AT COURT AND IN PRISON
William Penn still had many friends at court, and it was doubtless
largely through their efforts that he succeeded in having the bill to
take Pennsylvania away from him withdrawn from Parliament. There were a
number of prominent men in the government, however, who thought that
none of the American colonies should be owned by private persons, but
that all should be directly under the Crown, and these men soon offered
another bill much like the earlier one. To defeat this, Penn and Lord
Baltimore joined hands and ceased to wrangle over the boundary between
Pennsylvania and Maryland. A few days after this bill was presented in
Parliament, however, King William died from injuries resulting from the
fall of a horse he was riding. The king had been influential in urging
the change in the government of Penn's province, but his successor,
Queen Anne, was much more friendly to Penn. The matter was therefore
allowed to drop.
Although the daughter of James Stuart, Queen Anne was a Protestant, and
had married a Protestant, Prince George of Denmark. She was liberal to
all religions, and soon after she became queen the Quakers asked Penn to
present her with an address thanking her for the toleration toward all
sects that she had promised to observe. Penn read the address. Queen
Anne then answered graciously enough, "Mr. Penn, I am so well pleased
that what I have said is to your satisfaction, that you and your friends
may be assured of my protection, and I sincerely hope for your welfare
and happiness."
She kept her word to the Quakers, and also proved the constant friend of
Penn. She had seen him much at court when her father was king, and knew
of the old friendship between her father and the Quaker leader.
Therefore Penn became in a way a courtier again, and held somewhat the
same prominent position he had held before William came to the throne.
He spent much of his time in London, where he now had friends in both
the Whig and Tory parties. The leading statesmen thought so highly of
his abilities that they frequently asked him to arrange political and
personal matters that required tact and diplomatic skill. Sometimes he
tried to exercise these qualities by correspondence with the lawmakers
of Pennsylvania, and one of his latest efforts was on behalf of the
negro slaves in the province. Ten years before he had tried to get
justice done to these people, but in vain. Now he felt more strongly
than ever that it was wrong to import negroes into the new country as
slaves. He worked for this object until he induced the colonial Assembly
to try to discourage that traffic by placing a duty on the importing of
slaves. In 1711 they prohibited such importation in the future, but no
sooner had word of this good law reached England than the government
there, in spite of Penn's efforts, canceled the Pennsylvania act. Yet
the wisest statesmen in England realized that Penn was right, and that
the course he was urging his colony to adopt, not only in regard to
negro slavery but in all matters that dealt with human liberty and
enlightenment, was the best for the new world to follow.
Of Penn's children by his first wife, the lively Letitia married William
Aubrey, who was harsh and overbearing to her father and tyrannical
toward her. His son William had married, but had become very dissipated
during his father's visit to Pennsylvania, and was now the black sheep
of the family. He owed a great many debts and was in danger of being
put into prison for them, so Penn decided he would be better off in
Pennsylvania, and sent him out to Pennsbury. He was to be encouraged to
live a healthy outdoor life, and have horses and hounds for hunting
foxes, deer, and wolves. The son went out to Pennsbury, and James Logan
tried to keep a watchful and restraining eye on him, but he managed to
get into almost as much trouble there as he had in London, in spite of
all efforts to keep him straight.
A great change had come over England since the days when the Stuarts
were sovereigns. The old brutal laws had been abolished for the most
part, and there was far less cruelty and violence. Instead of the
dissolute Charles and the treacherous James, the rulers were honorable
and virtuous. There were no longer constant rumors of plots and
conspiracies, and all religions were treated fairly. William Penn found
that he was no longer needed to help some poor Quaker who had fallen
under the disfavor of officers of the law. Now his difficulties were
mainly those connected with trying to provide a decent government for
his province, and to get enough money from it to pay expenses.
Before Penn left Pennsylvania the Assembly there had voted to pay him
£2000, but that was soon spent, and the settlers were so economical
that they did not wish to give him anything more. Again and again he
wrote to James Logan about his financial difficulties in managing
Pennsylvania. In one letter he said: "Never had poor man my task, with
neither men nor money to assist me. I therefore strictly charge thee
that thou represent to Friends there, that I am forced to borrow money,
and add debts to debts, instead of paying them off.... Make return with
all speed or I'm undone."
He tried many ways to make his province pay him something in return for
the work and money he had already bestowed on it. He urged Logan to buy
and send him as many furs as he could get, knowing that they would bring
a good price in England. At one time he thought of selling his
government directly to the English Crown for a sum sufficient to pay off
all his debts. There was considerable haggling about the price and the
sale was never made. Meantime his son William was getting into more
trouble at Pennsbury and in Philadelphia. One night he and a dissipated
comrade began to beat the night watch. He received a thrashing, and was
afterwards treated as a common rioter. The son had been given a manor in
the hope that he would look after it, but instead he sold it and
squandered all the money. At last Penn sent for him to come home, and
when William the younger finally reached England, he took to his former
way of living, and incurred fresh debts for his already impoverished and
indulgent parent.
Penn figured that he had lost £30,000 by his province. "O Pennsylvania,"
he wrote, "what hast thou cost me! Above £30,000 more than I ever got by
it, two hazardous and most fatiguing voyages, my straits and slavery
here, and my child's soul almost.... In short, I must sell all or be
undone, and disgraced into the bargain."
The man who was now acting as deputy governor of Pennsylvania was
proving a poor makeshift, and conditions in the province seemed to be
going from bad to worse. Opposition to Penn himself also was increasing,
and presently the Assembly passed a set of resolutions that were sent to
him in London. These resolutions made many complaints against his
government of the province, charging him with having sided with enemies
of the colony, with having extorted money from settlers in the sale of
lands, with having failed to pay a former governor's salary, and ended
by stating that something must be done to suppress lawlessness in the
province. When it became known that the Assembly had sent such a note to
Penn, the colonists at once objected to the offensiveness of its tone.
Orders were given to recall the resolutions, and, in an attempt to
straighten the matter out, the Assembly voted £1200 for the support of
Penn's government. All might now have gone smoothly had not the deputy
governor, John Evans, tried to scare the Quakers by a foolish trick. He
had been wanting to build up a militia for the province, but the Quakers
had objected to this. So, on the day of the annual fair, Evans arranged
to have a messenger ride into Philadelphia, bringing the exciting news
that a force of French soldiers had been seen on the Delaware heading
toward Philadelphia. Then Evans buckled on his sword and rode up and
down before the people, urging them to arm and defend their province.
There was a brief alarm, during which the larger ships on the Delaware
were hurried up the river while the smaller craft were concealed in
creeks. Silverware and valuables were hidden, but only four men came to
the meeting-place Evans had appointed to enroll as militiamen. When it
was discovered how Evans had tried to trick them, the settlers were
highly indignant, and sent a complaint to Penn in England. Penn also
heard that there was much criticism of his friend and secretary, James
Logan.
A few of the men in whom Penn trusted, like James Logan, were entirely
worthy of his trust, but there were many who were not. Among these
latter was a man named Philip Ford, a Quaker, who had for some time been
acting as steward of Penn's estates in England and Ireland. Penn grew
very fond of Ford, as he had been very fond of James Stuart, and at
length made him a present of ten thousand acres in Pennsylvania, a city
lot in Philadelphia, and one hundred and fifty acres in the suburbs.
Ford sent accounts to Penn from time to time, but Penn was not a good
business man, and did not bother to look into the accounts. Finally,
when he did, he found the surprising fact that although Ford had
received from Penn £17,000 and had only spent £16,000, nevertheless Penn
owed him £10,500. Ford brought about this result by charging very large
commissions, adding compound interest every six months to all money
advanced, and claiming an exceedingly large salary, to say nothing of
sometimes failing to credit Penn with money actually received from him.
Yet Penn, although surprised at this new debt, made no investigation
into the crooked accounts, and at length, when Ford kept urging him to
pay the debt, Penn was so foolish as to give Ford a deed of the province
of Pennsylvania as security for this claim that he did not really owe.
To make matters worse, a little later Penn accepted from Ford a lease
of the province, so that it appeared that he had actually transferred
the province to this corrupt steward and was now leasing it from him.
None of this strange transaction was made public until Ford died, but
then his widow and son declared how the matter stood and announced that
they were the legal owners of Pennsylvania. Penn, they said, was merely
their tenant, and they sued him for rent amounting to £3000. They got
judgment against him, and then, when he failed to pay it, had him
arrested and put in prison for the debt. So now we find the owner of the
great province of Pennsylvania not only shorn of his title to his
property, but actually in jail on a charge of failing to pay his rent.
When the officers came to arrest him, they found him at the Quaker
meeting in Gracechurch Street in London, strange to say the very place
where he had first been arrested thirty-seven years before for preaching
to the Quakers.
For nine months Penn had to stay in prison, while the suit against him
dragged slowly through the courts of chancery. The fact that he had paid
so little attention to Ford's accounts, and had made no complaint about
the figures in them, made it look as if the claim against him might be
just. His friends tried to straighten out the tangled matter, and
meantime Penn, who was allowed fairly comfortable quarters, held small
religious meetings, and kept himself as serene and untroubled as in the
heyday of his fortunes. In this again the strong character of William
Penn appears, for he was not cast down by misfortune. His friend Isaac
Norris bore witness to this quality. "After all," said Norris, "I think
the fable of the palm good in him--'the more he is pressed, the more he
rises.' He seems a spirit fit to bear and rub through difficulties, and
as thou observes his foundation remains. I have been at some meetings
with him, and have been much comforted in them, and particularly last
First-day."
Gradually public sympathy, especially among the Quakers, began to be
aroused by the fact of Penn's imprisonment. He had done so much for the
Quaker cause, and had tried so hard to give his province a good
government, that people were indignant that he should now be so set upon
by such people as the Fords. So friends raised the sum of £7600, and
gave this to the Fords in settlement of their claim, and in return Penn
gave his friends a mortgage on Pennsylvania to secure the repayment of
the money they had lent him.
Meantime, while he was still in prison, his deputy governor Evans had
been behaving so badly that the people of the province decided they
would stand him no longer. Penn, having once felt a strong friendship
for this man, would have put up with almost any injustice from him.
Three prominent Quakers went to him in the Fleet Prison, however, and
told him that unless he removed Evans from the governorship the people
would appeal to Queen Anne to settle the matter. This might result in
taking the province from him; so, reluctantly, Penn agreed to dismiss
Evans from his position. Even then, however, he was so fond of Evans
that he would not let him know that he disapproved of his acts. He wrote
to James Logan, asking him to explain the matter to his deputy governor,
and said, "Pray break it to him and that the reason why I chose to
change, rather than contest with the complaints before the queen in
council, is, that he may stand the fairer for any employment elsewhere;
which would be very doubtful if those blemishes were aggravated in such
a presence."
In place of Evans, Penn sent out as the new governor another friend of
his, Colonel Charles Gookin. He wrote very flattering accounts of this
new governor to the people of Philadelphia.
Stanchness in standing by his friends, even when it was shown that
those friends were utterly untrustworthy, had proved nearly as
disastrous to William Penn in the government of his province as it had
proved to his fortunes in England in the days when he had supported
James Stuart against King William. It may have been a fine fault, but a
fault it was, nevertheless.