ritual also contained an implicit statement about Penn’s vision for the future of the colony. Although the colony contained only a few fledgling communities hugging the Delaware River in 1682, Penn planned for it to realize its full geographic expanse, if not within his lifetime then certainly in his descendants’. Indeed, he was well on his way before he arrived. By the time he left England, he had sold nearly 300,000 acres of land to more than 300 individuals, most of whom were fellow Quakers and many of whom were of middling means but great aspiration.9
Indeed, Penn kept expansion in mind in everything he designed, including his government. When Penn arrived on the banks of the Delaware, he carried two founding documents that he hoped would turn his expansionist dreams into a reality: a Frame of Government and twenty laws called “The Concessions” that would regulate the behavior of the first settlers. In the Frame, he transferred most of his political powers to his settlers by creating two legislative bodies and establishing a weak executive that he intended to grow even weaker over time. The two major governing bodies were representative bodies, the Assembly, similar in theory to a Parliament, and the more elite Provincial Council, similar to an upper House of Lords. Penn vested the Provincial Council with the power to control all facets of colonial growth. In consultation with the governor, the Provincial Council was to “settle and order the situation of all cities, ports, and market towns in every county, modeling therein all public buildings, streets, and market places, and shall appoint all necessary roads, and high-ways in the province.” The Assembly, meanwhile, would grow alongside the colony to five hundred members, proportionally represented by the hundreds (an English term to define an administrative region within a county) and counties.10
Penn also outlined the process through which land acquisition would happen. In his “Concessions,” he declared that the proprietor was the only person who could purchase land from Native Americans. He was aware that Native peoples in other colonies complained of deceptive land practices, and the strife in these colonies often frustrated English imperialists’ plans for their colonial domains. Penn believed that direct negotiations between Indian groups and himself (or his representatives in his absence) would create more formalized and peaceful diplomatic protocols for acquiring land. Such procedures also reduced the chance for individuals to hold competing titles. By purchasing all land directly from Indians through formal diplomatic treaties and alliances, the transfer would thus rest on the theory of consent facilitated through diplomacy between the proprietor and Indian nations. Penn’s approach to land also revealed something else about his vision for expansion. While he was willing to defer to colonists in governing settled areas, Penn’s land policy meant he controlled the acquisition of all new territory.11
There was one thing wrong with the ritual. While Penn planned to assert his rights to all of the land outlined in his charter, he intended this growth to occur peacefully. The livery of seisin, however, occurred at a fort, a symbol of war, militarization, violence, and all the emotions such a structure conjured: fear, anger, hatred, and desperation. Penn wanted none of these things in his realm. As he promised his Indian neighbors, “The people who come with me are a just, plain, and honest people that neither make war upon others nor fear war from others because they will be just.” With his designs for an ordered expansion through just treatment of Indians and good governance, Penn expected to build bridges, roads, and markets connecting people, not forts that divided. There would be no frontiers in Penn’s woods.12
Penn knew that good relations with Native Americans were the foundation upon which his promise of peace rested. He used the Concessions to reinforce this pledge by regulating interactions between colonists and Native Americans. Penn acknowledged that disputes over trading practices had led to conflict in other colonies. In Pennsylvania, he wanted to create a means of guaranteeing open and fair trade by regulating it. He limited trading to specific areas designated as public markets, mandated that all traders receive a license through the governor, required all goods to be inspected and stamped by colonial officials to protect against fraud, and placed heavy fines on those dealing in “goods not being good.”13
He also knew that the daily interactions of cross-cultural contact caused tensions. He thus declared that Indians should receive the same protections of the law that colonists enjoyed. If any settler wronged an Indian, Penn warned that the colonist should expect to “incur the same penalty of the law, as if he had committed it against his fellow planter.” Penn seemed particularly worried that settlers might seek retribution if they felt wronged by an Indian. Penn warned that under no circumstances were settlers to take the law into their own hands, stating that colonists “shall not be his own judge upon the Indian, but he shall make his complaint to the governor of the province, or his lieutenant, or deputy, or some inferior magistrate near him.” Penn also proposed a novel way to handle the inevitable conflicts that would arise between Indians and colonists: juries composed of equal numbers of Indians and colonists. Penn’s goal was to create an environment of just treatment that avoided rash action.14
Penn’s laws revealed his political acumen. He was a visionary, a theorist, and an optimist, but he was also a realist. Penn saw trade as an opportunity for both unity and friction. In theory, Penn believed fair dealing and brisk trade would help bring colonists and Indians together. In practice, he recognized that intercultural relationships were difficult and that colonists might try to defraud Indians of goods and lands. Penn the realist visionary anticipated this human inclination and saw government as the only means of safeguarding against it.
Penn applied this same foresight to controlling expansion. He envisioned developing any newly purchased land through a Land Office staffed by a Superintendent and various deputies. He would build some manors, but he would sell other land to individuals, most likely through a public auction that distributed lands fairly and evenly. All landowners would pay an annual quitrent to the proprietor for the protection and prosperity that proprietary offices provided them. The quitrent would not be onerous, but it would give Penn some compensation for his troubles and allow him to continue to develop the colony.
All of this planning would promote prosperity, peace, and stability. It was neither utopian nor cynical. Like so much else Penn had done to prepare, the plan sounded good in theory and appeared realistic from the drawing rooms in London.
“Be Soe Good and Kind a Neighbor”
Soon after arriving in his colony, Penn discovered a challenge to his expansionary vision: the imagined borders outlined in his charter conflicted with those of his English neighbors. Many of these overlapping jurisdictions existed only in the abstract because colonial settlement still hugged the eastern seaboard. No one, for instance, seemed to notice that Virginia’s claims to the Ohio River were the same as Pennsylvania’s, or that Connecticut might assert ownership to parts of the territory. Such was not the case when it came to Penn’s southern neighbor, Lord Baltimore, the proprietor of Maryland. Penn’s charter gave Penn rights to what is today Delaware. Lord Baltimore, however, grew enraged by Penn’s ownership, claiming that Marylanders already legally possessed it. Indeed, Baltimore argued that much of the land granted to Penn, including even Philadelphia, was already his. He also began to grumble that Penn’s western plans interfered with his own. If Baltimore’s understanding proved correct, then Penn’s dreams for his colony’s future would die.15
The dispute revealed the difficulties imperial planners faced when building an empire on a vast tract of foreign land. For those who sat an ocean away and drew lines on maps of North America, the specific location of borders looked clear and a minor detail when they saw so much open space on the parchments sitting before them. But for those whose personal wealth was tied to these lands, the ambiguities surrounding a few square miles were hard to accept. Baltimore and Penn thus marshalled legal arguments to justify their dueling claims and then looked to England for clarity.
The main sticking point in the south had to do with whether or not Europeans had settled on the southern portions of the Delaware River before English ownership. If Europeans (notably the Swedes and then the Dutch) had, then the land would have transferred
