A history of William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania

Preface

Twentj-one years have passed since 'William Penn, an Historical Biography', came out. The book obtained some favour, not in England only, but in Germany and America. Yet it has long been out of print ; awaiting that revision which an author who respects his public likes to give his final work. In one-and-twenty years, much light has come to us from public offices, both home and foreign ; and in dealing with a mass of new materials I have been led to write my book afresh. The change of title hardly corresponds to the material change. It would be no misuse of words to say that * William Penn : Founder of Pennsylvania/ is substantially a new book.

6 St. James's Terrace, Regent's Park.

Note.

In the first edition of 'William Penn' appeared an Extra Chapter on the charges brought by Macaulaj against Penn. The five specific censures were confronted with the actual names and dates, and every fact alleged as ground for censure was shown to be no fact at all. With a consent most rare in matters of this kind the press accepted this defence, and almost every one expected that the calumnies would be withdrawn.

On some points he gave way; especially as to William Kiffin and the Prince of Orange.

In his first edition he had repres-ented Penn as being 'employed by the heartless and venal sycophants of Whitehall" to seduce Kiffin into the acceptance of an alderman's gown and failing to induce that sturdy Baptist to comply. I met this statement with the words of KiflBn ; words which proved that Penn was not employed 'in the work of seduction;' and that Kiffin dUJ accept 'an alderman's gown,' Macaulay fenced wdth the first citation, but the second smote him, and he added to his text that Kiffin took the alderman's gown.

In his first edition he had said in reference to the Prince of Orange : ' All men were anxious to

know what he thought of the declaration

Penn sent copious disquisitions to the Hague, and even went thither in the hope that his eloquence, of which he had a high opinion would pre ve irresistible.' It was shown that not a word in this paragraph was true. Penn sent no copious disquisitions to the Hague in 1687. He did not go

NOTE.

over in the hope that his eloquence would prove irresistible. He did not go at all. Macaulay drew his pen across this passage ; replacing what was proved to be a falsehood by a sneer.

My hope was that Macaulay would in time withdraw his charges as disproved. I had some reason for this hope. His mind was racked by doubts, and he was often busy with this portion of his book. It is within my knowledge that his latest thoughts on earth were given to Penn and that which he had said of Penn. Some part of what he might have done, the world can guess from what he did. He ceased the work of calumny. In what he wrote after 1857, there is not a single sneer at Penn. His indexes were greatly changed. He struck out much that was false, and more that was abusive. Penn's Jacobitism was no longer 'scandalous,^ his word was no longer a 'falsehood.' Penn was no longer charged with ' treasonable conduct,' with ' flight to France,' and with 'renewing his plots.' What else Macaulay might have done can only be surmised ; but it is fair to think that changes in his index would have been followed by amendments in his text. I know that he was far from satisfied with his 'Notes' of 1857, and that he was engaged in reconsidering the defence of Penn when he leaned back in his chair and died.

Unhappily he passed away, and made no other sign. The accusations in his text remain : and it is only just that the defence of Penn. extended and adapted to the present time, should reappear.

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LIFE OF WILLIAM PENN.

CHAPTER I. Old and New Fortunes (1644)

The Penns of Penn were an old family, living in Bucks during the wars of the Red and White Roses, three or four miles from the town of Beaconsfield. in the parish from which they seem to have got their name. These Penns of Penn have long since passed away.

In very old times a branch of this family removed to the north of Wiltshire, where they held a small estate in land, a hundred pounds a-year. on the skirts of Brad on forest, on the borders of the shire. Their seat was called Penn's Lodge, a 'genteel ancient house ' and in the town of Minety, across the border, they had a second house. The last of these old Penns of Brad on forest was William Penn of Penn's Lodge and Minety. who survived his only son also a William I'enn, and dying in 1591 at a great age. was buried in Minety Church, near the altar. On the old man's death the property was sold to pay his debts, and this connexion of the Penn family with Penn's Lodge and Minety ceased.

This patriarch of failing fortune left two grandsons William and Giles, to begin the world afresh. Giles went to Bristol took to the sea and entered into trade. He sailed into the North Sea; he crossed the Bay of Biscay ; he visited the Sp anil

LIFE OF WILLIAM PENX.

ish ports; he caught some glimpses of the pirate holds. The skipper had his iips and downs; for some of his ventures turned out ill; the rovers seized his goods, the factors cheated him ; yet on the whole he made his way. In Bristol he found a lady to his mind ; a Gilbert of Yorkshire, who had recently come into the west country ; and marrying her. he took a house in that city for her home and there his sons, George and William (the future admiral) , were in due time born, though at an interval of twenty years.

George, the elder born of these two Bristol boys, was early put to work under his father's eye. He learned the business of a merchant, and spent his youth in passing from Cadiz to Antwerp and Rotterdam, until he fell in love with a lady of Antwerp, a Catholic in creed and a subject of the Crown of Spain, This love was happy, and on being united to the woman of his heart George Penn set up his home at San Lucar, the port of Seville, then a busy, thriving town. George, having no offspring, brought his wife's sisters from Antwerp to live with her. and made for them a pleasant home in that Morisco port, near the English hospice of St. George.

William, the younger born of these two Bristol boys, was put to sea. Captain Giles Penn. his father, roved about the Spanish. Portuguese, and Flemish ports ; and William worked his way. under that father's eye. from the lowest work on board his vessel to the highest office on the quarterdeck.

After George's settlement in San Lucar. Captain Giles Penn. the father, turned his keel towards the Moorish ports, then opening up a new and tempting branch of trade. The Moors of Fez and Susa were in want of many things that Bristol could 12

OLD AND NEW FORTUNES.

supply— tin. lead, and iron most of all— and Giles, having paid a visit to the ports, from Tetuan to Sallee. observing the course of trade and picking up the native speech, began to fetch from Bristol such commodities as he found would sell. But this new trade was only to be carried on at daily risk of life. The Spanish court had closed the Barbary ports by paper blockade —much as they had closed the American ports. Such ports were lawless in a certain sense, the natives having built and manned a swarm of boats in which they roved about the seas and preyed on vessels under every flag. ]n fact, these Barbary ports were pirate-ports. From Tunis to Sallee the African harbours sent out every spring a fleet of rovers ; some of which swept the coasts of Spain on her eastern side, some on her western side ; those pushing out as far as the Genoese waters, these coming up into the German and Irish seas. They chased all colours, and they seized all ships. They not only took the goods on board, but sold the officers and crews as slaves. Muley Mohammed, Emperor of Morocco, tried his best to limit this warfare of the sea to Spain ; but his seat of government was far away from the coast, and his unruly subjects of the sea-ports would not stay their hands to please a young and feeble prince. Sallee, the busiest of these pirate nests, was in revolt against his rule.

A quick and able man, this Captain Penn not only knew that court favour would be useful to him in his perilous trade, but saw how favour could be won at court by simple means. King Charles was fond of falconry, and (iiles brought home with him a cast of Tetuan hawks. Charles quickly let him know that he would like more hawks, on which the Bristol skipper told him he could get these birds if the King would give him 13

LIFE OF WILLIAM PENN.

letters of protection to the Moorish governor of the town. Lord Conway drew up letters in his favour, and Giles went back to Tetuan with the King's command to buy him Barbary horses, as well as hawks. On his return to England he came to town, when he made the acquaintance of Sir Robert Mansel. Edward Nicholas Endymion Porter, and other gentlemen of the court. Mansel had a great opinion of the skipper, and wrote to Lord Dorchester, then Secretary of State in his behalf. For Giles was in some trouble about a sale of cargoes in Tetuan; the proceeds had been seized, and Captain Penn was much afraid of being clapped in jail. His great friends helped him, for the King, in love with his new hawks, was eager for his agent to go out again.

In passing from Bristol to Barbary for several years, Giles Penn became acquainted with the Moors their ports, their customs, and their speech. At Sallee he was pained to hear that hundreds of English captives were said to be enslaved in that pirate stronghold ; some of them were women ; but, the port of Sallee being in revolt against the empire nothing could be done for them in the native court. On coming home Penn laid his news before the King, with full reports of what he had seen and done, and hints of measures by which the captives might be released. His plans were laid before the Council and approved. A fleet was manned and victualled for the voyage. Admiral Rainsborough was appointed to the chief command ; and there was a talk of sending out Captain Penn as Rainsborough's Vice-admiral. The skipper came to London, lodged at the Black Boy. in Ave Maria Lane and saw Lord Cottington and Lord Portland, who consulted him on every detail of the expedition the ships to be 14

OLD AM) NEW FORTUNES.

sent out, the stores to be laid in the crews to be impressed, the mode of approaching the piratetown, and the general policy of the voyage. But after being detained in London more than half a year he was dismissed with money and thanks; the money not much, the thanks still less. The voyage was a great success, Sallee was taken, the prisoners were released, and Muley Mohammed, on receiving back his revolted port, repaid the citizens, who had bought these English captives from Algerines the value of their liberated slaves.

To prevent this traffic in English flesh and blood, the London merchants prayed the King to appoint a consul in Sallee offering to pay all charges from the profits of their trade; and when the Council wrote to ask them who should be sent out, they answered Captain Penn. A warrant was accordingly drawn up and on the 30th of December, 1637. Giles Penn of Bristol was appointed His Majesty's Consul at Sallee.

WTien Captain Penn went to reside in Sallee. his son William kept his ship, until ship and man were taken together into the service of King Charles. At Rotterdam , the Bristol boy had fallen in with Margaret, a daughter of Hans Jasper— of that town — a girl with rosy flesh and nimble wit —and being taken by her comely face, had offered her his heart and taken up her own in pledge. But AYilliam was a prudent lover. Bent on rising in the world — perhaps rising to be Penn of Penn's Lodge —he had left the lady in her father's house on the canal, till he could lodge her in a better home than a poor skipper's cabin in a merchant-ship.

In those days every vessel going out of Thames or Severn on a distant voyage was armed ; with five guns, ten guns twenty guns as the case 15

LIFE OF WILLIAM PENN.

might need. She armed according to the seas she had to cross, the pirates to resist; and every officer on board was trained in all the details of war at sea. The trading navy was a fighting navy. When the country wanted fleets, and men to officer these fleets, she had only to send for the port-reeves and masters of companies, hire the vessels, and engage the officers and crews. The commercial navy was not the reserve ; it was the actual fleet ; but only called and paid in time of war.

In 1639, when the future Admiral was eighteen years and six months old, the Dutch acquired, by two great victories over Spain, a perfect command of the Narrow Seas. Tromp rode within sight of Dover Cliffs, and Charles was suddenly smitten with the want of money, ships, and men. The money was refused him ; but he found no difficulty in procuring ships and men. The craft in which William Penn was serving as a skipper seems to have been hired by the Crown ; and thus a lad of twenty passed into the public service with lieutenant's rank. Even now he would not marry ; and his rosy Margaret could wait. Knowing his duty as few men know it, he was soon employed, and soon rewarded for success. At twenty-one he was a captain. A few months later, fortune still going with him, he received a regular commission in the King's service, with the promise of the first ship worthy of his fame ; and having got his commission in his pocket, he ran over to Rotterdam and claimed his bride.

From that day forward Penn was always rising. When on shore he lived with his young wife in the naval quarter, near the Tower. His frank and jovial ways were highly relished. He had seen the world; he sang a stave; he loved a prank and 16

OLD AND NEW FORTUNES.

jest; and drank his wine with any salt alive. •Dutch Teg,' with 'more wit than Penn himself.' says Pepys, was jeered at first, until her friends discovered that both she and Captain Penn were folks to rise.

A first step for the young captain of the royal navy was to find employment for his talent. The great dispute of King and Commons as to which should command the marine had just been settled (1643) by the appointment of Warwick, in opposition to the will of Charles, to the office of Lord High Admiral. A part of the fleet, stationed in the Irish seas, adhered to the royal cause under the command of Sir John Pennington, whom the King had vainly tried to make Lord Admiral ; but the number of his vessels was not formidable even at first, and capture and desertion soon reduced them to such a state of weakness as to prevent their being troublesome to the Parliamentary chiefs.

One of Pennington's captured ships was the Fellowship, Captain Burley, cut out in Milford Haven ; a vessel of twenty-eight guns ; the third in size and weight then serving in the Irish seas. This ship was given to Captain Penn, who received his orders to sail in the service of his country ; and though his wife Margaret was then in a critical state, expecting to be confined, he went on board. At six o'clock in the morning, all being ready, he shipped his anchor and dropped down the Thames. But he was suddenly recalled to his house on Tower Hill. The Fellowship was detained in the river three weeks, and during these three weeks the Founder of Pennsylvania was born into the world.

The day of his birth was Monday, October the fourteenth, 1644.

2 17

CHAPTER II. Sea-Gexeral Pexx (1644-1655)

After Penn of Penn, and Penn of Penn's Lodge' the boy was christened William. Round in face, with soft blue eyes and curling hair the boy was 'a love ' not only in his mother's eyes^ but in his father's heart. Captain Penn had now a son to fight for; and as soon as Peg was fit to be left, her husband joined his ship and after visiting his admiral in the Downs, pushed onto Portsmouth, where he took Lord Broghill and his company on board. With Broghill Captain Penn formed a friendship which was never broken till his death, and which descended to his son. On landing Broghill at Kinsale, Penn put to sea and cruised about the opening of St. George's Channel from Milford Haven to the Cove of Cork.

In this service he remained some years; the ablest, if not the boldest cruiser in that section of the Commonwealth fleet. The prizes which he seized were sometimes rich ; and he was able to remove his wife and child from the close atmosphere of Tower Hill to the lawns and gardens of a country house. For some brief time he hired a place at Wanstead in Essex, to which he ran on leave. A daughter Margaret and a son Richard, were in season added to the nursery in which William broke his toys ; heirs not only to their father's gains, but the fortune made in foreign lands by 'Uncle George.'

The first great grief which fell upon the Wanstead circle came as news from San Lucar in Spain. 18

SEA-GENERAL PENN.

An English factor living in a Spanish port. George Penn was watched with jealous eyes by native priests and monks who had unluckily, access to his house as the confessors of his wife and of the sisters of his wife. These women were not only Catholics in faith but subjects of Philip the Fourth. Now George was a prudent man ; a factor who kept his shop and held his tongue ; so that malice could find no flaw in him even though it had three or four female confessions every week to work upon. But as he grew in wealth these priests grew angry at his blameless life. How could a heretic be a blameless man ? Was he ever seen at mass? Was he known to confess his sins? Did he honour the Spanish saints? Spies were set upon him ; his ^ife was questioned ; his wife's sisters were examined ; and when nothing could be found against him that would justify the civil power in dealing with his case they got from the Holy Ofiice in Seville a secret warrant for his arrest.

Officers came down from Seville to San Lucar, broke into his house, anathematized him seized his papers and books impounded his goods his plate, his jewels, his furniture, his horses, and his slaves. They seized the things in his house and magazines, as well as those on board his ships in the port. Having got his person and his goods, they separated him from his ^ife and then with holy incantations, cast him out. body and soul, from the Church of Christ and the society of men.

Nothing escaped the rapacity of these brigands ; from the wine in his cellar, to the nail in his wall. The property they seized was worth tweh^e thousand pounds. His wife was carried off he knew not whither; he himself was dragged to Seville, where he was cast into a dungeon, only eight 19

LIFE OF WILLIAM PEXX.

feet square, and dark as the grave. In this living tomb he was left with a loaf of bread and a jug of water. For seven days no one came near him ; and then the jailor brought him another loaf another jug of water, and disappeared. No one was allowed to visit him in his cell no letter or message was suffered to be sent out. He vanished from the world as completely as if the earth had opened in the night and sucked him in.

At the end of the first month of his confinement there was a break in the monotony of his life. The masked familiars of the Holy Office came into his cell, took him by the arms, stript him naked, tied him fast to the iron bars of his dungeon door, and one of them, armed with a whip of knotted cords, dealt out fifty lashes on his back. Each month this flogging was repeated, the new stripes crossing and tearing up the former wounds until his body was one festering sore. And all this time he was unable to learn the name of his accuser and the nature of his offence. He could not see his wife. He could not learn whether she was alive or dead.

At every blow they asked him to confess his crimes. What crimes? They could not say: he must confess of his own will and virtue. What was he to say? He would have told them anything, true or false, to stay their hands; for George was not a martyr ; and he only wished to live and trade in peace.

Three years elapsed without producing the confessions wanted by the Holy Office. George was then brought into the trial-chamber, and in the presence of seven judges was accused of various crimes :— of being a heretic ; of denying some of the seven sacraments; of presuming to marry a Catholic lady ; of persuading his wife to change 20

SEA-GENERAL PENX.

her creed ; of meaning to carry his wife into England ; of not hearing- mass in San Lucar ; of not confessing to a priest; of eating flesh on fastdays ; and of doubting the miracles wrought by Spanish saints. He pleaded not guilty. But instead of producing witnesses to prove his alleged crimes, the judges ordered him to be tortured in their presence, until he confessed the truth of what was charged against him. For a while his strength and resolution bore him up ; but his tormentors persevered, and at the end of four hours of excruciating and accumulating torments, he offered to confess anything they would suggest. Not satisfied with a confession which by the usages of Spain gave up his whole property to the Holy Office, the judges put him to the rack again, and by still more refined and delicate torture forced from him a terrible oath that he would live and die a Catholic, and would defend that form of faith at the risk of his life against every enemy, on pain of being burned to death. He was then cut down from the rack, placed on a hurdle, and conveyed to his former dungeon, where the surgeon had to set his broken limbs, and swathe his lacerated flesh. A little light was now let into his cell ; but ten weeks elapsed before he could be lifted from his bed of pain.

Neither George himself nor those who were nursing him back to life, expected that he would quit his cell for any other purpose than to make a holiday for the Sevillian mob. Near to his dungeon lay the public square in which heretics Jews, and Moors, were burnt in honour of Holy Church. To that infamous square every man condemned by the Inquisition, and whether he confessed his sins or not. was always led ; and George supposed that when his limbs were strong enough to bear 21

LIFE OF WILLIAM PENN.

his weight he would be marched like others to the place of death.

He could not know as yet how strong of arm, how quick to save his country was becoming, since the Stuart dynasty was put away.

Captain Penn while cruising off the coast of Munster, ran down a prize called the ,SY. Patrick, bound for Bilboa in Spain on board of which he found among his prisoners Don Juan de Urbina, secretary to the Spanish Viceroy of the Low Countries. Penn seized this great official, and stripping him naked thrust him into the hold. Don Juan talked big, as men like him are apt to do; and Seilor Bernardo, Philip's envoy in London, made complaints to the Council of the insult offered to a man of such high birth and such official rank. Of course, apologies were made; the Don was put into softer hands ; and Admiral Swanley was instructed to inquire into the conduct of Captain Penn. Then came out the facts. If such acts of wild justice could not be openly maintained the tale of George's suffering went to the nation's heart. Don Juan was sent home in another ship, but the prisoner of the Holy Office in whose cause he had been seized, was snatched from the burning pile.

So soon as ' Uncle George' could walk he was fetched from his cell in the Inquisition by the seven judges and their households; robed in the San Benito and carried in the midst of a great procession of monks and priests through the streets of Seville to the cathedral church. In this church a scaffold was raised up which they made him mount, so that every eye could see him as his sentence was slowly read by the secretary of the Inquisition. That sentence opened in the usual way. The prisoner was a heretic ; his goods were '22

SEA-GENERAL PENN.

confiscated ; hia wife was taken from him ; but for certain reasons hia life was to be spared. He was pardoned by holy Church ; but he was driven out from Spain for ever; his wife was given to a good Catholic for the salvation of her soul; and he was threatened with fire and fagot should he fall away from his newly-adopted faith.

While the three children of Captain l*enn were growing up at Wanstead, Penn was getting rich and rising to higher rank. His prizes yielded him a great deal more than he got in pay ; and some of this money he laid out in land. At twenty-three he was Rear-admiral in the Irish Sea; at twenty-five he was Yice-admiral ; and at twentynine, under the Commonwealth, he was sent as Vice-admiral into the Straits of Gibraltar, the ports and cities of which he had known from his earliest years.

Great changes were taking place on land, of which he took but distant note. Charles Stuart, for whom his father had bought hawks and horses, had lost his crown and life. The hero of Dunbar and Worcester was lord of all. But the change from parliament to protector wrought no change in Vice-admiral Penn, who stuck to his duties and avoided politics. When Cromwell announced to the fleet that he had taken the reins of power into his own hands, Penn was one of the first to send in his adhesion, with that of all the officers under his command.

For the next few years the hand of genius was felt in every department of the administration. While the great powers of the State were in conflict. Spain had treated us with haughty disdain, —France had insulted us at every turn —even Holland fancied we were no longer worthy of her ire. But Cromwell's arms soon taught them better. 2.3

LIFE OF WILLIAM PENN.

Ireland punished and Scotland pacified, he turned his resolute face towards Holland. France and Spain. The Dutchman lay the nearest and had most provoked his wTath ; but Holland was preeminently a naval power, and in dealing with her his invincible infantry was of little use. Genius finds its own resources. Resolved to infuse into the navy, as he had already done into the army his own heroic spirit, he employed in his fleet two captains of his camp, Blake and Monk; but these ofiicers, though filled with an energy of spirit like his own, were in a great measure ignorant of the sea. All that courage, activity, and resolution could do he expected them to accomplish ; but he saw the necessity of placing by the side of these soldiers a worthy sea-captain, and for this important post he selected the young Admiral of the Straits. The Lord Protector knew that Penn was not attached to his person and government; but he needed his services; and seeing that Penn was a worldly man, and of the earth most earthy, he supposed that pensions and honours could secure his sword, if not his heart. WTiat Cromwell wanted was his sword. Vice-admiral Penn had no objection to fight the countrymen of his wife. He was a sailor, as he used to say, and must be faithful to his flag.

When peace was made with Holland, Cromwell turned to Spain, the old and strenuous enemy of his country. England had a thousand scores to settle with the Spanish court; and two great expeditions were prepared in silence in the spring of 1655 ; one expedition, under Sea-general Blake, to act in Europe, sweep the Spanish coasts, and fight the Spanish fleets wherever he could find them ; while a second expedition was to cross the ocean, search the Spanish main, alarm the coasts and 24