Admiral Sir William Penn, renowned in English history by his martial valor as an officer of the British Navy, left to his son a claim against the Government for £16,000, consisting to a great extent of money advanced by him in the sea service and of arrearages in his pay.

Sir William Penn was in command of an English warship at the age of twenty-three, when sent to the coast of Ireland to help fight the battle of Parliament against Charles the First.

When the war with the Dutch followed--caused by the seizure of New Netherlands--Admiral Penn commanded the English fleet, under the Duke of York, in a fierce naval engagement off the east coast of England at Lowestoft, in June, 1665. Just before this battle the admiral's son, William Penn, Jr., was sent to the King with dispatches.

Admiral Penn died in 1670, worn out at forty-nine, and his son succeeded to his estates.

In 1680 William Penn petitioned Charles II to grant him, in lieu of the sum due to his father's estate, letter-patent, "for a tract of land in America, lying north of Maryland, on the east bounded with the Delaware River, on the west limited as Maryland, and northward to extend as far as plantable."

King Charles II was at once willing to grant the petition of William Penn because he could thus pay the debt owed Sir William. Some of his counselors objected, saying, that it would be ridiculous to suppose that the interests of the British nation were to be promoted by sending a colony of people that would not fight, that would have nothing to do with gin and gunpowder in dealing with the Indians. But the young Quaker stood high in the favor of the Duke of York, and of Charles II, and the King gladly consented to this easy mode of discharging the obligation.

The Duke of York desired to retain the three lower counties, or the present State of Delaware, as an appendage to New York, but his objections were finally withdrawn, as were those of Lord Baltimore.

After sundry conferences and discussions concerning the boundary lines and other matters of minor importance, the committee finally sent in a favorable recommendation and presented a draft of charter, constituting William Penn, Esq., absolute Proprietary of a tract of land in America, therein mentioned, to the King for his approbation; and leaving to him also the naming of the Province.

The King affixed his signature on March 4, 1681. The original charter is in the State Library. It is written on three pieces of strong parchment, in old English handwriting, with each line underscored with lines of red ink. The borders are gorgeously decorated with heraldic devices, and the top of the first page exhibits a finely executed likeness of His Majesty, in good preservation.

Penn wished his province to be called New Wales, but the King insisted on Pennsylvania. Penn next proposed Sylvania, on the ground that the prefix "Penn" would appear like a vanity on his part, and not as a mark of respect for his father; but no amendment was accepted.

The extent of the province was three degrees of latitude by five degrees of longitude, the eastern boundary being the Delaware River, the northern latitude, and on the south a circle drawn at twelve miles distant from New Castle, northward and westward into the beginning of the fortieth degree of northern latitude, and then by a straight line westward to the limits of longitude above mentioned." The three lower counties on the Delaware were not included in the charter.

The charter gave title to more than 45,000 square miles of land, and was among the largest tracts in America ever granted to a single individual. This grant gave Penn no coast line for his colony; so, August 2, 1682, he purchased from the Duke of York the "Three Counties Upon the Delaware," which now form the State of Delaware. Although these were separated from Pennsylvania in 1702, they remained a part of the domain of the Penn family until the American Revolution.

Three things moved Penn to plant a colony in the New World; first, he would get payment for the amount of £16,000 due his father; secondly, he would find a place for his brethren, the Quakers, or Friends, where they would not be openly insulted in the streets, or dragged from their meeting houses to loathsome jails and robbed of the last bed or cow to pay the fines for not attending the established church; and thirdly, he would satisfy the desire which the glowing accounts of the brethren in the present New Jersey had created in him.

The second of these motives was by far the strongest. Penn himself had been tried for preaching to "an unlawful, seditious and riotous assembly." Penn and his people enjoyed neither religious nor civil liberty in England.

The charter to Penn sets forth three objects; a desire on the part of Penn to enlarge the English empire; to promote trade; and to bring the savage natives by gentleness and justice to the love of civil society and the Christian religion.

Besides the territory granted, the charter gave Penn the power to make laws, set up courts, to trade, to erect towns, to collect customs duties; to make war, to sell lands and to impose taxes.

Copies of all laws were to be sent to England, and if disapproved within six months they became void. No war was to be made upon any State at peace with England. Any twenty of the people could request the Bishop of London to send them a preacher of the Church of England, who was to reside within the province without being molested.

Penn offered attractive concessions to the settlers. Land was sold to them at the rate of $10 for 100 acres and every purchaser of lands should have a lot in the city, to be laid out along the river. In clearing the ground care was to be taken "to leave one acre of trees for every five acres cleared." This was the beginning of forestry in America.

At the time of the charter the present limits of the State were inhabited by the Indians, with some Swedes and Dutch settled along the Delaware.

The first real settlement under the new proprietor was made in 1681, when Penn sent William Markham, his cousin, to take possession of the province. The next year Penn himself arrived, bringing in his ship, the Welcome, a hundred colonists of his own faith, to found Philadelphia, the city of "Brotherly Love."

Penn bought the land from the Indians, making a treaty of peace with them which remained unbroken for more than fifty years. "We shall never forget the counsel he gave us," said an Indian chief at Conestoga in 1721.