Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/155

 1868.] The Penn Treaty-Ground and a Monument to William Penn. 127 I have ; and, for my business here, know : that, after many waitings, watch- ings, solicitings, and disputes in coun- cil, this day my country was con- firmed to me, under the great seal of England, with large powers and privi- leges, by the name of PENNSILVANIA, a name the king would have given it, in honor of my father. J chose New Wales, being, as this, a pretty hilly country ; but Penn being Welsh for a head.* as Pen-man-nioire,f in Wales, and Penrith, in Cumberland, and Penn, in Bucking- hamshire, the highest land in England, they called this Pensilvania, which is the high, or head, woodlands ;J for I pro- posed, when the secretary, a Welshman, refused to have it called New Wales, Silvania ; and they added Penn to it, and though I much opposed it, and went to the king to have it struck out and altered, he said 'twas past, and would take it upon him, nor could twenty guineas move the undersecretaries to vary the name, for I feared, least it should be looked upon, as a vanity in me, and not, as a respect, in the king, as it truly was, to my father, whom he often mentions with praise. Thou mayst com- municate my grant to my friends, and expect, shortly, my proposals. 'Tis a clear and just thing; and my God, that has given it me, through many difficulties, will, I believe, bless and make it the seed of a nation. I shall have a tender care to the government, that it will be well laid at first. No more, now, but dear love in the truth. Thy true friend, W. PENN. The Penn s of Stoke-Pogis, (Bucking- hamshire, England,) whose church and burial ground form the locality of Gray's Elegy, were settled at an early period at Minety, Gloucestershire, and at Penn's Lodge, Wiltshire. Now the county of Gloucester is in the west of J Poetically, The Alpine Forest, or better, The Moun- ain Wood. England, adjoining Wales ; and Wilts is contiguous to, and immediately south of Gloucester. Buckingham is a mid- England county ; but the Penns were not seated here till after the times of Admiral Penn and his son, William, the Founder, the estate of Stoke having been purchased from the executors of Lady Cobham, in 1160, by Hon. Thomas Penn, Lord Proprietary of Pennsylvania. The Delawares being under the tutelage of the Five Nations, adopted the Iro- quois term Onas in their public speeches ; but when among themselves always called him by the Lenni Lenape term Miquon, a word of the same signification. THE PENN ARMS. The arms of the Penn f a m i 1 y are : Argent, on a f e s s sable, three plates. Crest, a demi- lion rampant argent, gorged with a collar sable, charged with three plates. Motto: Dum Clarum Rectum Teneam. THE HAND-BOARD. Even when in the immediate neigh- borhood, the curious stranger, or the townsman of leisure from another part of the city, would probably have some little difficulty in finding the memorial obelisk of the Penn Society. It is very closely encompassed by the remains of its own enclosure of white palings, tol- erably perfect on the Beach street front and the two sides. The back is gone ; but that, under the circumstances, makes no difference, as its place is supplied — upon the old line — by the back of a square enclosure of thickly-placed, un- painted, darkly-weathered palings, about twice the height of the memorial itself. Directly east of this, or up Beach street,
 * Or mountain. t Pen-maen-mawr.