The Troubles Of Penn And His Sons
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.
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