1685.]

DEATH OF CHARLES THE SECOND.

377

out of the pale of his Church. James tells the result himself. The duke "asked him if he desired he should send for a priest to him? to which the king immediately replied, 'for God's sake, brother, do, and please to lose no time.' But then, reflecting on the consequences, added, 'But will you not expose yourself too much by doing it?' The duke, who never thought of danger when the king's service called, though but in a temporal concern, much less in an eternal one, answered, 'Sir, though it cost me my life, I will bring one to you.' James found Father Huddleston, a Benedictine monk. The king confessed, received extreme unction; and then the Sacrament was administered by Huddleston. His natural children were called around the dying man's bed. Monmouth alone was absent, though his father had been privately reconciled to him. The queen sent to ask her husband's pardon for any offence she might have committed. "It is I that ought to ask her "Do not let Nelly starve,"

pardon," said Charles, with a passing remorse. he said to his brother. He apologised to the watchers around him for the trouble he was giving. The politeness of the gentleman remained with him to the last. Charles died at noon on Friday, the 6th of February. The people of London, odious as was the government of the king, lamented for the man. In that lament was probably mingled the fear that a worse king was coming.

About three years before the death of Charles the Second, an event took place which would then attract little of the regard of English courtiers and politicians, but which was fraught with important consequences never to be

"Life of James II.," vol. i. p. 747.

378

WILLIAM PENN-SETTLEMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA.

[1682

forgotten in the history of the Anglo-Saxon race. On the 5th of March, 1682, William Penn, who we last saw standing undaunted at the bar of the Old Bailey, was before the king in council at Whitehall. His father, the admiral, had died in 1670, leaving his Quaker son a considerable property. The duke of York, a friend of admiral Penn, had undertaken to be the young man's protector. Two years after his father's death William Penn applied to James to use his influence to procure some remission of the persecution of the Quakers. The duke made some of those professions of toleration which he had learnt to employ upon particular occasions. He was kind to Penn; who became a person of consequence at Whitehall. A considerable sum, about 16,000l., was due from the Treasury to Penn as his father's heir-the amount of money lent by the admiral, with accumulated interest. He petitioned to have his claim settled, not by a money-payment, but by the grant of a large tract in America-a region of mountains and forests and prairies, accessible from the sea by the river Delaware. During sixty years the colonisation of the great North American continent by Englishmen had gone steadily forward. The plantation of Virginia, the plantation of New England, in the reign of James I., laid the foundations of that mighty community whose present marvellous progress appears but the faint realisation of its ultimate destinies.* In the reign of Charles the Second, Carolina was also settled. Maryland had been a previous acquisition; New Jersey had been conquered from the Dutch. The commercial importance of the English North American settlements was stated by De Witt in 1669, when he wrote "The Interest of Holland." He says, "The long persecution of Puritans in England has occasioned the planting of many English colonies in America, by which they drive a very considerable foreign trade thither." Penn knew well that in the persecuted of his own sect he would find the best of settlers-men always remarkable for their industry and frugality. Not so solicitous for worldly profit, as for a home for his followers beyond the reach of penal laws, Penn assiduously pressed his suit; and on the 5th of March, he stood before the king and council, to have his charter signed. The name suggested for this mountainous and wooded region was first New Wales; and secondly, Sylvania. The king prefixed Penn to Sylvania. The Quaker legislator and his friend Algernon Sidney, the republican, drew up a constitution for the new colony. It was essentially democratic. Religious liberty was its great element, and with that was necessarily connected civil freedom. There was to be an executive Council, of which Penn, the proprietor, or his deputy, was to be president; which Council was to consist of seventy-two persons. There was to be an Assembly. Both were to be chosen by universal suffrage. It has been justly observed, that " as the proprietor and legislator of a province which, being almost uninhabited when it came into his possession, afforded a clear field for moral experiments, he had the rare good fortune of being able to carry his theories into practice without any compromises, and yet without any shock to existing institutions." +

The Welcome, a vessel of three hundred tons, in which Penn was to embark, set sail from Deal on the 1st of September, 1682. There were a hundred passengers on board, of whom a third died of the small-pox during

* See ante, vol. iii., p. 343.

+ Macaulay, "History," vol. i. 8vo, p. 507.

1682.]

SETTLEMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA.

379

the voyage. On the 27th of October, the survivors, with their governor, landed at Newcastle, on the Delaware. The next day Penn assembled the inhabitants, consisting of families of various nations, Germans, Dutch, Swedes, English. He produced his charters. He explained his system of government. Penn's relation, Colonel Markham, had arrived before him, and had prepared the way for him, by calling an Assembly for the purposes of legislation. In three days, Penn's constitution was adopted; and supplementary laws were enacted to carry out its spirit. The industrial education of rich and poor was provided for; justice was to be cheaply administered; prisons were to be regulated with a view to the reformation of the criminal; death punishments, except for murder and treason, were to be abolished.

The governor had much labour before him, but he went through it resolutely. The lands of the province were surveyed, and divided into lots for grant or purchase. Philadelphia was founded upon a plan which contemplated the growth of a magnificent city. In a year many houses had been built, and emigrants came in great numbers to become farmers or traders in a land where men could dwell without fear of oppression. Schools were founded. A Printing-Press was set up. A Post was established. The great outworks of civilisation were won. The principles of justice, upon which the new colony was founded, were to guide the conduct of the colonists towards the native Indians. The treaty with the red men-the only treaty that was never sworn to and never broken, says Voltaire was one of friendship, and brotherhood, and mutual defence. An American has painted the scene, with

380

PENN'S TREATY WITH THE INDIANS.

[1683. the vagueness of his time as to portraiture and costume; but West's picture gives some notion of a solemn ceremony, in which the Great Spirit, the common Father of all, was appealed to in the pledge that the power of civilisation should not be abused by the exercise of force or injustice against the weakness of barbarism.*

The interesting Biography of William Penn, by Mr. Hepworth Dixon, furnishes a very complete view of the settlement of Pennsylvania, of which ours is necessarily the briefest sketch.

Address of James the Second to his Council-He is proclaimed-He goes openly to Mass-Illegal levying of Customs-The king's ministers-Roman Catholic counsellors-Roman Catholics and Quakers released from prison-Renewed severities against Covenanters-Elections in England-Money from France-Constitution of Parliament-Its meeting-Conviction and punishment of Titus Oates-Conviction of Richard Baxter-Argyle lands in ScotlandDisastrous result of his expedition-His execution-Monmouth lands at Lyme - His Declaration-He enters Taunton in triumph-He is proclaimed king-March to BristolSkirmish of Philip's Norton-Monmouth returns to Bridgewater-Battle of SedgemoorFlight of Monmouth-His apprehension-His abject submission to the king-His execution-Military executions in the Western Counties-The legal massacres under JeffreysTransportations-The Court traffic in convicts-The legal traffic in pardons.

THE chamber of death is closed. James retires for fifteen minutes to the privacy of his closet, and then comes forth as king to meet the Council. It was necessary that he should address the assembled counsellors. He declared that he would follow the example of his brother in his great clemency and tenderness to his people; he would preserve the government in Church and State as by law established; he knew that the principles of the Church of England were for monarchy, and that the members of it were good and loyal subjects, and therefore he should always have to defend and support it; he knew that the laws were sufficient to make the king as great a monarch as he could wish, and therefore, whilst he would never depart from the just rights and prerogatives of the Crown, he would never invade any man's property. Some members of the Council asked for copies of this "benign and gracious declaration." The king said that he had spoken from his heart without much premeditation, and had not his speech in writing. Finch, the SolicitorGeneral, stated that he thought he could write it down word for word. He did write a report; the king approved, and ordered it to be published. The

VOL. IV.-120.