To put some perspective on Penn’s Frame of Government, his personal compact with the First Purchasers was based on what E. Digby Baltzell calls “the property theory of government”, i.e. Penn had been awarded sole proprietorship of Pennsylvania by the King at the time, and that proprietorship was Penn’s personal property, which would upon his death be inherited by his successors. Legally, Pennsylvania was a very large manor, as far as English law considered it–given its title by the King, only the King could rescind it. Penn himself saw the colony venture as a more a real estate venture than setting up a policy system. Land sales and land ownership were (1) his goal, and (2) the chief source of power in the administration of the very large English manor that was Pennsylvania. His real estate campaign was remarkable. Baltzell credits him with being an excellent salesmen and publicist, which is confirmed by another historian, William I Hull who asserted “The private motives of his perspective colonists to which Penn appealed … were religious, political and economic” [99] William I Hull, William Penn (New York, Oxford University Press,, 1937), pp. 221. In other words, First Purchasers of Pennsylvania land and the initial colonists, were almost all Quakers, although diverse in ethnic origin, or affiliated with the Quaker religious movement, but aside from that came to North America for their own reasons, owing no particular loyalty to Penn, other than the land contract they he had convinced them to sign.
From this diverse lot of First Purchasers Penn recruited a number of individuals, and brought into the the colony some family and friends. As Baltzell observes “Rather than a coherent class of men who knew what kind of society they wanted, and set about getting it, these men constitute an ideal example of an atomized elite, neither self-selected, nor elected by the people, but appointed by Penn for their plutocratic [wealth] rather than leadership qualifications [99] E. Digby Baltzell, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia (The Free Press, 1979), p. 127.
One man did emerge as a leader, Thomas Lloyd, and he is the individual entrusted to handle Penn’s affairs when he departed America. As previously described, Penn’s woes left Lloyd adrift and Penn’s leadership style and the lack of any popular opinion in his favor, Lloyd gathered independence from Penn, becoming “the first in a long line of bosses [which as we shall later see included Benjamin Franklin] who dominated Pennsylvania politics for much of the state’s history” [[99] E. Digby Baltzell, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia, p. 127. What Lloyd faced was a political culture, resting on a religion of free thinkers who stress tolerance for individual behavior and opinion (and other religions as well), absolute free speech, and what today would call “oppositional tendencies”. Historian Edwin Bronner, the dean of Pennsylvania historians, asserted “ the Quaker attitude toward authority made them an almost impossible people to govern: ‘the Quarrelsome spirit was present constantly, and encompassed nearly every one in the colony, even as fine a person as Thomas Lloyd’ … There was a greater disrespect for law and order in Pennsylvania than might have been expected from a Quaker colony dedicated to a ‘holy experiment’. Gary B. Nash summed the cultural anarchy as a combination of “Utopian propaganda, frail institutions, the effects of the [wilderness/harsh] environment, and the anti-authoritarian instincts of the Quakers contributed to the breakdown in the sense of community in early Pennsylvania” [99] Edwin B. Bronner, William Penn’s ‘Holy Experiment’: the Founding of Pennsylvania (Temple University Press, 1962, p. 252; Gary B. Nash Quakers and Politics: Pennsylvania 1681-1726 (Princeton University Press, 1968p. 174-5. In his opinion Penn’s “charismatic authority” had held it together and, of course, by this point that was exhausted.
By the late 1680’s William Penn, the sole proprietor of the Pennsylvania colony–and its policy system–had left for England, became involved in any number of religious, personal, and political events and affairs, and as far as Pennsylvania went, he took his “eyes off the prize”. By that time for sure, the residents and policy-makers of Pennsylvania were not unhappy that Penn was out of the political picture sitting on the English sidelines, but they were unhappy about any other number of things. Penn’s 1694 motivation behind his return to England was complex, but earlier I summarized it as some version of the “I quit, No!, you’re fired” syndrome. Historians are gentle, usually (correctly) observing that Penn returned to defend his interests against Lord Calvert’s Lower County claims–and Calvert’s troublemaking interference in Pennsylvania politics. Having “quit” twice in my professional career, I think Penn was effectively fired. Also reported in an earlier module, the Glorious Revolution, in all its glorious marvels, intruded in 1689, and Penn was truly fired as sole proprietorship in 1694 but got it back at the end of 1695. After that things got worse financially and legally for Penn, and not until 1698 was his Pennsylvania charter and personal finances stabilized to the degree he could once again concern himself with Pennsylvania.
By that time, however, the local Quaker’s were running the daily affairs of the province through a welter of provincial political structures. Picking up from Module 5.0, Pennsylvania province-level politics and policy-making were near anarchistic by the mid-late 1690’s, with personalistic factions quarreling, and off and on dominance in one or another of the several competing political factions and the institutions they controlled. The one constant that had emerged was the lower house (General Assembly) had taken an oppositional position to Penn and had come to think of itself in that manner. In Penn’s absence an abundance of Quaker immigration continued, but alongside came a goodly number of Anglican Church of England. Anglicans were the source of Quaker discrimination, and it was to escape them that Quakers had set up the Holy Experiment in Pennsylvania.
It was Markham who in 1696, set the stage for an eventual Penn return. Negotiating for almost two years, he reached an agreement/compact with Penn’s opposition: a structural and political compromise that was built around and called “the Act of Settlement”. It represented a significant modification to Penn’s 1681 Frame of Government. Markham was successful in altering the electoral franchise to make it more difficult for Pennsylvania newcomers (inherently less loyal to Penn) in favor of Quakers–still Penn’s base.The presence of Anglican congregations in the City of Brotherly Love stretch the bounds of religious toleration, perhaps more than allowing Catholics in. Penn’s loyalist base resided in the hinterlands, practicing yeoman agriculture in the hinterland “Greene Towns” and counties. The property requirements for farmers were broadened so that farmers could be eligible to vote. That broadening was not extended to urban artisans, a grouping that tended to vote oppositional. By the end of the seventeenth century, Quaker dominance, still in tact, was more tenuous than earlier expected. A two year residency requirement, an element of the Act of Settlement, provided a salve for healing the tension. On the other hand Markham empowered the General Assembly to initiate legislation–now it could indeed make policy and not simply react to Penn’s legislation. The Assembly also could now set its adjournment, and set the franchise eligibility for its membership. As we shall see, if nothing else the Act of Settlement provided each of the two major factions with a political structure from which they could press their interests and policy. A coherence, of sorts, was thrust on the chaotic Frame of Government system. Still, it is remarkable how in that short of time, Penn’s Frame of Government experimental policy system had degenerated to chaos and from chaos to a robust pro-proprietorship and anti-proprietor dynamic that consumed policy and politics in Pennsylvania. In the fifteen year absence of Penn, much had changed in Pennsylvania.
After fifteen years absence, Penn’s opposition hardened and was steadfast in its resistance. By 1695 the Quaker opposition leadership had passed from Thomas Lloyd, to a newcomer far-removed cousin, David Lloyd. David arrived in 1686 and over the next decade roose in the shadow of his cousin. Converting to Quakerism, David Lloyd aggressively resisted the imposition of William and Mary’s Fletcher royal governor–and he broke with the evangelistic Quaker wing. In 1694, with his cousin’s death, David was elected Speaker of the General Assembly. David came from middling background, a member of a younger Quaker cohort, saw Pennsylvania more an opportunity for social mobility, and by this time a generation of indentured servants were entering the free market and looking for the same. Most of the post-Penn immigrants were yeoman or artisan, and the Pennsylvania Quaker community had few aristocrats and gentry, and fewer still owners of manors. This was both an agricultural and urban working class constituency. With some exaggeration, Pennsylvania was almost the total opposite of Virginia in its social and class configuration–with a corresponding configuration in its economic base.
Added to Penn’s opposition was the Lower Three Counties (Delaware). Penn may have won in London the legal battle for the three counties–but he lost it in New Castle (the capital of the Three Counties). Penn had agreed to a sort of federation in which his counties had their own legislature and the Lower Three their own. While successful economically, they could not compete with the fast-rising Quaker Philadelphia. So they broke away from Pennsylvania in 1691, and Markham became their “deputy governor”. When the royal governor Fletcher came on the scene, he engineered a compormise uniting the two, by appointing Markham as Pennsylvania’s deputy governor (Fletcher after all was himself simultaneous governor of New York as well as Pennsylvania)
The opposition, unencumbered with royalist obligations were free to oppose trade restrictions, and to attempt some level of autonomy for the colony from Britain. To complete a thought introduced earlier, the distinction between a colony whose function was commercial trade for North American goods to England (which France for example still practiced), versus a settlement colony which England now universally practiced, meant an understandable, probably inevitable desire–and need– for some degree of colonial autonomy from the Mother Country. The reader now knows this tension was evident, quite evident by 1700. We can also see the natural political structure to lead the colony’s effort to autonomy was the lower house of the colonial legislature. This dynamic was to prove true for each of the American colonies.
The few allies Penn still held (Markham, the most important), were remnants from the now departed royal governor’s administration, and moderate Quakers who opposed the aggressive mini-Quaker fundamentalism that polarized Pennsylvania’s Quaker community. These moderate, relatively pro-Penn forces maintained a tenuous hold on the upper chamber (the Provincial Council, and its derivative the Commission). Penn no longer could rely on his closeness to the King, instead William and Mary used Penn only so longer as he could restore some order in the colony. On a personal level, Penn was not the charismatic religious leader he was fifteen years previous, but was a battered fromer shell. He sat on a precarious jumble of personal debt and debt resulting from his Pennsylvania colony; he had tempered is religious mission, mellowed, if you will, and had a new wife and family. In 1682 through 1684 he sat on top of a near-dictatorship; in 1699 he was resolved to clean op the cat’s litter box that had become Pennsylvania governance–and get out of there back to England.
Penn’s chief source of support came from merchants. Merchants gravitated to Philadelphia and county seats–Pennsylvania’s urban settlements. Their wealth and influence resulted from foreign trade, seaborne trade of food staples/lumber/furs, and Lower County tobacco to the West Indies. From the West Indies these Pennsylvania shippers took on sugar, molasses, run, wine. In England the shippers picked up the commodities needed in Pennsylvania, hard goods, dry and manufactured goods. Like Boston and New York a smuggling, off the books economy, had also taken root to avoid the British Navigation laws–and preying on all this shipping were the famous pirates we so love. Both pirates and merchant smugglers had caught the attention of the King & Queen and their Boards of Trade and Plantations. Penn still in England was caught in the middle, and working with Markham the two worked out a very hazy and flexible trade system that kept both on board supporting Penn–this may have been an exception to Penn’s general inability to be both flexible and responsive to other’s concerns and interests. All good things come to an end, however, and in 1699 the royal couple demanded Markham be fired, and the Board of Trade, supported by the Privy Council, required a strict application of the Navigation laws. Penn decided at that point he would have to return to Pennsylvania and figure out how to square the circle.
In December 1699, Penn landed in Philadelphia. Upon arrival Penn seems to have had two items on his agenda: somehow resolving the Crown concerns with Pennsylvania foreign trade, and resolving his immediate financial needs through collection of debt owed him from his land sales. Likely, the longer term governance issue weighed on his mind as well. Penn fired David Lloyd and Markham–the former creating a political uproar, and that raised the long-term governance issue to the top of the agenda. Penn’s attempt at satisfying the Crown unified a good deal of the resident support behind Lloyd, with Anglicans and evangelistic Quakers joining his cause. Penn’s efforts to collect debts owed him raised the intensity of opposition, and did little to rebuild the charisma he needed to restore some measure of stability. Penn’s inconsistent policies regarding land sales, his refusal to pay taxes on his land, and his biased application of land law to support his collection efforts prompted all sorts of bills in the legislature and tavern criticism. It didn’t take long for it to be evident that Penn was not accomplishing any of his initial goals and that dissatisfaction had elevated demand for constitutional reform of his Frame of Government. Penn sent a bill to the lower house that addressed several long term concerns, but tht General Assembly rejected it, and countered with a more serious revision of the Frame of Government. A struggle ensued and in no time, it was clear Penn had better concede to the Assembly’s bill or risk worse.
Eventually Penn signed the Assembly bill amending his previous Frame of Government. The Frame of 1701, better known as the Charter of Privileges, collapsed the two house legislature into one–eliminating the more powerful Upper House, the Provincial Council which was Penn’s structural bastion. Pennsylvania became a unicameral legislature, the only one in the thirteen provinces. That legislature was near all-powerful, with appointment of officials, full control over the passage of bills, and total control of its own leadership and internal affairs/structures of decision-making. In the course of debate on the Frame of 1701, the delegates from the three southern counties simply left the Pennsylvania Assembly, leaving their own separate Assembly the de facto legislature of the southern three counties. The 1701 Frame included a clause acknowledged the two legislatures within his sole proprietorship.
A second bill, authored by David Lloyd, created a judicial branch independent of the proprietorship, and defined the jurisdictions of the original and appellate courts created. On the merits, the Judiciary Act of 1701 was solid and corrected what had been at best a very confused, little understood judicial process. The Judiciary in Penn’s original Frame of Governance was, ultimately, subordinate to the proprietorship, and its structure and application of the law did little to enhance popular support or justice. A third bill created a special Court for Property, stripping Penn of the right of land sales and the administration of property law. That body included eight men appointed by the proprietor and thirteen elected at large by the province electorate. That law also empowered the Assembly to create counties, and to approve the incorporated of chartered land development corporations. The fourth bill passed created a municipal corporation for the city of Philadelphia–granting it limited self-rule. By that time, 1701, Pennsylvania’s population was estimated at 20,000,; in 1784 it was about 2,500.
Penn signed the legislation on October 28th, 1701, and left Pennsylvania forever three days later. To the extent he administered the sole proprietorship it was from London, and sometimes through the appointment of individuals to serve as his surrogate. Penn did not resolve his financial problems, which continued to his death. At his death Penn’s will asserted that he had lost a sum of 2,000 pounds in support of Pennsylvania [99] John Pomfret, the First Purchasers, p. 161. Interestingly, Penn did consistently defend Pennsylvania from the Board of Trade, and Parliamentary intrusions–asserting his powers of sole proprietorship as superior to that of those bodies.
The sole proprietorship, as amended by the Frame of 1701, continued until overthrown during the first month of the American War of Independence in 1776.
Penn died in 1718, although his effectiveness diminished severely by a stroke in 1712–and a continued decline until his death. Penn’s second wife inherited the sole proprietorship, and ran its affairs until her death in 1726. At that time the proprietorship was inherited by Penn’s two sons, with the last son running affairs until his death in 1775. Subsequent modules in this chapter will detail certain events and politics in this seventy plus year period, but at this point, the reader should assume the sole proprietorship was effectively checked, not repudiated or overthrown by the Frame of 1701. For the next seventy years it coexisted with the Pennsylvania government, headed and operated by the unicameral Pennsylvania Assembly. Baltzell asserts that from 1701 to the end of colonial Pennsylvania, “the basic problem of [political] authority revolved around the question of whether the representatives of the proprietors or the Assembly should rule” [99] E. Digby Baltzell, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia, p. 154.
Ron W. Coan 