Volume 1, Chapter 55, The Holy Experiment, The Founding of Pennsylvania, 1681-1690
The example of West Jersey taught William Penn two lessons.
It was possible, given sufficient territory, to found a large Quaker settlement in America,
and it was best to secure a charter for such a colony directly from the king.
In the vast stretches of America, Penn envisaged a truly Quaker colony, a holy experiment that an example may be set up to the nations.
In his quest for such a charter, Penn was aided by the fact that the Crown had owed his father, Admiral Sir William Penn, the huge sum of £16,000 for loans and back salary.
In March 1681, the king agreed to grant young William, the admiral's heir, proprietary ownership of the lands west of the Delaware River and north of the Maryland border in exchange for canceling the old debt.
The land was to be called Pennsylvania. Penn was greatly aided in securing the charter by his friendship with the king and other high officials of the court.
The proprietary charter was not quite as absolute as the colonial charters granted earlier in the century.
The proprietor could rule only with the advice and consent of an assembly of freemen, a provision quite satisfactory to pen.
The Privy Council could veto Pennsylvania's actions, and the Crown, of course, could hear appeals from litigation in the colony.
The Navigation Acts had to be enforced, and there was an ambiguous provision implying that
England could impose taxes in Pennsylvania. As soon as Penn heard news of the Charter,
he dispatched his cousin, William Markham, to be Deputy Governor of Pennsylvania. The
latter informed the 500 or so Swedish and Dutch residents on the west bank of the Delaware
of the New Charter. In the fall, Markham was succeeded by four commissioners and they were
succeeded by Thomas Holm as deputy governor in early 1682. In May, William Penn made the
Frame of Government the constitution for the colony. The frame was amended and streamlined
and became the second frame of 1683, also called the Charter of Liberties. The frame
Religion provided first for full religious freedom for all theists. No compulsory religion
was to be enforced. The Quaker ideal of religious liberty was put into practice. Only Christians,
however, were to be eligible for public office. Later, at the insistence of the Crown, Catholics
were barred from official post in the colony. The government, as instituted by the Frame,
A surprise to governor, the proprietor. An elected council, which performed executive and supreme judicial functions, and an assembly, elected by the freeholders.
Justices of lower courts were appointed by the governor. But while the assembly, like those in other colonies, had the only power to levy taxes, its powers were more restricted than those of assemblies elsewhere.
The Council could initiate laws and the Assembly was confined to ratifying or vetoing the Council's
proposals.
William Penn himself arrived in America in the fall of 1682 to institute the new colony.
He announced that the Duke's laws would be temporarily in force and then called an Assembly
for December.
The Assembly included representatives not only of three counties of Pennsylvania, but also
of the three lower counties of Delaware. For Delaware, or New Castle and the lower counties
on the West Bank of Delaware Bay, had been secured from the Duke of York in August. While
Penn's legal title to exercising governmental functions over Delaware was dubious, he pursued
William Penn now owned the entire West Bank of the Delaware River.
The assembly confirmed the amended frame of government, including the Declaration of Religious
Liberty, and this code of laws constituted the Great Law of Pennsylvania.
The three lower Delaware counties were placed under one administration, separate from Pennsylvania
proper.
Penn was anxious to promote settlement as rapidly as possible, both for religious, a
haven to Quakers, and for economic, income for himself, reasons. Penn advertised the
virtues of the new colony far and wide throughout Europe. Although he tried to impose quit rents
and extracted selling prices for land, he disposed of the land at easy terms. The prices
Rents of land were cheap. Fifty acres were granted to each servant at the end of his
term of service. Fifty acres also were given for each servant brought into the colony.
Land sales were mainly in moderate-sized parcels. Penn soon found that at the rate of one shilling
per hundred acres, quit-rents were extremely difficult to collect from the settlers. Induced
Faced by religious liberty and relatively cheap land, settlers poured into Pennsylvania at
a remarkably rapid rate beginning in 1682. Most of the immigrants were Quakers. In addition
to English Quakers came Welsh, Irish, and German Quakers. Penn laid out the capital
destined to become the great city of Philadelphia and changed the name of the old Swedish settlement
of Upland to Chester. The German Quakers, led by Francis Daniel Pastorius, founded Germantown.
In addition to Quakers, there came other groups attracted by the promise of full religious
liberty. German Lutherans, Catholics, Mennonites and Huguenots. The growth of Pennsylvania
was rapid. Three thousand immigrants arrived during this first year. By 1684, the population
The population of Philadelphia was 2,500, and of Pennsylvania, 8,000.
There were over 350 dwellings in Philadelphia by the end of 1683.
By 1689, there were over 12,000 people in Pennsylvania.
One of William Penn's most notable achievements was to set a remarkable pattern of peace and justice with the Indians.
In November 1682, Penn concluded the first of several treaties of peace and friendship
with the Delaware Indians at Shackamaxon, near Philadelphia.
The Quaker achievement of maintaining peace with the Indians for well over half a century
has been disparaged.
Some have held that it applied to only the mild Delaware Indians, who were perpetually
by the fierce but pro-English Iroquois. But this surely accounts for only part of the story, for the Quakers not only insisted on voluntary purchase of land from the Indians, they also treated the Indians as human beings, as deserving of respect and dignity as anyone else. Hence they deserved to be treated with honesty, friendliness and even-handed justice. As a consequence, the Quakers were treated
is precisely the same way in return. No drop of Quaker blood was ever shed by the Indians.
So strong was the mutual trust between the races that Quaker farmers unhesitatingly left
their children in the care of the Indians. Originally, too, the law provided that whenever
an Indian was involved in a trial, six whites and six Indians would constitute the jury.
Voltaire, raptuous over the Quaker achievement, wittily and perceptively wrote that the Shackam-Axon Treaty was the only treaty between Indians and Christians that was never sworn to and that was never broken.
Voltaire went on to say that for the Indians it was truly a new sight to see a sovereign,
William Penn, to whom everyone said thou, and to whom one spoke with one's hat on one's
head, a government without priest, a people without arms, citizens as equal to the magistrate,
and neighbors without jealousy.
Other features of the Assembly's early laws were puritanical acts barring dramas, drunkenness
and so forth. More liberally, oaths were not required and the death penalty applied only
to the crime of murder.
Punishment was considered for purposes of reform. Feudal primogenitor was abolished
To make justice more efficient and informal, the government undertook to appoint three
arbitrators in every precinct to hand down decisions in disputes.
The Quakers, however, unsatisfactorily evaded the problem of what to do about a military
force.
So as not to violate Quaker principle against bearing arms, the friends refused to serve
in the militia, but they still maintained a militia in the province, and non-Quaker officials
were appointed in command. But surely, if armies are evil, then voting for taxes and
for laws in support of the evil is serving that evil and therefore not to be condoned.
On the question of free speech for criticizing government, laws were, unfortunately, passed
prohibiting the writing or uttering of anything malicious, of anything stirring up dislike
of the governor, or of anything tending to subvert the government.
The tax burden was extremely light in Pennsylvania. The only tax laws were enacted in 1683. These
placed a small duty on liquor and cider, a general duty on goods, and an export duty
on hides and furs. But Governor Penn promptly set aside all taxes for a year to encourage
settlers. In 1684, however, another bill to raise import and other duties for William
Penn's personal use was tabled. Instead, a group of leaders of Pennsylvania pointed out
that the colony would progress much faster if there were no taxes to crippled trade.
These men heroically promised to raise 500 pounds for Penn as a gift if the tax bill
were dropped.
The tax bill was dropped, but not all the money raised.
As might have been predicted, the first political conflict in Pennsylvania came as a protest
against the curious provisions of the frame restricting the assembly to ratifying bills
initiated by the Council.
In the spring of 1683, several assemblymen urged that the assembly be granted the power
to initiate legislation. Several of Penn's devotees attacked the request as that which
seemed to render him in gratitude for his goodness towards the people. The assembly
balked too at granting the governor veto power over itself. There are indications that the
The non-Quaker elements in the Assembly were particularly active in criticizing the great powers assumed by the Governor and the Council.
One of the leaders of the incipient opposition to Penn was the non-Quaker Nicholas Moore, Speaker of the Assembly in 1684,
and Anthony Weston, apparently a non-Quaker, was publicly whipped on three consecutive days for his
presumption and contempt of this government and authority. Having founded the new colony and its
government and hearing of renewed persecution of Quakers at home, William Penn returned to England
in the fall of 1684. He soon found his expectations of large proprietary profits from the vast
royal grant to be in vain. For the people of the struggling young colony of Pennsylvania
extended the principles of liberty far beyond what Penn was willing to allow. The free people
of Pennsylvania would not vote for taxes and simply would not pay the quit rents to Penn
As a result, Penn's deficits in ruling Pennsylvania were large and his fortune dwindled steadily.
In late 1685, Penn ordered the officials to use force to protect the monopoly of lime
production that he had granted himself in order to prevent others from opening lime
quarries.
As to quit rents, Penn, to encourage settlement, had granted a moratorium until 1685. The people
insisted that payment be postponed another year, and Penn's threatened legal proceedings
were without success. Penn was especially aggrieved that his agents in Pennsylvania
failed to press his levies upon the people with sufficient zeal. Presumably, the free
Every taxless heir of Pennsylvania had contaminated them. As Penn complained in the fall of 1686,
well, the great fault is that those who are there lose their authority one way or another
in the spirits of the people, and then they can do little with their outward powers. After
Penn returned to England in 1684, the Council virtually succeeded him in governing the colony.
The Council assumed full executive powers and since it was elected rather than appointed,
this left Pennsylvania as a virtually self-governing colony.
Though Thomas Lloyd, a Welsh Quaker, had by pen been appointed as President of the Council,
the President had virtually no power and could make no decisions on his own.
Because the Council met very infrequently and because no officials had any power to
Act in the interim, during these intervals, Pennsylvania had almost no government at all,
and seemed not to suffer from the experience. During the period from late 1684 to late 1688,
there were no meetings of the Council from the end of October 1684 to the end of March
March 1685, none from November 1686 to March 1687, and virtually none from May 1687 to
late 1688. The councillors, for one thing, had little to do, and being private citizens
rather than bureaucrats, and being unpaid as councillors, they had their own struggling
If for most of 1684-88 there was no colony-wide government in existence, what of the local officials?
The laws had called for small payment to the counselors, but typically it was found to
be almost impossible to extract these funds from the populace.
If for most of 1684-88 there was no colony-wide government in existence, what of the local
officials?
Were they not around to provide that evidence of the state's continued existence, which
Which so many people through the ages have deemed vital to man's very survival?
But the answer is no.
The lower courts met only a few days a year, and the county officials were, again, private
citizens, who devoted very little time to upholding the law.
No, the reality must be faced that the new, but rather large, colony of Pennsylvania lived
for the greater part of four years in a de facto condition of individual anarchism and
seemed none the worse for the experience. Furthermore, the assembly passed no laws after
1686, as it was involved in a continual wrangle over attempts to increase its powers and to
A bit of government came in 1685 in the person of William Dyer as collector of the King's
customs, but despite the frantic urgings of William Penn for cooperation with Dyer, Pennsylvanians
persisted in their de facto anarchism by blithely and regularly evading the Royal Navigation
Laws.
William Penn had the strong and distinct impression that his holy experiment had slipped away
from him, had taken a new and bewildering turn.
Penn had launched a colony that he thought would be quietly subject to his dictates and
yield him a handsome profit.
By providing a prosperous haven of refuge for Quakers, he had expected in turn the rewards
of Wealth and Power. Instead, he found himself without either. Unable to collect revenue
from the free and independent-minded Pennsylvanians, he saw the colony slipping gracefully into
outright anarchism, into a growing and flourishing land of no taxes and virtually no state.
Men frantically determined to force Pennsylvania back into the familiar mold of the old order.
Accordingly, he appointed vice commissioners of state in February 1687 to act in the execution
of laws, as if I myself were there present, reserving myself the confirming of what is
done and my peculiar royalties and advantages.
The purpose of the appointments, he added, was that there may be a more constant residence
of the honorarian governing part of the government for the keeping all things in good order.
Penn appointed the five commissioners from the colonies' leading citizens, Quakers and
non-Quakers, and ordered them to enforce the laws.
The colonists were evidently content in their anarchism and shrewdly engaged in nonviolent
Resistance Against the Commission. In fact, they scarcely paid any attention to the Commission.
A year passed before the Commission was even mentioned in the minutes of the Council. News
about the Commission was delayed until the summer of 1687, and protest against the plan
poured into pen. The commissioners and the protesters, too, pretended that they had taken
and up their post as a continuing executive. Finally, however, Penn grew suspicious and
asked why he had received no communication from the supposedly governing body.
Unable to delay matters any longer, the reluctant commissioners of state took office in February
1688, a year after their appointment. Three and one-half years of substantive anarchism
The conservative anarchism were over. The state was back in its heaven. Once more, all was right with the world.
Typically, Penn urged the commissioners to conceal any differences they might have among themselves, so as to deceive and overhaul the public.
Show your virtues, but conceal your infirmities. This will make you awful and revered with your people.
The Commissioners confined themselves to calling the Assembly into session in the spring of 1688, and this time the Assembly did pass some laws for the first time in three years.
The two crucial bills presented by the Commissioners and the Council regulated the export of deer skins
and, once again, levied customs duties on imports so as to obtain funds to finance the government, in short, imposed taxes on a taxless colony.
After almost passing the tax bill, the assembly heroically defied the government once again and rejected the two bills.
The state had reappeared in a flurry of activity in early 1688, but was found wanting, and
the colony, still taxless, quickly lapsed back into a state of anarchism.
The commissioners somehow failed to meet, and the council met only once more, between
the spring meeting and December.
Pennsylvania was once again content with a supposedly dreadful and impossible state of
affairs, and when this idle came to an end in December 1688 with the arrival of a new
deputy governor appointed by Penn, the deputy governor had difficulty finding the officers
of the government. He found the council room deserted and covered with dust and scattered
Papers, The Wheels of Government had nearly stopped turning.
William Penn, seeing that the Pennsylvanians had happily lapsed into an anarchism that
precluded taxes, quit rents and political power for himself, decided to appoint a deputy
governor. But the people of Pennsylvania, having tasted the sweets of pure liberty,
were almost unanimously reluctant to relinquish that liberty.
We have observed that the commissioners of state had failed to assume their post and
had virtually failed to function after it was presumed they accepted. No one wanted
to rule others. For this reason, Thomas Lloyd, the president of the council, refused appointment
as deputy governor. At this point, Penn concluded that he could not induce the Quakers of Pennsylvania
to Institute a State, and so he turned to a tough non-Quaker, an old Puritan soldier,
and a non-Pennsylvania, John Blackwell. Once a State has completely withered away, it is
an extremely difficult task to recreate it, as Blackwell quickly discovered. If Blackwell
had been under any illusions that the Quakers were meek and passive people, he was in for
For a rude surprise, he was defined very quickly that devotion to peace, to liberty and to
individualism in no sense implies passive resignation to tyranny, quite the contrary.
In announcing Blackwell's appointment in September 1688, Penn made it clear that his
primary task was to collect Penn's quick rents and secondarily to reestablish a government.
As Penn instructed Blackwell, Rule the meek meekly, and those that will not be ruled,
rule with authority.
John Blackwell's initial reception as Deputy Governor was an omen of things to come.
Sending word ahead for someone to meet him upon his arrival in New York, he landed there
only to find no one to receive him.
After waiting in vain for three days, Blackwell went alone to New Jersey. When he arrived
at Philadelphia on December 17, he found no escort, no parade, no reception committee.
We have mentioned that Blackwell couldn't find the council or any other government officials,
and this was after he had ordered the council to meet upon his arrival. Once early escort
appeared and he refused to speak to the new governor, and when Blackwell arrived at the
empty council room, a group of boys from the neighborhood gathered around to hoot and jeer.
The Quakers, led by Thomas Lloyd, now embarked on a shrewd and determined campaign of resistance
to the imposition of a state.
Thomas Lloyd, as keeper of the Great Seal, insisted that none of Blackwell's orders
or Commissions was valid unless stamped with the great seal.
Lloyd, the keeper, refused to do the stamping.
It is amusing to find Edward Channing and other thorough but not overly imaginative
historians deeply puzzled by this resistance.
This portion of Pennsylvania history is unusually difficult to understand.
We find, for instance, so strong and intelligent a man as Thomas Lloyd, declining to obey
what appeared to be reasonable and legal direction on the part of the proprietor. As keeper of
the great seal of the province, Lloyd refused point-blank to affix that emblem of authenticity
to commissions which Blackwell presented to him. What Channing failed to understand was
It was that Pennsylvanians were engaged in a true revolutionary situation, that they were all fiercely determined to thwart the re-imposition of a burdensome state upon their flourishing, stateless society.
That is why even the most reasonable and legal orders were disobeyed, for Pennsylvanians had for some years been living in a world where no one was giving orders to anyone else.
Lloyd persistently refused to hand over the great seal or to stamp any of Blackwell's documents or appointments with it. Furthermore, David Lloyd, clerk of the court and a distant relative of Thomas, refused absolutely to turn over the documents of cases to Blackwell, even if the judges so ordered.
For this act of defiance, Blackwell declared David Lloyd unfit to serve as court clerk and dismissed him.
But Thomas Lloyd promptly reappointed David by virtue of his alleged power as keeper of the Great Seal.
As a revolutionary situation grows and intensifies, unanimity can never prevail.
The timid and the short-sighted began to betray the cause. Thus the Council frightened that the Lloyd's direct acts of rebellion now sided with Blackwell.
The pro-Blackwell clique was headed by Griffith Jones, who had consented to let Blackwell live at his home in Philadelphia.
Jones warned that, It is the King's authority that is opposed and looks to me as if it were raising a force to rebel.
Of the members of the Council, only author Cook remained loyal to the Lloyds and to the
resistance movement. Of a dozen justices of the peace named by Blackwell, four bluntly
refused to serve. When Blackwell found out the true state of affairs in Pennsylvania,
his state-bound soul was understandably appalled. Here was a thriving trade based on continuing
and Violations of the Navigation Laws. Here, above all, were no taxes, hence no funds
to set up a government. As Bronner puts it, he, Blackwell, deplored the lack of public
funds in the colony, which made it impossible to hire a messenger to call the council, a
doorkeeper, and someone to search ships to enforce the laws of England. He believed that
Blackwell managed to force the Council to meet every week during the first months of 1689, but his suggestion that every Council should meet every week during the first months of 1689, was that the Council should be free to do whatever they would like.
Arthur Cook led the successful resistance, maintaining that the people were not able to bear the charge of constant attendance.
As Blackwell continued to denounce the Council and Pennsylvania as a whole before his accession,
The conflict of views continued to polarize Blackwell and the Pennsylvanians. Finally,
The climax came on April 2, 1689, when Blackwell introduced proceedings for the impeachment
of Thomas Lloyd, charging him with eleven high crimes and misdemeanors.
Blackwell had also refused to seat Lloyd when the latter was elected counselor from Bucks
County.
In his impeachment speech, Blackwell trumpeted to his stunned listeners that pens and therefore
for his own powers over the colony were absolute. Penn was a feudal lord who could create manorial
courts. Furthermore, Penn could not transfer his royally delegated powers to the people,
but only to a deputy such as himself. The council, according to Blackwell's theory,
existed in no sense to represent the people, but to be an instrument for William Penn's
Blackwell concluded this harangue by threatening to unsheath and wield his sword against his insolent and unruly opponents.
Blackwell's proclamation of absolute rule now truly polarized the conflict.
The choice was now narrowed, the old anarchism or the absolute rule by Blackwell.
Blackwell. Given this confrontation, those wavering had little choice but to give Thomas
Lloyd their full support. Blackwell now summarily dismissed from the Council Thomas Lloyd, Samuel
Richardson and John Eckley. On April 9, while the Council, the supreme judicial arm of the
colony, was debating the charge against Lloyd, Blackwell threatened to remove Joseph Grodin.
At this point, the Council rebelled and demanded the right to approve its own members. Refusing
to meet further without its duly elected members, the Council was then dissolved by Blackwell.
With the Council homeward bound, the disheartened Blackwell sent his resignation to Penn, while
seven councillors bitterly protested to Penn against his deputies' attempt to deprive them
of their Liberties. As for Blackwell, he believed the Quakers to be those agents of the devil
foretold in the New Testament, who despise dominion and speak evil of dignities.
From this point on, the decision was in the hands of Governor Penn, and Penn decided in
favor of the Quakers and against Blackwell. For the rest of the year, Blackwell continued
formally in office, but lost all concern for making changes or exerting his rule. From
April 1689 until early 1690, he was waiting out his term. Blackwell wrote to Penn that,
I now only wait for the hour of my deliverance. He summed up his grievance against the Quakers.
These people have not the principles of government amongst them, nor will be informed.
Meanwhile, the assembly, headed by author Cook, met in May and fell apart on the issue
of protesting the arrest of one of its members. Between May and the end of the year, the Council
met only twice. Pennsylvania was rapidly slipping back toward its previous state of anarchism.
William Penn enlivened this trend by deciding to reestablish the old system with the Council
as a whole, his deputy governor. Writing to the leading Quakers of Pennsylvania, Penn
apologized for his mistake in appointing Blackwell, but wistfully reminded them that he had done
so because no friend would undertake the governor's place. Now he told them, I have thought fit
to throw all into your hands that you may all see the confidence I have in you.
With Blackwell out of office, the Council, back in control, resumed its somnolent ways.
Again headed by Thomas Lloyd, it met rarely, did virtually nothing, and told William Penn
even less.
had returned in triumph to Pennsylvania. And when Secretary William Markham, who had been
one of the hated Blackwell clique, submitted a petition for levying taxes to provide some
financial help for William Penn, the Council completely ignored the request.