The material prosperity of Penn's Holy Experiment kept on proving itself
over and over again every month of the year. But meantime great events
were taking place in England. The period of fifteen years from Penn's
return to England in 1684, until his return to Pennsylvania at the close
of the year of 1699, was an eventful time in English history. It was
long for a proprietor to be away from his province, and Penn would have
left a better reputation if he had passed those fifteen years in his
colony, for in England during that period he took what most Americans
believe to have been the wrong side in the Revolution of 1688.
Penn was closely tied by both interest and friendship to Charles II and
the Stuart family. When Charles II died in 1685 and his brother, the
Duke of York, ascended the throne as James II, Penn was equally bound
to him, because among other things the Duke of York had obtained Penn's
release in 1669 from imprisonment for his religious opinions. He became
still more bound when one of the first acts of the new King's reign
was the release of a great number of people who had been imprisoned
for their religion, among them thirteen hundred Quakers. In addition to
preaching to the Quakers and protecting them, Penn used his influence
with James to secure the return of several political offenders from
exile. His friendship with James raised him, indeed, to a position of no
little importance at Court. He was constantly consulted by the King, in
whose political policy he gradually became more and more involved.
James was a Roman Catholic and soon perfected his plans for making both
Church and State a papal appendage and securing for the Crown the right
to suspend acts of Parliament. Penn at first protested, but finally
supported the King in the belief that he would in the end establish
liberty. In his earlier years, however, Penn had written pamphlets
arguing strenuously against the same sort of despotic schemes that
James was now undertaking; and this contradiction of his former position
seriously injured his reputation even among his own people.
Part of the policy of James was to grant many favors to the Quakers and
to all other dissenting bodies in England, to release them from prison,
to give them perfect freedom of worship, and to remove the test laws
which prevented them from holding office. He thus hoped to unite them
with the Roman Catholics in extirpating the Church of England
and establishing the Papacy in its place. But the dissenters and
nonconformists, though promised relief from sufferings severer than
it is possible perhaps now to appreciate, refused almost to a man this
tempting bait. Even the Quakers, who had suffered probably more than
the others, rejected the offer with indignation and mourned the
fatal mistake of their leader Penn. All Protestant England united in
condemning him, accused him of being a secret Papist and a Jesuit in
disguise, and believed him guilty of acts and intentions of which he
was probably entirely innocent. This extreme feeling against Penn is
reflected in Macaulay's "History of England," which strongly espouses
the Whig side; and in those vivid pages Penn is represented, and very
unfairly, as nothing less than a scoundrel.
In spite of the attempts which James made to secure his position, the
dissenters, the Church of England, and Penn's own Quakers all joined
heart and soul in the Revolution of 1688, which quickly dethroned the
King, drove him from England, and placed the Prince of Orange on
the throne as William III. Penn was now for many years in a very
unfortunate, if not dangerous, position, and was continually suspected
of plotting to restore James. For three years he was in hiding to escape
arrest or worse, and he largely lost the good will and affection of the
Quakers.
Meantime, since his departure from Pennsylvania in the summer of
1684, that province went on increasing in population and in pioneer
prosperity. But Penn's quitrents and money from sales of land were far
in arrears, and he had been and still was at great expense in starting
the colony and in keeping up the plantation and country seat he had
established on the Delaware River above Philadelphia. Troublesome
political disputes also arose. The Council of eighteen members which he
had authorized to act as governor in his absence neglected to send the
new laws to him, slighted his letters, and published laws in their own
name without mentioning him or the King. These irregularities were much
exaggerated by enemies of the Quakers in England. The Council was not a
popular body and was frequently at odds with the Assembly.
Penn thought he could improve the government by appointing five
commissioners to act as governor instead of the whole Council. Thomas
Lloyd, an excellent Quaker who had been President of the Council and who
had done much to allay hard feeling, was fortunately the president of
these commissioners. Penn instructed them to act as if he himself were
present, and at the next meeting of the Assembly to annul all the laws
and reenact only such as seemed proper. This course reminds us of the
absolutism of his friend, King James, and, indeed, the date of these
instructions (1686) is that when his intimacy with that bigoted monarch
reached its highest point. Penn's theory of his power was that the frame
or constitution of government he had given the province was a contract;
that, the Council and Assembly having violated some of its provisions,
it was annulled and he was free, at least for a time, to govern as he
pleased. Fortunately his commissioners never attempted to carry out
these instructions. There would have been a rebellion and some very
unpleasant history if they had undertaken to enforce such oriental
despotism in Pennsylvania. The five commissioners with Thomas Lloyd at
their head seem to have governed without seriously troublesome incidents
for the short term of two years during which they were in power. But
in 1687 Thomas Lloyd, becoming weary of directing them, asked to be
relieved and is supposed to have advised Penn to appoint a single
executive instead of commissioners. Penn accordingly appointed Captain
John Blackwell, formerly an officer in Cromwell's army. Blackwell was
not a Quaker but a "grave, sober, wise man," as Penn wrote to a friend,
who would "bear down with a visible authority vice and faction." It was
hoped that he would vigorously check all irregularities and bring Penn
better returns from quitrents and sales of land.
But this new governor clashed almost at once with the Assembly, tried
to make them pass a militia law, suggested that the province's trade to
foreign countries was illegal, persecuted and arrested members of the
Assembly, refused to submit new laws to it, and irritated the people by
suggesting the invalidity of their favorite laws. The Quaker Assembly
withstood and resisted him until they wore him out. After a year and
one month in office he resigned at Penn's request or, according to
some accounts, at his own request. At any rate, he expressed himself as
delighted to be relieved. As a Puritan soldier he found himself no match
for a peaceable Quaker Assembly.
Penn again made the Council the executive with Thomas Lloyd as its
President. But to the old causes of unrest a new one was now added.
One George Keith, a Quaker, turned heretic and carried a number of
Pennsylvania Quakers over to the Church of England, thereby causing
great scandal. The "Lower Counties" or Territories, as the present
State of Delaware was then called, became mutinous, withdrew their
representatives from the Council, and made William Markham their
Governor. This action together with the Keithian controversy, the
disturbances over Blackwell, and the clamors of Church of England people
that Penn was absent and neglecting his province, that the Quakers would
make no military defense, and that the province might at any time fall
into the hands of France, came to the ears of King William, who was
already ill disposed toward Penn and distrusted him as a Jacobite. It
seemed hardly advisable to allow a Jacobite to rule a British colony.
Accordingly a royal order suspended Penn's governmental authority and
placed the province under Benjamin Fletcher, Governor of New York.
He undertook to rule in dictatorial fashion, threatening to annex the
province to New York, and as a consequence the Assembly had plenty of
trouble with him. But two years later, 1694, the province was returned
to Penn, who now appointed as Governor William Markham, who had served
as lieutenant-governor under Fletcher.
Markham proceeded to be high-handed with the Assembly and to administer
the government in the imperialistic style of Fletcher. But the
Assembly soon tamed him and in 1696 actually worried out of him a new
constitution, which became known as Markham's Frame, proved much more
popular than the one Penn had given, and allowed the Assembly much more
power. Markham had no conceivable right to assent to it and Penn never
agreed to it; but it was lived under for the next four years until
Penn returned to the province. While it naturally had opponents, it
was largely regarded as entirely valid, and apparently with the
understanding that it was to last until Penn objected to it.
Penn had always been longing to return to Pennsylvania and live there
for the rest of his life; but the terrible times of the Revolution
of 1688 in England and its consequences had held him back. Those
difficulties had now passed. Moreover, William III had established free
government and religious liberty. No more Quakers were imprisoned and
Penn's old occupation of securing their protection and release was gone.
In the autumn of 1699 he sailed for Pennsylvania with his family and,
arriving after a tedious three months' voyage, was well received. His
political scrapes and mistakes in England seemed to be buried in the
past. He was soon at his old enjoyable life again, traveling actively
about the country, preaching to the Quakers, and enlarging and
beautifying his country seat, Pennsbury, on the Delaware, twenty miles
above Philadelphia. As roads and trails were few and bad he usually
traveled to and from the town in a barge which was rowed by six oarsmen
and which seemed to give him great pride and pleasure.
Two happy years passed away in this manner, during which Penn seems to
have settled, not however without difficulty, a great deal of business
with his people, the Assembly, and the Indian tribes. Unfortunately
he got word from England of a bill in Parliament for the revocation
of colonial charters and for the establishment of royal governments in
their place. He must needs return to England to fight it. Shortly before
he sailed the Assembly presented him with a draft of a new constitution
or frame of government which they had been discussing with him
and preparing for some time. This he accepted, and it became the
constitution under which Pennsylvania lived and prospered for
seventy-five years, until the Revolution of 1776.
This new constitution was quite liberal. The most noticeable feature of
it was the absence of any provision for the large elective council or
upper house of legislation, which had been very unpopular. The Assembly
thus became the one legislative body. There was incidental reference
in the document to a governor's council, although there was no formal
clause creating it. Penn and his heirs after his death always appointed
a small council as an advisory body for the deputy governor. The
Assembly was to be chosen annually by the freemen and to be composed of
four representatives from each county. It could originate bills, control
its own adjournments without interference from the Governor, choose its
speaker and other officers, and judge of the qualifications and
election of its own members. These were standard Anglo-Saxon popular
parliamentary rights developed by long struggles in England and now
established in Pennsylvania never to be relaxed. Finally a clause in the
constitution permitted the Lower Counties, or Territories, under
certain conditions to establish home rule. In 1705 the Territories took
advantage of this concession and set up an assembly of their own.
Immediately after signing the constitution, in the last days of October,
1701, Penn sailed for England, expecting soon to return. But he became
absorbed in affairs in England and never saw his colony again. This was
unfortunate because Pennsylvania soon became a torment to him instead of
a great pleasure as it always seems to have been when he lived in it. He
was a happy present proprietor, but not a very happy absentee one.
The Church of England people in Pennsylvania entertained great hopes
of this proposal to turn the proprietary colonies into royal provinces.
Under such a change, while the Quakers might still have an influence in
the Legislature, the Crown would probably give the executive offices to
Churchmen. They therefore labored hard to discredit the Quakers. They
kept harping on the absurdity of a set of fanatics attempting to govern
a colony without a militia and without administering oaths of office or
using oaths in judicial proceedings. How could any one's life be safe
from foreign enemies without soldiers, and what safeguard was there for
life, liberty, and property before judges, jurors, and witnesses, none
of whom had been sworn? The Churchmen kept up their complaints for along
time, but without effect in England. Penn was able to thwart all their
plans. The bill to change the province into a royal one was never passed
by Parliament. Penn returned to his court life, his preaching, and his
theological writing, a rather curious combination and yet one by which
he had always succeeded in protecting his people. He was a favorite
with Queen Anne, who was now on the throne, and he led an expensive life
which, with the cost of his deputy governor's salary in the colony, the
slowness of his quitrent collections, and the dishonesty of the steward
of his English estates, rapidly brought him into debt. To pay the
government expense of a small colonial empire and at the same time
to lead the life of a courtier and to travel as a preacher would have
exhausted a stronger exchequer than Penn's.
The contests between the different deputy governors, whom Penn or his
descendants sent out, and the Quaker Legislature fill the annals of
the province for the next seventy years, down to the Revolution. These
quarrels, when compared with the larger national political contests of
history, seem petty enough and even tedious in detail. But, looked at
in another aspect, they are important because they disclose how
liberty, self-government, republicanism, and many of the constitutional
principles by which Americans now live were gradually developed as
the colonies grew towards independence. The keynote to all these early
contests was what may be called the fundamental principle of colonial
constitutional law or, at any rate, of constitutional practice, namely,
that the Governor, whether royal or proprietary, must always be kept
poor. His salary or income must never become a fixed or certain sum but
must always be dependent on the annual favor and grants of a legislature
controlled by the people. This belief was the foundation of American
colonial liberty. The Assemblies, not only in Pennsylvania but in other
colonies, would withhold the Governor's salary until he consented to
their favorite laws. If he vetoed their laws, he received no salary. One
of the causes of the Revolution in 1776 was the attempt of the mother
country to make the governors and other colonial officials dependent
for their salaries on the Government in England instead of on the
legislatures in the colonies.
So the squabbles, as we of today are inclined to call them, went on
in Pennsylvania--provincial and petty enough, but often very large and
important so far as the principle which they involved was concerned. The
Legislature of Pennsylvania in those days was a small body composed of
only about twenty-five or thirty members, most of them sturdy, thrifty
Quakers. They could meet very easily anywhere--at the Governor's house,
if in conference with him, or at the treasurer's office or at the loan
office, if investigating accounts. Beneath their broad brim hats and
grave demeanor they were as Anglo-Saxon at heart as Robin Hood and his
merry men, and in their ninety years of political control they built up
as goodly a fabric of civil liberty as can be found in any community in
the world.
The dignified, confident message from a deputy governor, full of
lofty admonitions of their duty to the Crown, the province, and the
proprietor, is often met by a sarcastic, stinging reply of the Assembly.
David Lloyd, the Welsh leader of the anti-proprietary party, and
Joseph Wilcox, another leader, became very skillful in drafting these
profoundly respectful but deeply cutting replies. In after years,
Benjamin Franklin attained even greater skill. In fact, it is not
unlikely that he developed a large measure of his world famous aptness
in the use of language in the process of drafting these replies. The
composing of these official communications was important work, for a
reply had to be telling and effective not only with the Governor but
with the people who learned of its contents at the coffeehouse and
spread the report of it among all classes. There was not a little
good-fellowship in their contests; and Franklin, for instance, tells us
how he used to abuse a certain deputy governor all day in the Assembly
and then dine with him in jovial intercourse in the evening.
The Assembly had a very convenient way of accomplishing its purposes in
legislation in spite of the opposition of the British Government.
Laws when passed and approved by the deputy governor had to be sent to
England for approval by the Crown within five years. But meanwhile the
people would live under the law for five years, and, if at the end of
that time it was disallowed, the Assembly would reenact the measure and
live under it again for another period.
The ten years after Penn's return to England in 1701 were full of
trouble for him. Money returns from the province were slow, partly
because England was involved in war and trade depressed, and partly
because the Assembly, exasperated by the deputy governors he appointed,
often refused to vote the deputy a salary and left Penn to bear all the
expense of government. He was being rapidly overwhelmed with debt. One
of his sons was turning out badly. The manager of his estates in England
and Ireland, Philip Ford, was enriching himself by the trust, charging
compound interest at eight per cent every six months, and finally
claiming that Penn owed him 14,000 pounds. Ford had rendered accounts
from time to time, but Penn in his careless way had tossed them aside
without examination. When Ford pressed for payment, Penn, still without
making any investigation, foolishly gave Ford a deed in fee simple of
Pennsylvania as security. Afterwards he accepted from Ford a lease of
the province, which was another piece of folly, for the lease could,
of course, be used as evidence to show that the deed was an absolute
conveyance and not intended as a mortgage.
This unfortunate business Ford kept quiet during his lifetime. But on
his death his widow and son made everything public, professed to be
the proprietors of Pennsylvania, and sued Penn for 2000 pounds rent in
arrears. They obtained a judgment for the amount claimed and, as Penn
could not pay, they had him arrested and imprisoned for debt. For nine
months he was locked up in the debtors' prison, the "Old Bailey," and
there he might have remained indefinitely if some of his friends had
not raised enough money to compromise with the Fords. Isaac Norris,
a prominent Quaker from Pennsylvania, happened at that time to be in
England and exerted himself to set Penn free and save the province from
further disgrace. After this there was a reaction in Penn's favor. He
selected a better deputy governor for Pennsylvania. He wrote a long and
touching letter to the people, reminding them how they had flourished
and grown rich and free under his liberal laws, while he had been
sinking in poverty.
After that conditions improved in the affairs of Penn. The colony was
better governed, and the anti-proprietary party almost disappeared. The
last six or eight years of Penn's life were free from trouble. He
had ceased his active work at court, for everything that could be
accomplished for the Quakers in the way of protection and favorable
laws had now been done. Penn spent his last years in trying to sell the
government of his province to the Crown for a sum that would enable him
to pay his debts and to restore his family to prosperity. But he was
too particular in stipulating that the great principles of civil and
religious liberty on which the colony had been established should not be
infringed. He had seen how much evil had resulted to the rights of the
people when the proprietors of the Jerseys parted with their right to
govern. In consequence he required so many safeguards that the sale of
Pennsylvania was delayed and delayed until its founder was stricken with
paralysis. Penn lingered for some years, but his intellect was now too
much clouded to make a valid sale. The event, however, was fortunate
for Pennsylvania, which would probably otherwise have lost many valuable
rights and privileges by becoming a Crown colony.
On July 30,1718, Penn died at the age of seventy-four. His widow became
proprietor of the province, probably the only woman who ever became
feudal proprietor of such an immense domain. She appointed excellent
deputy governors and ruled with success for eight years until her death
in 1726. In her time the ocean was free from enemy cruisers, and the
trade of the colony grew so rapidly that the increasing sales of land
and quitrents soon enabled her to pay off the mortgage on the province
and all the rest of her husband's debts. It was sad that Penn did not
live to see that day, which he had so hoped for in his last years, when,
with ocean commerce free from depredations, the increasing money returns
from his province would obviate all necessity of selling the government
to the Crown.
With all debts paid and prosperity increasing, Penn's sons became very
rich men. Death had reduced the children to three--John, Thomas,
and Richard. Of these, Thomas became what may be called the managing
proprietor, and the others were seldom heard of. Thomas lived in the
colony nine years--1732 to 1741--studying its affairs and sitting as a
member of the Council. For over forty years he was looked upon as the
proprietor. In fact, he directed the great province for almost as long
a time as his father had managed it. But he was so totally unlike his
father that it is difficult to find the slightest resemblance in feature
or in mind. He was not in the least disposed to proclaim or argue about
religion. Like the rest of his family, he left the Quakers and joined
the Church of England, a natural evolution in the case of many Quakers.
He was a prosperous, accomplished, sensible, cool-headed gentleman, by
no means without ability, but without any inclination for setting the
world on fire. He was a careful, economical man of business, which is
more than can be said of his distinguished father. He saw no visions and
cared nothing for grand speculations.
Thomas Penn, however, had his troubles and disputes with the Assembly.
They thought him narrow and close. Perhaps he was. That was the opinion
of him held by Franklin, who led the anti-proprietary party. But at the
same time some consideration must be given to the position in which
Penn found himself. He had on his hands an empire, rich, fertile, and
inhabited by liberty-loving Anglo-Saxons and by passive Germans. He
had to collect from their land the purchase money and quitrents rapidly
rolling up in value with the increase of population into millions of
pounds sterling, for which he was responsible to his relatives. At the
same time he had to influence the politics of the province, approve or
reject laws in such a way that his family interest would be protected
from attack or attempted confiscation, keep the British Crown satisfied,
and see that the liberties of the colonists were not impaired and that
the people were kept contented.
It was not an easy task even for a clear-headed man like Thomas Penn.
He had to arrange for treaties with the Indians and for the purchase of
their lands in accordance with the humane ideas of his father and in the
face of the Scotch-Irish thirst for Indian blood and the French desire
to turn the savages loose upon the Anglo-Saxon settlements. He had to
fight through the boundary disputes with Connecticut, Maryland, and
Virginia, which threatened to reduce his empire to a mere strip of land
containing neither Philadelphia nor Pittsburgh. The controversy with
Connecticut lasted throughout the colonial period and was not definitely
settled till the close of the Revolution. The charter of Connecticut
granted by the British Crown extended the colony westward to the Pacific
Ocean and cut off the northern half of the tract afterwards granted to
William Penn. In pursuance of what they believed to be their rights, the
Connecticut people settled in the beautiful valley of Wyoming. They were
thereupon ejected by force by the proprietors of Pennsylvania; but they
returned, only to be ejected again and again in a petty warfare carried
on for many years. In the summer of 1778, the people of the valley
were massacred by the Iroquois Indians. The history of this Connecticut
boundary dispute fills volumes. So does the boundary dispute with
Maryland, which also lasted throughout the colonial period; the dispute
with Virginia over the site of Pittsburgh is not so voluminous.
All these controversies Thomas Penn conducted with eminent skill,
inexhaustible patience, and complete success. For this achievement the
State owes him a debt of gratitude.
Thomas Penn was in the extraordinary position of having to govern as
a feudal lord what was virtually a modern community. He was exercising
feudal powers three hundred years after all the reasons for the feudal
system had ceased to exist; and he was exercising those powers and
acquiring by them vast wealth from a people in a new and wild country
whose convictions, both civil and religious, were entirely opposed
to anything like the feudal system. It must certainly be put down as
something to his credit that he succeeded so well as to retain control
both of the political government and his family's increasing wealth down
to the time of the Revolution and that he gave on the whole so little
offense to a high-strung people that in the Revolution they allowed his
family to retain a large part of their land and paid them liberally for
what was confiscated.
The wealth which came to the three brothers they spent after the manner
of the time in country life. John and Richard do not appear to have had
remarkable country seats. But Thomas purchased in 1760 the fine English
estate of Stoke Park, which had belonged to Sir Christopher Hatton of
Queen Elizabeth's time, to Lord Coke, and later to the Cobham family.
Thomas's son John, grandson of the founder, greatly enlarged and
beautified the place and far down into the nineteenth century it was
one of the notable country seats of England. This John Penn also built
another country place called Pennsylvania Castle, equally picturesque
and interesting, on the Isle of Portland, of which he was Governor.