In this manner, all of present Pennsylvania except the northwestern third was purchased by 1768. Population and Immigration Native AmericansĪlthough William Penn was granted all the land in Pennsylvania by the King, he and his heirs chose not to grant or settle any part of it without first buying the claims of the Native Americans who lived there. On May 8, 1985, they were also granted honorary citizenship by Pennsylvania. Three hundred years later, William Penn and his wife Hannah Callowhill Penn were made honorary citizens of the United States by act of Congress. By the time of Penn's return to England late in 1684, the foundations of the Quaker Province were well established. The second Assembly in 1683 reviewed and amended Penn's First Frame with his cooperation and created the Second Frame of Government.
This first Assembly united the Delaware counties with Pennsylvania, adopted a naturalization act and, on December 7, adopted the Great Law, a humanitarian code that became the fundamental basis of Pennsylvania law and which guaranteed liberty of conscience. He visited Philadelphia, just laid out as the capital city, created the three original counties, and summoned a General Assembly to Chester on December 4. Later, in October 1682, the Proprietor arrived in Pennsylvania on the ship Welcome. Penn's preface to First Frame of Government has become famous as a summation of his governmental ideals. In England, Penn drew up the First Frame of Government, his proposed constitution for Pennsylvania. In April 1681, Penn made his cousin William Markham deputy governor of the province and sent him to take control. In 1682 the Duke of York deeded to Penn his claim to the three lower counties on the Delaware, which are now the state of Delaware. Provincial statutes could be annulled by the King.
Other provisions assured its people the protection of English laws and, to a certain degree, kept it subject to the government in England. It was to include the land between the 39th and 42nd degrees of north latitude and from the Delaware River westward for five degrees of longitude. The King named the new colony in honor of William Penn's father. The King signed the Charter of Pennsylvania on March 4, 1681, and it was officially proclaimed on April 2. With the Duke's support, Penn's petition was granted.
Seeking a haven in the New World for persecuted Friends, Penn asked the King to grant him land in the territory between Lord Baltimore's province of Maryland and the Duke of York's province of New York. King Charles II owed William Penn £16,000, money which his late father Admiral Sir Penn had lent him. The Society's rejections of rituals and oaths, its opposition to war, and its simplicity of speech and dress soon attracted attention, usually hostile. George Fox, the son of a Leicestershire weaver, is credited with founding it in 1647, though there was no definite organization before 1668. The origins of the Society of Friends lie in the intense religious ferment of seventeenth century England. Despite the unpopularity of his religion, he was socially acceptable in the king's court because he was trusted by the Duke of York, later King James II. He used his inherited wealth and rank to benefit and protect his fellow believers. Despite high social position and an excellent education, he shocked his upper-class associates by his conversion to the beliefs of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, then a persecuted sect. Penn was born in London on October 24, 1644, the son of Admiral Sir William Penn. 1681-1776: The Quaker Province The Founding of Pennsylvania William Penn and the Quakers