William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania

A Documentary History

Jean R. Soderlund

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780812211313
• eBook ISBN: 9781512821499
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Frühe amerikanische Geschichte

On March 5, 1681, one day after receiving his royal charter for Pennsylvania, William Penn wrote that he believed God would make his colony "the seed of the nation." Penn wanted his Pennsylvania to be a land where people of differing languages and customs could live together, where men and women could worship as they pleased, where men could participate fully in their government. Such a land, Penn believed, would indeed be blessed.

Beginning with his petition to the king in May 1680 and ending with his departure to England in August 1684, this book contains the most important documents describing the founding of Pennsylvania. The letters, orders, petitions, charters, laws, pamphlets, maps, constitutional drafts, legislative journals, newspaper articles, memoranda, deeds, and other business records assembled here include Penn's own explanations of his desire to found a Quaker colony, his invitation to settlers, and his design for government.

Part VIII THE PENNSYLVANIA GENERAL ASSEMBLY § 10 MARCH 1683–4 APRIL 1683

WP’s signature and his Provincial Seal attached to the Philadelphia City Charter, 1701, Philadelphia City Archives.

PENNSYLVANIA’S legislative session of 10 March-4 April was by far the most important in the early years of the colony. The previous Assembly held in December 1682 (see doc. 50, above) had been a hastily improvised session, in which some forty-two assemblymen met with WP for only four days. The General Assembly of March-April 1683 was a much more elaborate affair in every way. Two separately organized legislative chambers met twice daily for nearly a month. Still, this General Assembly was not as large as WP had originally intended. When the freemen of the three Pennsylvania counties and the three lower counties gathered in February 1683 to choose representatives for this session, they informed WP that they were unable to elect twelve councilors and over thirty assemblymen from every county, as called for in the Frame of Government (doc. 30, articles 2, 3, and 14). Instead, the freemen chose three councilors and nine assemblymen from each county. Thus WP’s first two-house legislature consisted of eighteen councilors and fifty-four assemblymen. Though several of these legislators never showed up, and others were absent much of the time, an important feature of the March-April session was that the leading inhabitants from the six counties came to know each other, and to work closely together, over an extended period.

When the six county sheriffs presented the councilors and assemblymen to WP on 10 March, he told the members of the General Assembly that “they might amend, alter, or add” to the constitution that he had drawn up for Pennsylvania, and both houses quickly began to press for substantial changes. The assemblymen wanted a more active voice in making laws, the councilors wanted a simpler committee system, and everyone wanted a smaller legislature than was provided for in the Frame of Government. When WP saw these pressures building for change, he asked the legislators to sign a declaration of loyalty to him, and urged them to do nothing that might invalidate his royal charter. On 19 March, the governor, Council, and Assembly agreed upon the first major legislation of the session, an Act of Settlement. This act reduced the size of the Council and Assembly, moved the provincial elections and legislative sessions from late winter to early spring, gave the governor effective veto power over Council actions, and authorized the Council and Assembly to vote by voice rather than by secret ballot in all legislative matters.

The Council and Assembly were not yet satisfied, however, and on 20 March WP told both houses that he was willing to accept a revised or second Frame of Government in place of the constitution that he had prepared and published in England. Much of the rest of the session was devoted to the drafting of this second Frame; it was eventually approved by the governor, Council, and Assembly on 2 April. Meanwhile, the Council drafted and the Assembly approved a new code of laws to replace WP’s published Laws Agreed Upon in England (doc. 30, above). Many of these laws were copied directly from WP’s Laws, but others were newly devised. Altogether, the governor, Council, and Assembly passed eighty-one new laws in this session, and the Assembly ratified fifty-two laws that had been enacted in the December 1682 Assembly. The new code dealt with such issues as criminal justice, moral behavior, land development, the regulation of business and commerce, taxation, the regulation of the labor force, fees paid to provincial officials, and local court procedures. Finally, during the course of this legislative session the governor, Council, and Assembly adopted a set of parliamentary procedures, largely borrowed from English practice, that regulated the working relationships between the three branches of government. Thus when the assemblymen adjourned to their homes and farms on 3 April, and the councilors on the following day, they had established a functional constitutional system.

Doc. 62, below, combines the daily journal kept by the clerk of the Provincial Council with the daily journal kept by the clerk of the Assembly in order to show how Pennsylvania’s pioneer legislators operated day by day, and how the councilors and assemblymen interacted with each other. Doc. 63 presents the chief legislative enactment of this session, the second Frame of Government, which served as Pennsylvania’s operating constitution for about a decade, starting in 1683.

62 §

Minutes of the Provincial Council and Assembly of Pennsylvania

THE following daily record of the proceedings of the Provincial Council and Assembly from 10 March through 4 April 1683 combines the journal kept by Richard Ingelo, clerk of the Council, with the journal kept by John Southworth, clerk of the Assembly. The two records frequently overlap, but since both of these clerks often neglected to mention matters of importance, one must read the proceedings of both houses, day by day, in order to reconstruct the events of this session. The Council and Assembly minutes are discreet and formal in character; they devote much space to parliamentary procedure and little space to substantive or controversial issues. Thus we learn that Speaker Thomas Wynne took the chair at a particular hour and called the roll, or that there was a debate over a given bill, but we do not discover who spoke for or against this measure, or what the arguments were, and so we cannot tell why some bills were passed unanimously, others by a majority vote, and still others were defeated. The role of the governor is particularly elusive. The minutes tell us that WP presided over every Council meeting and that he made a number of speeches to the Assembly, but they rarely indicate what he said or did.

Nevertheless, the clerks’ attention to procedure helps us to understand the differing character of the two houses. The Provincial Council, presided over by the governor, was designed by WP to be much more powerful than the Assembly. It was a relatively small body, especially since several of the eighteen councilors were frequently absent. The Council initiated all legislation and allocated the drafting of bills to a series of subcommittees (see the Council entries for 16 March, 21 March, 26 March, and 30 March). It also heard petitions and advised the governor on his executive decisions. The Assembly was intended to play a much more limited role: to accept or reject the Council’s bills. But a careful reading of the following minutes shows that the lower house was constantly trying to expand its influence through frequent conferences with the governor and Council. During the March-April session, the Assembly did effectually participate in the drafting and revision of legislation. Speaker Wynne seems to have been a forceful manager who steered the assemblymen away from direct confrontation with the governor and Council; he was also a stickler for regular attendance and orderly behavior.

If WP hoped that his legislature would operate in a Quakerly spirit of brotherhood and achieve a harmonious consensus, he was doomed to disappointment. In 1683 the governor, Council, and Assembly had differences that could not be fully resolved. Indeed, the experience of meeting together for three and a half weeks seems to have made each branch of government more conscious of its own particular constitutional powers and privileges. But the General Assembly did work out a series of compromises that preserved WP’s plan of government in modified form. Although the formal record of events in doc. 62 cannot reveal the full passion and tension of this three-cornered contest, the Council and Assembly journals do tell us quite a bit about how the early Pennsylvania government worked. The reader is particularly directed to the following entries in the minutes:

10 March, Council: The temporary reduction of the Council from 72 to 18 members, and of the Assembly from 200 to 54 members.

12 March, Assembly: A proposal that the Assembly receive the right to initiate legislation, rather than simply react to bills sent down by the governor and Council. WP did not yield on this point until 1701.

13 March, Council: The alteration of the Council quorum from forty-eight (for a seventy-two member Council) to twelve (for an eighteen-member Council).

14 March, Assembly: Debate on reducing the size of the Council and the Assembly for the coming year.

15 March (a.m.), Assembly: Discussion of whether to grant WP veto power so that he could prevent the legislature from passing any law that might violate provisions of WP’s royal charter for Pennsylvania, which could result in his losing his colony. The Assembly decides to allow WP a veto of his Council’s votes, but not of the Assembly’s.

15 March (p.m.), Assembly: The first reading of the bill which became the Act of Settlement; this act reduced the size of the Council and Assembly ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations and Maps
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Editorial Method
• A William Penn Chronology, 1680-1684
• I § Negotiating the Charter for Pennsylvania, May 1680–March 1681
• II § The Charter of Pennsylvania, 4 March 1681
• III § Promoting the New Colony, March 1681–June 1681
• IV § Selling Land to the First Purchasers, July 1681–December 1681
• V § The Frame of Government of Pennsylvania
• VI § Preparing to Leave for Pennsylvania, January 1682–September 1682
• VII § First Months in America, October 1682–May 1683
• VIII § The Pennsylvania General Assembly, 10 March 1683–4 April 1683
• IX § Conflict with Lord Baltimore, June 1683–August 1683
• X § Negotiating with the Indians, August 1683–December 1683
• XI § Friction with the Colonists, January 1684–July 1684
• XII § Return to England, August 1684
• Abbreviations
• Glossary
• Suggestions for Further Reading
• Index