pointed, as I understand from Wm. Penn, for she told him she did not want to hear him, and such as he, for he was a scholar and a wise man, and she did not question but he could preach; but she wanted to hear some of our mechanics preach, as husbandmen, shoemakers, and such like rustics, for she thought they could not preach to any purpose. Wm. Penn told her some of these were rather the best preachers we had among us.'" (Buck's "Penn in America," p. 320.)

In such employments and pleasures he passed nearly two years. The full details of his acts as a governor, his dealings with the Assembly, and his troubles with the three lower counties, as Delaware was then called, are given in full by some of his biographers, and best of all by Janney and by Buck. I can touch on these subjects only lightly and merely say that he seemed to manage all these affairs easily and without the gnawing care and annoyance which they gave him in England. He was still paying official salaries and assisting this person and that with money; and he declared that Pennsylvania now stood him a loss of £20,000.* The Assembly would do nothing to make this up, and the returns from his quit-rents and sales of land were very slow.

Still he seems to have intended to remain in his province for an indefinite period. He was enjoying to the utmost the wilderness and what he called “a

country and proprietary life." But in the summer of 1701 he heard that there was a movement in England to turn all the proprietary governments into royal colonies under the direct rule of the crown, and that a bill for that purpose had been already

* Janney, p. 438.

introduced in Parliament.

He felt that he must

return to check this measure, and he prepared for his departure with the greatest regret. He hoped to return so soon that he wanted to leave his wife and daughter in Pennsylvania; but they insisted on returning with him.

In a letter to Logan at this time, after saying that all he has to dispose of in the world is in the province, he adds, "having no more gains by government to trust to for bread."* This chance sentence may possibly throw some light on the vexed question whether he had any position of profit under the government of James II.

At the close of October he was ready to sail; but before leaving he agreed with the Assembly on the new constitution he had promised them. It was a more simple document than those which had preceded it. There was no provincial council, or double house of legislature, but merely a governor to be appointed by him, and an assembly elected by the people; and this assembly had the right to choose its own speaker and other officers, originate laws, and could adjourn when it pleased. It was a very liberal government; for in many of the colonies the adjournment of the assembly was in control of the governor, who by that means could worry them into passing the laws he wanted.

The constitution abolished the provincial council, which had been a legislative body elected by the people like the assembly; and apparently there was

* Janney, p. 431

not even to be a governor's council; but Penn and his heirs after him always appointed a body of this sort to assist the governor; the people in vain protesting that it was unconstitutional. The constitution, as a whole, proved to be an excellent one, and the Pennsylvanians lived under it for seventy-five years, down to the outbreak of the Revolution, a longer period than they have lived under any of their subsequent frames of government.

XXII

A COURTIER AGAIN, AND AGAIN IN PRISON

WHEN Penn sailed away from his province, at the close of October, 1701, he thought he could quickly dispose of the measure in Parliament against the proprietary colonies, and would soon enjoy Pennsbury again. But he became absorbed in other things, and he never again returned to Pennsylvania.

But as

He had a quick voyage of only a month, instead of the three months of his outward passage. soon as he arrived we find Pennsylvania becoming a torment to him, instead of the great pleasure it always seems to have been when he lived in it. His expenses were no doubt greater in England, which made his steady losses by the province more apparent. But a greater loss was to find that during the two years of his absence his son William had got into very evil ways of dissipation. This young man was the last of Guli's children,-bright and accomplished in a way, but he had been keeping "top company," as his father called it. He was married and had a family of children, but that seems to have been no restraint upon him.

In great bitterness of spirit, Penn ever after blamed this loss on Pennsylvania: for if he had not been absent there for two years, he thought he could have saved his son. As time passed and the young

man's condition became more and more irreclaimable, Penn became all the more convinced that if it had not been for those two years of separation he could have stopped the evil habits before they became so firmly fixed.

The best thing to do, he thought, was to send him out to the province, where there was very little "top company," where he could live at Pennsbury and enjoy the simple pleasures of the woods. He had, it seems, contracted heavy debts in England, and his creditors were beginning to press, which in those days meant imprisonment. Penn evidently hoped to reclaim his son by indulging part of his love of pleasure. He was to have hounds for hunting foxes, deer, and wolves, to be taken on fishing excursions, little journeys to see the Indians, and everything of that sort that was wholesome; and the servants at Pennsbury were instructed to take good care of his dogs. The young man, in short, was sent to America with a very expensive outfit, and, in a letter to Logan, Penn complains of this as another heavy loss. Logan was instructed to look after the wayward youth, get him good acquaintances, encourage Penn's old friends to be kind and helpful to him, and prevent, if possible, "rambling to New York and mongrel correspondence."

In the spring of 1702, a few months after Penn's return, William III. died, and I cannot find any record of Penn's sorrow on that occasion. Queen Anne succeeded to the throne. She was the daughter of James, but a Protestant, and married to a Protestant, Prince George of Denmark. She continued the Tol