King William had taken the government of Pennsylvania away from William Penn probably because he thought that a colony governed by a Quaker friend of James Stuart might easily become a prey to French greed. But when the king and Penn became reconciled, the province was given back to Penn, in August, 1694. Although he was anxious to see his new city of Philadelphia again, it was not until five years later that Penn was able to cross the Atlantic. This was largely due to the fact that he had very little money left.

His colony of Pennsylvania had cost him a great deal of money; and, although he had expected large returns from the land and natural products there, he found that the colony caused greater and greater leakage to his purse. The settlers would not pay even the very small quit-rent of one shilling a year for each hundred acres, and were constantly calling on Penn to help them. His estates in Ireland brought in no profits, and the property at Worminghurst that had belonged to Mrs. Penn had been left in trust for her oldest son, Springett Penn, who was then about nineteen years old. All that Penn received from that property was enough to support and educate the three children.

While he stayed in England he began preaching again, and found that now, under William and Mary, the Quakers were allowed the fullest liberty to hold their meetings, and that religious persecution was a thing of the past. His preaching was very successful. Wherever he spoke great crowds gathered to hear the words of a man who had had such a remarkable history, who had been a close friend of King James, and who had been in hiding for some years. Penn was unquestionably a very eloquent speaker, and his many experiences must have added very much to the interest of what he had to tell the quiet-living Quakers of the English countryside.

Three years after his first wife died Penn married again, this time Hannah Callowhill, of Bristol. Soon afterward he lost his oldest child, Springett, a boy of great charm and a close companion of his father. Of Guli Penn's two other children, William became dissipated and was a great disappointment to Penn, and Letitia married William Aubrey, who turned out to be a very disagreeable son-in-law. By his second wife Penn had six children, four of whom, John, Thomas, Margaret, and Richard, ultimately became the joint owners of Pennsylvania.

Penn now moved to the English city of Bristol, where he continued making plans for his province, and preaching and arguing with people who did not approve of his religion. The Quakers were then doing a certain amount of missionary work, and the story goes that Penn sought out a young Russian prince who was studying shipbuilding in England, and gave him Quaker books which he explained to him. In time this prince became the Emperor Peter the Great of Russia, and he is said always to have taken great interest in the Quakers because of what Penn had taught him.

Meantime, much had happened in Pennsylvania. The history of the province had been full of ups and downs, many of its difficulties being due to the fact that for fifteen years Penn had been obliged to stay away from it. There had been many squabbles between the settlers and the men appointed to govern the province, but in spite of disagreements the colony had grown until now there were nearly twenty thousand settlers there.

When Penn left his colony in 1684, he had placed the power in the charge of a Council of eighteen men, and each of the eighteen had felt that it was his duty to do all the governing. When he learned that this system did not work well, Penn had tried to mend matters by doing away with the Council and appointing five commissioners. But this did not work very well, either, and in less than a year Penn appointed an old soldier of Cromwell's army, Captain John Blackwell, to replace the commissioners, and act as a deputy governor. The Quakers, however, did not like being in charge of a soldier, and made matters so difficult for Captain Blackwell that he resigned his post. Then followed another Council, and then another deputy governor, so that in ten years the form of government was changed no less than six times.

When William III. took the province away from Penn, he appointed a captain general, Colonel Benjamin Fletcher, who served until the colony was given back to Penn, a year and ten months later. Then Penn appointed his cousin, Markham, to be deputy governor, with two assistants. Markham, although he had a troubled time of it, managed to keep charge until William Penn was able to join him in 1699. All this time Penn had been paying salaries and spending money on his home at Pennsbury, and had been receiving nothing in return.

There was another reason for Penn's returning to his colony as soon as he could, and that was that King William was growing impatient at the stories he heard of the misgovernment of Pennsylvania, and was determined that something should be done to put things on a more stable footing. So, under the urging of friends at court who knew the king's mind, Penn collected what money he could, and on September 9, 1699, embarked with his wife and his daughter Letitia on the ship Canterbury at Southampton. The voyage was long and stormy, but three months later—toward the end of November—the ship reached the mouth of the Delaware River. The ship was so slow in sailing up the river that when New Castle was reached, Penn left her and was rowed to Chester.

Many settlers, hearing of the arrival of the proprietor of the province, flocked to Chester to greet him. Among them was a Quaker who had been well known in England, Thomas Story, who had traveled extensively in America. Penn and Story spent the night together at the house of Lydia Wade, near Chester, and Story told the proprietor all that had been happening in the province, including the scourge of yellow fever, or "Barbadoes distemper," as it was often called, that had visited Philadelphia a short time before and proved fatal to more than two hundred people.

Next day Penn returned to the Canterbury and sailed on up to Philadelphia. Here he landed, paid a short visit to Markham, the deputy governor, and then went to the Quaker meetinghouse, where he preached to a great congregation.

He brought with him to Philadelphia a young man named James Logan, who acted as his secretary; in time Logan became Penn's chief representative, and one of the wisest of those who helped to govern the province.

Penn had no house of his own in Philadelphia, so he, with his wife, his daughter Letitia, and James Logan, stayed for a month at the house of Edward Shippen, and then moved to one of the largest houses of the town, then known as "the slate-roof house"; it stood on the east side of Second Street between Chestnut and Walnut. There his son John was born, and the boy was always affectionately known as "John the American."

The Slate-Roof House. (See Page 128.)

Most of the people of Pennsylvania, and particularly the Quakers, were very glad to have Penn with them again. He was a man well able to govern, but not generally successful in choosing others to govern for him. There was one man, Colonel Quarry, who had been sowing dissension and distrust of Penn in the province, but Penn sent for him, and after a talk, Quarry admitted that he had been wrong and the two became friends. One of the things Penn soon learned, a thing that seems strange enough to us, was that there was a good deal of piracy going on in the neighborhood of his province, and that many of the pirates were actually living in comfort in Philadelphia! It did not take Penn long to get after these men, and he soon had them arrested and punished in a way that spoke well for his energy and zeal. Other crimes and wrongs he punished or corrected, and the Quakers soon found they were right in believing that their governor was as good an executive as he was a preacher.

He was very busy that winter, holding meetings of his Council and passing new laws, preaching to Quakers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, surveying a manor of ten thousand acres at Rockhill, in Bucks County, for his son John, and overseeing repairs to his country place at Pennsbury. Incidentally, it is interesting to recall that, liberal and freedom-loving as he was, it had not occurred to him to oppose the custom of holding negro slaves, for he himself had many slaves in his own employment.

He urged the settlers to make their prisons not merely places of restraint but workhouses and reformatories, and as a result Pennsylvania prisons were far better managed than those in other colonies. He introduced the custom of having a night watchman go through the streets, calling out the hour, the state of the weather, and any news of interest. In many ways he improved conditions, showing that he had a real genius for governing and an intense desire to make his province an ideal place in which to live.

Early in the spring of 1700 he moved to his mansion at Pennsbury, twenty miles up the river. It was built of bricks, most of which had been brought from England, and it stood about one hundred rods from the bank of the Delaware. Back of it were deep forests, penetrated by only a few roads and trails. It was said to have cost £5000 to build, a very large sum for a house in the wilderness, but it was the most imposing residence to be found anywhere between the Hudson and Potomac rivers, and had few equals in New York or Virginia.

Penn's Desk.

The house had two stories, with a high attic for servants' rooms, and the main walls were eighteen inches thick. There was a large hall on the first floor, where Penn held meetings of his Council, gave entertainments, and welcomed the Indian chiefs who frequently came to see him. A parlor and a drawing-room were to the north of the hall, a library and a dining-room to the south. As was the custom then, the kitchen was a separate building, but connected with the mansion by a covered passageway. Back of the kitchen was a building called "the brewhouse," where ale and "strong beer" were brewed. There was also a laundry and a stable for twelve horses, and at either end of the main house were small buildings, one of which was Penn's office for the transaction of the affairs of his province, the other for the business of his private estate. This was the way in which the large landowners of colonial times planned their homes and business offices.

When Penn visited Philadelphia, he usually went down the Delaware in his private barge, rowed by six oarsmen. He seems to have enjoyed this mode of travel, and to have taken great pleasure in the scenery along the broad river. Gardens stretched from his house to the water front, and he transplanted many native wild flowers to his own grounds, besides setting out walnuts, hawthorns, hazels, and fruit trees that he brought from England.

He lived in fine style; for William Penn, in spite of his urging simplicity in all things, could always appreciate and enjoy luxury. He had very handsome oak and walnut chairs and tables, satin curtains, a wine cellar well stocked, and six large cisterns for holding water or beer. Frequently he played the part of host to many Indians, and it is said that he once entertained them at a long table spread out-of-doors, serving a hundred turkeys and a large quantity of venison.

While the provincial Assembly was in session in Philadelphia Penn was very busy directing its business, but when it adjourned, he usually turned his attention to questions concerning the Indians, whom he regarded as almost as much his own people as the white settlers. When he made his first treaty with them, he planned to call them together twice each year to renew their treaty of friendship, to adjust any matters of trade that might have arisen, and to smoke the pipe of peace with them. His absence in England had for a long time made these meetings impossible, but he now resumed them, and called the chiefs into conference with him.

The Delaware and Susquehanna tribes, who had now enjoyed his fair treatment for almost twenty years, were anxious to have Penn make agreements with other tribes, more especially those who lived in the country along the Potomac River. So they went to Onas, as Penn was usually called, and he agreed to meet their allies in April, 1701. At this meeting there came to see him many leading Indians,—three kings, and the brother of the Emperor of the Five Nations, as well as forty other chiefs. With all these Penn made treaties of peace and trade, by which the Indians were to be protected from the greed and cunning of white traders, and were, on their part, to sell their furs and skins only to Pennsylvanians. In this way he contrived to keep the red men friendly to the whites in his province, and gained the great benefit of having a bulwark of friendly Indians to protect his colony from enemies. When he made one of these treaties, he sent word of it to the government in England, and so increased his already well-deserved reputation of knowing how to deal with the Indians better than any other governor of an English colony.

At Pennsbury the family lived much like a family of high rank in England. The ladies dressed in silk and wore elaborate caps and buckles and golden ornaments. Penn himself bought no less than four wigs in one year at a cost of nearly twenty pounds. But if he was indulgent to his family and himself, he was always looking after the poor and the sick. When he heard of men or women in prison for debt, he contrived to get them out and start them afresh; he was always ready to listen to and help those who came to him in any distress, and he gave pensions of three shillings a week to many old people who were no longer able to support themselves. His private cash books show a long list of generous giving that far outstrips the sums he spent for his own household use.

Besides his barge on the river he had a coach, a calash, and a sedan chair. He was very fond of good horses, and had a number in his stables. Often, however, he found it easier to explore the neighboring country on foot than on horseback, and he was very fond of taking long walks through the woods. Once he was lost on a hill near Valley Forge, and wandered about for some time when he came to another height from which he saw the Schuylkill River. The first hill he named Mount Misery, and the second Mount Joy, and these names stuck to the hills for some time.

A pleasant little incident is told of how, as William Penn was riding one day to the Quaker meetinghouse at Haverford, outside Philadelphia, he overtook a little barefooted girl, Rebecca Wood, who was also going to the meeting. He took her up behind him on the horse, and the two rode on to the meetinghouse, the little girl's bare legs making an odd contrast to the tall governor in his long coat and knee breeches.

William and Hannah Penn entertained continually at their country home, preferring Pennsbury to the town. Penn's daughter Letitia, however, who was twenty years old, and a very lively, handsome girl, did not care so much for the quiet of the country, and spent most of her time in Philadelphia with the Markhams, the Logans, or the Shippens.

Penn always dealt fairly with the Indians, and they trusted him far more than they did most of the white men. He traveled through New Jersey, New York, and Maryland, being eager to see the country and also to spread Quaker influence as widely as he could in the new world. The life of a country gentleman suited him to perfection, and he was undoubtedly much happier in Pennsylvania than he had been when a courtier at Whitehall in London, or striving to make other people believe that King James was as worthy a king as he himself thought him.

Still, the government of Pennsylvania did not run smoothly even while Penn was there. Quakers and Church of England people were constantly wrangling, and the Assembly would not pass the laws that Penn thought it ought to. He was not making money from his province; he still had to pay large salaries, and he was constantly being asked for money for various purposes. Once he declared that the province had meant a loss to him of £20,000. Occasionally he received payment from the sale of land or for rent, but the settlers were hard people to deal with and paid out their money grudgingly.

The limits of Pennsylvania were still very indefinite, and for the most part were not settled until years later. The province was said to be bounded on the north by the southern limits of New York, and on the south by the northern limits of Maryland. Neither of these boundaries was actually settled until 1768. Westward the boundary was yet more vague, being defined by the words "as far to the westward as Maryland extends." But boundaries were not of great importance then, when there was so much vacant land, although by 1702 great numbers of Germans, Swiss, Huguenots, and Scotch-Irish were coming into the province and taking up homesteads west and north of the little Quaker settlement on the Delaware.

The Pennsylvania Assembly refused to grant certain supplies that were asked by King William in 1701, and at the same time a bill was presented in the English Parliament to change the government of the English colonies in America. By this bill West and East Jersey were to be annexed to New York, and Penn's charter was to be revoked, he being paid a certain sum in return, and his province turned into a Crown colony similar to New York. When Penn heard of this, he thought that he ought to return to England and fight it. This he expected would take him only a short time, and he planned to return to Pennsbury at the end of a year. He wanted to make his home there, and expected his wife and Letitia to stay there until he returned. But his family thought otherwise about being left behind. Penn wrote to James Logan: "I can not prevail on my wife to stay: still less Tishe. I know not what to do." And in another letter he wrote: "The going of my wife and Tishe will add greatly to the expense; more of living in London than of the passage. But they will not be denied."

Both Mrs. Penn and Letitia were probably homesick for their native England. Letitia in particular missed her gay friends at home, and found the Quakers of the province a poor substitute. It happened that later, when she did return to England, she gave up the Quaker faith and became a member of the Church of England. Mrs. Penn, in addition to other reasons for returning home, had already seen that her husband required the help of her firm will and clear insight when he was beset with political troubles in England, and believed she could be of great assistance to him. So when Penn did return, he took his family with him.

He made Andrew Hamilton deputy governor of the province, and James Logan secretary; and on November 4, 1701, sailed from Philadelphia in the ship Dalmahoy. The ship made a very quick run, in fact one of the fastest voyages recorded at that time, taking only thirty-six days to cross; and by the middle of December Penn was again in London. He took apartments in Kensington, that he might be close to the king and Parliament in looking after his title to his province.

It turned out that Penn never went back to Pennsylvania again, although some of his children did. Politics were to take all his attention; he was to have no more of the country life in America that he had grown so fond of, and that seemed to bring out all the best qualities in his many-sided nature.