William Penn - To America and Back to England

It was in the midst of this extreme activity that Penn was made a Fellow of the Royal Society. Leaving his family behind him, Penn sailed with a hundred comrades from Deal in the “ Welcome “ on the 1st of September 1682. His Last Farewell to England and his letter to his wife and children contain a beautiful expression of his pious and manly nature. He landed at New Castle on the Delaware on the 27th of October, his company having lost one-third of their number by small-pox during the voyage. After receiving formal possession, and having visited New York, Penn ascended the Delaware to the Swedish settlement of Upland, to which he gave the name of Chester. The assembly at once met, and on the 7th of December passed the “Great Law of Pennsylvania.” The idea which informs this law is that Pennsylvania was to be a Christian state on a Quaker model. Philadelphia was now founded, and within two years contained 300 houses and a population of 2500. At the same time an act was passed, uniting under the same government the territories which had been granted by feoffment by James in 1682. 

Realistic and entirely imaginative accounts, inspired chiefly by Benjamin West’s picture, have been given of the treaty which there seems no doubt Penn actually made in November 1683 with the Indians. His connection with them was one of the most successful parts of his management, and he gained at once and retained through life their intense affection.

Penn now wrote an account of Pennsylvania from his own observation for the “Free Society of Traders,” in which he shows considerable power of artistic description. Tales of violent persecution of the Quakers, and the necessity of settling disputes, which had arisen with Lord Baltimore, his neighbor in Maryland, brought Penn back to England (Oct. 2, 1684) after an absence of two years. In the spring of 1683 he had modified the original charter at the desire of the assembly, but without at all altering its democratic character. He was, in reference to this alteration, charged with selfish and deceitful dealing by the assembly. Within five months after his arrival in England Charles II died, and Penn found himself at once in a position of great influence. Penn now took up his abode at Kensington in Holland House, so as to be near the court. His influence there was great enough to secure the pardon of John Locke, who had been dismissed from Oxford by Charles, and of 1200 Quakers who were in prison. At this time, too, he was busy with his pen once more, writing a further account of Pennsylvania, a pamphlet in defense of Buckingham’s essay in favor of toleration, in which he is supposed to have had some share, and his Persuasive to Moderation to Dissenting Christians, very similar in tone to the One Project for the Good of England. When Monmouth’s rebellion was suppressed he appears to have done his best to mitigate the horrors of the western commission, opposing Jeffreys to the uttermost.  Macaulay has accused Penn of being concerned in some of the worst actions of the court at this time. His complete refutation by Forster, Paget, Dixon and others renders it unnecessary to do more than allude to the cases of the Maids of Taunton, Alderman Kiffin, and Magdalen College (Oxford).