By this time he had become unpopular with the members for the Province. He had refused to pass three bills, relating to the charter and to property, without certain amendments; and he had published a proclamation to raise a militia among those whose religious scruples did not hinder them from bearing arms. This unpopularity became at length so great, that they drew up a private remonstrance against him, and sent it to England, to William Penn, in which it is said they reflected upon William Penn himself, and also upon James Logan, who was the public secretary to the government. Early in 1705 Governor Evans convened the same Assembly. In his address to them he stated how much the Proprietary had been grieved with the remonstrance he had received. "Gentlemen," says he, "the Proprietary is so far from agreeing with your opinion in these matters, that he is greatly surprised to see, instead of suitable supplies for the maintenance of government, and defraying public charges for the public safety, time only lost (while his constant expenses run on) in disputes upon heads which he had as fully settled before his departure as the best precautions could enable

him.

"The Proprietary also further assures us, that had the three bills been passed into acts here without the amendments, they would certainly have been vacated by her Majesty, being looked on by men of skill, to whom they were shown, as great absurdities.

"If the remonstrance was the act of the people truly represented, then it was the Proprietary's opinion, that such a proceeding was sufficient to cancel all obligations of care over them; but if done by particular persons only, and it was an imposture in the name of the whole, he expected the country would purge themselves, and take care that due satisfaction was given him."

Ile added, "that the Proprietary (who, it was well known, had hitherto supported this government) had been frequently solicited, upon the treatment he had met with, to resign and throw up all without any further care; but his tenderness to those in the place, whom he knew to be still true and honest, prevailed with him to give the people yet an opportunity of showing what they would do before all was brought to a closing period; but that he would be justified by all reasonable men for withdrawing the exercise of his care over those who, being so often invited to it, took so little of themselves."

Soon after this, Governor Evans, not being able to make an impression upon the Assembly, dissolved it, and at the time fixed by charter he called a new one. During the sittings of the latter there was a better understanding on both sides, and several laws were passed; but before the end of the year he became obnoxious to several of the most respectable of its members; for he had joined with the Assembly for the Territories in some acts which seemed to have been rather levelled against the interest of the Province than to answer any good end. He had treated, too, the religious

scruples of the Quakers against war as groundless and absurd; and he had exhibited, as a man, a looseness and levity of character which was disgusting to a serious-minded people.

In the year 1706 Governor Evans completed his unpopularity by two extraordinary acts. In order to succeed in his project of a militia he created a false alarm. It was contrived that a messenger should be sent to him from Newcastle to Philadelphia, at the time of the fair, to inform him that a number of vessels were then actually in the river for the purpose of invasion. Upon this news Evans acted his part. He sent his emissaries to spread consternation through the city, while he himself, with a drawn sword, rode through the streets in apparently great agitation of mind, and entreated and commanded by turns persons of all rank to assist him in this emergency. The plot, having been thus executed, operated differently upon different people. Some fled; others buried their property; and others took up arms. Among the latter were only four Quakers. Soon after this the imposition was discovered; and the consequence was, that he lost the good opinion of the Quakers and of many others from that day.

The other transaction was as follows:-The Assembly for the Territories had passed a law, on the suggestion of Evans, for the building of a fort at Newcastle; and they had enacted also, that all vessels coming from sea up the Delaware should pay a certain tax; and that all masters of vessels, whether going up or down the river, should drop anchor at the fort and report their vessels, and get leave to pass, under a penalty of five pounds, and so much for every shot fired at them in case of neglect. This law made him unpopular throughout the Province. The people there considered it an infraction of the Royal Charter, which gave them a right to the free use of the river and bay without obstruction from any quarter whatever; and they were determined to resist it. Accordingly, after the fort had been built, and the exactions paid by many, three Quakers, Richard Hill, who was one of the Council, and Isaac Norris and Samuel Preston, men of the first station and character, went on board a sloop belonging to Hill, and sailed down the river, and dropt anchor a little before they came to the fort. Norris and Preston then landed, to inform the officers in it that the vessel had been regularly cleared; after which they returned to her. When they got on board, Hill took the command of the sloop, stood to the helm, and passed the fort, and this withont receiving any damage, though a constant firing was kept up, and though the guns were pointed in such a direction that a shot went through the mainsail. As soon as the sloop was clear of the fort, John French, the commander of it, put off in a boat, manned and armed, to bring her to. When he came alongside, Hill ordered a rope to be thrown to him; upon which he fastened the boat and then went on board. Upon this, Hill cut the rope, and the boat falling astern, he conducted French a prisoner to the cabin, and sailed away with him to Lord Cornbury, who happened then to be at Salem, a little lower

down on the Jersey side of the river. Lord Cornbury, having reprimanded French, dismissed him. Soon after this, Hill, accompanied by a large number of the inhabitants of Philadelphia, attended the General Assembly, and laid a petition before them. The consequence was that the Assembly presented an address to the Governor, in which they reprobated the law in question without one dissenting voice, and this in so strong a manner that no proceedings of the like nature were continued.

These transactions together made such a rupture between Evans and the Assembly, that there was nothing but jarring between them afterwards; so that, when Evans sent to the Assembly the draft of a bill, which he supposed necessary, the Assembly immediately rejected it; and when the Assembly proposed another in its stead, Evans rejected it in his turn, remarking that it broke in upon the Proprietary's powers of government, and his just interests and rights.

This opposition of the Governor to the bill of the Assembly, and his remarks upon it, very much displeased them; and, as if they had something to let out by way of revenge, but no one to vent it upon, they brought against James Logan, one of the Council and the public secretary of the government, a number of accusations, which they styled articles of impeachment; but here they were foiled; for through Evans's management, and his protection of Logan, they were not able to effect any thing against the latter either by way of censure or removal from office.

Having been now twice worsted, they drew up, in 1707, a remonstrance, a second time, against Governor Evans, and sent it to William Penn. It was a sort of catalogue of the particulars of his mal-administration, which included the false alarm, the story of the sloop and the fort, as before mentioned, and twelve other charges.

On the first of October, the day of election according to the charter, the choice falling upon most of the old members, there was the same want of cordiality, or, rather, the same discord, between the parties, as before; so that very little was done in that session.

In the beginning of 1708, William Penn, having received the second remonstrance of the Assembly against Governor Evans, also letters from the latter in his own vindication, as well as several from others, who took their respective sides as they felt themselves influenced by facts and circumstances, took the case into his most serious consideration, with a determi-. nation to do justice to all parties, and, at the same time, to consult the true interest and welfare of the Province. The result was, that he found himself under the necessity of recalling Governor Evans. Accordingly, a letter was dispatched to him to this effect. It reached him in due time at Philadelphia, and he left his deputy government in cousequence in the

same year.

CHAPTER XL.

A. 1709-10-11-12.-IS OBLIGED TO MORTGAGE HIS PROVINCE-CAUSES OF THIS OBLIGATION-TRAVELS AGAIN IN THE MINISTRY-WRITES A PREFACE TO THE "DISCOURSES OF BULSTRODE WHITLOCKE"CONSTITUTION BEGINS TO BREAK REMOVES TO RUSHCOMB IN BERKSHIRE-DETERMINES UPON PARTING WITH HIS PROVINCEBUT IS PREVENTED BY ILLNESS WRITES A PREFACE TO THE "WORKS OF JOHN BANKS"-HAS THREE APOPLECTIC FITS —AFFAIRS OF PENNSYLVANIA.

IN 1709 William Penn submitted to a painful act for the sake of justice. His pecuniary embarrassments were such as to oblige him to mortgage his province of Pennsylvania for 6,6001. The money was advanced him by his friends, but principally by those who were of his own religious society.

One of the most remote causes of his embarrassment, indeed the great and continually operating one, was the expenditure of money for the good of the Province, without those pecuniary returns to which he was entitled. Oldmixon, who was cotemporary with him, and who published his "Account of the British Empire in America" only the preceding year, speaks on the subject thus:-"We shall not enter into any inquiries into the causes of the trouble that has been given Mr. Penn lately about the province of Peunsylvania. It appears to us, by what we have heard of it from others (for from himself we never had any information concerning it), that he has been involved in it by his bounty to the Indians, his generosity in minding the public affairs of the colony more than his own private ones, his humanity to those who have not made suitable returns, his confidence in those who have betrayed him, and the rigour of the severest equity, a word that borders the nearest to injustice of any. 'Tis certainly the duty of this colony to maintain the Proprietary, who has laid out his all for the maintenance of them, in the possession of his Territory; and public gratitude ought to make good what they reap the benefit of. This is all said ɔut of justice to the merit of this gentleman, otherwise it would have been without his consent." But, though this was the first and great cause, yet that which added to it, and brought on the present distress, was the unexpected demand of the executors of his steward Ford, and the issue of the suit in Chancery, as before mentioned. It appears, from the best information I have been able to collect on this subject, that William Penn had behaved to Ford, during his life-time, with great kindness and liberality, and that, not suspecting one whom he had both so eminently trusted and served, he had incautiously and without due inspection put his hand to papers, as mere matters of course, which his steward had laid before him to sign. Ilence the law could give him no relief. But, whatever was the history of the transaction, the steward lost his reputation by it. James Logan, who was secretary to the government of

Pennsylvania, and who knew the whole of the case, and who had occasion to allude to it in a manuscript found after his death, stigmatises the act by "the fraud and treachery of his steward," and in the same language it was generally spoken of at the time.

Having raised the money, and thereby removed some of his difficulties, he travelled as a minister of the Gospel to the west of England, and visited also in the same capacity the counties of Berks, Buckingham, and Surrey, and other places. He wrote, this year, "Some Account of the Life and Writings of Bulstrode Whitlocke, Esq., prefixed to his Memorials of English Affairs to the End of the Reign of King James the First, now published from his Original Manuscript." William Penn had for many years been acquainted with this great and venerable person.

In this year we first hear of the failure of his constitution. It is noticed by Eesse, the author of the first History of his Life, who says that the infirmities of old age began to visit him, and to lessen his wonted powers. It is noticed also by Oldmixon, in his second edition of his "Account of the British Empire in America," who speaks thus:-" The troubles that befel Mr. Penn in the latter part of his life are of a nature too private to have a place in a public history. He trusted an ungrateful, unjust agent too much with the management of it; and, when he expected to have been thousands of pounds the better for it, found himself thousands of pounds in debt; insomuch that he was restrained of his liberty within the privilege of the Fleet, by a tedious and unsuccessful law-suit; which, together with age, broke his spirits, not easy to be broken, and rendered him incapable of business and society, as he was wont to have been in the days of his health and vigour, both of body and mind."

This intelligence respecting his health, though it bursts thus suddenly upon us, ought not to surprise us. It is not wonderful that symptoms of decline should have begun to show themselves in his constitution at the age of sixty-seven, and more particularly when we consider the distressing scenes he experienced in this and the preceding year. In the former year he had to contrast his own unsuspicious and generous conduct with the treachery of his steward. He had to lament the failure of his suit in Chancery, both as it embarrassed his pecuniary affairs, and as it might injure his reputation. He had the mortification to see himself a prisoner within the limits of the Fleet. He had been afflicted by the renewal and continuation of bitter dissensions between the Assembly of Pennsylvania and his Deputy Governor. He had been under the painful task of removing the latter; and, in the present year, he had been compelled to mortgage his Province. These were causes which could not but have affected him. Religion and philosophy have undoubtedly the power of blunting the edge of our afflictions, and of making them more bearable; but they cannot alter the law of our mortality, or secure us from that decay to which we are liable from our nature.