Slips for Librarians to paste on Catalogue Cards. N. B. — Take out carefully, leaving about quarter of an inch at the back. To do otherwise would, in some cases, release other leaves. 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