THE QUAKER COLONIES

CONTENTS

I. THE BIRTH OF PENNSYLVANIA
II. PENN SAILS FOR THE DELAWARE
III. LIFE IN PHILADELPHIA
IV. TYPES OF THE POPULATION
V. THE TROUBLES OF PENN AND HIS SONS
VI. THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR
VII. THE DECLINE OF QUAKER GOVERNMENT
VIII. THE BEGINNINGS OF NEW JERSEY
IX. PLANTERS AND TRADERS OF SOUTHERN JERSEY
X. SCOTCH COVENANTERS AND OTHERS IN EAST JERSEY
XI. THE UNITED JERSEYS
XII. LITTLE DELAWARE
XIII. THE ENGLISH CONQUEST

BIBLIOGRAPHY





THE QUAKER COLONIES



Chapter I. The Birth Of Pennsylvania

In 1661, the year after Charles II was restored to the throne of
England, William Penn was a seventeen-year-old student at Christ Church,
Oxford. His father, a distinguished admiral in high favor at Court, had
abandoned his erstwhile friends and had aided in restoring King Charlie
to his own again. Young William was associating with the sons of the
aristocracy and was receiving an education which would fit him to obtain
preferment at Court. But there was a serious vein in him, and while at a
high church Oxford College he was surreptitiously attending the meetings
and listening to the preaching of the despised and outlawed Quakers.
There he first began to hear of the plans of a group of Quakers to found
colonies on the Delaware in America. Forty years afterwards he wrote, "I
had an opening of joy as to these parts in the year 1661 at Oxford." And
with America and the Quakers, in spite of a brief youthful experience as
a soldier and a courtier, William Penn's life, as well as his fame, is
indissolubly linked.

Quakerism was one of the many religious sects born in the seventeenth
century under the influence of Puritan thought. The foundation principle
of the Reformation, the right of private judgment, the Quakers carried
out to its logical conclusion; but they were people whose minds had
so long been suppressed and terrorized that, once free, they rushed to
extremes. They shocked and horrified even the most advanced Reformation
sects by rejecting Baptism, the doctrine of the Trinity, and all
sacraments, forms, and ceremonies. They represented, on their best
side, the most vigorous effort of the Reformation to return to the
spirituality and the simplicity of the early Christians. But their
intense spirituality, pathetic often in its extreme manifestations,
was not wholly concerned with another world. Their humane ideas and
philanthropic methods, such as the abolition of slavery, and the reform
of prisons and of charitable institutions, came in time to be accepted
as fundamental practical social principles.

The tendencies of which Quakerism formed only one manifestation appeared
outside of England, in Italy, in France, and especially in Germany. The
fundamental Quaker idea of "quietism," as it was called, or peaceful,
silent contemplation as a spiritual form of worship and as a development
of moral consciousness, was very widespread at the close of the
Reformation and even began to be practiced in the Roman Catholic Church
until it was stopped by the Jesuits. The most extreme of the English
Quakers, however, gave way to such extravagances of conduct as trembling
when they preached (whence their name), preaching openly in the
streets and fields--a horrible thing at that time--interrupting other
congregations, and appearing naked as a sign and warning. They gave
offense by refusing to remove their hats in public and by applying to
all alike the words "thee" and "thou," a form of address hitherto used
only to servants and inferiors. Worst of all, the Quakers refused to
pay tithes or taxes to support the Church of England. As a result, the
loathsome jails of the day were soon filled with these objectors, and
their property melted away in fines. This contumacy and their street
meetings, regarded at that time as riotous breaches of the peace, gave
the Government at first a legal excuse to hunt them down; but as they
grew in numbers and influence, laws were enacted to suppress them. Some
of them, though not the wildest extremists, escaped to the colonies in
America. There, however, they were made welcome to conditions no less
severe.

The first law against the Quakers in Massachusetts was passed in 1656,
and between that date and 1660 four of the sect were hanged, one of them
a woman, Mary Dyer. Though there were no other hangings, many Quakers
were punished by whipping and banishment. In other colonies, notably New
York, fines and banishment were not uncommon.