USA > Pennsylvania > Welsh settlement of Pennsylvania > Part 23
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But Robert Turner, in a letter from Philadelphia, 3. 6mo. 1685, to Penn, to be sent out as an advertising circular of the Province, to influence sales of land, was even more "enthusiastic" than Penn, when he wrote, "As to the Coun- try, the Improvements are Large, and settlements very Throng by the way of Townships and Villages"! Most of Penn's "Further Account" of his Utopia we know was "a pipe dream." There is no question but that his idea was to have townships of 5,000 (or 10,000) acres extent, with a village ir the middle, and five (or ten) families at least, in each township. But when he wrote the "glowing account" above, there were few families in any township, and these, with the exception of in Merion, (and there the Thomas & Jones party had settled in one corner, and although this township had the largest number of settlers in 1685, it was very far from being "throng"), were seated so scatteringly through any 5,000 aere tract, that a whole township was long called a "town," as much for this reason as for abbreviation.
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The Welsh Friends contended that it was agreed their 40,000 acres of land would lie in one undivided tract, or "town," and not be cut up into sections; but, if now there must be townships in the Province, their tract should be only one township, in conformity with the desire which they had expressed, and Penn had agreed to, and that they alone should have the right "to chuse" its officers, and from among themselves, as was also promised, and to expend within it the local taxes collected.
But this municipal district plan did not suit Penn, so the Welsh Tract was arbitrarily divided into three townships, and his Council appointed the first officers, and tried to collect the tithes, and thus the Welshmen were not allowed to have and support their own government within their territory. However, the Welsh continued to exercise some civil authority through their monthly meeting, and held "town meetings" among themselves at the several Friends' Meeting houses, to regulate certain matters of their "towns" which they did not wish to take into court. But of this further. This solid township idea is what has come to be known as the "Welsh Barony."
When you come to review the "Welsh idea," you may note that whatever the Welsh, when purchasing, wanted, Penn promised, and that they realized only disappointments out of their expectations. (And this was the experience of the Germans, too.) Their hopes for a township, or a "barony," in one tract, for themselves alone, their tract to be separate and distinct from every county, to have courts and magis- trates of their own, for there is the testimony of one Welsh- man, that when they called upon Penn in London, they "asked that in our tract, within which all causes, quarrels, crimes, and disputes [arose], might be tried and wholly determined by officers, Magistrates, and Juries of our own language"; * its inhabitants not to do jury duty outside
*If the Welsh Friends had enforced some of the old laws peculiar to themselves in their State, there certainly would have been trouble, but probably no more than we are now experiencing in our "united"
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of the "Welsh Town," which should be represented as a "barony" in the Provincial Council, and in the Provincial Assembly, by men of their own selection from among them- selves, although they claimed to have their own Assembly in their Monthly Meeting, to pay taxes raised only for the use of their Towns, they had reason to expect to enjoy, for they heard the "Great Man" promise, and for these, and other conditions, they often petitioned for confirmation.
Because there was no deed from Penn to the Welsh cover- ing a solid tract of 40,000 acres of Pensylvania land, he, and his agents, took advantage of this oversight, and champ- ions of Penn have claimed there was no authority for sup- posing the several grants should be laid in one body. Yet, there is Penn's personal instruction to his surveyor-general,
States where each has laws of its own choosing, especially in marital matters. The Welsh would have had the wife's dower (agweddi, or gwaddol), or marriage portion, remain her property, but would have "compensated" the husband by having the bride's father pay him the "maiden fee," (amobr or gobr merch), if she married by his consent. But not to be excelled in courtesy, the bridegroom would pay the father something, generally live stock, for the "loss" of his daughter's services in his household. And then further, on the morning after the marriage, "if the bride proved to be what he had a right to expect," the groom pre. nted her with cowyll, a gift of money for her own use; hut this only once, and this was her cyvarwys, or per- quisite. And if the Welsh Tract, or cymwd, had really been as they hoped, that is a gwlad, and held by the Friends organized into a polity, their Welsh "land laws" would have conflicted with Penn's. No ebediw, nor gobr estyn, no inheritance tax, nor investure fee would have been paid, providing all the land had been paid for by the decedent. Then there were peculiar "regulations" as to gorvedog, and mach, or bail bonds, and security for debt. But it is not clear how their law of marwdy, would work, for by it a house and contents "reverted to the lord" when the owner died intestate. Possibly Penn, as the pennaeth, or petty king, would have claimed it. But their laws as to trevtad, or patrimony, land, cattle, crops, etc., would certainly have made this "State" singular. The law as to horse trading was certainly peculiar; "Whom shall sell a horse or a mare let him be anserable for inward disorders, to-wit, 3 mornings for the staggers, end 3 months for the glanders, and a year for the farcy. Let the person who shall buy it look to an outside blemish."
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in his warrant of survey, instructing him to do the very thing the Welsh claimed, and confirming what the Welsh said they understood him to promise them, and this war- rant was issued but a short time after the date of their purchases, when the conversation could have been fresh in Penn's recollection. Certainly, it was before he began to be unfair to his Welsh friends. But a stronger argument for unity of the Welsh Tract, and the larger purchasers in it, may be seen in the "condition" of 11 July, 1681, under which he sold to them : "That whenever any number of purchasers, whose acres amount to 5,000 acres, desire to sit together in a township, they shall have their township cast together." However, it was not that the tract was inter- sected by other tracts, or that part of a Welshman's farm was in one place, and miles off there was some more of it, for it really lay contiguously, and the complaint of the Welsh was that it was subsequently made to lay part in one county and part in another, so, as far as the unity of the tract was concerned the county line might as well have been a many mile wide strip.
Their complaint of "division" also concerned another case within the greater one, but there was nothing to substan- tiate it, unless Penn's "conditions" of 11 July 1681, covers the case, and in part it does. This was the splitting up of the grants of 5,000, 3,000, and 1,000 acres of land, as we have seen was the case, for nearly all the Welsh Tract parcels, bought from the "trustees," were laid out part in one township, and the balance in a distant one, although within the Welsh Tract. And this affected not only the large tracts, but the small purchasers, for we have seen 150 acre lots, half, the maenor, in Merion, and half in Goshen. The evidence seems to be against any cause for supposing that the grants to the trustees, or companies, should lay con- tiguously. The deeds to them all road the same, differing of course as to names and acreage, saying "the full quantity of Five Thousand Acres to be allotted and set out in such places, or parts of the said province," etc., as had been or
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may be agreed upon. There appeared to be no guarantee that the trustees's tracts should be located in one place. This the Welsh overlooked to have in the deeds, never imagin- ing a purchase; or a cantrer, would not be all together.
But Penn was particular to have his own 10,000 acre tracts, which he reserved out of cach 100,000 acre lot he sold, lie contiguously. This was the plan of "tenths" which he introduced into We t Jersey, when he was managing the Byllyngs domain, which, by the way, was not an humani- tarian venture, though the sales were at first made to Quakers almost exclusively, and led up to Penn's personal "holy experiment."
There seems always, and particularly so in recent years, to have been considerable misconception about the Welsh Tract h ving been erected by Penn into a "barony," with all the honors and power pertaining to such a state.
Just as had William Alexander, the poet and court favorite, in Nova Scotia, the proprietors of Maryland, and of Carolina had authority to create a nobility, and the latter only used it. But Penn overlooked, or missed such a con- cession, or, more likely, he never insisted upon it, for he knew it would not be to the taste of the plain people of his faith, to whom he hoped to sell his land. So, he missed of his own accord being "the fountain of honour, as well as the source of office," yet he was the seignior, with a court, administering and dispencing justice in his name.
Penn, presumably, had no authority given him to create a baronage, and consequently to erect a barony of any degree in his domain, (yet he conferred on a Scotchman the "bar- ony of Inverie," in 1685), or to establish a semblance of an order of nobility. This only king and parliament could do, after he got his charter, and there was no suggestion that such would ever be their intention, or to delegate power to him, a dependent, to create a nobility, which would be feudatory to the Crown only through him, for this would have been what a baronage then meant, whether in Pen- sylvania, or England.
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Even his 10,000 acre reservations though called manors were never such, for this was only their courtesy title.
Penn's instructions to his surveyors-general to lay out the 40,000 acres of land, (they took altogether 50,000 acres), which the Welsh Friends purchased, "as in a barony," was only a "figure of speech" so far as the tract was concerned. He employed the same expression in the same sense when formulating his assembly; "one representative from each purchase of a 5,000 acre baronage." That is, as to the Welsh Tract, he desired it laid out in a barony-like tract ; "may be lay'd out contiguously as [like] one Barony," was the wording of his instruction. He meant all of the pur- chases of the seven, or more, Welsh "companies" should lie contiguous, in one body, a large sweep of land, or "broad lands," and this did not even suggest that the purchases lying contiguously should be a parish, or a precinct, but only "as one Barony." Penn owned property in Ireland, and had been there, and was probably familiar with the scheme of the plantation of Ulster, and with King James' "Orders and Conditions to be observed by the Undertakers upon the Distribution and Plantation of the Escheated Lands of Ulster," (these Orders, and the "Concessions and Agreements of the Proprietors of West Jersey," 1675-6, Penn must have consulted when he wrote his own "Con- ditions and Concessions to Adventurers for Land," as he copied their ideas, and expressions some places), which instructed that the ten "townlands" of 5,000 acres each should constitute a barony, and this term is still used in Ireland for every ten townships lying contiguously, or a precinct of 50,000 acres in size, which was the acreage of the Welsh Tract.
I don't think the Welsh Friends, the pioneers, had any notion that Penn meant their tract of land should be "a real barony," under ancient conditions, as has often been claimed. All they were interested in was having their pur- chases "lie contiguously as in a barony," or whatever such a whole tract of land may be termed, and that Penn should
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keep his promises to them, especially as to the entire con- trol and management of it through their meetings, or their monthly meeting.
And I do think that the "true barony" idea originated in the fertile imagination of some zealous, enthusiastic modern descendants of the Welsh Quaker pioneers. They imagined that the "barony" carried with it the feudatory right to sit in Parliament, overlooking the fact that the dignity of a baron, a lord of Parliament, was then, as now, a personal matter; not a territorial adjunct, but an honor conferred by the king and confirmed by a writ of summons to Parliament.
A "true barony," the descendants' idea, I can imagine would have been an ineptly bestowed concession, if the ancient custom had obtained, and Penn had power to inaugurate it. Who among the Welsh Quakers can you imagine would have been the Welsh peer who would sit in Parliament? Who would issue the fee simple grants within the Welsh barony? From whom would have been held the land if at that time a baronage had been a territorial dignity? Whoever he would have been, who would have selected him?
The nearest, the final, or acceptable Royal Charter came to giving Penn power to erect a dignity resembling a baron- age was where it gave him a baron's power to erect manors in his province, with all the authority peculiar to them, namely court-baron, "to hold view of frank pledge for the conservance of the peace," "to be fully exercised by the lords of the manors for the time being." Such manors may have been "a feudatory of the prince," for Penn at first had the authority of a petty king, but it did not carry with it the right of the manor-holder to sit in Parliament as a baron, though he was the "lord of the manor for the time being." His Royal Charter also gave Penn's grantees "power to erect any parcels of land within the province into manors," "and in every such manor to have and to hold a court-baron, with all things whatsover which to a court-baron do belong."
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Sydney George Fisher, writing of these times in Pen- sylvania, has a view of them that is hardly justified by the facts. He said, Penn "had promised them [the Welsh Quakers] a tract of 40,000 acres, where they would have a little government of their own, and live by themselves." "They insisted that their 40,000 acres constituted a barony, or county palatine, and it was known as the Welsh Barony until modern times changed it to Welsh Tract." "It was a manor, with the right of court-baron, like the one occu- pied by the Moravians on the Lehigh, and, if circumstances had been favorable, it could easily have been developed into a sort of a palatine." The Moravian "barony," was only a reservation, within one of Penn's "manors, and baronial rights, if any ever existed, were never exercised." A better suggestion of Penn's elastic grants was the one to Eneas Macpherson, a Scotchman of course, in 1685. Though it was similar in conditions to the grants to the Welsh "first purchasers," it was manorial, since it gave Mr. Macpherson power to erect his 5,000 acre lot "into the barony of Inve- rie," with privilege of court-leet, court-baron, &c. He fur- ther directed his Land Commissioners to grant large tracts of land with the same conditions, but, somehow they over- looked this order, which was very careless of them. This idea of manors, with court-baron, and even the Board of Land Commissioners, was the same King James employed when dealing with the undertakers for Ulster.
Penn knew better than to experiment with a petty nobil- ity in his refuge for Quakers, and, as said above, he con- sidered his manors were simply divisions of his territory for his own convenience. That is, his own manors were the lands kept in his own hands, for his personal use, or that of his family, and the "lord" of such manors, was simply his steward, appointed, or removed by him, at will.
But it was not Penn's fault that there was not the order of nobility in Pensylvania. Although not himself of the nobilty he was an aristocrat, and so were some who assisted him in framing his government. But others, not living in
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aristocratic atmosphere, advised him, if he wished to realize on his land, and interest the "plain people" in it, he should change his "Frame," and eliminate the nobility idea from it.
We have seen that one of his sehemes was to sell land in lots of 5,000 acres, with the "patroon idea" of settlement. This idea he held on to when he early planned the "Parlia- ment" for his Province. He wanted a "House of Lords," composed of owners of 5,000 acre tracts of land, and a "Lower House," made up of their tenants. That is, the Upper House of Parliament, or House of Lords, should be composed of fifty "barons"; and to be eligible to it, or to be a baron, one must be a married man and own 5,000 acres, or "a propriety." The right to sit as a "baron" was to descend from heir to heir, so long as the "barony" was not reduced below 2,000 acres, in such a case the "baronage" should cease. This was a great advertising card for Pen- sylvania if Penn had not been argued out of distributing it. It seemed such a good thing to him, that another draft of the same "Frame" makes the number of "barons" 100. The "lords and tenants" were to be organized into standing com- mittees, with, of course, the "Lords" in the majority, which should attend to all matters of "church and State."
In Penn's draft of the charter, the one he would have liked the king to grant, but which was discarded, he mapped out for himself extraordinary powers. He was to have the usual and magnificent powers of a count-palatine of feudal times, or an independent principality, with homage and fealty only to the king. It gave him powers to coin money, confer titles receive and spend all the revenue, control all the courts, etc., and be dictator in everything within his domain. The con- ferred royal charter was very much modified, probably to Penn's chagrin.
It cannot be denied that from the first the Welsh Friends had large ideas about the status of their tract, or "towns," for all along there are suggestions that they pre- sumed on what might be considered manorial, or baronial rights and privileges within their tract, and attempted to
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enjoy them. Their chief offense in this respect against the supreme authority of the proprietary was the use, if not organization of the monthly meeting into an alleged local court, to settle disputes arising in the traet, generally civil disputes arising among themselves, but probably not crim- inal cases, and there is suggestion that "taxes" were levied within their bounds for the use of the community, through the monthly meeting. And further, that they claimed that their "towns" should have delegates of their own selecting sit in the general assembly, and, if possible, one member from the tract in the provincial council. The "Welsh idea" of a tract exclusive to themselves, be it a barony, manor, or state, within Penn's province, may have been crude and impracticable, but certainly, if we are to believe Hugh Roberts, they originally had some encouragement from Penn in the matter of self-government, or that he held out some such inducement when effecting the sale of the land, and without actually committing himself to the scheme by sign- ing any agreement to this effect. Penn himself did create one barony, or manor, we know, and did instruct his com- missioners to do the same for him, so I do not doubt but that he made the promises to the Welsh Friends, which they claimed he did as late as in 1688-89.
Pastorius, the German scholar, who bought 15,000 acres of Penn, in London, on 5 June, 1683, for himself, and "an aggregation of individuals," all Germans, known as the Frankfort Company, came over to Philadelphia, arriving 20 Aug., 1683. It seems they experienced almost the identi- cal troubles the Welsh Friends had about lands, and con- cessions. His letters tell of the difficulty he had to get the land located and surveyed, after he had paid for it, and William Penn, "of his princely bounty," had granted it, and how he had to be satisfied with any location for the pur- chase the surveyor would give him, which we know was out on the hills of the present Germantown, across from the "Welsh Town." Pastorius may have supposed he should have had better treatment from Friend Penn, because Penn
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was part Dutch himself, his mother "Dutch Peg," (as Pepys called her), having been a Dutchwoman, and Penn spoke the Teutonic language well enough to express himself in both Dutch and German, and preached in both lands.
A minute of the Provincial Council, 5. 1mo., 1700-1, re- cords that Pastorius presented a petition in behalf of the German corporation, "setting forth, That by the Proprie- taries advice and Directions, they had seated themselves so close together that they Scarce have room to live. But Especially, That the Propriet'ry by his Charter in the Year 1689, had granted Several Considerable Privileges to the Germans of the Said Town by making them A Corporation by virtue of which they looked upon themselves exempt from the Jurisdiction of ye County Court of Philad'ia, and from all Taxes & Levies of the Same, having a Court of Record & Magistrates within themselves, and Defraying all the Public Charges of their Said Town & Corporation without any Assistance from the rest of the County. Therefore, they requested to be exempt from general County levies. A copy of their Charter being produced, It appeared by it that they had full Power of holding Court of Recording, and of trying Cases Judicially within themselves, but had no other grant for Representatives to Sitt in Assembly, than what ye rest of the County had." Several reasons were advanced why they should not share and contribute to the Philadelphia county taxes, one being that the roads and bridges the county maintained near their bounds, were enjoyed more by them than any people, and therefore they should help pay for them. On the contrary, they replied this was offset by keeping at their own charge the roads and bridges within their bounds, which were used by the whole country. From this it may be seen that not only the Welsh experienced Penn's capriciousness .*
*Even the beneficiaries under his will of his old friend, the noted apostle of Quakerism, George Fox, had an unpleasant experience with Mr. Penn. By deed of lease and release, dated 21 and 22 Oct. 1681 (which was not recorded till 21 April, 1767), George Fox bought
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It may have been for this reason that some of the leading English Quakers considered the Germans, as new settlers, were not acceptable. In 1717, Judge James Logan com- plained of "the great number of palatines pouring in upon us, without any recommendation, which gives our country some uneasiness, for foreigners do not so well among us as our own people."
This German community kept together till about the year 1707, not so long as the Welsh one, and the cause of dis- integration in both "towns," or settlements was the same, for the Germans, like the Welsh, presumed on too much, when they supposed they were to live by themselves, have a government of their own, under laws they had been accustomed to, and in their own tongue, and be represented in the general assembly of the province as a distinct "Ger- man State," for Pastorius, their leader and "Moses," says
from Penn 1250 acres of land, to help along his "experiment," paying £25, for which amount Penn gave him a receipt, witnessed by Harb't Springette, Tho Coke, and Mark Swaner. Fox was, as bonus, to have a city lot of twenty acres, or if he preferred, 16 acres of Liberty Land among the Welsh Friends, and two good city lots, and to pay one shilling per 100 acres in ground rent. Fox died in 1690, without having had his patent recorded, but he devised the "city lots" for the use of Phila. Friends, and this gift was confirmed to Friends Carpenter, Hill and Morris, as trustees, by patent dated 26. 6mo. 1705. The remainder of his right, Mr. Fox devised to his wife's sons- in-law, Thomas Lower, John Rouse, and Daniel Abraham. Said Abraham, and Nathaniel Rouse, son and heir to John, by deed dated 21. 4mo. 1715, for £8, released their interest in Fox's lands to Mr. Lower, who requested warrant to lay it out, which was granted, 22. 9mo. 1717. The above trustees had Fox's city lots, 'for the use of Friends located at the corner of High and 2d Streets, and on this property a meeting house was erected in 1695-6. This "annoyed" Penn greatly (see the Penn-Logan Correspondence, letters of Oct. 1703, and Sep. 1705), as he claimed these were lots he wished to reserve for his family, and that Markham had given them away without his permission. This, too, was a reflection on the trustees, but as they had had other similar experiences with the Founder, they let him fume, and did not surrender the lots, but had them confirmed to them as above.
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