Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/519

 P E N N 497 council was issued depriving Penn of the governorship of Pennsylvania, and giving it to Colonel Fletcher, the governor of New York. 1 To this blow were added the illness of his wife and a fresh accusation of treasonable correspondence with James. In his enforced retirement he wrote the most devotional and the most charming of his works, the collection of maxims of conduct and reli gion entitled The Fruits of Solitude. In December, thanks to the efforts of his friends at court, among whom were Buckingham, Somers, Rochester, and Henry Sidney, he received an intimation, that no further steps would be taken against him. The accusation, however, had been public, and he insisted on the withdrawal being as public. He was therefore heard in full council before the king, and honourably acquitted of all charge of treason. It was now that he wrote an Essay towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe, in which he puts forth the idea of a great court of arbitration, a principle which he had already carried out in Pennsylvania. In 1694 (23d February) his wife Gulielma died, leaving two sons, Springett and William, and a daughter Letitia, afterwards married to William Aubrey. Two other daughters, Mary and Hannah, died in infancy. He con soled himself by writing his Account of the Rise and Progress of the People called Quakers. The coldness and suspicion with which he had been regarded by his own denomination had now ceased, and he was once more regarded by the Quaker body as their leader. About the same time (20th August) he was restored to the governor ship of Pennsylvania ; and he promised to supply money and men for the defence of the frontiers. In 1695 he went on another preaching mission in the west, and sent a peti tion to parliament praying that affirmations might be sub stituted for oaths. This year and the next were busily occupied with preaching and writing, one of his auditors being no less a person than Peter the Great. In March 1696 he formed a second marriage, with Hannah Callow- hill, his son Springett dying five weeks later. In this year he wrote his work On Primitive Christianity, in which he argues that the faith and practice of the Friends were those of the early church. In 1697 Penn removed to Bristol, and during the greater part of 1698 was preaching with great success against oppression in Ireland, Avhither he had gone to look after the property at Shannangarry. In 1699 he was back in Pennsylvania, landing near Chester on 30th November, where the success of Colonel Quary, judge of the admiralty in Pennsylvania, who was in the interests of those who wished to make the province an imperial colony, and the high-handed action of the deputy Markham in opposition to the crown, were causing great difficulties. Penn carried with him particular instructions to put down piracy, which the objections of the Quakers to the use of force had rendered audacious, and concern ing which Quary had made strong representations to the home Government, while Markham and the inhabitants ap parently encouraged it. Penn and Quary, however, came at once to a satisfactory understanding on this matter, and the illegal traffic was vigorously and successfully attacked. The next question he took up was slavery, and his attitude towards it is curious. In 1696 the Phila- delphian yearly meeting had passed a resolution declaring it contrary to the first principles of the gospel. Penn, how ever, did not venture upon emancipation ; but he insisted on the instruction of negroes, permission for them to marry, 1 Colonel Fletcher s commission recites &quot; that by reason of great neglect and miscarriage in the government of Pennsylvania Her Majesty found it necessary to take the government into her hands and under her immediate protection.&quot; The attorney-general and the solicitor- general were of opinion (on 12th July 1694) that, when the aforesaid reasons failed or ceased, the right of government belonged to the petitioner. repression of polygamy and adultery, and proposed regula tions for their trial and punishment. The assembly, how- ever, a very mixed body of all nations, now refused to accept any of these proposals except the last-named. His great success was with the Indians ; by their treaty with him in 1 700 they promised not to help any enemy of England, to traffic only with those approved by the governor, and to sell furs or skins to none but inhabitants of the province. At the same time he showed his capacity for legislation by the share he took with Lord Bellomont at New York in the consolidation of the laws in use in the various parts of America. Affairs now again demanded his presence in England. The king had in 1 701 written to urge upon the Pennsylvania Government a union with other private colonies for defence, and had asked for money for fortifications. The difficulty felt by the crown in this matter was a natural one. A Bill was brought into the Lords to convert private into crown colonies. Penn s son appeared before the committee of the House and managed to delay the matter until his father s return. On 15th September Penn called the assembly to gether, in which the differences between the province and the territories again broke out. He succeeded, however, in calming them, appointed a council of ten to manage the province in his absence, and gave municipal institutions to Philadelphia. In May 1700, experience having shown that alterations in the charter were advisable, the assembly had, almost unanimously, requested Penn to revise it. On 28th October 1701 he handed it back to them in the form in which it afterwards remained. An assembly was to be chosen yearly, of four persons from each county, with all the self-governing privileges of the English House of Commons. Two-thirds were to form a quorum. The nomination of sheriff s, coroners, and magistrates for each county was given to the governor, who was to select from names handed in by the freemen. Moreover, the council was no longer elected by the people, but nominated by the governor, who was thus practically left single in the execu tive. The assembly, however, who, by the first charter, had not the right to propound laws, but might only amend or reject them, now acquired that privilege. In other respects the original charter remained, and the inviolability of con science was again emphatically asserted. Penn reached Eng land in December 1701. The accession of Anne appears to have put an end to the Bill in the Lords, and to his troubles on this score. He once more assumed the position of leader of the Dissenters and himself read the address of thanks for the promise from the throne to maintain the Act of Toleration. He now too took up his abode again at Kensing ton, and published while here his More Fruits of Solitude. In 1703 he went to Knightsbridge, where he remained until 1706, when he removed to Brentford, his final resi dence being taken up in 1710 at Field Ptuscombe, near Twyford. In 1704 he wrote his Life of Bulstrode White- locke. He had now much trouble from America. The terri- torialists were openly rejecting his authority, and doing their best to obstruct all business in the assembly ; and matters were further embarrassed by the injudicious conduct of Go vernor Evans in 1706. Moreover, pecuniary troubles came heavily upon him, while the conduct of his son William, who became the ringleader of all the dissolute characters in Philadelphia, was another and still more severe trial. This son was married, and had a son and daughter, but appears to have been left entirely out of account in the settlement of Penn s proprietary rights on his death. Whatever were Penn s great qualities, he was deficient in judgment of character. This was especially shown in the choice of his steward Ford, from whom he had borrowed money, and who, by dexterous swindling, had managed, at the time of his death, to establish a claim for 14,000 XVIII. 63