ROBERT MORRIS Etched for this work by Albert Rosenthal from the painting y Gilbert Stuart Four companies from Pennsylvania went to Albany, the Lieutenant-Governor procuring them clothing, arms, and ammunition on his own credit, in expectation of remittances from LieutenantGeneral St. Clair, who was to go from England to Louisburg as commander-in-chief. But St. Clair and the money not arriving, Thomas applied to the Assembly for a loan to His Majesty to pay for those articles and discharge the arrears due to the soldiers and provide subsistence for the time being. The House answered that there was no money to lend to the Crown, but he could use his own judgment about applying what was left of the 5,000l. to the present exigencies. Four months subsistence from the time of the arrival of the companies at Albany was secured from Gen. Gooch, and Thomas applied to the Assembly to continue this. The Assembly then thought that as the time for the campaign had elapsed, the troops could come home. On October 25, 1746, John Penn, "the American," died unmarried at Hitcham, Co. Bucks, England. Thomas, in condoling with the Assembly upon the event, spoke of his humanity, good nature, and affability. I-26 401 TH CHAPTER XIII. THOMAS PENN AND RICHARD PENN HE Penn estates in Pennsylvania and what is now Delaware were of four kinds. First, the millions of unoccupied and unappropriated acres, vast in future value, although their mineral wealth was not then dreamed of; as to these millions of acres, there were two sets of claims to be satisfied, those of the Indians and those of white purchasers whose rights had not been surveyed; the Indians, as we have seen, had by this time relinquished all the land southeast of the Blue mountains, and the "first purchasers" from William Penn had nearly all secured the warrant, the survey, and the patent whereby their indefinite property of so many acres "in Pennsylvania" had been located, and the subsequent purchasers took up their lands rapidly, some making bargains for definite tracts, the whole matter of granting warrants and making surveys as well as fixing price being in the hands of the Proprietaries and the officers who were their private servants. Then, secondly, were the quit rents, originally a shilling annually for every one hundred acres taken up by purchasers, higher on later grants; but as to the lots in Philadelphia these rents were larger, and as to the "bank lots," i. e., those on the east side of Front street running down the bank to the water, these rents were to be increased at the end of every fifty years to a rent equal to one-third of the value then to be ascertained of both lot and improvements thereon. The quit rents were not easily, and never promptly, collected: they were vexatious in the country, and in |