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 of the province of New Jersey, under a grant from the Duke of York. On the partition of the province in 1676 he became one of the trustees of the western half, and largely settled it with quakers. For this colony of West New Jersey, as it was called, he had framed a constitution on the largest possible basis of civil and religious liberty. He had also formed an association which, in 1680, purchased the neighbouring settlement of East New Jersey from the representatives of Sir George Carteret, and on 14 March 1681–2 he obtained a fresh grant of the colony from the Duke of York. A more important acquisition was a grant by letters patent, dated 4 March 1680–1 (in discharge of a crown debt of nearly 16,000l., due to him as the representative of his father), of an extensive tract of country to the west of the Delaware, which, in honour of the admiral, was named the province of Pensilvania (so the word is spelled in the charter). The land was vested in Penn in fee simple, subject to the quit rent of two beaver-skins and a fifth part of its gold and silver ore. By deeds dated 21 and 24 Aug. 1682 the Duke of York confirmed the letters patent, and added to the province (on somewhat more onerous terms) the contiguous southern territories, which eventually became the state of Delaware. As proprietary and governor of the province and the adjacent ‘territories,’ Penn was invested by the charter not merely with executive but also with legislative power, subject to the assent of the ‘freemen’ and the control of the privy council. He lost no time in advertising the advantages of his acquisition (see his Account of the Province of Pennsilvania, London, 1681, fol.), formed, May 1682, a ‘Free Society of Traders of Pennsylvania,’ and framed, in concert with Algernon Sidney, a constitution and code of laws for the colony, of which the following were the salient features: (1) the governor was to exercise his legislative and executive powers with the advice and consent of a provincial council chosen by ballot by the freemen (i.e. persons professing the Christian religion, and holding and cultivating a certain minimum of land or upwards, or paying scot and lot); (2) the provincial council was to be elected in the first instance in thirds of twenty-four members each, one-third for three years, one-third for two years, one-third for one year, and was to be perpetually maintained at the complement of seventy-two members by the annual election of one-third for three years; (3) the governor was to preside in the council with a treble vote; (4) a general assembly, not exceeding two hundred members, chosen by the freemen annually by ballot, was to have the right of approving or rejecting bills passed by the council, but not of initiating or amending legislation; (5) judges, treasurers, and masters of the rolls were to be nominated by the governor in council; sheriffs, justices of the peace, and coroners by the governor in general assembly; (6) the courts were to be open to all without counsel or attorney, pleadings were to be concise and in English, all cases to be tried by jury, fees to be moderate, and oaths to be dispensed with; (7) real property was to be liable for debts, conveyances to be registered, and seven years' possession to give indefeasible title; (8) prisons were to be provided with workshops; (9) all modes of religious worship compatible with monotheism and Christian morality were to be tolerated; (10) the constitution and code were to be unalterable without the consent of the governor and six-sevenths of the provincial council and general assembly.

Preceded by his deputy, William Markham, and several emigrant ships, Penn sailed for America early in September 1682, and landed at Newcastle on the Delaware towards the end of the following month. Having taken formal possession of the province, he marked out, on 8 Nov., at the confluence of the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers, the site of the future city of Philadelphia. In the course of the same month he visited East and West New Jersey and New York, and most probably met the chiefs of the Lenni Lenape Indians, whom he had previously conciliated by letter, under an elm-tree at Shakamaxon (afterwards Kensington), and concluded with them the treaty of amity which Voltaire (Dict. Phil. ‘Quaker’) described as the only league of the kind which was neither sworn to nor broken. Unfortunately, the point of the epigram is blunted by the fact, of which its author was doubtless ignorant, that the Indians with whom Penn negotiated were, at the date of the treaty, subject to the ‘Five Nations,’ by whom they had been completely disarmed. The official record of this treaty appears to be now lost, and, in consequence, the tradition that it made good by purchase Penn's title to the soil remains no more than a tradition. The first general assembly met at Chester on 4 Dec., and in the course of a few days passed Penn's constitution and code into law, with some slight modifications and the addition of penal clauses against profane swearing, blasphemy, adultery, intemperance, and other forms of vice, playgoing, card-playing, and other ‘evil sports and games.’ Notwithstanding its puritanic tinge, the ‘Great Law,’ as the revised code was en-