Philadelphia (Repplier)/Chapter 4

by Agnes Repplier

Chapter IV

The Last Years of William Penn

IN 1699 Penn returned to Philadelphia, and was welcomed with enthusiasm by the city, now nineteen years old, and rapidly outgrowing her pretty primitive simplicity. Much had happened to her Quaker Founder in the last fifteen years, much that has no place in this New World chronicle, though it may be read with interest by those who love to follow a brave man through the intricacies and fatal fortunes of life. The accession of James II. placed Penn in a position of trust and influence at court, for the King had always regarded him and his sober followers with favour; and one of the first acts of the new reign was the remission of the penalties imposed upon all who had refused to take the oath of allegiance, by which royal clemency more than twelve hundred Quakers were immediately released from prison. The faithful service rendered by Penn to the monarch who had befriended him from boyhood has been made the subject of much invidious and foolish criticism. Macaulay, whose attitude towards any adherent of the Stuarts resembles Voltaire's attitude towards Habakkuk, has not hesitated to accuse the courtly Quaker of more than one harsh deed; and though none of these accusations rest upon convincing authority, and most of them rest upon no authority whatever, there lingers in many minds a vague impression that Penn was at heart a time-server and a worldling. Even Mrs. Oliphant wonders with pious scorn, how a man who professed sanctity could obey a master so palpably imperfect as James, as though it were possible, under any form of government, to make character the condition of our obedience and our service to those who rule the land.

More dispassionate minds will find in the strange incongruous friendship something equally creditable to king and subject. James held this gentle yet outspoken follower at his true worth, and many gracious deeds were the result of his influence and intercession. Penn's loyal heart found little to forgive. The King's Catholicity troubled him not at all, for in his serene breadth of mind he saw no reason why even a monarch should not cherish his own faith, an idea which had not then dawned upon the civilized world, and which has made but little headway in the intervening years. He believed James to be sincere—albeit sincerity was not a Stuart failing—and he had a grateful affection for the morose man who won so little love. The revolution of 1689 brought him serious disaster, and was full of evil omens for the Quakers who clung to him as their leader and support. He found himself an object of deep suspicion at court, was accused before the Privy Council of treasonable correspondence with the exiled King, and was promptly deprived of his proprietary rights. Disgraced, poor, well-nigh friendless, separated from his wife, who died before his restoration to favour, he bore this sharp reversal of fortune with unalterable patience and composure. It was not until England had grown calm again, and had reconciled herself sagaciously, though with no lively satisfaction, to the great and wise and disagreeable prince whom she had invited to her throne, that Penn was able to prove his absolute innocence. He had loved and served James. He neither loved nor wished to serve William. But his creed forced him to play a passive part in these strange shifting scenes which changed the destinies of nations, and made even his own little life the sport and plaything of conflicting fates.

When, after years of trouble and disrepute, the sun of royal favour shone faintly upon him once again, and the government of Pennsylvania was restored to his hands, he resolved to return to the province, which had been but little disturbed by the mighty changes at home. The flight of James and the accession of William had, in fact, made no particular impression upon the colonists, who paid scant heed to the startling news, but waited without impatience for further developments. James, they considered, might come back, and the Prince of Orange might fly in his turn. Neither possibility interested them very profoundly. Those were happy days, when the serenity of one hemisphere was not at the mercy of daily despatches from the other. Nine months passed before the new reign seemed so reasonably secure, that, in tardy little Philadelphia, William and Mary were proclaimed King and Queen of England.

In matters nearer home, however, the colony was as actively contentious as its neighbours, and even across the ocean there had reached Penn's ears the echoes of constant strife. "For the love of God, of me, and of the poor country," we find him writing to Lloyd, "be not so governmentish, so noisy and open in your dissatisfaction." He had failed to realize, amid the cares and dangers that beset his path in England, how in far-away Pennsylvania there was growing with every year a spirit of strong and bitter opposition to his proprietary powers. He thought that all would be well when he was with his own people once again; but scarcely had the words of welcome which greeted his return to Philadelphia died away, when the struggle began which in two years left little of his cherished laws, or of his old authority. The Assembly was ready enough to assist him in the suppression of smuggling and piracy, which lawless but profitable professions had grown to scandalous magnitude. On other points they met his wishes with steady resistance, and the Christ Church party, under the leadership of Robert Quarry, Judge of the Admiralty, grew more hostile every month. Penn took up his quarters for the winter in the Slate Roof House; but at the earliest approach of spring he went gladly to Pennsbury, which had been furnished with a degree of elegance hitherto unknown to the colony.

"The Slate Roof House"

Turkish tapestry and satin hangings covered the bare white walls, the first carpet carried over the ocean adorned the drawing-room floor, silver and glass sparkled on the massive sideboard. Outside there were lawns and terraces, made with infinite pains, to give the house some sweet resemblance to an English country home, and endear it in the sight of wife and child; for Penn had married a second time, and his family accompanied him now to the strange New World, and liked it very little when they got there.

The successor of poor Gulielma Maria, who had escaped forever from careless servants and encroaching friendships, was a "devout and comely maiden," Hannah Callowhill, the daughter of a Bristol merchant. Her letters, which have been ardently recommended as profitable reading for the young, show her to have been a woman of force and character, well fitted for the serious cares of life, and for the important part she was destined to play in the history of the province. She had three sons, one of whom, John Penn, was born in Philadelphia, and was commonly called "the American," though he did as little as possible to merit the title, or to make it an honourable distinction. "A lovely babe," writes Isaac Norris, with breathless enthusiasm, in 1701, "and has much of his father's grace and air, and hope he will not want a good portion of his mother's sweetness, who is a woman extremely well-beloved here, exemplary in her station, and of an excellent spirit, which adds lustre to her character, and has a great place in the hearts of good people."

Penn's only daughter, Letitia, and his scapegrace son, William, the children of his first wife, had accompanied him to the colony, and Letitia's discontent and homesickness fully equalled her stepmother's. The "fair mansion house" seemed but a desolate dwelling-place to these sedate Englishwomen, who never learned to love such unaccustomed freedom, and never ceased to fear the silent forest that surrounded them, nor the "insolent bears and painted savages" that roamed—most uncongenial neighbours—through its sombre
Penn's Desk depths. Yet Penn maintained the dignity of his position in a manner that might well have satisfied, and even dazzled, the Bristol merchant's daughter. Four horses drew his state coach bumping and jolting over the rough, ill-made road from Pennsbury to Philadelphia; eight oarsmen rowed his barge when he took the smoother waterway. The colonists were impressed, amused, or exasperated, according to their dispositions, by all this formality and display; but even those who least loved the Proprietor were compelled to admit that his was a nature broad enough to understand the needs of a community, and generous enough to begrudge neither labour nor wealth when the happiness of the people was at stake. Penn, like Washington, was a slaveholder, and, like Washington, he treated his slaves with uniform kindness and humanity. He even urged upon the Assembly a bill obliging all colonists to instruct their negroes in Christian truths; and while the Quakers, as a rule, made but little effort to convert the Indians about them, they gave to the savages a rare example of that seldom seen Christianity which consistently practised what it preached.

Meanwhile the town grew and prospered. Active measures were taken against the pirates who swarmed along the coast,—unmitigated ruffians for the most part, who had no wrongs to avenge like Kingsley's warm-hearted and sentimental "Buccaneer"; but who robbed honest men, and assaulted honest women, and dishonoured the very seas over which their black crafts sailed. The commerce they had blocked was once again resumed. Emigration increased almost too rapidly, people thought, for the welfare of the colony. It is curious to hear, echoed from the very beginning of the eighteenth century, the same apprehensive whispers that now disturb our peace. James Logan, who came to the province as Penn's secretary in 1699, and who was for many years the best, the most loyal, and the most capable public servant that Pennsylvania possessed, wrote doubtfully, after thirty years of experience: "It looks as if Ireland is to send all its inhabitants hither. The common fear is that if they continue to come, they will make themselves masters of the place. It is strange that they thus crowd where they are not wanted."

Not very strange, for the land was fertile and the country was at peace, a peace to be broken and lost before many years had passed through the harshness and arrogance of these same Scotch-Irish emigrants, who tilled the soil with splendid industry, and an undeviating indifference as to its rightful ownership. In 1701 Penn was recalled to England by a fresh danger. Parliament was considering a bill for the purchase by the crown of all proprietary rights; and to defend both the independence of the province and his own peculiar claims became the immediate duty of the governor. Before he left Philadelphia, the Assembly, ever prompt to secure an advantage, obtained the Charter of Privileges, which gave it the power to originate its own measures, and left to Penn, of all his old authority, little but empty honours, and the quit-rents, which were destined in the coming years to enrich his children and his children's children "beyond the dreams of avarice," as the story books phrase it, though never beyond their own avaricious desires.

Hannah Penn and Letitia rejoiced openly at this chance of returning to England; but Gulielma Maria's son was left in the colony, where it was hoped he would gain steadfastness of purpose, and propriety of behaviour. "Weigh down his levities, temper his resentiments, and inform his understanding," wrote Penn to Logan who remained as Hamilton's provincial secretary, and upon whose capable shoulders fell a heavy burden of cares. The young man's resentments and levities, however, so far outweighed his understanding that no balance of sanity could be struck, and his riotous conduct sorely scandalized the quiet Quaker community. His father meanwhile settled once more into his old familiar life, became rather a favourite of good Queen Anne's, succeeded in checking the bill for the purchase of proprietary rights, and spent much time at court, very pleasantly and profitably, until overtaken by the serious financial trouble which shadowed and saddened his old age. Many causes contributed to this disaster. The difficulty of collecting quit-rents, the extravagance of his dissolute son, and the greed of his parsimonious son-in-law, William Aubrey,—"a scraping man," says Penn with his usual felicity of phrase, who compelled the prompt payment of Letitia's portion when so large a sum could hardly be raised without ruin. Above all, an unjust steward—that character as well known in the eighteenth Christian century as in the first—completed the work of destruction, and forced Penn to live for many months within the confines of the Fleet prison.

It is not pleasant for us to contemplate the founder of our Keystone State, the founder of our Quaker City, pent up in a London jail. It is not pleasant for us to remember that Robert Morris, who poured out his wealth like water for the support of our endangered commonwealth, was left to lie unhelped and unheeded in a debtor's prison. It is never pleasant to realize that every page of history is but a monotonous illustration of Tourgueneff's savage satire, a monotonous repetition of that pitiless scene, where, the virtues being gathered together in the azure halls, it is discovered that Benevolence and Gratitude have never met before. Even in England and in France, the spectacle of Penn's misfortunes could not long be endured with equanimity, and his own unbroken courage heightened the feeling of sympathy and of resentment. A compromise was finally effected, money was raised by the English Quakers for his release, and the man to whom had been granted absolute rights over vast and unknown territories, was permitted to enjoy once more the fields and the skies of his native land. He rented a modest country house in Buckinghamshire, and the remainder of his life—until paralysis clouded his understanding—was spent quietly, though with little joy, for ever and again some fresh contention with the province disturbed his peace of mind. His last sad, serious letter to the colonists shamed them into an outburst of love and loyalty which came too late for comfort. He died in 1718, being seventy-four years old; and his most sincere mourners were found, neither in London nor in Philadelphia, but in those trackless forests where the Indians—whose friends had been but few—still cherished and honoured the memory of the "white truth-teller." They sent gifts of skins over the sea to his widow, and bewailed in savage fashion around their camp-fires "the man of treaties unbroken, and friendships inviolate."

Calumny, which loves a shining mark, has never been sparing of her favours to William Penn. Many are the arrows she has winged; many are the accusations she has reiterated. In his own day he was denounced by sturdy Protestants as a concealed Papist, by angry Whigs as a rebel at heart, and by clamorous preachers as a Jesuit in disguise, which last accusation might have been spared a man who had two wives and five children. He offended worldlings by his Quaker creed, which to them was mere hypocrisy, and he scandalized the righteous by his association with courts and courtiers. His personal charm is vouched for by no less censorious a critic than Swift, who says that he spoke "very agreeably, and with much spirit." In 1710, Swift writes to Stella that he met at Mr. Harley's, "Will Penn the Quaker," and that they passed a lively evening, being exceedingly well entertained by one another. "We sat two hours, drinking as good wine as you do," adds the great churchman with unwonted amiability; and it is perhaps the strongest proof of Penn's lovableness that, after drinking good wine with him for two hours at night, Swift has the next morning no word of dispraise for his companion.

Logan Arms