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”. By that Baltzell suggests that, said and done, the Penn sole proprietorship of Pennsylvania awarded by, and subject to, the King was Penn’s personal property, which upon his death would be inherited by his successors. Legally–cynically, Pennsylvania was a very large manor, as far as the King and 17th century English law considered it. His Proprietary was modeled after the Calvert Maryland (Baltimore) Proprietary issued forty-seven years before. The King had learned a lot in those years (mostly from an obdurate Massachusetts), and it was changed in one major respect. Within five years of approval, all major laws were to be submitted to the Privy Council, which with Crown approval could void the legislation. While ostensibly a limit on Penn, it proved to be more a limit on an energic legislature. The King specifically mentioned the infamous Navigation Acts in his grant–there would be no legal escape from London’s colonial “system”. That Act asserted the right of the Crown to pass English taxes on to the colonies. There it is, “taxation without representation” applied to Pennsylvania.
Having said this, the Crown deposited political powers in Penn personally–included at the discretion of Penn was the role and impact of an elected legislature. So long as Penn’s laws conformed to English laws, Penn himself had free “reign”. Whatever governance Penn established within English tradition, recognizing the rights of an English citizen (which did not include the franchise), was compatible with the grant. He did envision some sort of public-private “partnership” which, in his mind, rested firmly on its Quaker majority composition. But lodged in his personality, if not in the back of his mind, was a style of governance that he personally exercised. He did not see fundamental or foundational decisions as requiring public input. His critical “personal” responsibility was to mediate the operation of the Pennsylvania colony with the intentions/policy of the King, Parliament, Privy Council and the Board of Trade. That personalism, the core of the sole Proprietary, I contend, is the chief reason Pennsylvania followed its own path to political development, a path seriously different from most other colonies. It was a path that traveled through its own unique territory, and encountered its own particular issues and problems that shaped its institutions and political development.
As we shall see Penn transferred the political structures, but he personally devised the relationships among these structures–and he did so to facilitate his personal goals, Holy Grail Experiment for Quakers, and his real estate profit ambitions for himself and his family. We have discussed the former previously, now we dwell on the latter. No surprise I suspect, to the reader, this had rather direct ties to our economic development history.
Holy Experiment and Real Estate–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. Penn saw the colony as a Holy (Quaker) Experiment, but ran/managed it more as a real estate venture. His policy system, composed of his Frames and series of legislation collectively known as the Charter of Privileges (his de facto constitution) exposed him as intending to establish some sort of investor-resident corporation managed by his proposed policy system. In its institutions and fundamental economic base, he merely intended to copy his perceived sense of English 17th century local government/economic base, and install the First Purchasers as the governing class of the colony–its landed elite. Property, principally land ownership, was the entry into his 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. He may have had his designs and plans, which set contemporary planner’s hearts all atwitter, but they were plans developed in England and never were successfully applied in any but the smallest details once in Pennsylvania. The rhetoric of “greene” city planning has carried on to this day; Two wide streets, today’s Broad and Market) connected to a grid, within which were four neighborhood open areas (Franklin, Washington, Rittenhouse Squares and Logan Circle). The “on the street” reality was that deviances were numerous. The plan was soon rendered obsolete after its initial outline was settled (if not before). Despite some good inclinations and intentions, Penn quickly lost whatever planning vision he held for his urban-export-capitol in the chaotic press to settle and close land sales.
Over the next several decades Philadelphia was to be left to its own fate and dispositions. Land sales decisions, compromises with topography, and with Swede-Finn-English already resident, spread out his waterfront, and in a matter of a few years, devolved into a series of mixed and conflicting uses. The sustained in-migration of new settlers meant a never ceasing drive to the city periphery, beyond Philadelphia’s predetermined boundaries, spilling over to independent boroughs/towns–the suburbs. Penn held a firmer hand over the hinterland, using his incorporation powers, combined with requirements for rapid sale of land, and people attraction marketing efforts. In all this we see the seeds of Penn’s future approach to Pennsylvania settlement, as a profit-making strategy, dominated by his real estate perspective. This real estate perspective, a core of early Pennsylvania histories, got pushed off to the margins in the next two centuries.
Frankly, over the years, historians, without challenging the real estate/economics theme, simply focused more on the political aspects of Penn’s colonial administration. In many ways there was a need to do so; the political crisis Penn unleashed with his deficient “Frames” provincial constitution–combined with the tolerance motif of Quaker Pennsylvania political culture (protruding into Indian relationships, tolerance of religion, and openness to different ethnic groups) was the larger story. When that story bumped into the politics of the American Revolution, all other perspectives dropped off the table.
Herein lies the problem. Penn, often loosely identified as a Whig of sorts, did not establish a Whig policy system in Pennsylvania. His Frames constitution clearly at best created a policy system that was to dominated by a land aristocracy:(1) his First Purchasers as his most clearly defined electoral constituency; (2) his conception of Philadelphia municipal governance as a English city with the guild substituted for his “Frist Purchasers” Society of Free Traders; (3) his lack of empowerment of the Pennsylvania legislature; (4) his failure to embrace separation of executive, legislative and judicial branches; and most outstandingly, if subtle, (5) his focus on the township (and then on the county), rather than provincial governance reflected his desire for a decentralized colonial government. Penn followed a “bottoms up” settlement strategy that from the very beginning centered on the township. Penn’s decentralized policy system which he rightly deemed more congruent with his real estate focus, and his desire to generate profits and revenues for the support of himself and his family. But his was not just a “property” conception of government; it was also “medieval manorial” — agricultural economic base, supplemented by the necessary incorporation of a traditional English city government to govern his port and process its exports/imports. He seemed amazingly blind to the vacuum in that urban governance left without its central engine: the guild oligarchy policy system.
In any event, there was precious little actual democracy in this policy system that rested within the pages of his first two Frames of government.
The Penn Proprietary–It is going to be no surprise that the town, land sales and real estate permeated in his design of the township (and later initial county) governance. The City of Philadelphia was also caught up in this as well. His Frames concentrated his Proprietary powers into dominance of the local government functions and deliberative/judicial bodies that were crucial instruments of his settlement strategy. His proposed framework for provincial matters was a lower legislature limited in franchise and powers which “suggested” initiatives and policies for its upper house or the Proprietor. An empowered upper chamber dominated by Proprietary appointments, and either himself as Governor or his hired Deputy Governor essentially were to make the decisions on fundamental provincial matters. Bureaucracy, such as it was, consisted of the judiciary which he largely appointed, and his Personnel Secretariat, headed by his Superintendent and his Land Office, through which he conducted his real estate functions. Settlement of townships was the core economic development strategy, and development of a “urban” capitol city-port city, his less well-thought through secondary strategy. From his perspective, control of land and settlement translated into personal profits, stable politics, and Proprietary political dominance.
Concentrating upon his Secretariat Bureaucracy and leadership, the Penn Proprietary pursued its settlement/real estate growth strategy. As we shall see in a later module, the urban Philadelphia element went its own way, and was left pretty much untouched by the Secretariat, who used it only to export what was grown or taken from its hinterland backwoods. The political unit associated with the settlement strategy was the hinterland town/ship. Penn controlled that process from start, town-building, to its independence as an incorporated town, or borough. In this he had undisputed right to confer, without anyone (the legislature, for instance) having any say in the decision. Penn was also the only source of land for purchase, all unsold land being his personal untaxed property. It was the job of the Secretariat to assemble, subdivide, plat, sell, close and collect any quitrents and terms of the land sale. The first step was purchase of the land from Native Americans, a requirement that Penn imposed upon himself, Quakers, and the legislature in its turn adopted. A clear title for land sale started only with acknowledged treaty purchase of the land from the resident tribe. We shall see this aspect of the strategy, while not perfect, was the gold standard of colonial settlement strategy–and remarkably successful through to the 1730’s.
Next to follow was his surveyors and land plat bureaucracy, including local courts of jurisdiction. Some areas were developed for speculation, but in Penn’s first years he worked with larger purchasers and was able to settle a town with a collection of these “land investors”, Germantown for example. He required purchased land to be settled within three years, or title would revert to Penn. Other than survey and plat, infrastructure was left to the town once incorporated–this proved to be a major deficiency. Penn retained as his own personal property ten percent of the land purchased–of his own choosing– for personal speculation. The town bureaucracy, including the town court and justices (a fused legislative-judicial system of several units). This governance collected annual quitrents and implemented the terms of the land sale, and conducted the affairs of the new community. This town-county government nexus was the heart, soul and purpose, to the extent such existed in the turbulent period that followed, of the Proprietary Executive Branch.
We shall go into much greater detail in a following module, but the take away is the Penn Proprietary became the de facto executive branch of colonial Pennsylvania after 1701 . The Executive Branch concentrated its power base and a good deal of its attention to real estate and the sub-provincial levels of government. To be sure, Penn Frame-based policy system, resting on himself, a near-monarch, or his deputy governor (in his absence), an upper legislature which served as his Privy Council/Cabinet, and a lower house, the Assembly, which arguably was the Frame’s weakest institution. The Frames left no doubt that Penn intended to control provincial politics and policy-making as intensely as sub-state government. The Assembly offered input, but it could not even decide when it came in and out of session. It could not approve legislation–that was done in the upper house, and it had no taxing powers. Moreover, its basis of legitimacy was left unspecified-just who did it represent? The First Purchasers? Quakers? Property-Owning Residents? Or, perish the thought, the People in a proper Whiggish-Lockean sense?
As we go on to discuss below, Penn’s vision of the Assembly did not work out–at all, and from the start. It was the Assembly that launched the civil war, in the very first sessions it met in 1683. It twice rejected his Frames (actually his second Frame was an effort to bridge a compromise). It also rejected his governance for Pennsylvania, the Society of Free Traders–a Municipal Corporation. All that plus the near succession of the Lower Three Counties (the future State of Delaware) and his fight with Calvert’s Maryland over boundaries translated into an administrative-structural chaos by the time Penn left for England in 1784. His departure, caused by a variety of reasons (including one wonders if he was quitting, or had been fired) only made things worse. He was absent for almost fifteen years (1699), and during that time just about everything went wrong that possibly could have.
That included his being stripped of the Proprietary for three years, and his replacement by the New York royal governor, who mostly was as absent as Penn. It also included a war, a Quaker heretical fragmentation with enormous political implications–and to top it off his wife’s death, and his constant flirting with bankruptcy–caused of all things by his inadvertent signing away of his proprietary rights to his personal financial advisor which commenced a decade or so of legal battles. Did I mention the Glorious Revolution in 1689 kicked out Penn’s King, Charles I, and replaced him with William and Mary who held totally different ideas about colonial administration? It was not until the new royal administration decided it wanted a little to do with governing Pennsylvania–which was nothing but trouble in their short reign–and returned the Proprietary to Penn (1696), who by that time had serious thoughts about selling it. After securing some legal comfort, Penn would return to Pennsylvania for a second spin at governance in 1699, which we will discuss shortly. But in the meantime (1685-1699), while Penn’s “bad times rolled on, offering little respite that would soothe Penn’s soul”, another development had evolved that made the context of Pennsylvania governance significantly different from when he first left: an organized political group had coalesced around an opponent who did not share Penn’s vision expressed in his first two Frames, and who had secured serious influence over the still frustrated and largely powerless Assembly. In his absence the political civil war had begun. Let’s see what happened.
Module II: Time of Troubles
Previous to his first departure, Penn, from the rather diverse lot of First Purchasers, recruited a number of individuals, and supplemented them with family, friends and acquaintances armed with vital skills to form his core political leadership that was to exercise day-to-day administration of the colony subject, of course, to his direction . 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 constituted 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. Most were Quakers, but over the years Scots Irish, Scots and English wandered into the mix–creating a bit of religious chatter by the Quaker majority. By no means did Penn’s cast of characters be compared to Virginia’s “royalist” cast, nor New York’s manor-mercantile elite, Charleston/South Carolina’s Barbadian plantation owners, or even New England’s more governmentally focused Puritan elite. Penn’s Proprietary elite was more free-flowing, opportunistic, with an entrepreneurial bent whose view of political affairs reflected their economic plans than their political visions and values. When Penn left town for the first time in 1684. one man emerged as a key leader, Thomas Lloyd, and he is the individual entrusted to handle affairs when he left in 1685. Did that prove to be a mistake.
It was Penn’s well-to-do allies who held the upper hand during the first decade of the colony’s existence. Working through the Council (the upper house-Cabinet) these men affixed to Penn’s grant of executive power certain judicial and legislative functions which had been reserved to the Proprietor, appointing judges to county courts, and to the Provincial Court, and submitting laws on the Council’s authority for the Assembly’s approval.
[But]
Indeed as he held power, the proprietor’s friends became his uneasy allies, jealous of their newly-gained prerogatives, and thus wary of their instructions from England. And from their position of economic advantage, they were dissatisfied with Penn’s land policy [i.e. the settlement nexus discussed above]; it barred speculation [by them] which was financially stifling; and it was inconsistently applied, especially regarding the proprietor himself who retained one tenth [of land sales, which lay] mostly idle, and, of course did not pay quitrents [taxes] which were to be exacted from all other real property [99] Joseph E. Illick, Colonial Pennsylvania: a History (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), p. 46
It was Penn’s real estate based settlement strategy, the path to Penn’s personal profit that rubbed his allies raw. Now that he was in England, he looked more an more like an absentee landlord who was abusing his tenants. Remarkably more than sixty years later, that charge would constitute Benjamin Franklin’s, then Speaker of the Assembly” indictment of the Penn Proprietary–and the principal bottom line reason why the colony need to fire him and replace him with a royal governor. As early as 1686, in light of this criticism and warnings that an insurrection was afoot, he reorganized his executive branch and centered it in a Commission composed of a number of his still key allies; they included men like his deputy governor Markham, his surveyor and Secretariat Thomas Holmes, James Claypoole, and Thomas Lloyd–his new choice for Deputy Governor (he was a Welsh Quaker, Oxford educated). Instead of decentralizing power and sharing the benefits, Penn’s Commission only centralized it in the hands of one institution, and made no disposition to share any goodies that came out of the colony. Brotherly love apparently had its economic limitations and his absence did not make Pennsylvania Quaker’s heart go fonder.
Lloyd, Penn’s choice for Deputy Governor turned it down, and Penn appointed (1688) John Blackwell, a Puritan with a strong military background in his place. It all went south [for Penn} after that. Penn’s woes and intransigence had left Lloyd adrift; Penn’s leadership style and the lack of any popular opinion in his favor, enabled, if not pushed Lloyd to operate independently 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. Lloyd who still held the position of President of the Commission refused to recognize Blackwell’s authority, and instead used the Commission to bypass the Deputy General–a sort of internal coup which Penn 3,000 miles away could not make a timely counter-attack. Lloyd then used the Council [the upper chamber] and transformed that into his base of power by 1692.
The Glorious Revolution occurred during this period, and Penn himself was hanging onto the Proprietary by his finger tips–he was unable to respond to Lloyd’s de facto power grab. In an attempt to reform his power base, Penn allowed Lloyd to pass in 1691 a bill establishing the Municipal Corporation of Philadelphia–incorporating it as a city. But Lloyd was able to patronize it with his supporters. The events of the day, however, quickly overwhelmed the Corporation, essentially rendering it still-born. Still the incorporation had mobilized commercial and trading elites of the city, and given them a potential stake in fighting the proprietorship.
When the Council in 1692 raised property taxes to pay their bills, all hell broke loose. The Assembly refused to pass it, and Lloyd himself was under attack. If Penn couldn’t run affairs, apparently neither could the Commission-Council. To complicate the picture a Quaker preacher, with strong political inclinations, spread a rigid view of Quaker fundamentalism that he argued had been made necessary by the “laxness” of living in the Pennsylvania wilderness. That polarized Quakers, their monthly and Annual Meetings. Lloyd was able to regain his luster somewhat by leading the opposition to the heresy, and by the end of 1692, nearly every political institution in Pennsylvania was fighting against the others, while the Quaker elite was itself hopelessly polarized.
Penn is Fired, Pennsylvania has a Royal Governor— In 1688, Britain entered into the “Nine Years War” (1688-97) which is known in the colonies as King Williams’s War. Fought most savagely in Europe, along the Rhine and Ireland, it spread to the West Indies-North American colonies after 1691. This was a major, and culminating war launched by the aggressive policies of Louis XIV, and was regarded by Britain as very much a crisis of empires. As the war evolved, its effect on British colonial policy and administration was profound, and page-turning. A bottom line transformation was London, its newly created Board of Trade, and the Crown itself began a series of multi-year Parliamentary hearings, with an eye on making better use of its colonies for the general stability and growth of William and Mary’s new realm.
A new leadership and regulatory bodies were established, and a centerpiece reform was to revamp economic trade to be an active and serious contributor to the British (domestic) economy. All trade would flow to and from British ports, British lending institutions would be provided a monopoly for colonial investment capital, the colonies were restricted in the issue of cheap money in order to support the hard capital reserves and loans of British banks, and the colonies were expected to help pay for their own defense, and assist in supplying/financing military units to fight. A concern with Proprietary colonies governance, and the imposition of royal governors throughout the thirteen colonies triggered a period (after 1689) of general political instability–Pennsylvania went through its own distinctive period, which we now describe.
In this section, then, the reader should interpret the discussion from the prism that the “external environment of Pennsylvania policy system”, or our term the global competitive hierarchy, became a major player in internal Pennsylvania policy-making and politics. Through its first decade, Penn had sheltered Pennsylvania from the Crown’s attention and colonial administration. Pennsylvania Quakers were not rigidly regulated, and their dysfunctional politics and their chronic anti-authoritarian pushback against colonial administration more or less tolerated. That era was over by the very early 1690’s–indeed Penn himself was under attack, and his Proprietary charter under scrutiny.
Between 1692 and 1696 (or so) fundamental structural reform of Pennsylvania governance was introduced to Pennsylvania by the Crown, and the disruption and dysfunction caused and wreaked on Penn’s now-imploded Frames of Government was massive, and durable. In that short period, the clash of political structures, my so-called seventy-five year political civil war between Proprietary and the Legislature was launched. From this point on Penn’s Frames of Government were damaged beyond repair–and like Humpty Dumpty they fell off the wall, never to be put back again. Moreover, after 1696, London/Crown had essentially rejected management of a Pennsylvania through as a Crown Colony (using a royal governor), closing the door to the radical change in Pennsylvania government/policy system restructure. No matter, it would seem, how bad Pennsylvania policy-making deteriorated, London had determined it was Penn’s (and his family) problem to fix. No matter how dysfunction the political civil war evolved (and there were times that decision was questioned), until 1776, the Proprietary was going to be London’s dog in the hunt. The Proprietary could not collapse, no matter how hard the Penn family worked to make it do so.
Quakers supposedly do not “war”, but when the war came to Pennsylvania, Quakers fiercely resisted involvement in, and financial support of that war. Anti war Quaker pacifism saturated the politics of the colony–and if that were not sufficient, the Quaker “government”, particularly the Assembly, provided aid and comfort to Philadelphia smugglers, laundering pirate booty, and even assisting privateers in milking the West Indies–a key point of battle in the war. Parliamentary hearings focused attention on how much Pennsylvania and other colonies were hurting Britain’s economy and war effort. The Navigation Acts were revamped to reflect change as described above, and Pennsylvania, among others, failed to comply, and flaunted their resistance. The reaction was surely predictable:
By 1691 … the global war with France convinced virtually everyone in London concerned with affairs of the empire that the colonies in both economic and strategic terms were crucially important in the competition with France for trade and empire. Heretofore a concern for regularity and discipline had inspired colonial reform; now nothing less than the fate of England’s overseas possessions was at stake. Inspired by the critical nature of the colonial defense problem, and also by recent reports form the Governor of Maryland that Pennsylvania merchants were trafficking with the French and pro-French Indians. the Lords of Trade recommended in October 12, 1691 that Pennsylvania be placed under royal government, and annexed to either New York or Maryland. A full year passed before Captain Benjamin Fletcher, royal governor of New York, was commissioned to assume the government of Pennsylvania, and another six months elapsed before Fletcher arrived in Philadelphia [99] Gary B. Nash, Quakers and Politics, 1681-1726 (Northeastern University Press, New Edition, 1993), pp. 182-3
So the Crown removed William Penn as Proprietor, and his Deputy Governor Blackwell was fired. The Proprietary Charter seemingly had been revoked. In his stead the royal governor of New York assumed the title and responsibility as Pennsylvania governor, a royal Crown governor. Given the power to replace the Frames, Fletcher, a military official and Anglican did so. The Royal Governor set up a lower house, the Assembly, as a representative body to represent its citizenry, as was the practice in the other royal colonies. Its powers were minimal; the governor had a veto, could call and end legislative sessions, and he had powers similar to Penn’s over local government and the judiciary. If anything the Legislature was weaker than in the Frames, although its legitimacy as the representative of the general population was established. The provincial structures of Penn’s executive branch proprietary were terminated, and a new Council, to advise the Royal Governor was named.
Fletcher, after offering THOMAS Lloyd presidency of the Council, he refused. Thomas Lloyd, an active, perhaps prime player in supporting smuggling, laundering, and trade with British enemies, (and at this time, a major player in the 1691 incorporation of the Philadelphia Municipal Corporation) shifted his political “machine” into the Assembly. In 1694, Thomas Lloyd died. Nevertheless, the Assembly had not only assumed the role of leading the opposition to Royal Governor Fletcher, it was in position to continue the actions and policies that had invited the overthrow of the Propriety. The shift of power to the Assembly from Penn’s upper house/cabinet/Commission was real and proved durable, if dependent completely on continued governance by a royal-appointed governor. Fletcher, in reaction, appointed Lloyd’s opposition, a good deal of whom were Penn Proprietary (Markham, Claypoole as examples) and others were inserted into the local and judicial offices of the government. Penn’s political allies, in essence, had been inserted into the new royal Crown regime–and Penn’s enemies into the Legislature.
Finally, Fletcher, with Markham’s influence, reached an agreement with the Lower Three Counties (future Delaware). Markham had set up a sort of federation in which the Upper Three counties had their own legislature, and the Lower Three their own in 1691, and agreed to by Penn. Markham became their “deputy governor”. When royal governor Fletcher came on the scene, he engineered a compromise uniting the two, by appointing Markham as Pennsylvania’s deputy governor of the Lower Counties, and the young DAVID Lloyd as the Upper Deputy Governor. In one form or other, this federation-like distinction between the lower and upper counties persisted to 1776. Always a thorn in the Proprietary side, the Lower Counties, until the Revolution, possessed a degree of autonomy from Philadelphia that became a bedrock fixture of the policy system.
What also became a fixture in the Pennsylvania policy system was the rigid and unqualified opposition of the Assembly to whomever was Governor: Fletcher, or William Penn, the ghost from the past. The opposition, dominated by the two Lloyds:
embarked on a program of obstruction. Previous Quaker officeholders shunned such [offices] as Fletcher offered them on the new county courts, unseated county clerks, refused to yield up the court records to their successors, and the Quaker leaders on the Council [Lloyd’s machine] quickly moved to obtain seats in the new Assembly. Thereafter, the game was a familiar one played against [Penn’s Proprietary and his Deputy Governor]: refuse to admit the governor’s power until threatened with treason, stall for time, bargain for laws investing the Assembly with wider powers, narrow the scope of appointed officials and county courts, and word legislation acts so ambiguously that they meaning would be open to endless questioning [99] Gary B. Nash, Quakers and Politics, 1681-1726 (Northeastern University Press, New Edition, 1993), pp. 186
Totally sandbagged, Fletcher eventually left town, and, complaining bitterly to London about Quaker intransigence, returned to New York. In the meantime, Penn had been working his connections, but he quickly gathered momentum when it was apparent the London royal governor option had effectively and essentially failed, recognizing “that Quaker cooperation in the defense of the middle colonies had failed dismally under the unpopular Fletcher and might be better obtained through a bargain with Penn”[99] Gary B. Nash, Quakers and Politics, 1681-1726, p. 187. Penn cut a deal, late in 1694 (officially Fletcher turned over authority in March 1695) in which he got the colony returned to him in return for his “compliance with future requests” from London on military assistance and financing–and that he take personal charge of the colony, i.e. go back to Pennsylvania. Penn’s return to power, however, did little to quell the Quaker opposition to the war, or anything else.
By 1696, the pressure was on Penn to stop the smuggling and bring Philadelphia merchants into compliance with the Navigation Laws. Other legislation was threatened; a serious effort was made to establish Vice-Admiralty Courts in the colonies themselves, taking away key provincial autonomy. As usual Pennsylvania was a ground zero in this debate, and Penn stuck around in England to fight or at least temper the legislation. Still, despite headwinds from London, Pennsylvania governance, Lloyd and Markham, did little to inhibit merchants to cease their flagrant support for smuggling and laundering pirate booty; nor did they restrain Pennsylvania courts from failing to convict its violators. Eventually a law was approved in the Assembly “an Act for Preventing Fraud and Regulating Abuses in Trade”, but its language included a loophole that made it unlikely any Philadelphia merchants brought to court could be convicted–an loophole, lawyer David Lloyd used to recruit support among merchants and traders. With Philadelphia still in non-compliance, pressure on Penn to head back to Philadelphia increased. In early 1699, for his own reasons, and to qualm the uproar in London, Penn returned.
During this period, Markham and Lloyd were negotiating for almost two years to find a way to structure Pennsylvania provincial government so the dysfunctional and ofttimes almost irrational political conflict could be restrained. Markham reached an agreement/compact with Lloyd: “the Act of Settlement”. It included a significant modification to Penn’s 1681 Frame of Government, restructuring both the governance and the franchise. Recognizing the uproar in London, Markham and Lloyd linked Pennsylvania structure reform with a second initiative to appropriate funds for the war effort, and a third bill, which was never approved, to recruit a militia for service in the war. By this point, the Quaker political majority in Pennsylvania had been sufficiently diluted by immigration, that Quaker leadership was concerned Anglicans, whose urban vote was substantial (Philadelphia attracted many New England and New York draft dodgers), could leverage their way into the policy process. It still took two legislative sessions to garner the votes for final approval. Penn, still in England, had finally reached the position that his Frames had to be reformed, especially if he was to secure approval trade, and war effort legislation demanded of him by London. He put aside (for the moment) his substantial concerns for his settlement strategy, and allowed Markham to work his compromise.
Markham was successful in altering the electoral franchise to make it more difficult for Pennsylvania newcomers (inherently less loyal to Penn) to vote, favoring Quakers–Penn’s base; . 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 in opposition to Penn. A two year residency requirement, an element of the Act of Settlement, provided a salve for healing the tension. On the other hand Markham agreed to significant structural change by empowering the General Assembly. The Assembly was authorized to initiate legislation so it could indeed make policy and not simply react to Penn’s legislation. The body was limited to four delegates per county–cutting its size by half. The Assembly could set its adjournment, and franchise eligibility for its delegates [99] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/pa06.asp. While still lacking critical, if not essential powers, the Legislature was acknowledged as the representative of the populace and as a legitimate branch of government.
The Act of Settlement was approved in Pennsylvania, but rejected in London–and in 1699 when Penn returned the Act, no longer in effect was an open sore in Pennsylvania’s body politc–a major outrage that demanded immediate rectification.
Ron W. Coan 