William Penn

On his arrival in England, toward the end of 1701, he found the situation by no means so bad as he had feared. It had been merely a plot on the part of his enemies to deprive him of his ownership of Pennsylvania without any indemnification. Upon Penn’s proving that he had relinquished a claim on ten thousand pounds against the crown in exchange for his patent, which document had been drawn up in the proper legal form; that besides this he had acquired undisputed possession of the land by subsequent purchase from the Indians; and finally, that the interest on that ten thousand pounds had by this time increased it to more than double that sum, which must lawfully be paid to him if he were deprived of his province, even King William was forced to recognize the justice of his cause and the proposed bill was abandoned, never to be revived again.

Penn had not neglected to fulfil his promise to the Pennsylvanians and immediately after his arrival had ordered his son to leave as soon as possible for Philadelphia; but it was with great reluctance that he did so, for during his father’s absence the pleasure-loving youth had abandoned himself to every form of dissipation, to the great detriment not only of his health, but of his pocket. To send him out to America alone without restraint or guardianship of any kind meant merely a continuation of his dissolute career, with perhaps ruin and disgrace to the honorable name he bore. Nor was the young man any better pleased with the idea, and it was not till his father had opened his eyes to the seriousness of the situation and agreed to pay his debts that he yielded and promised to go without further protest. Before he sailed Penn wrote to some of the Friends in Philadelphia begging them to watch over his son with fatherly care and solicitude. All seemed to go well at first with young William. He troubled himself little, to be sure, as to the province or its affairs, preferring rather to spend his time in hunting and fishing; but the evil spirit in him soon broke out afresh, and he plunged once more into a life of wild excess, defying all the laws of the country, and after he had succeeded in squandering huge sums of money and making himself thoroughly detested, he went back to England, unbidden and unregretted.

The payment of these new debts contracted by his son caused Penn great financial embarrassment, which was still further increased by the unexpected and extortionate demands of a creditor. This was the successor of his former advocate and man of business, who at the time of Penn’s first journey to America had advanced him the sum of twenty-eight hundred pounds in exchange for which and ostensibly as a mere matter of form he had induced his unsuspecting client to sign a bond pledging the whole province of Pennsylvania as security. Now without any warning an account of fourteen thousand pounds was sent in to Penn with the threat that an attachment would be served if this sum were not immediately paid. After investigating this fraudulent account, he declared himself willing to settle for some four thousand pounds, all to which the creditor was justly entitled. This the latter refused to accept, however, and the owner of Pennsylvania was forced to go to a debtors’ prison as the assembly of that colony refused to make him any advances or even pay the revenues owing to him. In this emergency Penn offered for the sum of twenty thousand pounds to sell his whole province to Queen Anne, who, as the second daughter of the dethroned King James the Second, had succeeded to the throne on the death of William the Third, in 1702. She refused to take it, however, and at length he managed by great effort to raise between seven and eight thousand pounds, with which his false creditor finally agreed to content himself, Penn thereby procuring release.

The long confinement had so seriously affected Penn’s health that he now decided to leave London and moved with his family to Brentford, some eight miles distant, where he devoted himself entirely to his former vocation of preaching the gospel throughout the country and conducting meetings for his Quaker brethren. The increasing infirmities of age, however, soon put an end to these journeyings, Penn having now reached the age of sixty-five, and in 1710, therefore, he retired to Rushcombe in Buckinghamshire, where he remained until his death.

From there he addressed a communication to the settlers in Pennsylvania, reproaching them for the ingratitude with which they had rewarded his labors and sacrifices in their behalf. His last journey to England had been taken solely in their interests to prevent the absorption of that province by the crown, in which case their existing constitution would have been abolished. He had made every effort to accomplish this purpose, in spite of their indifference, with the result that he had become impoverished while they had grown rich; while they, thanks to his foresight and perseverance, were in possession of an empire, liberty, and power, and he, for their sake and because of their avarice, had been forced to languish in a debtors’ prison. He was forced to conclude, therefore, that it was their wish to sever the old relations hitherto existing between them and himself, in which case, if they would signify their desire by the choice of a successor, he would then know how to act.

This letter did not fail to impress the conscience-stricken Pennsylvanians. At the popular election which shortly followed a new assembly was chosen in place of the one that had proved so ungrateful to their benefactor, and it was no small consolation to Penn, broken as he was by trouble and ill health, that this new assembly unanimously agreed on the passage of resolutions that filled him with hope for the future of the province.

Chapter IX
Death of his Dissolute Son William—Penn’s Last Illness and Mental Decline—His Death and Will

The younger William Penn meanwhile had gone from bad to worse, to the bitter disappointment of his father, who after the untimely death of his first-born had placed all his hopes on this unworthy son. After having entirely estranged his family by his excesses, he entered the army in defiance of his father’s principles, but resigned soon after when an opening offered for election to Parliament. Failing to accomplish this, however, he abandoned his wife and children and went to the continent, where he led a life of riotous adventure in the various capitals till his death in 1720.

It may have been the arrival of some distressing news about this degenerate son that led to the apoplectic stroke with which Penn was seized early in the year 1712 and which in his feeble state of health was a serious matter, although he rallied for a time sufficiently to be able to occupy himself with colonial affairs. The question of slavery was much on his mind. He had become more and more convinced of its inhumanity and sinfulness and had great hopes of securing its abolition, as the untiring efforts of the German settlers had secured the passage of a law forbidding the importation of any more slaves.

This first stroke, however, was soon followed by two more which left him a wreck physically and mentally. The devoted care of his wife and children helped to avert any immediate danger to his life, but the brilliant mind was hopelessly shattered. He became like a child, serene and peaceful fortunately, playing about the house or garden most of the time with his own young children and those of his son, whom with their deserted mother he had taken into his own home at Rushcombe. Occasionally there would be lucid moments when he was able to converse intelligently, and then the placid smile would vanish from his lips at the sight of his wife’s care-worn face and the realization of the burdens she had to bear not only in the management of family affairs, but also to keep up the extensive correspondence required by colonial matters.

In this condition Penn lived on for five long years, sometimes able to recognize his old friends when they came to see him and even exchange a few intelligible words with them, but toward the end the power both of speech and memory failed him. On the thirtieth of May, 1718, he passed away quietly and peacefully at the age of seventy-four, after a life of ceaseless devotion to the service of God and the welfare of humanity.

In a will made while still in full possession of his mental faculties, Penn left the following directions: His son William, having already squandered the money left him by his deceased mother as her family inheritance, was debarred from any share in the estate, the English property, yielding at that time an annual revenue of some fifteen hundred pounds, passing to his children instead. To each of the grandchildren, as well as his daughter Letty, he bequeathed ten thousand acres of the best land still unsold in Pennsylvania, and after disposing of enough more of this land to pay the expenses of his burial, the remainder was to be divided among his five children by his second wife, Hannah Callowhill, who was made executor with an annuity of three hundred pounds. The management of his colonial affairs he entrusted to his two friends the Earls of Oxford and Pawlett, with orders to dispose of his right of possession on the most favorable terms possible, either to the English crown or elsewhere, the proceeds to be invested for the benefit of these children.

Penn had arranged his worldly affairs with his usual wisdom and foresight. While it might appear by the terms of the will that he had shown a preference for his son William’s children by leaving them the English property with its assured returns, his own receiving only the doubtful American possessions which of late had yielded a revenue of little more than five hundred pounds a year, yet as a matter of fact it was quite the reverse; for during the twenty years of peace and prosperity that followed the French and Indian war the value of the colonial property increased enormously. In 1797 the government of Pennsylvania paid the descendants of William Penn the sum of one hundred and thirty thousand pounds for their rights of ownership, exclusive of all personal properties, as well as back-standing payments and rents due from the sale of lands left them by the founder of the State; while in England they also received the additional sum of five hundred thousand pounds voted by Parliament as indemnity for the losses suffered by him.

The body of William Penn was laid to rest beside those of his first wife and their eldest son in the quiet churchyard of the village of Jordan in Buckinghamshire. Hundreds came from far and near to pay their last respects to the noble Quaker, and it needed not the eulogies pronounced over his grave to proclaim to the world that a great and good man had passed away.

APPENDIX

The following is a chronological statement of the more important events in William Penn’s life:

Transcriber’s Notes

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• Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged.