great essayist because he forgot
what he had so often scrawled in his copy-book
at the grammar-school in Chigwell, *' Evil com-
munications corrupt good manners." He
trained in a hard crowd, and people naturally

^t. 43.] THE MACAULAY CHARGES. 205

wondered what a good man could be doing at
the court of James. Still, it was very necessary
for one honest man to be near the King, and in
forming its judgment mankind must remember
that one greater and better and wiser than
William Penn had also eaten with publicans and
sinners. Penn, however, while he seemed to
mingle freely enough with the sinners, didn't
waste much time on the publicans. Nothing
under a King for Governor Penn.

In Hbelling a better man than himself, Macau-
lay formulates his charges in five counts :

I. That Penn's connection with the court of
James caused his own Society of Friends to
look on him coldly and treat him with obloquy.

II. That he accepted the royal mission to ex-
tort money from the girls of Taunton for the
Maids of Honor.

III. That he allowed himself to be employed
in the work of seducing Kiffin into compliance
with the designs of the court.

IV. That he sought to secure William's as-
sent to the edict of James, suspending the penal
laws. And

V. That he endeavored to seduce the Fellows
of Magdalen College from the path of right.

206 WILLIAM PENN. [1688.

These charges have been satisfactorily met at
every point, and refuted by Dixon and others,
and still more ably and fully by Samuel M.
Janney in his most excellent " Life of Penn,"
and Penn's character is made to shine only the
more brightly by the vigorous polishing it re-
ceived at the hands of Macaulay. On the first
count, that ^' Penn's own sect regarded him with
coldness," it is more than probable that some of
them did. Even Clarkson thinks that many of
the Friends thought he meddled too much in
politics. But these were Friends who were out
of prison. Whenever a zealous Quaker found
himself on the wrong side of the lock, he im-
mediately became convinced that William Penn
at court was the right man in the right place,
and that he was doing the cause of religious
liberty more good by standing at the King's
elbow and saying a good word for the im-
prisoned Quakers than he could accomplish in
any other way. And as the majority of the
Quakers were in prison, it is evident that Penn
stood well in the esteem and affections of the
greater part of his Society. That some of them
may have censured him, and did not treat him
kindly or justly, is very probable ; that many of

^£. 43.] THE SALE OF PARDONS. 20'J

them did not pay their quit-rents is beyond all
dispute, on Penn's own testimony ; and that the
Friends are just as good as other people, and
some of them much better than some other peo-
ple, is a well-known fact. If William Penn was
at all times universally and faultlessly popular
with all members of his own Society, it is the
first and only case of the kind on record. There
was a Judas even among the Twelve. So it was
no very serious matter that some of the Friends
did not believe Penn to be a bit of earthly per-
fection. There are no perfect men in this
world. There never was but one, and people
hated him and crucified him.

The affair of extorting money from the girls
of Taunton was simply this. When Monmouth
arrived at Taunton in his revolt against James,
that town was enthusiastically rebellious, and
the school-mistress led a procession of her pupils
to meet him, and presented him a set of royal
standards. Some of the httle girls in the pro-
cession were not over ten years old. None the
less they were rebels, and the sentence of death
hung over them. It was one of the refined cus-
toms of the court of James to divide the rebels
among the King's friends, for transportation or

208 WILLIAM PENN. [1688.

ransom, according as the friend wanted colonists
for his plantations over the sea, or ready money.
" The Queen begged one hundred for some
favorite whose name is not preserved," "Sir
Philip Howard received two hundred," " Sir
Richard White two hundred, and two other
knights received one hundred each." So the
poor wretches were distributed around like
merchandise, and the friend who received this
gift of men, women, and children set ransoms
on their heads, and wrung their freedom or
money or life away from them.

While all the others were getting so much
out of this traffic, the female persons of the
court — called, by a ghastly sarcasm. Maids of
Honor — proposed to hypothecate a few par-
dons themselves. The King gave them these
Taunton school-girls, and the alleged maids of
so-called honor began to manipulate their little
corner. The maids had some trouble in get-
ting the matter arranged, as all the men to
whom was offered the mission of managing the
sale of pardons in the case of these school-girls
refused to be mixed up in the business, until a
man named George Penne was found, a profes-
sional pardon-broker, who officiated in this rob-

JEt. 43.] TJ/E CASE OF ELDER KIFFIN. 209

bery. William Penn, on the best evidence, had
nothing to do with the shameful transaction.*

As for William Kiffin, he was a Baptist
preacher, and an old opponent of Penn's. In
his anxiety to do good that evil might come,
James was doing all he could to secure the
adhesion of dissenting subjects, and therefore
appointed William Kiffin a city magistrate.
But this most liberal and tolerant monarch had
just beheaded two of Elder Kiffin's grandsons
lor expressing their views on religious liberty
by joining Monmouth's army, and it was feared
that the old man might not be anxious to accept
office under the murderer of his boys. A
grandfather of any sensibility naturally would
feel a little delicate about it. Kiffin came to
Penn to ask him that he '' might be excused,"
or else Penn went to Kiffin to advise him not to
throw over a good thing when he had it, or
Kiffin and Penn came to each other. Macaulay
states positively, as he states everything he has
occasion to say, that Penn was employed by the
"heartless and venal sycophants of the court"
to seduce Kiffin into the acceptance of an AI-

* But only think of the crowd he was associating with, six
days in the week!

2IO WILLIAM PENN. [1688.

derman's gown. Kiffin himself, quoted by the
defence, says: "A great temptation attended
me, which was a commission from the King, to
be one of the Aldermen of the city of London ;
which, as soon as I heard of it, I used all the
diligence I could to be excused, both by some
lords near the King, and also by Sir Nicholas
Butler and William Penn, but all in vain ; they
said they knew I had an interest that would
serve the King, and although they knew that
my sufferings had been great, by the cutting ofiF
of my two grandsons and losing their estates,
yet it should be made up to me, both as to their
estates and also in what honor or advantage I
could reasonably desire for myself." * If Elder
Kiffin knows what he is talking about, it would
appear to a man up a tree that William Penn
did advise him to accept office under the King,
who would pay the old man for his grandsons
at the ruling rate on 'Change, and on the usual
terms for grandsons, thirty off for cash. If any
man can make anything else out of Kiffin's
statement, which is the only evidence quoted
by the defence, that man ought to rise up and

* Janney.

iEt. 43.] HIS LITTLE WEAKNESSES. 2 1 1

tell the American people just what William's
position was in this supremely important mat-
ter of Elder Kiffin's aldermania.

The story of Penn's connection with the
Magdalen College affair has been gone over
briefly in a foregoing chapter, and Samuel
Janney's exhaustive researches have been suf-
ficient to show that the great Quaker had clean
hands and a right mind in all this matter, and
said and did nothing derogatory to his charac-
ter as a man of honor. In generarl, the Macau-
lay charges fall to the ground in the light of
fair investigation, and the great essayist himself
bears wiUing testimony to Penn's "eminent
virtues," to his "strong sense of religious duty,"
to " his integrity that stood firm against oblo-
quy and persecution ;" as " a lawgiver who, in
an age of persecution, made religious liberty
the corner-stone of a polity." His charge that
the Quaker's resolution gave way when at-
tacked " by female blandishments" only excites
a smile. That he " had no skill in reading the
characters of others," and that " his confidence
in persons less virtuous than himself led him
into great errors and misfortunes," is sadly
true, as Penn himself learned in some of the bit-

212 WILLIAM PENN. [1688.

ter experiences of his old age. That he " en-
deavored to gain William's assent to the edict
of James, suspending the penal laws/* is not
proved. It is known that Penn, much as he
approved of the widest principles of religious
liberty embodied in that proclamation, rejoicing
as he did to see the prison-doors opened by it,
feared that the arbitrary suspension of the ob-
noxious enactments was the use of a dangerous
prerogative, and was ever anxious to have the
Declaration sanctioned by Parliament. William
was positively and most certainly a good man,
but he would dabble in politics. And no man
ever yet went into politics, though he went in
not more than knee-deep, who did not come out
plastered with mud to the nape of his neck.
The better he is, the more mud is fired at him.

CHAPTER XIII.

CRUSHED again!

TT/'ILLIAM PENN did not attend court so
^^ regularly now as he was used to do. Most
of his friends at court had gone out of the country,
and he was almost the only man who had been
intimately associated with James who did not
run away. He knew he had done nothing to
run for. And even if he had, Penn was not the
man to trust in his legs, and he feared the new
King no more than he had feared the Tower
and Newgate in the old days of persecution.
He would no't Hsten to his friends when they
urged him to fly to America and look after his
province. He did not even change his address.
He remained in London and took his daily
walks in Whitehall as usual.

One day in December he received a message
informing him that the Lords were then sitting,
and if he would favor them with his attendance,
they would like to propound a few conundrums

214 WILLIAM PENN. [1688.

to him. When a man received a message of
that nature, he did not send word that he would
walk around the block and see them later. If
he couldn't get over to France, he went right
along with the messenger. Penn went before
the Lords, and in reply to the numerous ques-
tions they propounded to him he said that he
had ever loved his country and Chesapeake
oysters, and had been devoted to the Protestant
faith and the colony of Pennsylvania, and had
always done his best to promote the true inter-
ests of all these things. The recent King, he
added, had been his friend and his father's
friend, and while he no longer owed him alle-
giance as a subject, owing to circumstances
over which his recent majesty appeared to have
very little control, yet as a man he still retained
for him a great deal more respect than any
member of that family ever deserved. He had
done nothing, and should do nothing, but what
he was willing to answer for before God and
his country.

The Lords were puzzled what to do, but as it
appeared, after a rigid investigation, that Penn
had done nothing for which he could be held,
they decided to hold him under bail of ;^6,ooo,

iEt. 45.] THE KING AND THE CHURCH. 21$

and with this pleasant reminder of prosecution
and more trouble, he was allowed to roam at
large. His case was continued from term to
term for about a year, and then when he ap-
peared in court there were no prosecuting wit-
nesses and he was discharged.

The first Parliament in the reign of William
and Mary passed the Act of Toleration, which
was hailed with great joy by all denominations
save the Catholics, who were left out. It did not
remove the tests, nor did it extend its privileges
to people who did not believe in the Trinity.
But none of the penal laws could now be con-
strued against those dissenters who would take
the oath of allegiance to the present government,
and a special clause was inserted for the Qua-
kers, allowing them to swear or affirm.* The
act was not as broad in its liberality as Penn
would have liked to see it, but it was better than
nothing, and as he had no influence with this
administration anyhow, he was glad to see his
friends get what they could out of it. As it
was, the act was altogether too merciful to
please the gentle Church of England, and it

* The Government didn't care a continental which.

2l6 WILLIAM PENN. [1689.

therefore opposed it, but the King was too
heavy for the Church, and the bill went through
both houses by a large majority, and the law
could no longer give a man thirty daj^s or ten
dollars because he wouldn't go to a church
where he didn't know the facings and couldn't
find the place, and always knelt down when the
rest of the people stood up, and roared out
*' Good Lord deliver us !" at the prayer for the
King — a response that was eminently appro-
priate but highly improper. The world was
slowly coming to its senses.

In America, matters were still progressing
miserably in his province. Once more Penn
reformed the executive department of his gov-
ernment, and it was so reorganized as to consist
of a Deputy Governor and two assistants.*
President Lloyd said he had all the glory and
twice the trouble he had ever hungered for in
governing a new province, and he resigned.
Penn appointed Captain John Blackwell, of
Boston, in his place. Captain Blackwell was
not a Quaker, but he was a '' grave, sober, wise
man," and had been a soldier of the common-

* Known as "governor" and " t'other governor."

yEt. 45.] THE DEPUTY GOVERNOR ARRIVES. 21/

wealth, and Penn believed in him. The proprie-
tor's quit-rents continued to be very much due,
and at this time he writes : '' I have rough peo-
ple to deal with about my quit-rents, that yet
cannot pay a ten-pound bill, but draw, draw,
draw, still upon me. And it being his talent
(Blackwell's) to regulate and set things in
method, easy and just, I have pitched upon him
to advise therein." Blackwell came, saw, and got
into a row the first thing. The Friends disliked
him because he was a military man, and perhaps
he stirred up the people about their quit-rents,
which was always a tender subject with them.
Dissensions still existed in the Assembly, and it
was difficult for the Deputy Governor to get a
quorum of the Council together. Of course.
Council, Assembly, and Deputy Governor
poured their complaints in upon Penn, who
finally advised Blackwell to resign, " although,"
the Governor writes, " I must say that his pee-
vishness to some Friends has not risen out of the
dust without occasion." The government then
reverted to the Council, with Thomas Lloyd
president, the original form of 1683.

During this year, also, Clarkson says, Penn
wrote to Lloyd, instructing him to set up a pub-

2l8 WILLIAM PENN. [16S9.

lie grammar-school in Philadelphia, which he
would incorporate, by charter, at some future
time. This, says Janney, ''gave rise to the
Friends' Public School, Avhich was incorporated
in 1697, confirmed by a fresh patent in 1701,
and by another charter in 1708, whereb}^ the
corporation was forever thereafter to consist of
fifteen discreet and religious persons of the peo-
ple called Quakers, by name of ' The Overseers
of the Pubhc School, founded in Philadelphia,
at the request, cost, and charges of the people
called Quakers.' But its last and present char-
ter from William Penn, confirming the other
charters and enlarging its privileges, is dated
29th of November, 171 1, by which the election
of the overseers is vested in the corporation. In
this excellent institution, the poor were taught
gratuitously, others paid a proportion of the
expense incurred in their children's education,
and it was open on the same terms to all reli-
gious persuasions."

In the year preceding the estabhshment of the
public grammar-school, the first protest against
human slavery in America had been bravely
spoken. At a monthly meeting of the German
Friends at Germantown, in April, 1688, the

JEt. 45.] F/J^ST PROTEST AGAINST SLA VERY. 219

members of the Society present gave their tes-
timony against the evil that was one day to
overshadow the land with clouds of war and
drench the republic with blood. This protest
against slavery was signed by Garret Hen-
derich, Derich Op de Graeff, Francis Daniel
Pastorius, and Abram Op de Graeff.

In 1690, the first American paper-mill was
established near Germantown, on the Wissa-
hickon, by William Bradford and William Rit-
tenhouse. At this mill the paper was made on
which the Weekly Mercury was printed in New
York.

But while his province was prospering in its
material development, it needed the presence of
the Governor, and Penn was anxious to return
to it. The persecutions of the dissenters had
ceased ; he could do no more for his Society; he
had remained in the country after the accession
of William and Mary long enough to get arrest-
ed and dismissed, and had shown people that
he had no fear and did not shrink from the con-
sequences of any of his acts, and he wanted to
come back to Pennsylvania and stir up the peas-
antry about those quit-rents. But there were
several reasons for his remaining in England.

220 WILLIAM PENN, [1690.

One day, just before King- William went to
Ireland for the purpose of fighting a battle, —
the anniversary of which would forever be
celebrated several days out of date, and would
every year be the cause of as many broken
heads as there may be Orangemen in New York,
— a file of soldiers arrested Penn and took him
before the Lords of Council, on a charge of
holding treasonable correspondence with King
James. Penn did not like the make-up of the
Council, for among them, now the bitterest per-
secutors of the Catholic King, were the men
who had fawned on him with most servile sub-
mission when he was on the throne. He de-
manded an examination before the King in
person, and accordingly Friend William and
King WiUiam faced each other, and the Quaker
was informed that his clandestine correspon-
dence with King James was known. He was
glad to hear of this, because he did not know
anything about it himself, and would like very
much to hear what there was in it. They told
him he had better save his sarcasm for the
Indians, and then showed him a letter from
James to himself which had been intercepted.
It was a square deal, no doubt of that; the letter

JEt. 45.] P£^^^ REMAINS IN ENGLAND. 221

was genuine and addressed to Penn. Evidently
somebody had access to his lock-box, and Penn
said there would be a vacancy in the London
Post Office if he had any influence with Frank
Hatton. In this letter, the exiled King desired
Penn " to come to his assistance and express to
him the resentments ^ of his favor and benevo-
lence."

They asked Penn why James Stuart wrote to
him. Penn couldn't say. The Stuarts usually
wrote to his family for money, and he had no
doubt that was really what James wanted now.
He couldn't get it, if that was it. Penn had no
money to spare, in the first place, and if he
should send his friend a draft, some of the
rascally carriers under this administration
would steal it. Penn made this last remark in
a loud, defiant voice.f Then the Council want-
ed to know what " resentments" did he mean.
Under what obligations of gratitude was Penn
to James? This must have puzzled Penn when
he thought it over. What did he owe to the
Stuarts? He and his father before him had
served them faithfully and zealously, and
Charles and James had used them so long as

* " Resentments of " — gratitude for. f In his mind.

222 WILLIAM PENN. [1690.

they were useful, and had paid their debts in
acres of wild land and tribes of wilder Indians.
Finally he answered that he supposed James
wanted him to assist in bringing about his res-
toration, and while Penn still protested his
friendship for the exile, and declared that as a
private person he was willing to render him any
service in his power, yet as a citizen of England
he owed him no obedience, and had never
thought of aiding him to regain the throne.

At the conclusion of this examination, Penn
was bound over to appear in court at the Trinity
term, and when he appeared he was again dis-
charged. William the Quaker was a far better
man than was William the Admiral under a
similar state of things, and James thought very
meanly of Penn when he believed him capable
of plotting treason against the Government.
What had this narrow-minded man ever seen
in Penn to justify him in such a base estimate
of his character ? *

James landed in Ireland, and King William
went to meet him in that famous foot-race
known as the Battle of the Boyne, in which

* Answer in next number. A chromo will be given for the
first correct solution.

JEt. 45.] ACQUITTED ONCE MORE. 223

contest of speed James came out a little ahead,
although William was close behind him. In
London Penn was again in danger of arrest.
Lord Preston, Master Ashton, and a man named
Elliott had been arrested on the eve of their
departure for France, and papers of a treason-
able nature were found on their persons, which
implicated a number of people of note. A pro-
clamation was issued for the arrest of the Bishop
of Ely, Lord Clarendon, and William Penn,
among others. Penn was not then arrested,
although he wrote to the Secretary of State,
asking when he would be wanted and express-
ing his readiness to come in at any time. Going
to prison every few days seemed like old times
for him, and it is a mystery how he kept him-
self from writing a few pamphlets. There was
no evidence against him in this case, nothing in
the intercepted papers to implicate him, but so
long as he was in the country it seemed to be
the opinion of Mary, who was running the
mangle during her husband's absence, that he
might as well be in prison. So he went to his
dungeon-cell,* and on the last day of Michael-

* Same old sell ; up three pair back, and knock at the right-
hand door. Knock hard.

224 WILLIAM PENN. [1690.

mas term — whenever that is or was — he was
brought into court, acquitted, and discharged
as usual.

On the 13th of January George Fox died, and
William Penn stood beside him as he " finished
his glorious testimony." " He is gone," said
Penn, " and has left us in the storm that is over
our heads, surely in great mercy to him, but as
an evidence to us of sorrow to come." Penn
officiated at the funeral, and even in the depth
of his sorrow his own troubles pursued him.
No grief was sacred and no grave secure in the
good old days.

A body of officers hurried to the grave of
George Fox to arrest Penn on a new charge,
but they reached the spot too late ; the Quaker
had returned to his home. Here he learned
that WiUiam Fuller, a gentleman who supported
himself in easy affluence by swearing to any-
thing he could be paid for, had, under oath,
accused him of being engaged in treasonable
correspondence with the enemies of the Govern-
ment. This same detective, also swore out an-
other accusation against him in Dublin, being
determined to earn his money and maintain his
character as a detective, if he had to accuse

^t. 46.] LIVING IN SECLUSION. 225

Penn all over Europe. It is some consolation
to know that within a few months the House of
Commons took up this man Fuller and resolved
that he was " a notorious cheat, rogue, and false
accuser, who had scandalized the Government
and magistrates and abused the House." And
within ten years he was convicted as a Hbeller,
condemned to stand three times in the pillory,
fined i,ooo marks, and sent to prison.

In the face of these accusations and warrants,
Penn once more postponed his return to Penn-
sylvania, and for a few months lived very quietly.
He had no idea of going into court to stand the
farce of a trial with professional perjurers as
witnesses for the prosecution, and the fact that
he made no effort to purchase Fuller indicates
that detectives were more expensive then than
now, or else the Government could outbid him
on witnesses. If Penn could only have col-
lected his quit-rents, he might have bought all
the witnesses he needed. As it was, he simply
kept himself in a general state of umbrageous
seclusion, and was not at home to any gentle-
man wearing a star on his coat. But it is proba-
ble that he would have been found had the
Government wanted him very much or really

226 WILLIAM PENN. [1690.

believed him to be guilty. He wrote letters
from his retirement — nothing could keep him
from writing letters. He pledged himself to
the King for " inoffensive behavior" of himself,
and spelled behavior with a " u" to make it more
binding ; and begging for either peace or fair
treatment, he added, *' If I am not worth looking
after, let me be quiet ; and if I am of any impor-
tance, I am worth obliging.'* " Let me go to
America, or let me be protected here."

Penn was more than ever anxious to return
to America, and he must have half wished he
had never exchanged Philadelphia for London.
The officers of the law were after him with two
warrants, his enemies were reiterating the old
charges of Jesuitism, everything King James
had done that was unpopular — and all his acts
were unpopular since the new King came in —
was charged upon William Penn ; even many
of the dissenters joined in the clamor against
him, members of his own Society treated him
coldly, and the day of his influence at court had
passed away. But yesterday, and at Penn's
house in Kensington, crowds of clients, friends,
and suitors waited on him, begging for his favor
with the King ; petitions, remonstrances, and

Mi. 46.] THE QUID OF BITTER MEMORIES. 22/

addresses were entrusted to the courtly Quaker's
influence and keeping, with most obsequious
reverence and courtesy ; no man so favored
and so courted, and to-day, hiding in a back
room up a rickety flight of stairs, with a camp
bedstead, a tin wash-basin, and two hooks in the
wall for furniture, and one window with a view
of a back alley and a Chinese laundry. How
vain are the smiles of princes, and how lighter
than vanity it is to put one's trust in king*.*
How often, in his retirement, must poor Penn
have thought of the impressive remarks of Rev.
Alonzo C. Wolsey, the well-known revivalist:

"... Oh, Cromwell, John H. CromwelH
Had I but attended to my own knitting,
And worked as hard for my own province,
With half the zeal and about one third of the money,
As I have served this go-as-you-please-so-you-get-out-of-the-

country King,
I had not then been left by any man."

In these days of trial and affliction came one
grateful friend, Locke, and offered to procure a
pardon for him, for it was now Locke's day of

* Three tiny little deuces will take the rigidity out of the two
biggest Kings that ever glared upon the glittering boards.

228 WILLIAM PENN. [1691.

grace. But as Locke had conscientiously re-
fused a pardon, obtained for him by Penn,
because he knew he had done no wrong, as
George Fox had refused pardons because only
guilty men could be pardoned, so now William
Penn would have none. He asked for justice,
not mercy, and he refused to go to America as
an exile.

Affairs were growing more and more compli-
cated in Pennsylvania. The inhabitants of the
territory showed a desire to secede from the
province, and the members of Council from the
territories insisted on separate civil establish-
ments, and, ignoring the honorable members
from the province, proceeded to appoint their
own judges, and issued their commissions.
Penn, willing to conciliate the territories, wrote
to the Council, submitting for the people's choice
three forms of executive, a Council, or five
Commissioners, or a Deputy Governor. The
people of the province promptly decided on a
Deputy Governor, and the territories, being in
a large minority, could not help themselves,
although they wanted the five Commissioners,
and wanted the Deputy Governor least and last
of any. But the province, for the sake of peace,

^t. 47.] GOVERNORS ALL ROUND. 229

made them a fair offer : 'Til take the turkey and
^\NQ you the buzzard, or you take the buzzard
and give me the turkey." And so the province
took the Deputy Governor, and named Thomas
Lloyd for the place, while the three lower
counties would none of him, and scoffed at him
and would not make obeisance before him, but
said " Ha, ha," and called him '' Tom" and
'' Gov."

Penn was displeased with Ltoyd for accept-
ing " a broken office," and he justly blamed the
territory men for their ingratitude. But scold-
ing wouldn't help matters, so he did the best
he could. He confirmed Thomas Lloyd as
Deputy Governor for the province, and sent
out Colonel Markham as Deputy Governor for
the territories. This firm action on the part of
Penn was immediately felt. The two sections
had now each its own deputy governor to sup-
port, and fearing that Penn might send out a
Lieutenant-Governor and possibly a Governor-
at-Large, they subsided into tranquil and trem-
bling submission. Their pacification and sup-
pression was complete when there came a
rumor from England, that if there was any
more trouble, Penn had threatened to send out

230 WILLIAM PEN A. [i^^ji.

a real governor's private secretary, appointed
from the ranks of our best young men. This
dreadful threat, coming from one usually so
kind and merciful, cast a gloom over the entire
community. Penn was sorely distressed about
the near future of his province, for he saw
whither it was drifting.* " Lay their union
upon them," he wrote, " for else the Governor
of New York is like to have all, if he have it
not already."

George Keith, feeling that nobody would
know who he was nor what he was doing if he
didn't talk loud and call upon the editor every
time he came to town, now added his little fire-
brand to the general distraction. It was not
well, he thought, to have all the unrest and ex-
citement and hullaballoo confined to politics.
The mixture needed a little tincture of religion
to make it bitter. George was a Scotch Qua-
ker, a minister of the Society, a fine scholar,
with a profound respect for George Keith and
the "' docthrines" with a long o. He had been
a stanch and able Quaker, but he would rather
wrangle over some rugged tough old theo-

* Having probably heard Miss Anna Dickinson's admirable
lecture on that subject.

^t. 47.] DISGUSTS HIS AUDIENCE. 23 1

logical knot than eat. He now started to re-
form the Society. Some of its doctrines he
ridiculed, some he denounced ; he abused the
Friends for taking any part in politics or as-
sisting in the execution of the laws, set up a
separate meeting, drew large numbers of
Friends after him, went to England and was
ordained a clergyman of the Church of England
by the Bishop of London, and returned to the
province in orders, a clergyman of the most
political church then known. His Quaker
followers looked at him in amazement. They
had tasted the Christian love and fellowship of
that church in nearly all the prisons in England,
and had quivered under the pitiless lash of its
persecution until a dreadful Catholic prince
stayed its arm, and they didn't care for any
more Episcopalian on their dish. No wonder
that many of Keith's followers left him, and the
wonder is that any should remain with a man
who placed himself in the exceedingly pleasant
position of denouncing, for one half his life,
what he had spent the other half in defending.

All this religious and civil distraction and
dissension in the province gave the King the
pretext he needed, and Penn's worst fears

232 WILLIAM PENN. [1691.

were realized. During the war with France, it
was necessary that the King- should have a firm
and controlling hold upon all the colonies.
Many charters were annulled on various pre-
texts, and on the loth of March an order in
council was promulgated, which deprived Wil-
liam Penn of his government, and placed the
province oi Pennsylvania under the jurisdiction
of Benjamin Fletcher, Governor of New York.
Penn's downfall must have moved even the
pity of his enemies. He claimed that he was
almost impoverished by his expenditures for
his model province ; his Irish estates had been
wrung from him in very much the same way
they had been wrung from some one else for
his father; swindled by his own stewards, over
head and ears in debt, neglected or persecuted
where he had been courted, under the sus-
picion and frowns of royalty where he had
basked in the smiles of the court, deprived ol
his governorship, and forced to see the fate of
the " Holy Experiment" in the hands of a rough
soldier, arrest hanging over him and the prison
yawning before him, his loving wife heart-
broken over her husband's troubles and re-
verses, care and sorrow hemmed him in on

JEt. 47.] JIA/^D TIMES FOR THE FOUNDER, 233

every side. But he was patient and content to
abide the just judgments of time. '' I know my
enemies," he writes, " and their true characters
and history, and their intrinsic value to this or
other governments. I commit them to time,
with my own conduct and afflictions."

It is a world of change. The radiant sunrise
and the cloudless skies this morning ; the
tossing clouds and the pitiless storms to-night.
To-day, we stand in voiceless admiration before
the glowing bill-boards of Barnum the magnifi-
cent ; to-morrow, the circus is gone and the all-
devouring goat of the upper wards browses
pensively upon the gorgeous tropical scenery,
the writhing boa, the fierce Numidian lion, the
Kentucky giant, and the fat woman. Sic tran-
sit gloria cir^^ccus !

CHAPTER XIV.

NUGGETS OF SOLID WISDOM.

"TVURING these long months of perplexities,
^ troubles, and retirement, Penn kept him-
self so closely connected with the ink-well that
one of his worldly friends, an idle man given to
vain babbling and profane conversation, advised
him to go into the publishing business under
the firm name of " Penn and Ink.'* To which
the stately Quaker gravely replied in a letter,
saying that he wot not that he had none of his
acquaintance of such a name as Ink, nor were
it at all seemly that he should enter upon busi-
ness covenants (though he must needs say it)
with a person whom (although in all civility
and none unkindness) yet not to have known
more of his merits and conversation (being, as
it were, well spoken and favored) and so it be-
hooveth him. Then the profane babbler who
made the idle and wicked jest felt that W. Penn
had " sot down onto him."

iEt. 48.] WOMEN'S RIGHTS. 235

He was a busy man and must have been a
standing terror to publishers. He wrote, during-
the three years he was hunted and persecuted
after James went out of the royalty business,
his preface to Robert Barclay's works, a tract
called "Just Measures," which was a sort of
pioneer " women's rights " document. In the
Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Meetings of the
Friends, womea as well as that noble animal,
the man, were allowed to take part, not merely
in the ministry and subscriptions, but in the
government of the church as well. In all relig-
ious denominations there has always been and
ever will be a class of men, usually the stupid-
est and stingiest in the church, who consider
a woman utterly incapable of comprehending,
much less transacting, the simplest items of
church business, which should be left entirely
to the brethren, while the sisters should confine
their humble duties as church members to the
narrow but proper sphere of their limited abili-
ties,and be content merely with collecting money,
organizing and maintaining sociables, mite soci-
eties, fairs, missionary circles, relieving the
poor, raising funds for the church carpet and a
new organ, paying the sexton, clearing off the

236 WILLIAM PENN [1692.

church debt, buying coal, and managing the
summer picnic and the winter Christmas-tree,
paying for the parsonage, making baptismal
robes, washing dishes and making oyster-soup
at the festival, organizing the lecture-course,
paying the gas-bills, keeping up the prayer-
meetings, attending all the funerals, buying
Sunday-school libraries, not be bothering the
men for money all the time, and keep quiet in
business meetings when the men are voting to
apply the funds now in the hands of the ** Wo-
men's Home Mission" to the purchase of a desk
and office chair for the church clerk. As there
are men of this class in all churches to-day, so
there were such men among the Friends then,
and William Penn, with his usual good sense,
maintained '* So that as men and women make
up the church, men and women make up the
business of the church."

He also published ''A Key Opening the
Way to every Capacity how to Distinguish the
Religion professed by the people called Qua-
kers from the Perversions and Misrepresenta-
tions of their Adversaries ; " and " An Essay
toward the Present and Future Peace of Eu-
rope," which was a peace-society paper, and

JEl 4^.] PENN'S PATENT PRECEPTS. 237

was a forerunner of the views and plans of the
Universal International Lamb-and-Lion Society
of to-day. He also pubhshed at this time '' Some
Fruits of Solitude in Reflexions and Maxims re-
lating to the Conduct of Human Life." These
maxims, as maxims are very apt to be, are
plumb full of wisdom and quite generally neg-
lected, it being so much easier to write them
than to keep them. Penn's maxims wander
over a wide range of subjects, and if he remem-
bered them all himself, to do them, it is no
wonder he was a good man. The following
samples, extracted here and there from the mass
of his wise sayings, will not burden the memory
of the careful reader who skips this chapter, and
for whose special edification they are here in-
serted :

Cunning borders very near upon knavery.

In his prayers man says, *' Thy will be done ;**
but means his own ; at least acts so.

Lend not beyond thy ability, nor refuse to
lend out of thy ability ; especially when it will
help others more than it can hurt thee.

If thou rise with an appetite, thou art sure
never to sit down without one.

Strong liquors are good at some times, and in

238 WILLIAM PENN. [1692.

small proportions : being better for physic than
food ; for cordials than common use.*

Frugality is good, if liberality be joined with
it. The first is leaving off superfluous expenses ;
the last bestowing them to the benefit of others
that need. The first without the last begins
covetousness ; the last without the first begins
prodigality.

Never marry but for love ; but see that thou
lovest what is lovely.

Frequent visits, presents, intimate correspon-
dence, and intermarriages t within allowed
bounds, are means of keeping up the concern
and affection that nature requires from relations.

There can be no friendship where there is no
freedom. It will speak freely, and act so too ;
and take nothing ill where no ill is meant.

Avoid company, where it is not profitable or
necessary ; and on these occasions, speak little,
and last.

Give no advantage in argument, nor lose any
that is offered. This is a benefit which arises
from temper.

* "For mechanical purposes, a little of it goes good." — Josh
Billings.
f He believed in keeping the property in the family.

^t. 48.] PENN'S PATENT PRECEPTS. 239

If thou thinkest twice before thou speakest
once, thou wilt speak twice the better for it.

It is wise not to seek a secret ; and honest not
to reveal one.

Only trust thyself, and another shall not be-
tray thee.

Openness has the mischief, though not the
malice of treachery.

Some are so foolish as to interrupt and an-
ticipate those that speak, instead of hearing
and thinking before they answer ; which is un-
civil, as well as silly.

Wisdom never uses nor wants cunning. Cun-
ning to the wise is as an ape to a man.

Be not easily acquainted ; lest, finding reason
to cool, thou makest an enemy instead of a good
neighbor.

It were endless to dispute upon everything
that's disputable.

We must not pretend to see all that we see, if
we would be easy.

Rarely promise ; but, if lawful, constantly per-
form.

If thou wouldst be obeyed being a father,
being a son, be obedient.

240 WILLIAM PENN. [1692.

Be not fancifully jealous, for that is foolish ;
as to be reasonably so is wise.

It is no sin to be tempted, but to be over-
come.

If we would amend the world, we should
mend ourselves ; and teach our children to be,
not what we are, but what they should be.

It is not how we leave our children, but what
we leave them.*^

Ingenuity, as well as religion, sometimes
suffers between two thieves : pretenders and
despisers.

*' Have but little to do, and do it thyself." f

To shoot well flying is well ; but to choose
it has more of vanity than judgment.

To be dexterous in danger is a virtue ; but
to court danger, to show it, is weakness.

A man, like a watch, is to be valued for his
goings. X

Never give out while there is hope ; but hope
not beyond reason ; for that shows more desire
than judgment.

* This may sound worldly, but we reckon it's all right. ,

f He wrote this while he was staying in London and letting

other men govern Pennsylvania for him.

X That is, his value is in his works, not his face. Hence it

is only a cheap man who " runs his face" for anything.

yEt. 49-] PENN'S PATENT PRECErrS. 24 1

We must take care to do things rightly ; for
a just sentence may be unjustly executed.

I have oftentimes thought that a passionate
man is like a weak spring that cannot stand
long locked.

And it is as true that those things are unfit
for use that cannot bear small locks without
breaking.

Remember the proverb, '* Bene qui latuit,
bene vixit:" They are happy that live retired-
ly.*

Affect not to be seen, and men will less see
thy weakness.

Happy that king who is great by justice, and
the people who are free by obedience.

Let all the people think they govern, and
they will be governed.

Kings, chiefly in this, should imitate God;
their mercy should be above all their works.

Where a subject is more popular than the
prince, the prince is in danger.

We are apt to love praise, but not to deserve
it.

It is safer to learn than to teach ; and he who

* This one he wrote while he was living in the court of James.

242 WILLIAM PENN. [1693.

conceals his opinion has nothing to answer for.

It were better to be of no church, than to be
bitter for any.

God is better served in resisting a temptation
to evil than in many formal prayers.

This is but twice or thrice a day ; but that
every hour and moment of the day. So much
more is our continual watch than our evening
and morning devotion.

Running streams are not so apt to corrupt
as stagnant waters: nor itinerant, as settled
preachers; but they are not to run before
they are sent.

If I am even with my enemy, the debt is
paid ; but if I forgive it, I oblige him for ever.

" Open thou my lips, and then," said the royal
prophet, '' my mouth shall praise God." But
not till then.

When Penn drops into politics and touches
upon civil-service reform, he speaks truths that
are new and strange to the statesmen who, by
going without a girl in the kitchen and having
their washing done at home, manage to save
$45,000 a year out of a $5,000 salary. Penn
was evidently no admirer of the noble scratcher

iEt. 49-] CIVIL SERVICE IDEAS, 243

or independent, for in speaking- of party one of
his maxims is, ^' Where right or rehgion gives
a call, a neuter must be a coward or a hypo-
crite."

Among his maxims under this and similar
heads are :

The safety of a prince, therefore, consists in
a well-chosen council ; and that only can be
said to be so where the persons that compose
it are qualified for the business that comes be-
fore them.

Who would send to a tailor to make a lock,
or to a smith to make a suit of clothes ?

Let there be merchants for trade, seamen for
the admiralty, travellers for foreign affairs,
some of the leading men of the country for
home business, and common and civil lawyers
to advise of legality and right, who should al-
ways keep to the strict rules of law.

Yet the public must and will be served ; and
they that do it well deserve public marks of
honor and profit.

To do so, men must have public minds, as
well as salaries ; or they will serve private ends
at public cost.

Government can never be well administered

244 WILLIAM PENN. [1693.

but where those entrusted make conscience of
well discharging- their places.

Five things are requisite to a good officer :
ability, clean hands, despatch, patience, and im-
partiality.

Let men have sufficient salaries, and exceed
them at their peril.

It is a dishonor to government that its offi-
cers should live on benevolence ; as it ought to
be infamous for officers to dishonor the pubhc,
by being twice paid for the same business.

He that understands not his employment,
whatever else he knows, must be unfit for it ;
and the public suffer by his inexpertness.

They that are able should be just too ; or the
government may be the worst for their capa-
city.

While Penn was employing his abundant
leisure in writing all these wise things and
good books, his friends at court, remembering
his unselfishness and kindness in the day of his
own court influence, procured him what he
most earnestly desired, a public hearing before
the King, the result of which was that Penn's
defence of himself was so able, simple, and con-

yEt. 49.] DBA TH OF GUL PENN. 245

vincing that even the King", who knew all the
time he was innocent, told him " he was as free
as ever," and should " not be molested or in-
jured in any of his affairs." This was exceed-
ingly kind in the King. He had already seized
Penn's estates in Ireland, and had taken away
his province, and now that Penn had nothing
left that his most gracious Majesty could get
hold of, he assured him of the royal protection
and confidence. '' If I have done anything you
are sorry for," said this magnanimous King, '' I
forgive you."

Once more Penn was a free man, but his cup oi
bitterness was not yet full. His wife, Gulielma,
whose health had long been failing, broken by
sorrow for her husband's troubles, lived to see his
name honorary cleared from every accusation,
and then, on February 23, 1693, in the fiftieth
year of her age, passed away " to the world that
sets this one right." ** In great peace and sweet-
ness she departed," Penn writes, "and to her
gain, but our incomparable loss, being one of
ten thousand, wise, chaste, humble, plain, mod-
est, industrious, constant, and undaunted." " She
quietly expired in my arms, her head upon my
bosom, with a sensible and devout resignation

246 WILLIAM PENN. [1693.

of her soul to Almighty God. I hope I may
say she was a public as well as a private loss ;
for she was not only an excellent wife and
mother, but an entire and constant friend, of a
more than common capacity, and greater mod-
esty and humihty; yet most equal, and un-
daunted in danger ; religious, as well as ingenu-
ous, without affectation ; an easy mistress and
good neighbor, especially to the poor ; neither
lavish nor penurious ; but an example of indus-
try as well as of other virtues."

The beautiful character of Gulielma Penn,
drawn by her husband and attested by her life
and the testimony of the friends who enjoyed
her society, draws us very near to the great
Quaker in this crowning affliction, which fell
upon him at the very time when his troubles
were so many and his friends seemed so few.
After Guli's death his heart was heavy and his
pen was idle, until he was roused and called back
to the pitiless workaday world and its active
duties by startling news from Pennsylvania.

When that province was annexed to New
York, Governor Fletcher went down to Phila-
delphia and summoned the Assembly to meet
him. He paid no attention to the old legal

iEt. 49-] FLETCHER SHAKES THEM UP, 247

form in calling them together, probably desir-
ing to let them know there was no funny busi-
ness about him, and they didn't have patient
William Penn to fool with when he was around.
He put on airs and talked about Brooklyn bridge
and the L roads and going back to the " city,"
in a way that was exasperating to the Philadel-
phians, and affected to be afraid of wolves when
he crossed Broad Street, and looked amazed and
got out and walked when a Market Street car
conductor tried to collect six cents fare of him,
and found fault with Fairmount Park because it
was so small, and talked so incessantly about
what they did and the way they did it in *' New
Yawk," that the Assembly grew tired of him
before it assembled, and the greater number of
the members refused to take the oaths tendered
to them. Fletcher then watered the oaths down
to the mild consistency approved by their politi-
cal palates, but assured them at the same time
that he only did it because this was the first
time and didn't count. After this, he said, they
should take the oath straight, if it burned their
throats raw.

Then he proceeded to the business upon the
Speaker's table, and laid before them a requisition

248 WILLIAM PENN. [1693.

from Queen Mary for men and money to defend
the frontiers of New York against the French
and Indians. Albany was exposed to attack, and
there were all the precious Knickerbocker fami-
lies, seven hundred years older than the Flood,
exposed to the murderous attacks of barbarous
Indians, who would lift the hair of a genuine
Knickerbocker even as the daughter of an Irish
king chips the edges of your china. And if
these families were utterly destroyed from off
the face of the earth at that time, what was
New York going to do in coming years for de-
scendants of the placid marble bakers, who
would rather be killed sitting down comfort-
ably than make the exertion necessary either
for fighting or running away ? Somebody must
protect these precious old duffers, and the Penn-
sylvanians were called upon and ordered to see
that the Knickerbockers received no hurt.

The Quakers, in reply to this, intimated that
if Governor Fletcher was spoiling for a fight,
they had one right there, with which they
could accommodate him, and before they took
New York under their protecting wings they
would defend Pennsylvania from his arbitrary
and unjust encroachments. They insisted very

^t. 49.] NOT ANY WAR SUPPLY. 24g

humbly, but very obstinately, that he should
confirm all the laws now in force in the province
of Pennsylvania, reminding him that while they
acknowledged him as their lawful Governor,
and admitted that his administration superseded
William Penn's, yet it was to be run on the old
William Penn basis and principles ; and they
earnestly besought the new Governor not to for-
get it. Having thus declared their rights and
manfully asserted their privileges, they passed,
among other bills, an act imposing a tax of a
penny a pound on the clear value of real and
personal estate, and a poll-tax of six shillings a
head, which they presented the Crown, with a
request that one half thereof be allowed to the
Governor, — which was more than the ungrate-
ful legislators Ijad ever done for William Penn.
They made no grant of men or money for the
defence of New York, for which wilful neglect
Fletcher urged the King to form New York, the
Jerseys, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut into one
province, when the Quakers could be outvoted
and compelled to furnish their quota of troops
and money for a vigorous prosecution of the
war. "In London," says Dixon, "the displeas-
ure of William fell on the absent Governor, and

2$0 WILLIAM PENN. [1693.

the Privy Council even ordered the Attorney-
General vigorously to inspect his patent, and
see if some legal flaw could not be found in it
which would furnish a pretext for its with-
drawal altogether."

Once again Governor Fletcher made a requi-
sition on Penns3dvania for money and troops for
the defence of New York, and once more he did
not get any. He modified his request this time,
asking the non-combatants to clothe and feed
the Indians, and thus secure their friendship
for the colonies.

This was one hundred and eighty-eight years
ago, but it seems that even at that day the
North American Indians were unable, or un-
willing, to clothe and feed themselves, and lived
on the bounty of the Government just as they
do even unto this day. They had in that far-
away time the same excellent and carefully cul-
tivated voice for blankets and guns and beef and
bread and rum. And they would starve before
they would work for a line of it. They were
then, as to-day, paupers. When Penn is writing
from Pennsylvania about kiUing wild turkeys
and pigeons with sticks, and Richard Townsend
drops his scythe to chase the wild deer out of

iEt. 49-] BEGGING FOR WAR SUPPLIES. 2jl

his meadow, the Indians had to be clothed and
fed to keep them from starvation and the war-
path, and they would fight for the side that fed
them the most. An Indian, after all, is more
like an Indian than anything- else.

The Assembly responded promptly. Had
WiUiam Penn, who loved his model state as he
loved his children, who had ever been indulgent
and patient and liberal, and who in the days of
his opulence supported the provincial court out
of his own pocket, — had this man asked them
for supplies, the Assembly would have paid no
attention to his request. But when Governor
Fletcher stood up and scowled and talked bass,
and growled, and told them what he wanted and
that he was going to have it, or —

The Assembly voted the same tax as before so
quickly the Governor didn't have time to finish
his threat, and the supply thus voted amounted
to £760. None the less the Assembly stipulated
that Thomas Lloyd and William Markham,
Deputy Governors, should have ;^2oo of this.
Fletcher rejected this bill, and, the Pennsylvan-
ians still manfully asserting that they had a
right to dispose of the money they appropriated,
the Assembly was dissolved, and no way had

252 WILLIAM PENN. [1694.

yet been discovered of making the Quakers take
part in the French war. True to their princi-
ples, they would neither fish nor cut bait.

Just what the ancient Pennsylvanians thought
of themselves at this time nobody knows, for
they never told, and if they had said anything,
honest shame would have impelled them to lie
about it, rather than give posterity an honest
judgment on themselves. In two years they
had voted, with marvellous promptness, a sup-
ply of ;^i,5oo to a soldier, a rough, rude man, a
stranger careless of their rights or consciences,
and WiUiam Penn, founder of their state, their
benefactor and protector, was at this moment
in England, begging his own colonists to lend
him enough money to bring his family to Amer-
ica. And they wouldn't let him have it on any
terms.

That is the manner of people our glorious old
ancestors were.

CHAPTER XV.

THE LAY OF THE QUIT-RENTS.

STUNG by the ingratitude of the colonists
for whom he had sacrificed his fortune,
but still hoping that he might yet be able to
work out to a bright fruition all his cherished
hopes for his " model state," Penn set to work
to get Pennsylvania back into his own hands.
He sent the Queen a petition, begging an inves-
tigation of all matters referring to the alleged
misconduct of his province, which was granted
him, and resulted in his reinstatement as Gov-
ernor of Pennsylvania. He was Governor once
more, but he couldn't get out to his province.
He had about quit asking for his '' quit-rents."
He had been singing on that key for ten years,
and didn't seem to touch the popular chord.
Now he tried to borrow ;^ 10,000 of one hun-
dred of his most prosperous settlers, Dixon
says, offering these blessed quit-rents as se-
curity. But the one hundred prosperous set-

254 WILLIAM PENN, [1G94.

tiers wouldn't have it. Failing in this little
negotiation, he resolved to govern his province
in London, rather than accept a steerage ticket
from the Emigration Society or work his way
over.'^ He appointed William Markham his
Lieutenant-Governor ; Thomas Lloyd, his for-
mer deputy and one of his intimate friends, was
dead. The Five Nations of Indians, weary of
Pennsylvania cookery and supplieSjf had weak-
ened on the children of Onas and joined the
French ; the irreverent savages were swarming
in the vicinity of Albany, knocking the Knick-
erbockers about as though they were only com-
mon people ; it was feared that the Lenni
Lenape would be won over to the majority, and
v/ho would care for the sons of Onas then?
Penn knew that he had the law and the right
by the treaty on his side, but he was afraid
some of the Iroquois had not heard of the de-
cision and might scalp a few Friends before they
could be committed for contempt. He knew
there were enough men in the province who

* It never occurred to the Governor t® apply for a pass, or to
walk around.

f If the Pennsylvanians didn't "supply" the Indians better
than they did their Governor, it is easy to see why the Indians
went over to the French.

/Et. 50.] MO/^E PAMPHLETS. 255

would rather fight than eat, to protect the non-
combatants. Eighty men were appointed as
the war contingent of Pennsylvania, with enough
money to run them three months. And the In-
dians could '^ run them the rest of the time.

While he governed Pennsylvania vicariousl}^
Penn wrote a few pamphlets, and a preface to
the Journal of George Fox, entitled " A Brief
Account of the Rise and Progress of the People
called Quakers, in which their Fundamental
Principles, Doctrines, Worship, Ministry, and
Discipline are plainly declared;" and as the war
in America was over, he seemed to think there
was no necessity for his returning to his prov-
ince now, and so remained in England writing
pamphlets and preaching, regularly forgetting
some of his own wise maxims and never learn-
ing that a house in London was a poor resi-
dence for a Governor of Pennsylvania. " It is
but just," said Penn in one of his maxims, " that
those that reign by their princes should suffer
for their princes ;" and his Pennsylvania col-
onists accepted his maxim. '' Towards the set-
tlers in his province," says Dixon, " Penn stood

* And would.

256 WILLIAM PENN. [1694

exactly in the position of a feudal lord : the
soil and the government were his personal
property. Though in his first charter he had
given up many of his rights, enough remained
to create strife and bitterness in men so jealous
of power. It was sufficient that he traced his
rights to a source alien to their choice, to rouse
discontent."

This explains to a certain extent the obstinate
refusal of the Pennsylvanians to pay the pro-
prietor his long-sought quit-rents. The tax
itself amounted to little, — a mere trifle, — but the
principle was a great one. They would buy
the land and pay for it, but once bought it was
their own, and in their refusal to pay an annual
quit-rent claimed by a feudal proprietor was
involved the same principle that in later years
Massachusetts maintained in her resistance to
the tax on tea. It was the germ of democracy in
Pennsylvania that grew into life and developed
strength through all the years, until it came to
full fruition in the city of its birth, and the
Declaration of Independence only echoed the
resistance of the Pennsylvanians against the
quit-rents. And yet William Penn thought
he was establishing a free republic, a pure

JEt. 50.] ATO QUIT-RENTS. 257

democracy, a "■ model state," when he retained
the quit-rents in it, and when he insisted so
strongly on his rights and privileges. But
while this liberty-loving spirit and abhorrence
of feudalism explain the persistent refusal of the
Pennsylvanians to pay their quit-i-ents, they do
not excuse them for their niggardly and un-
grateful treatment of Penn in their refusal to
grant him the supplies they voted so promptly
to Fletcher.

Among other important affairs of the prov-
ince during the piping times of peace was the
presentment of Robert Reman, at Chester, for
"divining with a stick." The grand jury, fully
awake to the demands and dangers of the
times, also presented as a vicious book '' Cor-
nelius Agrippa's Teaching Negromancy." It
is thought the grand jury made some search
for the author of this vicious, profane, and idle
work on necromancy, under the impression that
he was somewhere in the province. But they
did not find him. He was gone. Nobody
knew where, but it was some place outside of
the jurisdiction of the Chester grand jury.
The Assembly, in 1696, secured, after a long
wrangle, Lieutenant-Governor Markham's sig-

258 WILLIAM PENN. [1696.

nature to a " bill of settlement" which largely
increased the power of that body, giving it
authority to originate bills, and to adjourn and
assemble at its own pleasure rather than that of
the Governor. And for these concessions it
voted an appropriation of ^300 for the support
of the government and ''for the relief of the
distressed Indians of New York." The stern
duty of killing off the superfluous white popula-
tion of New York, which devolved upon these
Indians, was a severe one, entailing upon them
constant labor and almost sleepless vigilance.
Many of the New-Yorkers had to be chased
ten or fifteen miles before they could be caught
and killed. Some of them were opposed to the
operation of scalping, claiming that it was of no
benefit whatever as a preventive, although the
Indians assured them that no person ever had
the small-pox after being scalped. Sometimes
the white people resisted, and many Indians
were seriously if not fatally injured in the per-
formance of this duty. The braves had great
callous bunions worn on their hands by the
constant use of the scalping-knife, so they could
now perform no manual labor. In some in-
stances, depraved old Knickerbockers had

JEt. 52.] SUFFERINGS OF THE INDIANS. 259

palmed off wigs on the unsuspecting- savages
for scalps, and as the French refused to pay the
usual bounty on these hair goods, the poor In-
dians lost heavily in such transactions. And
when one noble child of the forest brought in a
basketful of scalps taken from white children
under three years of age, the French command-
ant refused to receive them and would not pay
him a cent for the lot, and the poor Indian lost
his whole week's work, and was so depressed
and disappointed that he never scalped another
child, but devoted all his time and talents there-
after to lifting the snowy locks of men and
women of seventy years and upwards. And
now the war was over, and the price of scalps
had fallen until they weren't worth gathering,
and when an Indian took one or two, just to
keep his hand in, the pitiless New-Yorkers
would fall upon him and cut him into so many
pieces that the coroner would scratch himself
bald trying to decide whether it was a powder-
mill or freight-train.

Oh, how sad the peace-loving people of Penn-
sylvania were when they heard of the sufferings
of these poor, overworked Indians ! They voted
a big appropriation for their relief right away.

260 WILLIAM PENN. [1696.

This enabled the Indians to keep along until the
next war broke out, when business would pick
up a Httle. In accordance with this ancient
precedent, it has ever since been the custom of
the United States Government to take the best
care of the worst Indians.

Penn continued to preach and write without
molestation, save in one instance, when he was
arrested while preaching from the balcony of
an inn, the arrest being made, doubtless, at the
instigation of a lot of commercial travellers who
wanted to sit on the balcony and smoke, and
did not come to that house to listen to a sermon.
Penn showed a license from the bishop, how-
ever, and was immediately released by the
magistrate, to the great mortification of the con-
stable, who had to apologize and couldn't collect
his fee. After this, being duly licensed accord-
ing to law, Penn preached regularly.

In January of this year Penn married Miss
Hannah Callowhill, a daughter of Thomas Cal-
lowhill, a Bristol merchant, and in a few weeks
thereafter his eldest son, Springett, died. *' Much
of my comfort and hope, "writes Penn, '' and one
of the most tender and dutiful, as well as in-
genious and virtuous youths I knew, if I may say

iEt. 52.] DEATH OF HIS FIRST BORN. 26 1 "

SO of my own dear child, in whom I lose all that
any father could lose in a child, since he was
capable of anything- that became a sober young
man, my friend and companion, as well as
most affectionate and dutiful child." It was
indeed a heavy loss to the great founder of Penn-
sylvania, for to this son, inheriting alike the
manly courage and firm convictions of his father
and Guli Springett's 'tenderness and softness
of nature," Penn had hoped to leave his pro-
vince. Now, alas ! the next heir in succession,
his son William, was a youth of some good
qualities, clever, generous to everybody except
his father, brave in anything but morality, wild
in his tastes and desires, sociable, frank — in fact,
one of those characters usually described as
** nobody's enemies but their own," which means
they are everybody's enemies. Young William
was not exactly the promising sort of youth to
leave in charge of a rather restless province.
And even now that province was growing more
and more restless, assailing the Governor and
what he called his "rights" through his Lieu-
tenant-Governor, and they were making poor
Markham realize the truth of Penn's maxim,
" It is but just that those that reign by their

262 WILLIAM PENN. [1696.

princes should suffer for their princes." They
badgered him, accused him of defrauding the
revenue, and of protecting and standing in with
pirates and smugglers, and it was a short day
when they couldn't invent or discover some
new cause of complaint. All this time William
Penn remained in England, visited Ireland, went
to Deptford to convert Peter the Great, kept
away from Pennsylvania entirely, and was
thereby laying up a great store of experience
from which he could some day write a pamphlet
" On the Exceeding Great Vanity and Foolish
Idleness of Attempting to Lead a Horse with a
Halter Three Thousand Miles Long ; Being as
it were the Brief Experience of a Governor in
London with a Province in America."

The Tsar of Russia, of all the Russias in
fact, Peter the Great, was at this time working
in the royal shipyard at Deptford, as a ship-
carpenter. The ancient Quakers had mighty
noses for a king, and their missionaries got into
nearly all the royal palaces and prisons in Eu-
rope, in their passion for converting rulers and
real dukes. They went for everything that sat
on a throne, from the Pope himself down to
the German prince of an eighty-acre Hesse

iEt. 52.] AN EDIFYING INTERVIEW. 263

something, or a Dutch monarch who lived and
reigned with his cows in a wind-mill. Any-
thing, so it was a king. Of course, when the
Tsar came to Deptford, where he worked in
the dockyard by da}^ and got drunk wherever
he could find cheap rum at night, the Friends
made a dead set for him. Thomas Story and
Gilbert Molleson visited him, and wrestled with
him, and sought to interest him on the subject
of religion, their own denomination preferred,
because Peter was, after the religion of his
fathers, a violently pious man. Peter was much
amused at their great bareback hat act, which
they explained very fully to him, and taught
him how to do it. These two missionaries
knew no Russian or German, and Peter knew
no English, so they were soon convinced they
had converted^ the Tsar. They gave him *' Bar-
clay's Apology," in Latin; gave him two copies
of it, so that when he had read one copy to
pieces he could start in on the other. Peter
was greatly edified by this Latin book. He
knew about as much Latin as the missionaries
knew Russian, and probably did not read that
book through in fifty years. But the joyous
missionaries spread the tidings of the imperial

264 WILLIAM PENN. [1697.

conversion, and William Penn went with Prince
Menzikoff to York Buildings, where Peter held
his imperial sprees incognito, to land this mighty
fish. He found the royal Muscovite curious
and attentive, but still a most hopeless case of
Quaker.

" You are a new people," said the Tsar; '' will
you fight any better than others ?"

They told him they would permit the smallest
state in South America to open their mail, in-
sult their ministers, kill their chickens, and kick
them all over their own house, without offering
to strike back.

" Then," said the Tsar, '' the United States is
the right place for you. We have no use for
you in Russia." ^

Penn was an excellent German scholar, and
conversed easily with Peter in this language.
The Muscovite attended several Quaker meet-
ings, and the Baptists and Presbyterians fairly
howled with envy. Penn wrote the Tsar a
letter, and Janney says, '* The impression pro-

* Peter might have given William come excellent hints about
managing his province, and how to wring the slow-moving
quit-rents out of reluctant tenants, had Penn only asked him
about it.

.Et. 52.] INTO POLITICS ONCE MORE. 265

duced upon the Tsar by this intercourse with
Friends in England appears to have been last-
ing." It may have been lasting, but it certainly
wasn't deep, because Peter began beheading
the Streltzi and fighting with his neighbors soon
after he returned to Russia, and kept it up with
little intermission as long as he was able to lead
an army. When he wasn't actively at war with
some foreign foe, he was beating his companions
in uproarious sprees, and making various public
and private free-for-all exhibitions of his violent
and ungovernable temper. Peter the Great was
not, in a moral view, a very promising convert
for any denomination.

Penn cautiously, or rather, considering what
his experience had taught him, incautiously
waded into politics again. He couldn't keep
out of it. The House of Commons was debat-
ing a bill against blasphemy, and Penn rushed
in with a pamphlet — '' A cautious Requisite
in its consideration, showing the necessity of
explaining the word Blasphemy, etc." The
affrighted House, dreading lest Penn had once
more become addicted to the pamphlet habit,
dx^opped the bill before the Speaker could an-
nounce its full title, and promised, if Penn would

266 WILLIAM PENN. [1697.

not write any more pamphlets, they would
never look at the document again.

It being now very necessary that Penn should
return at once to Pennsylvania, he packed his
trunks and went to Ireland, to hold a few meet-
ings and look after his Irish estates, which by
this time he had recovered, their former owners
being without any such influence at court as
Penn had been able to use for his friend Sir
Robert Coltness. As Penn wrote to the Tsar,
" the Quakers were an industrious people in
their generation, and though against superfluity,
yet lovers of ingenuity." And he was '' ingeni-
ous" enough to live in London and govern, or
rather govern at, a province in America, and
hold on to the estates in Ireland which had
been given his father as his reward for serving
two opposing governments at the same time, —
an " ingenious " piece of statecraft which has
brought many of our modern statesmen to the
ground. But they worked these things better
in Sir William Penn's time.

Formerly, when Penn travelled, he left Guli
and the children at home. On this occasion, it
will be observed, Mrs. Penn and the children
went with him. On this journey Penn preached

iEt. 53.] HORSES FOR THE HOSSIFERS. 267

a great deal, looked after his estate of Shan-
garry Castle, and was unable to get into prison
or any serious trouble. On only one or two oc-
casions was he molested. By an act of Parlia-
ment, any man was allowed to seize any horse
worth more than five guineas belonging to a
Catholic, and retain it on paying or tendering
that amount. Under this '' Act to make horse-
stealing safe and easy," when a man saw a good
horse in possession of a stranger, he merely ac-
cused the stranger of being a Papist, and offered
him five guineas for his steed. When Penn and
his friends, on one of their missionary tours in
Ireland, arrived at Ross, they ordered their
horses ferried across the Nore, while they "re-
turned to the tavern and refreshed themselves
after their long ride." * Two young officers
saw the excellent horses of the Quakers, and,
informing the Mayor that Penn and his friends
were Catholics, took the animals, swearing to
their information with the easy grace that was
known only to the regularly ordained liars of the
established church in the seventeenth century.
A few of the horses had been ferried over before

* That is, each man called for what he wanted — same as they
do now.

268 WILLIAM PENN. [1697.

the authorized robber}^ could be made, and with
these Penn and some of his friends went on their
way, the other members of the party remaining
to sue out a replevin for the rest of the animals.
The officers who stole the horses were placed
under arrest, and but for Penn's gracious inter-
cession they would have been dishonorably dis-
missed the service/^ Penn wrote a few pam-
phlets while in Ireland, and had a wind-mill with
Rev. John Plympton, a deep-water Baptist, and
a little set-to with the pamphlets with the
Bishop of Cork, a home-rule agrarian, high
Trinitarian, lights-on-the-altar young man. Penn
whipped, in both instances. He says he did,
himself.

At Cashel, the meeting -of the Quakers was
invaded by the Mayor at the instigation of the
Bishop, who ordered the Friends to disperse,
which they, with great promptness and sub^
mission to his will, did not. The discussion
began to wax warm, when Penn, who was not
in the meeting, but was in an adjoining room, —
having heard, perhaps, that John Vaughton was

* In Texas they would have been invited to a neck-tie party
under a tree. Dancing in the air. Music by the string-band.
No cards.

JEt. 53.] GA THERING IN THE SHEKELS. 269*

going to preach, — sent for the Mayor, talked to
him gently but firmly, as one talks to a friend
when he comes to borrow money, and finally
sent him away, and the meeting was resumed
with redoubled silence. The Bishop afterward
explained to Penn that he was angry because
all his congregation went off to the Quaker
meeting and left him only the bare walls to
preach to. He did not mind preaching to the
bare walls and empty benches, he said ; in fact,
he rather preferred them to his usual congrega-
tion, as being superior in general intelligence
and Christianity, but they didn't pan out nearly
so well in the assay for collections. Penn im-
mediately wrote him a pamphlet, and the mat-
ter dropped. Afterward Penn held meetings
and preached to the land-leaguers in Cork, and
in Kildare, Limerick, Kilkenny, Tipperary, and
other counties famous for the peaceful and law-
abiding disposition of the natives. He also
went to the barony of Imokelly, " where lay a
great part of his Irish estates," and thence " to
the barony of Ibaune and Barryoe, to view the
rest of his estates in those parts." He had no
trouble now about collecting " quit-rents" from
his Irish tenantry. Ibaune and Barryoe and

270 WILLIAM PENN. [1697.

Imokelly were going to pay rents for nearly
two hundred years before they got hold of the
" Pennsylvania idea " of non-resident proprie-
tors and quit-rents. Ireland was a thousand
years older than Pennsylvania, but the ideas in
Pennsylvania were as new as the land.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE GOVERNOR ON DECK.

pETURNING from Ireland, Penn was once
-■■ V more forcibly impressed with the fact that
he was needed in Pennsylvania, and accordingly-
looked around for some place else to which he
could go. Finally he compromised* by going
down to Deptford and seeing Thomas Story
embark for the western world. But even the
departure of Thomas Story did not allay the
dissensions in the province. Markham had re-
fused to pass the Jamaica Act against pirates,
he had imprisoned a Commissioner for the
Crown, just to^show him who was running the
machine in Pennsylvania, and Colonel Quarry,
a revenue officer sent to the provinces by the
King, made the most and the worst of the Lieu-
tenant-Governor's folly ; the provincial govern-
ment, he reported, refused to assist him in catch-
ing pirates, and when he did catch any the
Quakers refused to put them in jail, lest the
pirate might have been pirating from a sense of
duty, and thus be punished for conscience' sake.

2/2 WILLIAM PENN. [1698.

At last matters became so bad in the province,
or at least Colonel Quarry presented them in
such a bad light, that the Council deprived
Colonel Markham of his powers for five years.
Added to this, word had reached Penn that
there were altogether too many drinking-houses
in Philadelphia for a city where all the houses
looked so much like one another that it was a
difficult matter for even a sober man to pick out
his own residence after dark. And finally, Penn
drew upon his agents in the province for '' three
hundred and odd pounds," and the draft came
back protested. In those times it ruffled a man's
spirits beyond all description to have a draft
come back protested, as it does to-day ; and as
people are very much like other people, Penn
received this wayward draft very much as a man
receives a distant relative, poor but honest,
whom he has not seen for thirty-two years
and does not wish to see for thirty-two years
more. Penn wrote to the delinquents at once.
'■'■ Loving friends," he begins his letter — " Loving
friends,* is it not my right by public obligation
to six hundred pounds?" — because for that sum

* If they had loved him less and paid him more, they had
been better friends.

JEt. S4-] MORE LOVE THAN MONEY. 273

he had relinquished certain customs voted to
him ; that is, he had reUnquished the customs,
and now he had the six hundred pounds, at
least he had it to get. And "• all my expenses
in two years' withstanding of Edward Randall,
at my great charge," " my expenses in coming
over and prosecuting the dispute with Lord
Baltimore, which held near a year," "and last
of all, my quit-rents, of which I have not seen
for twelve years one sixpence." No matter how
Penn began a letter to his colony, it was sure
to run into the quit-rents before it got down to
" Y'rs tr'ly."

His " loving friends" were deeply touched by
the beautiful and just sentiments expressed in
this letter, and immediately did not send him
his money. They valued Penn as a friend ; as
a Governor, they respected him ; as a religious
teacher and guide, they venerated him ; and as a
just and humane creditor, they swindled him.

At last Penn, all the other places being closed,
packed his hat-box and, accompanied by his wife
and his daughter Letitia,* sailed for America,

* In some of the Quaker biographies of Penn this daughter
is called Letty, and Penn himself calls her Tishe; but in a work
of this gravity and severity such vain babbling and idle appel-
lations cannot be admitted.

274 WILLIAM PENN, [1699.

September 9, 1699. It does not appear that
Mrs. Penn or Letitia felt any gnawing desire to
come to America, nor did they want to stay
after they got here, and Penn has been blamed
for yielding to their importunities and influence,
and absenting himself from the province which
so much needed the wisdom and strength of his
personal government. William Penn, Jr., did
not come. This rapid young man remained in
London to complete his education, having quite
a number of evil and iniquitous habits to form
before he felt himself competent to govern a
turbulent province that was much given to feed-
ing Indians and evading its quit-rents.

Three months the Penn family tossed on the
waves of the restless sea, and then landed at
Philadelphia on Sunday, — which was not right.
The ''yellow fever" had been raging in Phila-
delphia through the autumn months, and was
just abating when Penn arrived. The death-
rate had run up to seven and eight a day, and
Story says in his journal : '' Great was the fear
that fell upon all flesh. I saw no lofty nor airy
countenance, nor heard any vain jesting to move
men to laughter; nor witty repartee to raise

iEt. 54-] TRAGEDY OF THE EMPTY GUN, 2J$

mirth; nor extravagant feasting to excite the
lusts and desires of the flesh above measure ;
but every face gathered paleness, and many
hearts were humbled, and countenances fallen
and sunk, as of those who waited every moment
to be summoned to the bar and numbered to
the grave."

Friend Story also relates that the Yearly
Meeting of the Friends was held at the usual
time, notwithstanding the plague, and that
"there was not one taken ill during the whole
time of the meeting, either of those that came
there on that account, or of the people of the
town." Just why the Board of Health did not
order the meeting to remain in session, then,
until the epidemic disappeared, one cannot un-
derstand. Perhaps it was thought to be vain
and undignified to use the Yearly Meeting as a
general colonial vaccination.

When Penn landed at Chester, the usual thing
happened. Two young men, probably stu-
dents from the Pennsylvania Military Institute,
founded a great many years later, fired a salute
from two small field-pieces, and one of the men
ran his arm down the gun to see if it was

276 WILLIAM PENN, [1699.

loaded.* It is an instructive study in human
nature, this simple fact that even two hundred
years ago two men and a cannon could not get
together and separate with more than three
arms for the crowd. Just enough to go around.
But then one man, the monopoHst of the party,
would have two thirds of the stock. As usual,
the sad affair cast a gloom over the entire com-
munity.

Penn lost no time in convening his Council
and the General Assembly, and made them un-
derstand that the Governor was on deck. With
his characteristic energy he fairly compelled the
Assembly to enact laws for the '' prevention of
illicit trade" and '' the discouragement of piracy."
Perhaps it would have been just as well to make
them for the discouragement of illicit trade and
the prevention of piracy. But our glorious an-
cestors didn't seem to want to be too hard on
the poor pirates.f Piracy was a genteel occu-
pation at that time. Soon after Penn arrived at
Philadelphia, two alleged pirates were arrested,
and one of them was the son-in-law of Lieuten-
ant-Governor Markham, Penn's cousin. It took

* It was. f Perhaps the pirates " loved their Queen."

^t. 54.] PENNSBURY MANOR. 277

the Assembly sixteen days to pass these two
bills. When it is remembered how proud Penn
was seventeen years before, when his first As-
sembly passed fifty-nine laws in three days, it
will be seen how rapidly the legislature was im-
proving- and modernizing itself. The later legis-
lature required more grease to make it run
smoothly. And the pirates and illicit traders
had evidently ''greased" it.

" On their arrival at Philadelphia," says Jan-
ney, " the Governor and his family went to
lodge ^ at Edward Shippen's, where they re-
mained about a month. Penn then took a house
known as the slate-roof house, on Second Street,
between Chestnut and Walnut, at the southeast
corner of Norris' Alley. Here was born, about
two months after they landed, his son John, the
only one of his children born in this country,
and therefore called ' the American.' "

Pennsbury, the Governor's country mansion,
on the Delaware near the falls of Trenton, was a
very comfortable hovel for a starving child of
poverty who couldn't get his quit-rents, and
didn't care for the vanities and frills and " gaudy

* This confirms our previous suspicion that Penn was a
Mason.

278 WILLIAM PENN. [1699.

carpets and side-boards " of this idle old world.
Markham originally laid out an estate here of
about eight thousand acres, but the Governor
gave much of it away. The hut in which the pov-
erty-stricken Governor hid his gaunt form in the
times of the quit-rent famine was two stories high,
built of " fine brick," and covered with tiles. It
had a front of sixty feet on the Delaware, with a
superb view of the river. The house was forty
feet deep, " and the brew-house, a large wooden
building covered with shingles, stood back some
little distance from the mansion, and was con-
cealed among the trees." " I am a man of quiet
tastes," said Penn, and then he went back to the
brew-house, amid the all-concealing trees, and
tasted something. The rooms of the manor-
house were arranged in suites. " Suites to
sweet," said Penn to Hannah, although the
house had been built for GuU. The interior
ornaments and decorations had been sent from
England. The shanty was comfortably fur-
nished. I quote from Dixon : *' Mahogany was
a luxury then unknown ; but his spider tables
and high-backed carved chairs were of the finest
oak. An inventory of the furniture is still ex-
tant ; there were a set of Turkey worked chairs,

JEt. 54.] A COMFORTABLE HOVEL. 279

arm-chairs for ease, and couches with plush and
satin cushions for luxury and beauty. In the
parlor stood the great leather chair of the pro-
prietor; in every room were found cushions
and curtains of satin, camlet, damask, and striped
linen ; and there is a carpet mentioned as being
in one apartment, though at that period such
an article was hardly ever seen except in the
palaces of kings. His side-board furniture was
also that of a gentleman ; it included a service
of silver, — plain but massive, — blue and white
china, a complete set of Tunbridge ware, and a
great quantity of damask table-cloths and fine
napkins. The table was served as became his
rank, plainly but plentifully. Ann Nichols was
his cook ; and he used to observe in his plea-
santry, '' Ah, the book of cookery has outgrown
the Bible, and^I fear is read oftener; to be sure,
it is of more use.* His cellars were well stocked ;
Canary, claret, sack, and Madeira being the fa-
vorite wines consumed by his family and their
guests. Besides these nobler drinks there was
a plentiful supply, on all occasions of Indian or
general festivity, of ale and cider.^ Penn's own

*This was not the common five-a-glass cider that feebly
struggles to keep pace with the pink lemonade of the circus of

280 WILLIAM PENN. [1699.

wine seems to have been Madeira ; and he cer-
tainly had no dislike to the temperate pleasures
of the table. In one of his letters to his stew-
ard, Sotcher, he writes : * Pray send us some two
or three smoked haunches of venison and pork
— get them from the Swedes ; also some smoked
shads and beefs;' adding with delicious unction,
' the old priest at Philadelphia had rare shads.' "
Moreover, Penn rode and drove only thorough-
bred horses, of the best blood in England ;
kept his own *' yacht," — at least it was called a
yacht then ; it is described as a six-oar barge,
and all the time he was in England he would al-
low no one to use it. William Penn and his
family dressed well, and not in very Quakerly
style. '' The ladies wore caps and buckles, silk
gowns, and gold ornaments." While in Amer-
ica, '' Penn had no less than four wigs, all in the
same year, purchased at a cost of nearly twenty
pounds." He countenanced " innocent country
dances " by his own presence and the attend-
ance of his family. And while he lived well
and in a manner and style befitting the station
and dignity of the Governor of Pennsylvania

to-day. It was a New Jersey brand, and a pint of it would
double up a Conestoga sachem at forty yards.

^t. 54.] SIC TRANSIT OF VENUS. 28 1

and a well-bred English gentleman of noble
family, he was charitable and generous, and the
needy and sick ever found in him a friend who
always coupled his words of cheer with a loaf
of bread, and never took his hand out of his
pocket empty. And his handsome house at
Pennsbury, his well-spread table, his pleasant
hospitality, and his Christian, unassuming, mod-
est philanthropy wasn't costing the province
of Pennsylvania a cent.

Pennsbury has passed away, with so many
other mementos of the great Quaker in this
country, into the hands of the omnipresent relic-
hunter. Some time about 1780 the manor-house
was torn down and distributed. A chair that
belonged to Penn is now in the Pennsylvania
Hospital ;* John Smith has another ; so has
Thomas Jackson; so has Mrs. Belvawney; all
the Joneses have one apiece; and every student
of the University of Pennsylvania is presented
with one when he graduates, and if he belongs
to the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, which was
founded by Penn, he gets two. William Penn
didn't do anything, while he was in America,

* This chair is genuine.

282 WILLIAM PENN. [1699.

but sit down in chairs for the benefit of pos-
terity. He was a thorough-bred long-haired
Enghsh setter.

He hated tobacco, and "on one occasion Gov-
ernor Jennings, of New Jersey (who was also
an eminent minister among Friends), and some
of his friends were enjoying their pipes, a prac-
tice which the gentlemanly Penn disliked. On
hearing that Penn's barge was in sight, they
put away their pipes, that their friend might
not be annoyed, and endeavored to conceal
from him what they were about. He came
upon them, however, somewhat suddenly, and
pleasantly remarked that he was glad they had
sufficient sense of propriety to be ashamed of
the practice. Jennings, rarely at a loss for an
answer, rejoined that they were not ashamed,
but desisted to avoid hurting a weak brother." "^
In connection with this pleasant anecdote it
may be edifying to quote, from the same author-
ity, from a letter written by the great tobacco-
hater to his secretary about this time : *' Let the
Indians come hither and send in the boats for
more rum, and the match-coats, and let the

* Janney.

^t. 54.] OLD SETTLER REMLNISCENCES. 283

Council adjourn to this place." " More rum"
has always been a very poor civilizer with the
Indians. More tobacco and less rum has ever
a much better effect upon the noble red man,
and William Penn's ordinarily level head was
very hilly on the subject of rum and tobacco.

Only the ruins of the brew-house, it is said,
now remain of the pleasant estate of Pennsbury.
The old manor-house itself has joined the in-
numerable caravan of Penn chairs, has been sat
down upon literally, and lives only in the ten-
der memories of white-haired old prevarica-
tors who never saw it. But the memory of its
courtly, gentle master, his manly qualities and
Christian virtues, his patience and unselfishness,
the sorrows and triumphs of his life, live on and
on, over the decay of all these material and
unnecessary reminders of his existence.

The winter of 1699 is said by the oldest in-
habitants of that time to have been one of almost
unprecedented severity, although, in deference
to our own oldest inhabitants, we question if
there have not been since that time winters of
such exceeding cold that their resentments are
not to be countenanced by any winter of the
seventeenth century. Sutcliff, in his *' Travels in

284 WILLIAM PENN. [1699.

Some Parts of North America," relates as some-
thing remarkable an anecdote of the Founder.
One night William Penn, in his travels during
this cold winter, lodged at the house of some
person whose name is not given, or else is sup-
pressed for family reasons, as it is the most im-
portant name in the story. Knowing the habits
of that family in its entertainment of guests,
people would like to know the family name, in
order to avoid the houses of the descendants.
It seems, from the narrative, that after Penn
went to his room the family was seized with an
uncontrollable desire to know how a Governor
appeared when he crawled into the forbidding
awfulness of a spare-room bed, and wrapped
the drapery of the 36°-below blankets and zinc-
plate sheets about him and lay down to freeze.
So the family went up and successively pasted
their eyes against the key-hole and looked in at
the shivering Quaker preparing for death on
Mont Blanc. Sutcliff says only a boy twelve
years old went up, but SutchfT lived near the
seashore and must have been accustomed to
relating stories for marines only, because every-
body knows that the last person in the house to
think of that key-hole act would be the boy.

^t. 54.] 7^00 THIN. 285

He never thought of it until he saw the rest
of the family coming down, suspiciously and
supernaturally innocent as to demeanor, and
red as to one eye. At all events, the boy went
up and glued his eye to the key-hole, remained
there until he was almost frozen, and then came
down and reported that he saw the Governor
kneel down at his bedside and repeat his even-
ing prayer. Now, it is well known that the
habit of prayer was not so unusual with William
Penn that his host's family had to go about
speering through key-holes to prove it on him.
If the story is true, and undoubtedly it is true,
although extremely unimportant, the only re-
markable thing about it is that the Governor
should kneel down to pray in a parlor bed-room
in December. It seems hardly possible that
the Governor of Pennsylvania should not know
that it is the custom in America, when a man is
sentenced to be confined for one night in the
Arctic horrors of an old-fashioned '' spare
room," for him to plunge into bed with his
overcoat and boots on, and chatter his shiver-
ing prayers under the frigid blankets.^

* Erratum. — Read blanket. There is never more than one.

286 WILLIAM PENN. [169^.

In his " Historical Notes" Mr. Benjamin M.
Nead says there was no choice of representa-
tives for the Assembly of 1699 from New
Castle, owing to a disturbance at the polls,
and "Sheriff Joseph Wood forwarded, as his
return, a half-sheet of blank paper only, and a
letter containing this message: ' I here enclosed
send you the names of the Council and Assem-
blymen chosen here on the loth instant. To
give you any reason for such an election is be-
yond my power; have had no discourse with
any of the electors about it' " The Sheriff was
promptly summoned before the Council to an-
swer for this vain babbling and frivolous and
profane misconduct. He "disavowed any in-
tention of wrong-doing, declaring that he had
sent the blank sheet of paper as a joke."

This is the first joke on record in Pennsyl-
vania. It is interesting as a finely preserved
specimen of a joke of the vintage of 1699, and
no less interesting is the record which shows in
what earnest and severe temper the Council of
that day gazed upon the pioneer joker of the
province of Pennsylvania, the forerunner of
Charles G. Leland, Charles Heber Clark, Fran-
cis Wells, and other jesters of a lighter and

iEt. 54.] A BUD OF PROMISE. 287

brighter era, when a man could perform a
single-hand joke without being arrested and
dragged before the Council for it. This Penn-
sylvania joke was preceded in Virginia by the
first touch of '' American humor" about eighty-
one years,* thus showing that with all the won-
derful advantages of the virgin soil and mar-
vellous climate of the new world, it required
nearly a century for a germ of humor to develop
and grow to the full fruition of a strong and
fearless joke, which spread its bright wings to
catch the morning breeze, and soared into the
broad empyrean of progressive thought and
emancipated intellect', a glad, free thing, with
Italics at one end and a hyphen in the middle
to prop it up, and translate its joyous song to
the dull ear of the wise and good.f

* See Charles Dudley Warner's " Life of Capt. John Smith,"
p. 191.
I Copyright secured.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE SKELETON IN THE WOOD-PILE.

THE colored brother was now discovered
lurking in the gloomy recesses of the dark
and silent wood-pile.

He was there when Penn founded the Key-
stone State. Penn found him here when he
landed in Philadelphia, clanking fetters and all.
Queen Elizabeth had the honor of extending
the commerce of England to the slave-pens of
the Gold-Coast, and long before her time, in
continental countries, anything made in the
image of God, with a black skin, was con-
sidered property. Slaves were held in all the
American colonies, and if a rnan did not own
slaves, it was usually because he was too poor
to buy them. In common with all other good
people, the ancient Pennsylvanians bought their
servants rather than hire them. When Wil-
liam Penn, in 1685, wrote about training up
two men and a boy in the art of gardening, he

^t. 55-] " CUSSED BE CAJVAAJV." 289

says, " It were better they were blacks, for
then a man has them while they live." Four-
teen years before that time George Fox had
advised the Friends of Barbadoes, in regard to
their slaves, that " after certain years of servi-
tude they should make them free," but it does
not appear that any of the slave-owning Friends
unloaded because George Fox said so.

The colored man remained in the seclusion
of the fuel department until 1688, only six years
after the founding of Pennsylvania, when, as
we have already seen, some of the German
Friends, at their meeting in Germantown,
spoke their minds freely on the subject of
human slavery, and made the first protest
against it in America. The meeting itself as a
body, however, dodged the issue, and ^'judged
it not to be so proper for this meeting to give a
positive judgment in the case." But the per-
sonal protest of Daniel Pastorius and his
friends, though not adopted by the Society,
made itself felt, and eight years later the Yearly
Meeting again took up the irrepressible subject
very gingerly, and advised that " Friends be
careful not to encourage the bringing in of any
more negroes, and that such as have them be

290 WILLIAM PENN. [1700

careful of them, bring them to meetings, and
restrain them from loose living as much as in
them lies, and from rambling abroad on first
days or other times."

The Germantown leaven was working, al-
though not until eighty years later did the
Society of Friends embody in its discipline an
outspoken prohibition of slavery, and nearly
two centuries had passed away when the
sword, with bloody judgment, made into a
righteous and irrevocable decree the brave
protest so bravely spoken by the Friends of
Germantown. The Quaker meeting-house was
the cradle of abolitionism and emancipation.

In the spring of 1700, Penn made an effort to
" improve the condition of the negro by legal
enactments." He introduced in the Council a
bill to " regulate the morals and marriages of
negroes." This bill was readily passed by the
Council, the members of that body being all
members of the Society of Friends. But the
Assembly promptly killed the bill when it came
into their hands, and under the sanction of this
body the slaves went on marrying as numer-
ously and carelessly as they pleased, and pur-
sued the unguarded ways of their earthly pil-

JEt. 56.] THE POPULAR VOICE. 29 1

grimage with no check upon their baggage or
their conduct

The Founder, now turned from the Assembly
to his own Society, and at fhe next monthly
meeting laid this subject before it, and be-
sought the Friends to '■' be very careful in dis-
charging a good conscience toward the Indians
and negroes in all respects." The meeting ap-
pointed a meeting for the negroes, "■ to be kept
once a month." The Friends thus early sought
to promote the spiritual welfare of their slaves.
But they still held them as slaves, and emanci-
pation as a means of grace was not resorted to
until many years afterward. William Penn, it
is true, gave all his slaves their freedom in his
will, although the will appears to have been
carried out as wills usually are — as the heirs
and executor wish it, and not as the testator
intended. A letter from James Logan to
Hannah Penn, quoted by Janney, says : " The
proprietor, in a will left with me, at his depart-
ure hence, gave all his negroes their freedom,
but tJiis is entirely private ; however, there are
very few left. Sam died soon after your de-
parture hence, and his brother James very
lately. Chevalier, by a written order from his

292 WILLIAM PENN. [1700.

master, had his liberty several years ago, so
that there are none left but Sue, whom Letitia
claims, or did claim, as given to her when
she went to England, but how rightfully I
know not. These things you can best dis-
cuss. There are besides two old negroes quite
worn, that remained of three which I received
eighteen years ago of E. Gibbs's estate of
New Castle Co."

It appears not to have been a very SAveeping
emancipation, after all. Penn meant well, but
these things can be and are done much better
by the living than by the heirs of a dead mas-
ter. To a lame man, it would appear from this
letter that of the slaves freed by this will, Sam
died before his master got to England ; James
died soon after ; Chevalier was free because
Penn manumitted him in time and by his own
hand; Letitia, who was not in the emanci-
pation business, laid her gentle hands upon Sue,
will or no will ; and there were left, to enjoy
their freedom under the Governor's will, two
decrepit old darkies, who had worked them-
selves clear out as slaves, were not now worth
their keep, and probably at this time were not

^t. 56.] A GROWING CHILD. 293

able to take care of themselves. Such was old-
fashioned emancipation.

William Penn, however, was ever a kind and
humane master, and his intentions were just
and noble. But this is one of the instances
where ^' his confidence in persons less virtuous
than himself" disarranged his plans and vetoed
his wishes. While he owned slaves, it must be
borne in mind that the morality of his time ap-
proved of slavery, and he was a better master
to his slaves than some of our neighbors are to
their employes.

An absence of sixteen years had done its cer-
tain work in weaning the rugged and healthy
infant province Penn had planted in the wilder-
ness away from its loving Founder. Sixteen
years ; and such years they had been, pregnant
with great events, restless with the birth and
growth of ideas. Twice in that time Penn had
seen the greatest throne in the world made
vacant, once by the mighty hand of death, and
once by the hand of the people scarcely less
mighty. Persecution, cruelty, and bloodshed,
in the sacred name of religion, had raged over
the kingdom, desolating homes, filling the pri-

294 WILLIAM PENN. [1700.

sons, and drenching the block with the bravest
and purest blood of England. Sidney and
Monmouth died under the axe; Jeffreys had
run the limit of his evil and cruel career ;
James, torn from his throne, had met defeat in
England and disgraceful rout in Ireland ; Penn
from the estate of a prince had fallen to the
obscurity of a fugitive, death had entered his
household and taken away the best and dear-
est ; war with France broke out, and closed
with honor to the English arms ; the dissenters
of England had at last worn out persecution by
patience and matchless courage and glorious
faith in the righteousness of their cause, until
the meeting-house and conventicle were as safe
as the church, and no man's prayers could shut
him in a dungeon ; and with all these wonder-
ful changes in the world in which he lived
these sixteen years, could Penn imagine that
the New World was standing still? Did he
suppose he would find his " model state" just
where he left it ? Could he not understand the
murmur of discontent already flowing from
colony to colony, and spreading a contagion of
restlessness through the provinces? Sixteen
years? In those stirring days that was time

JEt. 56.] GROWN OUT OF RECOGNITION. 295

enough to build a new state on the ashes of an
old.

Penn had seen this in England : he was a
child when Cromwell builded the Common-
wealth on the ruins of the throne, and a boy
when the King came back to his own and the
throne was established on the wreck of the
Commonwealth ; he was a man of broad ex-
perience, keep insight, and wide political influ-
ence when William stepped on the neck of
James to ascend the throne. And yet with all
these instructive scenes rolling before him on
the panorama of events, he stayed away from
his province in the New World and thought he
could govern it. Sixteen years ! The Blue
Anchor Tavern that he saw finished on Dock
Street had been hidden by the grander houses
of the city he planned; for now more than ** a
thousand finisht houses" his capital boasted.
Immigrants fleeing from the lash of persecution
had crowded into his province and made it
prosperous. In the wake of its prosperity
came the flotsam and jetsam of the tide. Men
came to Pennsylvania who cared naught for
Penn, and less for his religion ; men came who
had never or scarcely heard of William Penn ;

296 WILLIAM PENN. [1700.

men came who knew him only to dishke him ;
men came who hated his ideal of the perfect
state ; good men, bad men, weak men, slavers,
smugglers, pirates, men of all conditions came
to Pennsylvania, w4th their own political ideas.
When Penn returned to his province after his
absence of sixteen years, he did not find the
state he left. He found a people who knew not
Penn, and who regarded a governor or pro-
prietor as a figure-head that should be allowed
only the least possible amount of power.

The seeds of democracy Penn had sowed in
the wilderness " had taken root and flourished
with the unexpected luxuriance of a Canada
thistle or the dog-fennel of the prairies. The
province had grown democratic even more
rapidly than Penn had anticipated or wished.
While he had been sixteen years in England,
and most of that time a constant attendant upon
the King, a favorite with royalty and a power
in the court, the colonists had been receiving a
very different education in America, and all

* The reader will kindly excuse me for making no reference
in this connection to Cadmus and his little experiment in pro-
ductive dentistry. I thought of it, but grandly refrained from
using it.

iEt. 56.] ARMED NEUTRALITY. 297

their dealings with the Crown only served to
intensify their disHke for it.

The Assembly met Penn this year in an atti-
tude of " armed neutrality" if not open hostility."^
It was called to meet at New Castle as a small
libation of taffy for the lower counties, and
Penn briefly recommended a revisal of the laws,
the settling of property, and a supply for the
support of the government, closing by recom-
mending to the House amity and concord
among its members. The Assembly did not
waste any time on the promotion of amity and
concord ; no committee was appointed on that
subject. The only matter it appeared to har-
monize upon in perfect unity was the revision
of the laws. They were ready, willing, and
anxious to annul the old and frame a new con-
stitution right away ; but Penn was less anx-
ious for this heroic method of mending the old
constitution, and but little progress was made
in that direction at this session. Then the rep-
resentatives from the territories and the prov-
ince began wrangling over the quota of repre-
sentation. The members from the territories

* The classic reader is requested to insert here something
about the hand of steel in the silken glove.

298 WILLIAM PENN. [1700.

went in for minority representation. They
claimed that as the territories had the smallest
population, they should therefore have the
largest representation, in order to strike a gen-
eral average. They threatened to secede at
once if ever the province organized any more
counties, ''and thereb}^ more representatives
were added, so that the number of the repre-
sentatives of the people in legislation in the
province should exceed those of the territories."
Finally this was compromised by Penn, who
proposed " that in all matters and things what-
soever wherein the territories were or should
be particularly concerned, in interest or privi-
lege, distinct from the province, then, and in
that case, no act, law, or ordinance, m any wise,
should pass in any Assembly in this province,
unless two parts in three of the members of the
said territories, and the majority of the mem-
bers of the province, should concur therein."
This quieted the territory men for the time, but
they promised to bring up the subject of the
union at the next session, and at every succeed-
ing session, in fact.

Then there was the supply for the support of
the Government ; ;^2,ooo were to be raised, and

iEt. 56.] A MODEST MINORITY. 299

in levying" the tax, the members for the province
intimated that if the territories insisted on an
equal representation and voice and vote in all
matters pertaining to the state, they should also
raise half of the supply. But the territory
members declined the flattering proposition.
They explained that they wanted to strike a fair
average in this matter, and would agree to a
just and righteous compromise. They would
agree to do all the talking and most of the vot-
ing, and let the members for the province raise
all the money. How did that strike them ? It
did not seem to strike the provincial representa-
tives as altogether the proper caper, and in turn
they submitted four propositions, each looking
to an equal tax on property both in the provinces
and territories ; but the territories voted them
down, being in a minority. Lack of space for-
bids my explaining how this was done. The
representatives of the territories had only one
rule in voting on any bill or motion. When the
province voted '•'• yea" the territories voted
"nay," and when the province voted against
any measure the members for the territories
worried that measure through, if they had to sit
up all night. The members for the territories

3CO WILLIAM PENN. [1700.

seem to have been very pleasant, peaceably dis-
posed men.*

Once more the wisdom and long-suffering
patience of the Governor cast the crude petro-
leum of compromise upon the troubled winds of
legislative debate, with the proposition that the
province should raise i^ 1,575, and the territories
^^425. This looked fair to the territories, and
the Pennsylvania Assembly went home, having
for the first time since the founding of the prov-
ince voted a supply to the only Governor who,
up to that time, deserved one at their hands.

A terrible riot broke out in East Jersey about
the time the legislature adjourned. Men stood
out in the streets and called one another all sorts
of names; casual bricks — whole and bats —
strewed the highways thick as the leaves that
strew autumnal brooks in Vallambrosa,t only
somewhat harder and rather larger; windows
were broken, grass was pulled up by the roots, and
tumultuous horror brooded over the pleasant
valleys of Appeljacque, — all because an insolent
criminal on trial asked an East Jersey magis-
trate some questions that his honor couldn't

* After they were buried. f Original.

JEU 56.] QUELLED BY A PAMPHLET. 3OI

answer. The august courts of this country
had not at that time attained the Guiteau state
of passive submission.

When Penn heard of the riot, he immediately
pulled on his big boots, and calling " twelve of
the most respectable Friends about him," girded
on his two-handed pamphlet with the terrible
name, and rode for the scene of conflict. But
long, long before he got there, the insurgents
heard he was coming and gat them unto their
homes in greate terrour, and did there abide in
all feare and submissfulnesse.

Penn had now some leisure to attend to the
noble red men. As usual, the guileless savages
had some land to sell, and they knew Penn was
the best man in the world to buy land. Before
he sailed for England, in 1684, Penn bought "all
that tract of land lying on both sides of the
river Susquehanna and the lakes adjacent, in or
near the province of Pennsylvania," from the
Iroquois Indians, for ;^ioo. Now the Susque-
hanna Indians came into court, and said there
was a cloud on Penn's title ; that the Iroquois
could not make him a deed of that land, because
they had only acquired it temporarily, and in
the most unquakerlike way, by pounding the

302 WILLIAM PENN. [1700.

ground with the Susquehannas, who were the
rightful owners, tomahawking a divers many
of them, and driving them away from their own
land, which they had themselves, with great
pains and much scalping, acquired in a Hke
manner from its former owners, — although they
didn't say anything about that, — and now, they
didn't want to make a fuss about it, but if
William Penn really wanted that land, they
would sell it to him cheap for cash, or on
long time, say fifteen minutes, with approved
security.

So Penn, Jbelieving the Indians, and knowing
not that they were taught to lie before they
were weaned, bought this same land over again,
this time from the Susquehannas.

The Susquehannas got their money and goods
for the land, and then went back to the forest
primeval, and around the blazing camp-fire,
under the whispering hemlocks, in the long
shadows of the stately pines, and amid the
small but numerous inhabitants of their humble
tepees, they told what a good thing they had
made out of those old Iroquois timber-claims on
the Susquehanna. The other Indians, being as-
sured that in the matter of a land-deal William

iEt. 56.] EARLY POST-SUTLERSHIPS. 303

Penn was but as a sucker, said, '' Go to ; let us
arise and sell Brother Onas these Iroquois lands
ourselves."

So Connoodaghoh, King of the Conestogas,
and a lot of other kings, his most gracious
majesty King of the Shawnees, '' the restless
nation of wanderers," the lynx-eyed chief of
the Ganawese,^ and a king of the Onondagas,
came down to Philadelphia in April, 1701, and
told William Penn that he might be and was the
only genuine Onas of Philadelphia, but they
were the Onas of that Iroquois reservation, and
he must not neglect to recollect it. Penn at
once opened up another line of presents, and
the tramps of the forest graciously confirmed
the two purchases he had already made of this
same land. It may be that Penn kept on buy-
ing this Iroquois land of new Indians so long as
he remained in America, but there is no record
of any further sales.

In order that the Indians might be protected
from swindling traders, it was decided at this
last treaty that only Penn himself and his im-
mediate successors should have authority to

* Brother of the oxide of manganese.

304 WILLIAM PENN. [1701.

license Indian traders. This was the beginning
of the monopoly in post-sutlerships.

It was also decided by the Governor and his
Council '' that no rum should be sold to any
Indians but their chiefs, and in such quantities
as the Governor and Council shall think fit, to
be disposed of by the chiefs to the Indians about
them as they shall see cause." This made thin
gleaning for the other Indians, and the haughty
chieftain gradually fell into the royal habit of
doing all the drinking for his tribe. It kept his
most gracious majesty busy, but he was fond of
employment, and loved to toil at the earthen
jug, while his gentle wife or two chewed the
bear-skins soft and pliable, or idly hoed the
rustling maize, or with resounding blows and
muffled grunts laid in the winter wood.

During this summer, a letter from the King
was laid before the Assembly, demanding a con-
tribution of i^350 for the construction and main-
tenance of forts in New York. The Assembly
was greatly distressed. It had a hard time all
round. Whenever William Penn wanted a sup-
ply or asked for his quit-rents, they reminded
each other that although the Governor was a
Quaker, all the colonists were not, and it didn't

Ml. 57.] CONVENIENT PIETY. 305

make any difference to them whether he got
any suppHes or not. But when the King called
upon them for a war appropriation, they sud-
denly remembered that their constituents, for
the greater part, were Quakers, and their
peculiar views must be regarded with all due
respect by the Assembly. After mature delib-
eration, therefore, the Assembly declined to
vote the supply required by the King, on the
remarkable grounds of the tax recently levied
for the support of the Government, "• and the
quit-rents due "! Those blessed quit-rents ! The
casual observer would be apt to remark that
they were due, as not a shilling of them had
been paid in eighteen years. And then to
strengthen their reasons with the most glaring
incongruities that could be suggested, the As-
sembly— Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, peace-
makers, fighters, and all — begged the Governor
to assure the King that they were ready to com-
ply with his demands " as far as their religious
persuasions would permit."

This grows better and better, when we re-
member this is the same devout body that curtly
refused to pass a bill regulating Christian and
decent marriages among the negroes. And

306 WILLIAM PENN. [1701.

finally the territories came in with the crowning
reason, declaring they were in a most defence-
less condition themselves, without arms, am-
munition, militia, or officers, and asked to be
excused from " building forts in New York
while they were unable to build them for their
own home defence."

The Assembly was dismissed after this mag-
nificent jumble. Certainly it had earned the
right to go home and place its several heads in
brine. It had distinctly stated that it could not
vote a war supply to build forts in New York
because —

It had just voted all the supply necessary for
the government expenses ;

Eighteen years of quit-rents, which they
never had paid and were never going to pay,
were due ;

They had religious scruples against building
forts ; and

They were going to build some for themselves
as soon as they were able.

When the Ancient Free and Accepted As-
sembly of Pennsylvania sat down and harnessed
its massive intellect to the mental task of evolv-
ing a few consecutive reasons why it shouldn't

Ml. 57.] SUNDRY AND DIVERSE REASONS. 30/

spend any more money than it had to, the result
was an intellectual three-decker with an iron
ram and an Ericsson turret, that made the effete
monarchies of Europe tremble on their crum-
bling thrones, while the prophetic aureole
about the dome of Independence Hall glowed
like an Alpine sunset on the Wissahickon.

CHAPTER XVIIL

GOVERNING AT LONG RANGE.

A S he had now been in the province nearly
•^ *■ two years, it was about time for the Gov-
ernor to go back to England. He seemed to
like Pennsylvania more the less he saw of it,
and wasted very little of his precious time in
his " model state.*' Various reasons urged his
return to England at this time. There was in
the mother-country a strong party in favor of
extinguishing the proprietary governments, and
vesting the rule of the colonies in the Crown,
and a bill to that effect had already been intro-
duced in the House of Lords. It was thought
best by the leading men of the colony that
Penn should at once set sail for England.
They appeared anxious to have him go, pos-
sibly realizing the fact that they had their own
way more fully when the Governor was three
months out of reach — a view of the case that
seems to have missed the Governor entirely.

JEt. 57.] TII£ WOMAN DID IT, 3^9

In addition to these political reasons, there
were others equally weighty. Mrs. Penn and
Miss Penn were both averse to remaining in
America. They had enjoyed the novelty of a
visit in the new country, and did not appear to
care for any more of it, failing to enter into the
Governor's enthusiasm for taming the Indians
and building a model state, and making the
wilderness to blossom as the rose. Penn him-
self writes, at this time : " I cannot prevail on
my wife to stay, and still less with Tishe
[Letitia]. I know not what to do. Samuel
Carpenter seems to excuse her in it, but to all
that speak of it, say I shall have no need to
stay in England, and a great interest to re-
turn." And when a man's wife and daughter
both put down their feet and say they will not
stay in this horrid country another minute,
and they will go back to England to-morrow if
they have to walk every blessed step of the
way, and, to make it worse, Samuel Carpenter,
who might have been in better business, comes
along and aids, abets, and encourages the wo-
men in their distracting opposition to the Gov-
ernor's wishes, — it is easy to see the Governor
must surrender, and place three months of

3IO WILLIAM PENN. [1701.

ocean between him and the province that con-
stantly required his presence. Or rather, he
required the presence of the province, if he
wanted to hold it and mould it to his own will.
The province got along in its own way while
the Governor was in London, but it wasn't
Penn's way at all. Penn's own wishes would
have held him in America, for he writes, '' My
inclinations run strongly to a country and pro-
prietary life." And then he packed up and
went straight to London. But he assured the
Assembly in his opening speech that '' no un-
kindness or disappointment shall ever alter my
love for the country, and resolution to return
and settle my family and posterity in it."

Before he sailed, the new Assembly was con-
vened, and the Governor told them to review
their laws, enact such new ones as they thought
best, and consider the King's request for the
New York forts appropriation, referred from
the last Assembly. In reply to which the As-
sembly promptly refused to build one solitary
embrasure, not a lunette, not even a rifle-pit; it
would not vote one shilling for a fort.

But it would and did trouble the Governor
with a long address of twenty-one articles, in

iEt. 57.] STAND AND DELIVER. 3II

which the Assembly and citizens asked for some
things the proprietary was wiUing to grant,
some that he granted unwillingly, and some that
he wouldn't listen to. Among other things, the
modest freemen merely asked that the Gov-
ernor should fix the price of all his unsold land
at the extravagant rate of " one bushel of wheat
in the hundred." The Assembly must have had
this request stored away in the ice-house all
summer. When any other man held his land a
few years he was entitled to sell it at the
*' raise," but the price of the Governor's land
was to be immutably fixed. Even at this dis-
tance, this request still retains a shuddering
sensation of frostiness, when we remember that
Penn bought all his land of King Charles, and
then of numerous Indians in rapid succession.

Then the colonists had one more little favor
to ask. It wasn't much, and they disliked to
bother him about such a trifle, but would the
Governor be good enough to lay out all his
bay-marshes and swamp-lands as common
lands ? The Governor's hair began to stand on
end.

Oh yes, and one thing more : they wanted
the common use of some vacant land in the city

312 WILLIAM PENN. [1701.

of Philadelphia, and the free use of the river-
bank at the ends of the streets on the Delaware
and Schuylkill; and, by the way, they wanted
all of his islands near the city to be reserved
free to them for their supplies of winter fodder.
Penn gave them the vacant lots and the river-
fronts, but he held on to the bay-marshes and
the islands.

Was there any other business before the
House ? They could not think of anything else
of importance. Oh, the appropriation for his
journey to England ? Well, that was all right ;
they weren't going to make any. If he wanted
to go to England, he was at liberty to go. It
was the privilege of any citizen. But he could
pay his own way or hoof it, the Assembly didn't
very much care which. Or, he might stay in
Pennsylvania. It was a good country, and
they were going to stay themselves. They
were glad enough to get away from England,
and they had no desire to go back to a country
where they spelled apple with an *' h." If he
wanted money, he could sell land.

And that is just what he had to do. He had
five or six hundred thousand or million acres
of land, — he didn't know which it was, — and he

^t. 57.] POLITICAL STRANGERS. 313

sold a few counties to pay his way back to
England. To this sad state of penniless desti-
tution was the once wealthy Governor and pro-
prietor of Pennsylvania reduced. Ah, how
few of us, blessed with comfortable homes and
a good salary of $850 a year, know of the pen-
ury and woe and pinching poverty and white-
faced want stalking like grim spectres through
the palaces of our Governors ! Let us, while
we pity the griping poverty of the starving
owners of whole reservations of land, learn
wisely the lessons of their misfortunes ; let us
lay our several hands upon our respective
hearts, and solemnly declare we will never bite
off more than we can chew.*

Penn was greatly displeased with the excel-
lent appetite this Assembly displayed for his
lands, and in a conference on this subject he
told them very plainly that " he would never
permit an Assembly to meddle with his pro-
perty, lest it should be drawn into a prece-
dent." And that was just what the Assembly
was after. Penn saw about as little of his own
province as any man in England ; his successor

^' Properly "chaw," but the proof-reader played it mean on
the author.

314 WILLIAM PENN. [1701.

might be an unscrupulous, grasping man, also
living in London and holding at exorbitant
prices his inherited lands and privileges, and
the Assembly, wiser in its day and generation
than the Governor, was anxious to secure these
lands and privileges to the people and immi-
grants of future generations while it could be
done. It is true there was an element of calm
iciness in the Assembly's demands, but, after
all, it was singing on the right key.

Some time during the session a bill was intro-
duced to confirm the revenue laws passed at
New Castle, and, as might have been expected,
every member from the territories was on his
feet in a minute, declaring that such a bill in-
timated that laws enacted in the territories were
invalid. They would be recreant. Sir, to their
principles, and false. Sir, to their constituents,
Sir, if, Sir, they remained supinely. Sir, in their
seats. Sir, when this galling insult. Sir, was
hurled at the grand old constituency, Sir, it was
their honor and privilege, Sir, to represent. Sir.
And then they said they would and did boldly
and fearlessly fling back the infamous insinua-
tion into the teeth, Sir, of the cowardly insinua-
tors ; they would beard this lion of tyrannical

JEt. S7'] ANOTHER NEW CHARTER. 315

and arbitrary despotism in the bud ; they would
trample this gathering cloud of usurpation un-
der their feet, and in the might and majesty of
a downtrodden people they would hurl the
proud invader from his gory seat and plant the
flag of freedom there ! (Loud cheers and cries
of ''Go on!" from the galleries, which were
promptly checked by the Speaker.) And with
this burst of legislative eloquence and grammar
the representatives from the territories put on
their hats, and seceded.

Penn interposed in behalf of union and har-
mony, and after repeated conferences the terri-
tory members agreed to come back on condition
''that nothing might be carried over their heads
by outvoting them." You see, the territories
did not want very much, but what they did want
they wanted hke everything. At last, on the
promise of the Governor that a clause should be
inserted in the charter providing for their sep-
aration in three years, the seceders returned to
the House.

This Assembly adopted a new constitution,
passed one hundred bills, and adjourned on the
28th of October. The day following, Penn pre-
sented the inhabitants of Philadelphia an act of

3l6 WILLIAM PENN. [1701.

incorporation for the city, appointing Edward
Shippen Mayor and Thomas Story Recorder,
and placing other friends approved by himself
in office, so that the machine might start off in
the best shape, and leave as little work as possi-
ble for the "Committee of One Hundred,"
which before long began to exhibit signs of an
eager desire to stick its shovel into the muni-
cipal sand and have something to say about
electing the city officers itself.

The Indians came in great numbers to bid
Penn good-by, as it had been noised abroad
he was going to return to England, and it was
quite generally understood that liberal quanti-
ties of backsheesh would be dispensed, after
Penn's usual manner. The heart-breaking sor-
row of these simple-minded children of the
forest at Penn's departure has often been justly
and feelingly portrayed. Penn had been a
friend to the Indians."^ He was the first white
man to treat them honestly. He was also the
last. They had sold him the same piece of land

* This remarkable and somewhat startling statement has
been made by other authorities. Clarkson, Janney, Dixon,
the Logan MSS., the memoirs of the Penn. Hist. Soc, the
Proprietary Papers, and various MSS. have asserted it, and
even Wf^por? a^lmits it.

^t. 57.] GOOD-BY TO ON AS. 317

many times, and they now wept to think they
might never be able to sell him that old Iroquois
timber-claim again. They wished they had sold
it oftener while they were at it.

In the dim gloaming of the misty future, other
Governors would come who would buy their
lands with bayonets ; who would fence them on
a reservation of sage-brush and alkali ponds,
and then abuse them because they didn't kill
deer and buffalo on a reservation where a coy-
ote would starve to death in ten minutes. True,
they had never seen very much of Penn. He
loved them, but he had spent only four or five
years in their country in all his life. Whenever
they did vSee him, however, they scooped him.
They struck him rich every time they made a
deal with him in land, and they gloomily
thought of the day when another Governor
should arise, and Edward Marshall would walk
clear around the whole State of Pennsylvania
in a day and a half. Their eyes were dim when
for the last time in this world they looked upon
the noble Quaker, and when they said good-
by,* and turned to their humble lodges in the

* They didn't say " good-by" exactly. They said " Won-
nikiquinochisackvvissahiconkessett Connekhocheaque," which
means the same thing.

3l8 WILLIAM PENN. [1701.

wilderness, sorrow gat hold upon them with
the heart-breaking grip of a tight boot in
church.

Penn's last official acts in Philadelphia were
to appoint James Logan his agent and An-
drew Hamilton Deputy Governor, and then,
on the 30th of October, his delighted family
hurried on board. The Governor sorrow-
fully said good-by to his friends and quit-
rents. With a fair wind and a good tide the
ship dropped down the river; the faces on the
wharf grew indistinct and blurred;^ the ''thou-
sand finisht houses" of Philadelphia blended
into the autumnal fohage of the surrounding
forests, and the hazy atmosphere of October
fell like a veil over the bright hopes and fair
dreams of human liberty that had been laid in
the grand foundations of the mighty state yet
to be builded thereon in honor and honesty
by the hands of a free people ; the blue lines
of the hills, the winding river, and the little
city melted into the embracing skies, and the
fair province of Pennsylvania passed forever
from the gaze of its Founder. Neither in life
nor in death was it ever to receive him again.
He loved it so much, and he saw it so little, and

iEt. 57.] THE LAST GRAB. 3I9

in death his body was fated to lie thousands of
miles away from the land that most sincerely
honors his memory — the land that hands his
great name down to posterity in that of the
state he founded by '' deeds of peace."

But his loving- colonists had one more grab at
him. When the ship reached New Castle,
David Lloyd and Isaac Norris, executors of
Thomas Lloyd, presented a petition, asking for
compensation for Thomas Lloyd's nine years' ser-
vice as president of the Council, that one thou-
sand acres of land be given him for that amount
taken away from him by the Maryland claim,
and that some other lands Lloyd had bought
should be located. Penn readily gave and
located the land as desired, but in regard to the
other '' compensation" said, " What I have not
received I cannot pay. I am, above all the
money for lands I have sold, twenty thousand
pounds sterling out of purse upon Pennsylvania,
and what has been given me pays not my com-
ing and expense since come."

From shipboard the Governor wrote his
agent, James Logan : " Use thy utmost endeav-
ors to receive all that is due me. Get in quit-
rents, look carefully after all fines, forfeitures,

320 WILLIAM PENN. [1701.

escheats, deodands, and strays that shall belong
to me as proprietor. Get in the taxes and
Friends' subscriptions, and use thy utmost
diligence in making remittances to me by bills
of exchange, tobacco,^ or other merchandise.
. . . Judge Guest expects a hundred pounds a
year of me. I would make it fifty. . . . Let not
my cousin Durant want, but supply her with
economy." f

The good ship Dalmahoy made a quick pas-
sage, and after weeks of the usual marine misery,
Penn landed in England. When he got there,
he learned that the bill for making all the
American provinces Crown colonies had been
dropped, and he didn't know just what he came
to England for. Still, this same legislation
would probably be attempted in a succeeding
Parliament, and it was evident that Penn was
once more going to maintain the Pennsylvania
executive mansion in London, for another in-
definite period.

James died an exile. Three months before

* He didn't like people to smoke it, but he would sell it.

f Economy was a very necessary article in every household.
Supplied with plenty of economy, cousin Durant would be
happy as a king.

JEt. 57.] VOC/ATG WILLIAM COMES OVER. 32 1

Peiin's return to England, his royal son-in-law
was gathered to his fathers, if not to his father-
in-law, and Anne, the daughter of James, reigned
in WiUiam's stead. One of the first places we
hear of Penn, after he reached England, is at
court, as usual, where he was once more in
favor. Penn lived with his family in Kensing-
ton, kept out of politics, wrote another volume
of maxims for the guidance of other people, and
a few pamphlets and a preface or two, and wor-
ried over the news from iVmerica, which con-
tinued to be of a most discouraging nature.
The territories had seceded. Deputy Governor
Hamilton died in 1703, and the new Assembly
quarrelled with Edward Shippen, who succeeded
him ; and when the Governor and Council pro-
posed to confer with the House as to the time
for holding the next session, the Assembly
showed them all about that by simply and
promptly adjourning to the ist of May, with-
out troubling the Governor and his Council for
any opinion or voice in the matter. Year after
year the Assembly grew more and more inde-
pendent, and it never had cared very much for
a Deputy Governor anyhow.

Young William Penn was now sent out to

322 IVILLTAM PENN. [1702.

Pennsylvania, not indeed with any hope of his
improving the province, but for the purpose of
reforming the young man. His father begged
Logan, in touching terms, to look after the
youth. '' Possess him ; go with him to Penns-
bury, contract and recommend his acquaint-
ance. No rambling to New York." Penn
knew that if ever the young man got into the
habit of going to New York, all hope of refor-
mation was at an end. " He has wit," adds the
father, ''kept the top company, and must be
handled with much love and wisdom. And get
Samuel Carpenter " — that was the useful per-
son who '' excused " * Mrs. Penn in insisting on
returning to England — '' Edward Shippen, Isaac
Norris, Phineas Pemberton, Thomas Masters,
and such persons to be soft, and kind, and teach-
ing." " He is sharp enough to get to spend."
"• All this keep to thyself," adds Penn, and
Logan accordingly, after the usual manner of
treating private and confidential correspond-

* Heaven only knows, however, what "excused" may or
may not have meant in those days. Perhaps this wronged
Samuel Carpenter sat up nights to persuade Mrs. Penn to re-
consider her determination and remain in America. " Ex-
cused " may have meant "opposed, persecuted, condemned,
opposed with violence," or something of that sort.

iEt. 58.] A BOLD, BAD BOY. 323

ence, had the letter placed in the archives of
the American Philosophical Society, where the
reporters could have access to it. " There
now," said Logan, " that letter is safe."

*' Pennsylvania has cost me dearer in my poor
child," said Penn, "than all other considera-
tions," which, considering- that the poor child
learned all his deviltry in London, is rather
severe on Pennsylvania. And then, with his
singular weakness for doing, or endeavoring to
do, the most important things at the longest
range, he sent this son away from home and its
restraining influences^ away from himself, away
over into a new world, and among strangers, to
reform him. The young man came over with
John Evans, the newly appointed Deputy Gov-
ernor, a youth of twenty-six years, who was
recommended by Penn as a '' sober and sensible
young man," who would be " discreet and ad-
visable, especially by the best of our friends."

But the Governor was most dreadfully taken
in on young Evans, and the two young men
made Rome howl when they had been long
enough in the province to get acquainted a
little. By this time, only about one third of
the population of Philadelphia were members

324 WILLIAM PENN. [1703.

of the Society of Friends, and these youths had
no trouble in finding plenty of convivial society.
They tarried long at the wine; they sang ''In
the morning by the bright light" on the streets,
with great vigor but a little out of tune ; they
bought the police ; and, secure by the dignity of
their positions, the Deputy Governor and the
son of the proprietor made the morals of the
city worse than any other two men could have
done, because their boon companions found im-
munity from arrest in the company of the
Deputy Governor.

Young Penn was elected a member of the
Provincial Council, but as it met in the day-
time, he was seldom able to attend ; a deputa-
tion of " one hundred Indians, nine of whom
were kings," called upon him, to pay their re-
spects to the son of Onas and gather in a bale
of presents ; but even this cataract of royalty
failed to mend the young man's waj^s. In open
opposition to the tenets of his sect, he joined
the war party and organized a body of those
fell destroyers of cakes and ale known as
militia in Philadelphia. He sold WiUiamstadt,*

Now Norristovvn township, Montgomery County, Pa.

iEt. 6o.] THE FREE FIGHT AT STORY'S. 325

the beautiful manor of eight thousand acres
given him by his indulgent father, because
Logan could not supply him with money fast
enough. He was a prodigal son in every re-
spect save the last chapter.

Finally this riotous conduct culminated in a
free fight one night at Enoch Story's tavern.
Deputy Governor Evans, Sheriff John Finney,
Joseph Ralph, and Thomas Gray the scrivener,
— a reporter, maybe, — and young Penn pounded
a watchman or two, but the guardians of the
peace were re-enforced by *Hhe Mayor, Re-
corder, and one Alderman ;" the Hghts were
put out, and Alderman Wilcox pounded the
ground with Deputy Governor Evans, not
knowing who he was, and when the unhappy
executive disclosed his identity and dignity the
indignant Alderman leaped upon him and
whipped him again for lying to him. And in
the mean time somebody else was wiping up
the floor with young William Penn.

The Deputy Governor felt greatly chagrined
over this affair, especially about the right eye
and the end of his nose ; and young Penn, after
being presented by the grand jury, shortly after
returned to England. His father would have

326 WILLIAM PENN. [1704.

been less than a man had he not felt hurt at
what he considered the harshness with which
his son had been treated. " Bad Friends' treat-
ment of him," said the father, "stumbled him
from the truth. I justify not his folly, and still
less their provocation." Logan says the present-
ment was " an indignity put upon the son of the
Founder, which is looked upon by most mode-
rate men as very base." But then, it must be
remembered, the people of Pennsylvania never
saw enough of the Founder to get very well ac-
quainted with him, and the son of some man
away over in London was a person of very
little consequence to a great many of the colo-
nists, especially the Dutch and Swedes.

Troubles never come single."^ If they had
been content to come only in pairs or triplets,
Penn would have been a happier man, but they
began to rain upon him now. His daughter
Letitia married WiUiam Aubrey, who appears to
have been a cannibal and desired to live on his
father-in-law. He clamored for the payment of
his wife's portion much faster than Penn could
pay it, and Logan describes him as " one of the

* Original thought.

JEt. 62.J TI/E FALSE ALARM. 327

keenest men living." Young William's credi-
tors were also pressing the Governor. *' Both
son and daughter clamor," said Penn, " she to
quiet him that is a scraping man and will count
interest for a guinea ;" young William had en-
tirely renounced the Society of Friends, ran for
Parliament and got left, and wanted to enter
the army.

In the province Evans was vainly endeavoring
to re-unite the territories and the province, and
as vainly trying to get the Assembly to vote a
supply for the Government and pay up their
quit-rents, the Assembly being convinced that
the ;^2,ooo they had voted some years before
would, if it were ever collected, run the prov-
ince for fifty years. As to the quit-rents, they
said, they were reserved for the support of the
Government, — which was probably intended for
a joke. There was very little money in Penn-
sylvania at that time, and had the Assembly de-
sired to vote a revenue, it could hardly have
been collected.

Governor Evans had William Biles impris-
oned for calling him a boy, and saying "they
would kick him out, because he was not fit to
govern them." He was making strong efforts

328 WILLIAM PENN. [1706.

to organize a militia, and, to test the sense of
the people, he one day caused a report to be
circulated that the French were coming up the
river, and then rushing into the street, sword in
hand, Evans called upon the people to arm and
follow him. Instead of following him, however,
the population broke for the woods, by a large
majority. This disheartening indication that
the martial spirit was either dead or in a rapid
decline was very discouraging to the Deput3{
Governor. However, he succeeded in persuad-
ing the territories to build a fort at New Castle,
at which the ships reported or which they ran
by, as they saw fit. The Assembly drew up
articles of impeachment against Logan, Evans's
secretary, and finally addressed the proprietary
such a letter of remonstrance, in which were set
forth all the follies and evils of Evans's adminis-
tration, that Penn recalled him and he left the
province in 1708.

Among other very wise and useful maxims
that he wrote for the guidance and instruction
of other people, William Penn, after due de-
liberation and the usual period of incubation,
evolved the following nugget of solid wisdom :
" A man may be defrauded in many ways by a

MX.. 63.] PENN'S CONFIDENTIAL STEWARD. 329

servant ; as in care, pains, money, trust." And
about this time he began to understand how
that might be himself.

Philip Ford was Penn's confidential man ; his
steward. That is, he had been. At this time
he was dead, and had probably gone where the
other rich man went, and was spending all his
time prospecting for water, with never an in-
dication, or a show of color. He was, in his
life-time, a member of the Society of Friends,
an eminently respectable man, though not so
good a man as John Evans. Penn liked him,
for some inscrutable reason, placed all con-
fidence in him, gave him full charge of all his
affairs, never looked into his accounts, and in
every way treated him as though he were
cashier of a bank and Penn were only presi-
dent. When Ford wanted any papers signed,
he simply told any lie about them that hap^
pened to come handy, and William Penn said,
" Oh, never mind. Friend Ford, anything thee
does is O. K," and blandly signed them.

The result of all this easy book-keeping was
just what any ordinary business-man would
have known it would be ; in a few years the
servant had so much more money than the mas-

330 WILLIAM PENN. [1707.

ter, that when Penn wanted to come to Amer-
ica the second time he was a little short, and
PhiHp Ford said he could let him have ;^2,8oo.
As a mere matter of form, however, not that
it was really necessary between them as man
and man, you understand, but to give the affair
a business-like finish, you know, if he would
just make a kind of deed of the province to
Ford, as a sort of security like ?

" Why, certainly," Penn said, and signed the
deed.

*' It is really a deed," said the steward, *'but
we will consider it just a mortgage."

*' Oh yes," said this singularly easy-going
Governor, ''we'll play it is a mortgage.*' And
lie went on his way, repeating to himself the
followmg selections from his excellent maxims:

" An able bad man is an ill instrument, and
to be shunned as the plague.

'' Be not deceived with the first appearance
of things, but give thyself time to be in the
right.

"It is ill mistaking where the matter is of
importance.

" It is not enough that a thing be right, if it
be not fit to be done. If not prudent, though

^t. 63.] SHUTTING DOWN ON HIM. 33 1

just, it is not advisable. He that loses by
getting had better lose than get."

Ford continued in favor and confidence and
full fellowship, receiving and disbursing mo-
neys, charging compound interest every six
months at eight per cent in all his advances, and
Penn continued to know nothing about it all,
until the rascally old steward died and went
as hereinbefore-mentioned. Then his son, who
was worse than his father, and widow Ford,
who was worse than her son, returned from the
funeral and came down upon the astonished
Governor with this conveyance of the prov-
ince in one hand and a bill for i^ 14,000, or
;^ 1 2,000, or ;^ 10, 500, as the case may be, de-
pending upon which authority you accept.
Penn didn't have that amount right in his
clothes, and asked for an itemized bill, by
which it appeared that his steward, by his own
accounts, had received on behalf of Penn
;^ 1 7,859, and paid out ;^ 1,659, but still, so deftly
were those papers manipulated, they brought
Penn more than ;^ 10, 500 in his steward's debt.
It was the interest that ran it up so. The
Fords had charged interest both on their ad-
vances and on Penn's payments, then they

332 WILLIAM PENN. [1707.

added both interest accounts together, com-
pounded it, and deducting the amount from the
payment, added it to their original advance,
and then computed interest on it from that
date. So that every time Penn made a pay-
ment of ;^300 it cost him ^^450 to make it good,
and it would have been money in his pocket to
have stayed out altogether and made no pay-
ments. It requires a man of broad compre-
hension, profound judgment, liberal education,
and a quick intuition to comprehend the mys-
teries of scientific book-keeping.

Penn, by the assistance of two experts, man-
aged to cut the claim down to ^4,303, which he
offered to pay, but the Fords demanded their
pound of flesh, and the case went into court.
The special case of debt, the original i^2,ooo,
was affirmed, the sum amounting with costs to
about ^3,000, and on the loth of February Gov-
ernor William Penn was arrested by a member
of his own Society of Friends, at Grace Street
Church. Acting on legal advice, Penn went
into Fleet Street Prison, and so he got around
to where he started. Thirty-seven years be-
fore, a file of soldiers arrested him while he was
preaching at this very church, and dragged

JEt. 64.] SENTIMENT AND REFLECTION. 333

him away to prison. And now it was a Qua-
ker who, disregarding his standing in the
Society of which they were both members, with
no respect for his high station in the world,
with no reverence for his gray hairs, with no
more claim of right or justice than the soldiers
of Charles were armed with, arrested the old
man at a Quaker meeting-house, and forced
him to prison. This world is made up mainly
of men and women, and people are very much
like people after all.

Penn lay in prison about nine months, when
the Fords began to talk of a compromise. The
proprietary then mortgaged the province once
more, having derived so much profit and pleas-
ure from the first mortgage, and raised ;^6,8oo.
The Fords were paid ;^7,5oo, and Penn left the
prison and went to his home in Brentford,
having had abundant leisure, during his prison
fife, to amass material for one more maxim,
*'You can't most always tell anything about
nobody."

CHAPTER XIX.

AT REST.

pOLONEL GOOKIN, the new Deputy Gov-
^ ernor, arrived in Pennsylvania about five
o'clock on the evening of March 17th, and was
knee-deep in the usual wrangle with the As-
sembly at seven o'clock on the morning of the
1 8th. The quarrel should and would have
begun the evening before he got there, had the
two parties known where to find each other.
The Assembly reflected upon the Council,
made direct charges against Logan, the Secre-
tary, abused Evans roundly, refused to furnish
the Queen the hundred and fifty soldiers she
demanded, and only offered to vote money
under conditions that were resented by the
Governor as mean and discourteous, and gener-
ally trod on everybody's corns that were with-
in reach of the legislative heel.

The next Assembly, chosen in October of
this same year, was a little worse than its pre-
decessor; the same old party was successful.

iEt. 65.] THE EXPOSTULATORY LETTER. 335

and David Lloyd was again elected Speaker.
Logan came to England, received a triumphant
acquittal at the hands of both Friends and civil
authorities, — somewhat remote from the loca-
tion of the charges, it is true, but he was ac-
quitted, none the less, — and while there he told
Penn all this pleasant njsws about the model
state.

Sixty-five 3^ears and much trouble were be-
ginning to tell on the rugged frame of the
Founder, but he could not give up the " Holy
Experiment" without one more effort to restore
to its councils the harmony and fraternal confi-
dence with which it had been planted. He
wrote his factious colonists a patriarchal epistle
from London, in which he ran over his old
dreams and plans and present hopes for Penn-
sylvania ; mourned that it had been to him but
a source of '' grief, trouble, and poverty ;" de-
clared his readiness to grant them anything
that *' would make you happier in the relations
between us ;" reminded them that already they
had made three constitutions with no opposi-
tion from him ; protested against the As-
sembly's assuming to meet and adjourn when
it will as prejudicial to good order ; and told

33^ WILLIAM PENN, ■ [1709=

them " nothing could be more destructive than
to take so much of the provision and executive
part of the Government out of the Gov-
ernor's hands and lodge it in an uncertain col-
lective body," and that he did not think it
'' prudent in the people to crave these powers."
Alas, poor Penn! Before many years the
people in the American colonies were craving
a great many powers that their non-resident
Governors did not think it "■ prudent" for them
to have. The Founder complained that he
''had but too sorrowful a view and sight to
complain of the manner in which he had been
treated;" that "my quit-rents, never sold by
me," had been turned to the support of the
Government, his overplus land claimed ; his
secretary persecuted on account of the Gov-
ernor ; that Penn himself and his '' suffering
family" had " been reduced to hardships;" he
asked them to " consider the regard due to
him that had not been paid," and with much
gentle and touching expostulation, and earnest
prayers for the blessings of " peace, love, and
industry" upon " our poor country," he sub-
scribes himself " your real friend as well as just
proprietor and Governor."

^t. 66.] PENN TRIUMPHANTLY SUSTAINED. 33/

This expostulatory epistle touched the right
spot. The State Central Committee made a
campaign document of it and franked it all over
the state ; the Friends turned out on election-
day and stayed all day at the polls and worked
like beavers, with the exception of the gaudy
and frivolous worldly mill-privileges enjoyed
and employed by beavers, and in the election
for the Assembly of 1710 the Founder was
vindicated, Pennsylvania was saved, the gray
light of victory shone on the upturned faces of
the vanguard, reform was triumphant, calumny
and aspersion fled away in the black night of
a nation's rebuke, and the traitorous hand that
lifted its envenomed tongue to stab the heart
of the state hid its grovelling head in the dust
of defeat, while the black night of arnica that
threatened to overwhelm our glorious ship of
state was trampled under the indignant feet of
the godlike voice of the people. David Lloyd
was kicked higher than Gilderoy's celebrated
kite, not one of the old Assembly was reelected,
the Committee of One Hundred did not go home
till morning, and Isaac Norris got off a joke.^

* It was about "astral influences," a very mild-mannered

338 WILLIAM PENN. [1710.

Good-will and general concord now reigned
in the councils of Pennsylvania. The new As-
sembly, when the Queen made a requisition on
the province for war supplies, passed a bill
appropriating ";^2,ooo for the Queen's use."
" We did not see it inconsistent with our prin-
ciples," gravely explains one of the members,
** to give the Queen money, the use to which
she put it being her affair, not ours." But
they wouldn't vote a dollar of war supplies.
And thus his satanic majesty was larrupped
around the shrubbery even as a calico horse
around the circus-ring. As the province voted
no war supplies, the Queen bought a ship-load
of powder and muskets and paid off two regi-
ments of soldiers * with the money, nobody's
conscience was disturbed, and everybody was
happy.

As if to crown this year of good things with
fatness, word reached Penn that a silver-mine
had been discovered in his province, near
Conestoga. The news was brought to the

joke, which is carefully labelled and explained as "a piece of
pleasantry" by his biographer.

* The pay of the British soldier was sixteen cents a year and
find himself.

^t. 67] AN- INDIAN SILVER-MINE. 339

Council by an Indian. Neither the Council
nor Penn had yet learned how difficult it is for
any but an expert to distinguish a full-grown
Indian from an able-bodied liar, and these
innocent men believed him. The Governor
had an eye like a hawk for anything that
looked like money, and the next mail carried
letters of instruction to his secretary to look
into this silver-mine, hire an expert to go out
to it, and see whether it assayed half so much
ore as it did ten times as much assessments.

There was no silver-mine. The Indian liar,
asking the Council to excuse him while he went
out and laughed, went back into the trackless
forest with one eye closed and his aboriginal
tongue thrust far into the recesses of his dusky
cheek, while ever and anon he smote with open
palm his sinewy thigh and carolled his wild
laughter to the rustling oaks. Thus upon the
invading race of pale-faced men he had played
his unusual joke with his accustomed Indian-
nuity.* It may have been that with prophetic
eye the savage looked up Chestnut Street and

* Joke of 171 1. No extra charge. For particulars, see
MSS. now on file in the stumpage bureau of the Interior De-
partment.

340 WILLIAM PENM. [171 1.

saw the Keystone National Bank and the
United States Mint, but those inexhaustible
mines, though located in his own province,
William Penn had never a chance to work.
His paper wasn't sufficiently gilt-edged for the
one, and his bullion was too prior for the
other.

His final chapter of literary work was written
this year, a preface to John Banks's Journal, and
it indicates no mental weakness, no approach of
the decay of that intellectual vigor that had
marked all his writings, no shadow of the cloud
that was soon to darken the clear mind. On
the whole, the evening was gathering about
him pleasantly. There was peace in his beloved
province, and if the silver-mine did not pan out,
there was an ocean of petroleum, and had the
colonists only had Colonel Drake for a Gov-
ernor, the Standard Oil Company would have
owned all western Pennsylvania before the
Revolution.

The Assembly of 171 1 passed a law prohibit-
ing the importation of any more slaves, and
although, in reply to William Southbe's petition
for a law declaring the freedom of all negroes,
the Assembly in 1712 resolved "it is neither

JEt. 68.] THE WEIGHT OF YEARS. 34I

just nor convenient to set them at liberty," still
the leaven of abolitionism was working. It is
interesting to note that the act of 171 1 was
promptly cancelled by the Crown as soon as it
reached England, for the mother-country was
in the slave-trade then with great profit and
eagerness. Parliament was doing all it could to
promote the inhuman traffic ; in some instances
—notably in Pennsylvania— it was fairly forced
upon the colonies, and not until the days of '^6
did freedom come to the negro even in the
Northern States.

For several years Penn had been negotiating
with the home government for the sale of his
province to the Crown. His province was
decorated with that clinging symbol of fidelity
and attachment known as a plain open-and-shut
mortgage; the annual yield of quit-rents con-
tinued to be represented by a round and sym-
metrical O, the cares and worry of provincial
affairs were weighing heavily upon him, and
for his peace of mind and health of pocket it
was perhaps better that he should sell. He
was an old man ; he had well-nigh reached the
limit that bounds the ordinary life-time of men ;
affliction and cares of many kinds, anxiety for

342 WILLIAM PENN. [17 12.

his province and anxious sorrow for his way-
ward boy, persecutions and prisons and sixty-
eight years were accomplishing their perfect
work on his mind and body. Regretfully he
put his hand to the preliminary papers relating
to the sale of his model state, which he finally
agreed should pass to the Crown for ''^12,000,
payable in four years, with certain stipulations."
But before the deed was executed, paralysis
checked the hand and clouded the brain of the
Founder, and the transfer was never made ;
William Penn died proprietor and Governor of
Pennsylvania.

From the second shock of paralysis which
came upon him in Bristol, "while he was writ-
ing a letter to Logan, so suddenly," Janney
says, " that his hand was arrested in the begin-
ning of a sentence which he never completed,"
he never entirely recovered. In this last letter
by his hand, the Founder treats upon his never-
failing theme of poverty, '' for it's my excessive
expenses upon Pennsylvania that has sunk me
so low, and nothing else ; my expenses yearly
in England ever exceeding my income ;"....
both my daughter and son Aubrey are under
the greatest uneasiness about their money

^t. 68.] THE PEN IS DROPPED. 343

which I desire, as well as allow thee to return
per first. Tis an epidemic disease on your side
the sea to be too oblivious of returns. ... I have
paid William Aubrey* (with a mad, bullying
treatment from him into the bargain) but ^^500,
which with several hundreds paid at several
times to him here makes near ^1,100, besides
what thou hast sold and put out to interest
there,— which is so deep a cut to me here ;—
and nothing but my son's tempestuous and
most rude treatment of my wife and self too
should have forced it to me. Therefore do not
lessen thy care to pay me, or at least to secure
the money on her manor of Mount Joy, for a
plantation for me or one of my children." The
closing sentence of the unfinished letter runs:
" I am glad to see Sybylla Masters, who has
just come down to the city and is with us, but
sorry at M. Phillips's coming, without just a
hint of it. She"—

The pen that dropped from his hand was
never resumed. After he recovered somewhat,
'' by easy journeys he reached London," writes
his wife, " and endeavored to settle some affairs

* Letitia's husband.

344 WILLIAM PENiW [lyjo.

and get some laws passed for that country's
ease and his own and family's comfort." He
was unable, however, " to bear the fatigues of
the town," and went to his home in Ruscombe,
where he had resided for the past two years.
Scarcely had he reached home, however, early
in February, when a third time he was stricken
with paralysis, "and though," writes Hannah
Penn, *' through the Lord's mercy he is much
better than he was, and in a pretty hopeful way
of recovery, yet I am forbid by his doctors to
trouble him with any business until better."

She never troubled him with business again,
but took his case into her own hands with true
wifely devotion. Six years Penn lived after
his third attack, and the closing scenes of his
life were '' sweet, comfortable, and easy ;" his
wife kept '' the thoughts of business from him ;"
his bodily health continued good ; he took great
pleasure in the presence of the children of his
wayward son William, whose neglected wife
and family were at Ruscombe ; but his memory
failed, his mind was darkened, and so, delight-
ing himself in the great house at Ruscombe.
" walking and taking the air when the weather
allowed, and at other times diverting himself

^t. 74.] IN THE JORDANS CHURCHYARD. 3 |5

from room to room," he walked in childish
pleasures and his own native innocence down
the easy decline of his pilgrimage, until he
reached the resting-place at the foot of the
hill on the 30th ol July, 171 8, in the seventy-
fifth year of a life that had crowned its little
faults with great virtues.

They buried him in the Friends graveyard at
Jordans, in Buckinghamshire, by the side of his
well-beloved Gulielma. Only two miles away
from Jordans, on one side, is Beaconsfield ; about
as far in the other direction is Chalfont St. Giles,
where first he met Guli Springett, nearly half a
century before. Only six miles away is Rick-
mansworth, where he took Guli to spend her
honeymoon. Only eight miles away is the old
village of Penn, which is said to have taken its
name from Penn's ancestors and where the only
Penn born in America, John, is buried. It is a
quiet resting-place. The plain tiled meeting-
house with its old-fashioned lattice windows ;
the three-roomed cottage, where the women
still hold their business meetings ; the roomy
stabling covered by the extended roof of the
mesting-house ; and, close by, the little oblong
burial-ground, are all shut in by leafy limes and

34^ WILLIAM PENN. [1718.

beeches, and beyond the woods the pleasant
meadows stretch away in lonely restfulness;
only a single house can be seen in any direction
from Jordans. Here lies Thomas Ellwood, Guli
Springett's first lover, who loved her so dearly
he dared not speak of it, fearing the blow of a
rejection ; but he was ever a warm and faithful
friend to her and her husband. Here Penn's
wives are buried ; here sleep their children,
Springett, the first-born, and Letitia ; here rest
the Penningtons, Guli's step-father and mother ;
here is buried Ellwood's wife ; and somewhere
in this little burial-ground WiUiam Penn is
sleeping.

Just exactly where, nobody knows. Only a
vShort time since, the people of Pennsylvania
thought an agreeable and eminently proper
feature in the bicentenary celebration of the
founding of the model state, which will occur
in October, 1882, would be the removal of the
remains of the Founder from England to the
state he founded. The report of this intention
reached Jordans about June, just the time of
holding the regular Yearly Meeting, and a feel-
ing was produced which was something akin to
excitement. The Friends in the Chalfont valleys

Mt. 74. j POSTHUMOUS REVERENCE. 347

suddenly remembered how dear William Penn
was to them, and this feeling spread like a con-
tagion through all England. Everybody in
England loved William Penn, and dearly and
tenderly did they revere his memory, and lov-
ingly would they guard, even as the apples of
their eyes, his sacred bones. True, their fathers
had oftentimes plunged those sacred bones into
filthy prisons, when the bones regarded love
and hate a great deal more sensitively than
they do now ; true, their most brilliant historian
had been the only man in all the world of letters
found willing and anxious to blacken the name
and smirch the fair fame of William Penn, but
no matter. Dear were his bones and sacred
his memory, and now no prowling hand from
Yankee-land should violate his sacred grave
with its polluting touch. And then when they
thought of the boundless rapacity of the Ohio
medical student, and the hyenaic enterprise of
the man who robbed the grave of Stewart, — not
any English king of that name, but an Ameri-
can Stewart whose grave was worth robbing, —
they trembled, and besought the Government
to set a trusty man-at-arms to keep a faithful
watch and ward above the grave of Penn.

348 WILLIAM PENN. [171 8.

Just about that point the interest in the dis-
cussion culminated. The Government was per-
fectly willing that the man-at-arms should watch
the grave of Penn, but — which grave should he
watch ?

That, gentle reader, was the gaul of it. No-
body knows positively where William Penn is
buried. He is buried somewhere in the grave-
yard of Jordans, but that is all we know.
Many years ago the '^ Testimony of Reading
Friends" bore witness that '■' the field in which
the illustrious dead repose is not even decent-
ly smoothed. There are no gravel-walks,
no monuments, no mournful yews, no cheerful
flowers ; there is not even a stone to mark a
spot or record a name." For one hundred and
forty-four years these graves lay unmarked, and
the first attempt to identify and mark any of
them was made in June, 1862. And when, even
after this attempt at identification had been
made, and people who had visited the grave of
William Penn were mortified to learn they had
wept and plucked blades of grass from the rest-
ing-place of Isaac Pennington or Mrs. EUwood,
it was learned that the attempted identification
that disturbed their reminiscences and ruined

^t. 74.] IDENTIFICATION IMPOSSIBLE. 349

their relics was untrustworthy. The trustees
of the Jordans burial-ground, scarcely longer
ago than a year, declined to pledge themselves
to a precise identification of Penn's grave. For
a century and a half the grave was unmarked.
In all that time a rough and by no means cer-
tain plan of the graveyard was the only clue to
the location of any of the graves, and it is more
than doubted whether identification is at all pos-
sible. So, even if Pennsylvania should get the
handful of nameless dust that reposes under the
stone marked— for the past twenty years— with
Penn's name, it would only be a doubtful quan-
tity.

And why should Pennsylvania want his bones,
that never had his body? While his ideas were
American, Penn was by birth and residence an
Englishman. In the thirty-six years that he was
proprietor and Governor of Pennsylvania, from
1682 to 1718, he spent but four years in Amer-
ica, and these in visits of two years each, sepa-
rated by an interval of about sixteen years.
And much of the want of harmony between the
Founder and the colonists, often unjustly charged
to the grasping spirit of the latter, was owing
to his own continued absence. He was a

350 WILLIAM PENN. [1718.

stranger to his province, as the colonists were
strangers to him. They couldn't go to England
to get acquainted with the Founder, and he
wouldn't, or at any rate didn't, come to America
often enough or stay long enough to get ac-
qainted with them. As he didn't live here, and
of his own will chose Jordans for his last resting-
place, there seems no reason why his remains —
" supposing," in the language of the trustees of
the Jordans burial-ground, ''that they did ex-
ist"— should be disturbed.

If the ancient Pennsylvanians were accused
by the Founder and his friends of avarice and
ingratitude, of grasping overmuch, and of
"thinking it no sin," as Logan said, "to haul
what they can from you," it must be remem-
bered that the proprietary and the colonists
looked at these things from very different points
of view ; that the growing spirit of freedom
and popular government, on even a broader
basis of popular rights than Penn had con-
ceived, was developing beyond his conception
in a colony with which his actual personal con-
nection was so shght. They would not pay his
quit-rents, but it was on principle, not from
niggardly meanness. And while they held back

^t. 74.] HONORS ARE EASY, 351

on the one hand, certainly no man ever accused
Penn of any undue bashfulness about asking for
money. His letters to Pennsylvania were one
continuous song of poverty, his great financial
losses by his provincial speculation, and urgent
requests for supplies and quit-rents. Like the
theme in an intricate musical transcription,
whatever other topic his letters touched upon,
the song of the quit-rents moaned along through
them all like a bassoon solo with orchestral
accompaniment. And at his death, for a man
who had spent forty years complaining of pov-
erty, he was able to leave his family in compara-
tively comfortable circumstances. His estates
in England and Ireland, bringing an income of
;^ 1,500 a year, were left to his grandchildren —
Guli, Springett, and William Penn — the chil-
dren of his prodigal son.* In addition he left
to these children and to his daughter Letitia,
being issue of his first wife, each ten thousand
acres of land in Pennsylvania. All the residue

* This son William never reformed. He abandoned his
family, went to the Continent, and continued in the prodigal
business with eminent success until 1720, when he died of con-
sumption, brought on by his excesses. He was very penitent
at the last. His father never knew the saddest chapters of his
boy's history.

352 WILLIAM PENN. [1718

of his Pennsjlvania lands he left to the children
of his second wife, Hannah Penn, to be con-
veyed to them at her discretion, after enough
had been sold to pay his debts. All his per-
sonal property he left to his wife Hannah. The
will was in chancery several years, as usual ; for
no man, even though he be a Governor and
a wise man, can make a will that does not read
three or four different ways; but all was eventu-
ally left as the testator wished. John, Thomas,
and Richard — Penn's sons by his second mar-
riage— became proprietors of the province, and
presently the Penn family began to reap a gold-
en harvest from the Pennsylvania plantation.

After the war of Independence, the Penns
not taking a remarkably active part on the side
of the colonies, the Pennsylvania Legislature
passed a bill which vested in the common-
wealth the estate of the Penn family, but re-
served to William Penn's descendants all their
private estates, "■ including quit-rents and arrear-
ages of rents," — for down to the end of recorded
time nothing will probably ever be done about
the Penn estates in Pennsylvania into which
the ghost of the quit-rent will not come stalk-
ing like a financial Banquo. This same act

iEt. 74.] THE PENNSYLVANIA HARVEST. 353

appropriated ;^ 130,000 sterling to be paid to the
representatives of Thomas Penn and Richard
Penn, which was all paid within a few years
after the bill was passed. When we bear in
mind what was usually done with the estates of
foreign non-residents by victorious kings at the
close of a war in those days, one cannot complain
that the Pennsylvanians did not remember
gratefully and loyally the Founder of their
state, and for his sake deal generously, justly,
and, by the laws of war and the code of the
time, more than justly, by his sons. And when
it is remembered that the British Government
allowed the heirs of Penn ;^5oo,ooo for their
losses by the American Revolution, and that
the original cost of the state of Pennsylvania
was ;^ 1 6,000, and paid for by a hopeless debt at
that, we are led to hope that the heirs of
William Penn have outlived the alarming desti-
tution and pinching poverty that was a burden
on the life of their great ancestor. Pennsyl-
vania has not been ungrateful to the Founder.
While England persecuted him, Pennsylvania
was an asylum for himself and his friends.
While English laws cast him into prison, the
laws of Pennsylvania were such as he made

354 ' WILLIAM PENN. [1718.

them. While an EngUsh historian sought to
blacken his character, Penns3dvania was ever
his stanch defender. With a generosity not
demanded or expected by the laws of nations,
Pennsylvania, in the day of its own poverty
and hard-won independence, enriched the loyal-
ist descendants of his name, while its own noble
son, Morris, his purse drained by sacrifices for
his state and country, died in poverty. And
jarring differences of state policy only arose
between Penn and the model state when the
Founder, by his long years of absence, made
himself a stranger to the changing opinions and
growing ideas of the state he planted.

CHAPTER XX.

"THE NOBLEST WORK OF GOD."

'T^HE honest man who was born two hundred
■*■ and thirty-eight years ago was no better
than the honest man born in our own fairer
times, but he was a much greater rarity. To-
day, good men are so common they are often
overlooked; in those older days, a good man
was eagerly sought for, and when the au-
thorities found him they put him in prison
lest he should get away entirely, and the king-
dom be left without even a small sample of
goodness. If he was extraordinarily good, they
cut off his head. A good man was at a pre-
mium, but he rarely cared to collect the pre-
mium himself, because he had a family to sup-
port. A man who would attract not more
than ordinary attention to-day shone out then
like a comet among stars. In that elder day it
was a rare advantage with serious dravv'backs
for a good man with a live conscience to live.

356 WILLIAM PENN. [1718.

He enjoyed a monopoly of the business, until
it occurred to some bishop to make a sacred
bonfire of him.

It was in such an era of the world's history
that William Penn came upon the stage of
human affairs, and was hailed as a star before
the curtain went down on the first act. In
such an age, a man of character so decidedly
marked, of convictions so conscientiously felt
and so earnestly pronounced, could not remain
concealed, could not walk in obscure paths.

He had the faults of men, the weaknesses of
humanity, because he was not a god. His
faculty of self-interest was well developed, and
down to old age he retained unimpaired his
excellent voice for quit-rents. His keen ac-
quisitiveness, his constant clamor for his quit-
rents, and repeated and again repeated asser-
tions of his grievous poverty, detract from the
dignity of a character in all other respects
n^ble and lovable, and are apt to impress one
with pity rather than sympathy. But it is
from his many virtues, and not from his few
weaknesses, that we read the elevating lessons
of his life.

Born in stormy times, he walked amid

^t. 74.] " THE NOBLEST WORK OF GODr 357

troubled waters all his days. In an age of bit-
ter persecution and unbridled wickedness, he
never wronged his conscience. A favored
member of a court where statesmanship was
intrigue and trickery, where the highest mo-
rality was corruption, and whose austerity was
venality, he never stained his hands with a
bribe. Living under a government at war
with the people, and educated in a school that
taught the doctrine of passive obedience, his
life-long dream was of popular government, of
a state where the people ruled. In his early
manhood, at the bidding of conscience, against
the advice of his nearest friends, in opposition
to stern paternal commands, against every
dictate of worldly wisdom and human pru-
dence, in spite of all the dazzling temptations
of ambition so alluring to the heart of a young
man, he turned away from the broad, fair high-
way to wealth, position, and distinction that the
hands of a king opened before him, and cast-
ing his lot with the sect weakest and most un-
popular in England, through paths that were
tangled with trouble and lined with pitiless
thorns of persecution, he walked into honor
and fame, and the reverence of the world, such

358 WILLIAM PENN. [i^ig.

as royalty could not promise and could not
give him.

In the land where he planted his model state,
to-day no descendant bears his name. In the
religious society for which he suffered banish-
ment from home, persecution, and the prison,
to-day no child of his blood and name walks in
Christian fellowship nor stands uncovered in
worship. His name has faded out of the living
meetings of the Friends, out of the land that
crowns his memory with sincerest reverence.
Even the uncertain stone that would mark his
grave stands doubtingly among the kindred
ashes that hallow the ground where he sleeps.

But his monument, grander than storied col-
umn of granite or noble shapes of bronze, is set
m the glittering brilliants of mighty states be-
tween the seas. His noblest epitaph is written
in the state that bears his honored name. The
little town he planned to be his capital has be-
come a city larger in area than any European
capital he knew. Beyond his fondest dreams
has grown the state he planted in the wilder-
ness by ''deeds of peace." Out of the gloomy
mines that slept in rayless mystery beneath its
mountains while he lived, the measureless

^t. 74 ] •' THE NOBLEST WORK OF GOD." 359

wealth of his model state sparkles and glows
on millions of hearth-stones. From its forests
of derricks and miles of creeping pipe-lines, the
world is lighted from the state of Penn, with a
radiance to which the sons of the Founder's
sons were blind. Roaring blast and smoky
forge and ringing hammer are tearing and
beating the wealth of princes from his mines
that the Founder never knew. Clasping the
continent, from sea to sea, stretches a chain of
states free as his own ; from sunrise to sunset
reaches a land where the will of the people is
the supreme law, a land that never felt the pres-
sure of a throne and never saw a sceptre. And
in the heart of the city that was his capital, in
old historic halls still stands the bell that first,
in the name of the doctrines that he taught his
colonists, proclaimed liberty throughout the
land and to all the inhabitants thereof. This is
his monument, and every noble charity gracing
the state he founded is his epitaph.

THE END.

INDEX.

Act of Toleration, The, 215

Amyrault, Moses, 16

Andros, Governor, 65

Anne, Queen, 321

Arran, Earl of, 183

Arran, Lord, 20

Ashton, Master, 223

Assembly, The, 125; meets
Governor Fletcher, 246; ob-
tains increased power, 257;
convened by Penn, 276; ac-
tion on slavery, 290; dis-
pute s between members
from the province and the
territories, 297; refuses an
appropriation to the king,
304, 310; address to Penn,
310; disputes in, 314; its
increasing independence,
321; impeaches Logan, 328;
action on Deputy-Governor
Gookin's arrival, 334; ap-
propriates money ' for the
Queen's use," 338; prohibits
the importation of slaves,
340

Aubrey, William, 326, 342

Baltimore, Lord, 76, 153; in

England, 159; 273
Banks, John, 340
Barclay, Robert, 66, 235
Baxter, Richard, 13S
Baxter, Thomas, 58
Berkeley, Lord, 61
Besse, 49

Biles, William, 327
Blackwell, Captain John, 216,

217
Blue Anchor Tavern, The, 94
Bradford, William, 219
Buchan, Earl of, 1S5
Bushel, Edward, 39
Butler, Sir Nicholas, 210
Byllynge, Edward, 62, 63, 64

Callowhill, Miss Hannah,
260. See Penn, Hannah

Callowhill, Thomas, 260

Carpenter, Samuel, 309, 322

Carteret, Sir George, 61, 63

Chalfont, 50-53

Charles L, 4, 5

Charles IL, 6, 9, 42; issues his
Declaration of Indulgence,
57; releases Fox, 60; blesses
the colonists, 65; his death,
161; touching for King's
evil, 163

Clapham, Jonathan, 27

Clarendon, Lord, 223

Clark, Charles Heber, 286

Clarkson, 206, 217

Coltness, Sir Robert, 266

Conventicle Act, The, 35

Coolin, Annaky, 141

Cork, Bishop of, 268

Cornish, gibbeted, 177

Cromwell, Mrs., 53

Cromwell, Oliver. See Protec-
tor, The

Cromwell, Richard, 9

\62

INDEX.

Declaration of Indulgence,
The, 57

Dixon, Jeremiah, 21, 99, 171,
206, 249, 255; description
of Penn's house, 279

Durant, 320

EastJersey,63,65; riot in, 300

Elizabeth, Electress, 66

Elliott, 223

EUwood, Thomas, 52, 53,
346

Ely, Bishop of, 223

English, Major, 144

Evans, John, his character,
323; his attempts at govern-
ment, 327; his recall, 328

Ewer, Friend, 143

Falckenstein und Bruch,
Countess von, 67

Farmer, Anthony, 195

Fenwick, John, 62, 64, 65

Finney, Sheriff John, 325

Fleetwood, General, 53

Fleming, Justice, 59

Fletcher, Governor Benjamin,
232, 246

Flower, Enoch, 95

Ford, Philip, 329

Fox, George, 12, his doctrines,
13; persecutions, 13, 60;
sails for Holland, 66; belief
in witches, 13S; refuses a
pardon, 167; his death, 224:
advice in regard to slaves,
289

Frederick, Prince Palatine, 66

Friends' Public School. 218

Fuller, William, 224

Gaunt, Elizabeth, 177

Gibbs, E., 292

Gookin, Colonel, 334; meets

the assembly, 334
Graeff, Abram Op de, 219
GraefT, Derich Op de, 219

Gray, Thomas, 325

Grey, 175

Guest, Judge, 320

Halifax, Lord, 95
Hamilton, Andrew, 318, 321
Henderich, Garret, 219
Hendrickson, Jeshro, tried for

witchcraft, 141
Hough, Dr., 195, 196
Howard, Sir Philip, 208

Indian Ben, 143

Indians, The, 66; conference
with Penn, 105; treaty Avith
Penn, 116; and rum, 172,
282; sell land to Penn, 301

Ives, Jeremy, his contest with
Penn, 45

Ives, Rev. Mr., preaches
against the Quakers, 44

James, Duke of York, 9, 42,
60, 76, 200. See James II.

James II., 163; settles the dis-
pute between Lord Balti-
more and Penn, 170; issues
declaration of indulgence,
191; leaves England, 198;
letter to Penn, 220; lands in
Ireland, 222; defeated, 294

Janney, Samuel M,, 206, 210,
218, 264, 277, 342

Jasper, Margaret, 3

Jeffreys, 175, 294

Jennings, Governor, 282

Jennings, Solomon, 132

Keith, George, 230
Kensington Elm, The, 120
Key, John, 124
Kiffin, William, 209

Leland. Charles G., 286
Lloyd, David, 319, 335
Lloyd, Thomas, 173, 216,217,
229, 251, 254, 319

INDEX.

363

Locke, John, 166, 227
Loe, Thomas, 13, 22
Logan, James, 291, 318, 319,

322, 326, 350
Love, John, 55
Lowrie, Gawen, 63
Lucas, Nicholas, 63

Macaulay, 200; charges
against Penn, 201

Markham, Colonel, 76, 99,
103; goes to i^ngland, 153;
Deputy Governor, 229; 251,
254, 257, 261, 271, 272; his
son-in-law accused of pira-
cy, 276; 278

Marshall, Edward, 132, 317

Mason, Charles, 171

Masters, Sybylla, 343

Masters, Thomas, 322

Mather, Cotton, 138

Mattson, Margaret, tried for
withcraft, 141

Mead, Captain William, 36, 60

Menzikoff, Prince, 264

Metamequan, 128

Milton, John, 52

Mintye church, i

Molleson, Gilbert, 263

Monk, 35

Monmouth, 175, 207, 294

Moore, Nicholas, 174

Nead, Benjamin M., 286

Nichols, Ann, 279

Norris, Isaac, 319, 322, 337

Ormond, Duke of, 20

Paradise Lost, 52
Paradise Regained, 52
Pastorius, Francis Daniel, 2 19,

289
Pastorius, Franz, 75
Peachey, Dr., 195
Pearson, 103
Pemberton, Phineas, 322

Penn, Giles, 2

Penn, Gulielma (wife of Wil-
liam Penn), her death, 245;
her character, 246, 345

Penn, Gulielma (granddaugh-
ter of William Penn), 351

Penn, Hanncih, 291, 309; her
care of her husband, 344; 352

Penn, John, his birth, 277; his
burial-place, 345; proprietor
of Pennsylvania, 352

Penn, Leiitia, 273; claims a
slave, 292; 309; her mar-
riage, 326; her burial-place,
346, 351

Penn, Richard, 352, 353

Penn, Springett (son of Wil-
liam Penn), 260, 346

Penn, Springett (grandson of
William Penn), 351

Penn, Thomas, 352, 353

Penn village, I

Penn, Admiral William, 2; his
career, 3; demands compen-
sation of the Protector, 6;
offers his fleet to Charles
Stuart, 6; imprisoned, 7;
his humble petition to Crom-
well, 7; restored to liberty,
7; resumes treasonable cor-
respondence, 7; declares for
Charles, 9; is knighted, 9;
his offices, 9; refuses his son
permission to join the army,
21; his death, 42; relations
with James, 200

Penn, William (son of Admiral
Penn), birth, i; ancestors, i;
education, 10; religious sur-
roundings, 1 1 ; hears Thomas
Loe, 14; suspended, 14; re-
turn home, 15; sent to Paris,
16; meets Algernon Sidney.
17; writes poetry, 17; en-
tered at Lincoln's Inn, 17;
goes to sea, 18; encounters
the plague, 18; goes to Ire-

3^4

INDEX.

Penn, William {Continued^.
land, 19; military ardor, 20;
refused permission to join
the army, 21; portrait in
uniform, 21; becomes a
Quaker, 22; arrested and
imprisoned, 22; his hat, 23;
eliminated, 24; returns, 25;
writes a book, 27; publishes
" The Guide I\Iistaken," 28;
discussion with Vincent, 29;
publishes " The Sandy
Foundation Shaken," and is
arrested, 30; " No Cross, no
Crown," 31; " Innocency
with her Open Face," 34;
his trial, 36; at his father's
death-bed, 41; writes a re-
port of his trial, 44; contest
with Ives, 45; pamphlet
against Popery, 45; in the
Tower, 46; more pam-
phlets, 47; goes to Holland,
49; marriage, 50; "The
Spirit of Alexander the Cop-
persmith," 57; discussion
with Baxter, 58; as arbi-
trator, 62; prepares a consti-
tution, 63; sails for Holland,
66; returns to England, 69;
accepts land for his claim
against the Government, 71;
draws up a constitution for
Pennsylvania, 74; his moth-
er's death, 77; letter to his
wife, 83; the small-pox at
sea, 86; conference with the
Indians, 105; second treaty
with the Indians, 128; dis-
agreement with Lord Balti-
more, 153; goes to England
and sees the King, 159; his
opinion of the King, 162;
interview with James II.,
163; suspected to be a
Papist, 168 ; " Fiction
Found Out," 168; denounces

Penn, William {Continued).
Jeffreys, 175; pleads for
Cornish, 177; and Elizabeth
Gaunt, 177; goes to Holland
as informal envoy of James,
180; obtains pardon for dis-
senters, 182; dispute about
"quit-rents," 185; appoints
five commissioners, i8g;
writes " Good Advice to the
Church of ^England," 193;
arbitrates between the King
and the Fellows of Magdalen
College, 195; relations with
James, 200; Macaulay's
charges, 201; advice to Kif-
fin, 209; summoned before
the House of Lords, 213; re-
forms the executive depart-
ment of Pennsylvania, 216;
his quit-rents, 217; arrested
on charge of treasonable
correspondence, 220; at the
death-bed of George Fox,
224; deprived of his govern-
ment, 232; writes "Just
Measures," 235; and other
works, 236; maxims, 237;
obtains a public hearing be-
fore the king, 244; his wife's
death, 246; reinstated as
governor, 253; writes an
"Account of the Quakers,"
and other works, 255; his
position toward the Penn-
sylvanians, 255; licensed to
preach, 260; marries Miss
Hannah Callowhill, 260;
visits Peter the Great, 262;
writes a pamphlet on blas-
phemy, 265; goes to Ire-
land, 266; loses his horses,
267; draft protested, 272;
returns to America, 273;
lands at Chester, 275; life
at Pennsbury, 277; yacht,
280; dress, 280; charity,

INDEX.

365

Penn, William {Contimied).
281; opinion of tobacco,
282; anecdote of, 284; on
slavery, 288; elfort to im-
prove the negroes' condi-
tion, 290; frees slaves in his
will, 291; buys land of Indi-
ans, 301; return to England,
308; requests of the Assem-
bly, 310; sells land, 312; pre-
sents act of incorporation
to Philadelphia, 315; leaves
Philadelphia for the last
time, 318; his steward's dis-
honesty, 329; letter to the
colonists, 335; last literary
work, 340; negotiations for
the sale of his province,
341; illness, 342; death, 345;
burial-place, 345; will, 351;
the gratitude of Pennsyl-
vania, 353; character, 356;
monument, 358

Penn, William (grandson of
Admiral Penn), 261, 274;
goes to Pennsylvania, 322;
returns to England, 326;

327, 344

Penn, William (great-grand-
son of Admiral Penn), 351

Penne, George, 208

Pennington, Isaac, 51, 346

Pennsbury, 277

Pennsylvania, named, 73;
condition of, 89; Penn's de-
scription of, 148; growth of,
295

Pennsylvania, Assembly of,
87

Pennsylvania Hospital, 125,
281

Pennsylvania Legislature, acts
of, 143; action in regard to
Penn estates, 352

Pepys, 15

Perrot, John, 55; writes " The
Spirit of the Hat," 57

Peter the Great, 2T52

Philadelphia, 90; yellow fever
in, 274; act of incorporation,

315

Phillips, Mr., 343

Pickering, Charles, 137

Piracy, 2, 276

Plague, The, 18

Plympton, Rev. John, 268

Popple, 167

Preston, Lord, 223

Preston, Mrs., 103

Protector, The, 5; compen-
sates Admiral Penn, 6; im-
prisons him, 7; liberates
him, 7; his death, 8; 295

Proud, Sir John, 50

Provincial Council, 125; first
trial for witchcraft, 138; on
slavery, 290

Quakers, their doctrines, 26;
settle in America, 63; de-
clare slavery unlawful, 67;
meeting-houses, 153; in
prison, 165; waive the cere-
mony of the hat, 193; opin-
ions of Penn, 206; action in
regard to slavery, 290

Quarry, Colonel, 271, 272

Ralph, Joseph, 325
Randall, Edward, 273
Reman, Robert, 257
Rickmansworth, 54
Rittenhouse, William, 219
Robinson, Sir John, his grati-
tude, 46
Rupert, Prince, 35, 66
Russell, 53

Shippen, Edv^ard, 277, 316,
321, 322

Sidney, Algernon, 17; a can-
didate for Parliament, 69;
draws up a constitution for
Pennsylvania, 74; beheaded,
159, 175, 294

366

INDEX.

Sidney, Algernon {Contiiiued).

Sidney, Henry, 71

Slavery, protest against, 144,
218; in Pennsylvania, 288;
advice of Yearly Meeting,
289; action of Council and
Assembly, 290; action of
Assembly, 340; action of
Parliament, 341

Smith, Aaron, 167

Sotcher, 280

Southbe, William, 340

Spencer, Lord Robert, 17

Springett, Gulielma, 50, 345,
346

Springett, Lady, 12, 50

Springett, Sir William, 50

Stewart, Sir Robert, 183

Story, Enoch, 325

Story, Thomas, 263, 271, 274,
316

Sutciiff, 283

Talbot, Colonel, 157
Tamanen, 128, 136
Taunton, 207
Test Act, The, 59; repeal of, 178

Tillotson, Dr., 168, 169
Townsend, Richard, and the

deer, 146
Treaties, 115, 128

Venables, General, 7
Vincent, Rev. Thomas, 28
Voltaire, 31

Wells, Francis, 286
West, Benjamin, 103
West Jersey, 63, 65
White, John, 144
White, Sir Richard, 208
Whitehead, George, 29
Wilcox, Alderman, 325
William and Mary, 215
William of Orange, lands in

England, 198; 220, 295
Witchcraft, 138
Women's rights, 236
Wood, Sheriff Joseph, his

joke, 286
Worminghurst, 66
Worth, Chief Justice, 72

Yeates, James, 132
Yellow fever, 274.

IJ 926