William Penn Founds Philadelphia – 3

About this time William Penn was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in London, probably by nomination of his friend, Dr. John Wallis.

Continuing William Penn Founds Philadelphia,
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Previously in William Penn Founds Philadelphia.

Time: 1681
Place: Philadelphia

About this time William Penn was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in London, probably by nomination of his friend, Dr. John Wallis, one of its founders and with the hope that his connection with the New World would enable him to advance its objects.

With a caution, which the experience of former purchases rendered essential, Penn obtained of the Duke of York a release of all his claims within the patent. His royal highness executed a quitclaim to William Penn and his heirs on August 21, 1682. The Duke had executed, in March, a ratification of his two former grants of East Jersey. But a certain fatality seemed to attend upon these transfers of ducal possessions. After various conflicts and controversies long continued, we may add, though by anticipation, that the proprietaryship of both the Jerseys was abandoned and they were surrendered to the crown under Queen Anne, in April, 1702.

Penn also obtained of the Duke of York another tract of land adjoining his patent. This region, afterward called the “Territories,” and the three “Lower Counties,” now Delaware, had been successively held by the Swedes and Dutch and by the English at New York. The Duke confirmed it to William Penn, by two deeds, dated August 24, 1682.

The last care on the mind of William Penn, before his embarkation, was to prepare proper counsel and instruction for his wife and children. This he did in the form of a letter written at Worminghurst, August 4, 1682. He knew not that he should ever see them again and his heart poured forth to them the most touching utterances of affection. But it was not the heart alone which indited the epistle. It expressed the wisest counsels of prudence and discretion. All the important letters written by Penn contain a singular union of spiritual and worldly wisdom. Indeed, he thought these two ingredients to be but one element. He urged economy, filial love, purity and industry, as well as piety, upon his children. He favored, though he did not insist upon, their receiving his religious views. We may express a passing regret that he who could give such advice to his children should not have had the joy to leave behind him anyone who could meet the not inordinate wish of his heart.

In the mean while his deputy, Markham, acting by his instructions, was providing him a new home by purchasing for him, of the Indians, a piece of land, the deed of which is dated July 15th and endorsed with a confirmation, August 1st and by commencing upon it the erection which was afterward known as Pennsbury Manor.

All his arrangements being completed, William Penn, at the age of thirty-eight, well, strong and hopeful of the best results, embarked for his colony, on board the ship Welcome, of three hundred tons, Robert Greenaway master, on the last of August, 1682. While in the Downs he wrote a Farewell Letter to Friends, the Unfaithful and Inquiring, in his native land, dated August 30th and probably many private letters. He had about one hundred fellow-passengers, mostly Friends from his own neighborhood in Sussex. The vessel sailed about September 1st and almost immediately the small-pox, that desolating scourge of the passenger-ships of those days, appeared among the passengers and thirty fell victims to it. The trials of that voyage, told to illustrate the Christian spirit which submissively encountered them, were long repeated from father to son and from mother to daughter.

In about six weeks the ship entered the Delaware River. The old inhabitants along the shores, which had been settled by the whites for about half a century, received Penn with equal respect and joy. He arrived at New Castle on October 27th. The day was not commemorated by annual observances until the year 1824, when a meeting for that purpose was held at an inn, in Laetitia court, where Penn had resided. While the ship and its company went up the river, the proprietor, on the next day, called the inhabitants, who were principally Dutch and Swedes, to the court-house, where, after addressing them, he assumed and received the formal possession of the country. He renewed the commissions of the old magistrates, who urged him to unite the Territories to his government.

After a visit of ceremony to the authorities at New York and Long Island, with a passing token to his friends in New Jersey, Penn went to Upland to hold the first Assembly, which opened on December 4th. Nicholas Moore, an English lawyer and president of the Free Society of Traders, was made speaker. After three days’ peaceful debate, the Assembly ratified, with modifications, the laws made in England, with about a score of new ones of a local, moral or religious character, in which not only the drinking of healths but the talking of scandal, was forbidden. By suggestion of his friend and fellow-voyager, Pearson, who came from Chester, in England, Penn substituted that name for Upland. By an act of union, passed on December 7th, the three Lower Counties or the Territories, were joined in the government and the foreigners were naturalized at their own request.

On his arrival Penn had sent two messengers to Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore, to propose a meeting and conference with him about their boundaries. On December 19th they met at West River with courtesy and kindness; but after three days they concluded to wait for the more propitious weather of the coming year. Penn, on his way back, attended a religious meeting at a private house and afterward an official meeting at Choptank, on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake and reached Chester again by December 29th, where much business engaged him. About twenty-three ships had arrived by the close of the year; none of them met with disaster and all had fair passages. The new-comers found a comparatively easy sustenance. Provisions were obtained at a cheap rate of the Indians and of the older settlers. But great hardships were endured by some and special providences are commemorated. Many found their first shelter in caves scooped out in the steep bank of the river. When these caves were deserted by their first occupants, the poor or the vicious made them a refuge; and one of the earliest signs both of prosperity and of corruption, in the colony, is disclosed in the mention that these rude coverts of the first devoted emigrants soon became tippling-houses and nuisances in the misuse of the depraved.

Continued.

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