argued that the land was never in European hands and was rightfully his because his charter gave him the right to all undeveloped areas of the Delmarva Peninsula (the name for the spit of land that Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia now share). If Baltimore’s argument won out in English courts, then Penn would lose the only waterway that provided his colony with access to the Atlantic. At stake was the future of each colony. The outcome would also shape the English Empire in this burgeoning region.16
The second dispute regarded the fortieth degree, or the northern border of Maryland, and proved much trickier to resolve. Here too the disagreement was over a river—this time, the Susquehanna—that both proprietors saw as a gateway to the west. Without the river, Penn worried that his western lands would become nothing more than “a dead lump of earth” because Baltimore would control all trade. Penn’s charter stated that his colony’s southern border was the “beginning of the fortieth degree.” According to Penn’s maps, his colony started below where the Susquehanna River met the Chesapeake, giving him the entirety of the potentially lucrative river. Baltimore’s charter, in contrast, contained the passage that his colony went up to “that part of the Bay of Delaware … which lieth under the fortieth degree.” Today, such phrases may seem very specific designations, and indeed, they were meant to be exactly that. In an era of poor instrumentation and mapmaking, however, such descriptions proved troublesome. And this too was no small matter. Whoever controlled the Susquehanna would control trade with and expansion into the interior.17
Once Penn caught wind of Baltimore’s concerns, he tried to settle their differences in a series of meetings. He asked Baltimore “to be soe good and kind a neighbour as to afford him but a back door” to his colony. Penn’s friendly talk won him no favors. Baltimore appeared displeased and uninterested—if not downright hostile—at every meeting. And he had just cause. Many people at the time and quite a few historians since believed that by the letter of the law, Baltimore had a stronger case in both disputes. Penn, however, disagreed and pressed Baltimore on both fronts.18
Matters came to a head when Penn and Baltimore met in New Castle in August 1683. Their relations had become so poisonous that they could not even agree on how to conduct their negotiations. Penn wanted the two to adopt diplomatic protocols that resembled the way two nations negotiated treaties. He proposed that both men retire to separate houses with their respective advisers by their sides and then “treat by way of written memorials,” so their words could not have “the mistakes or abuses that may follow from ill designs, or ill memory.” Baltimore declined this invitation by blaming poor weather, but it was clear he had little interest in negotiating. After this failed meeting, Baltimore began issuing proclamations in the contested zone, offering more land for cheaper prices than Pennsylvania in an attempt to build a solid bulwark of loyal Marylanders who rejected Penn’s authority.19
The race was on to see who could establish the strongest claims to the territory. Penn, realizing that Baltimore rejected Penn’s own admittedly self-serving sense of neighborliness, began to adopt Baltimore’s more cutthroat tactics in order to bolster his legal standing in an English court. In October 1683, just two months after the failed treaty, Penn traveled to the Susquehanna River to secure an Indian deed to this contested area. Penn’s “purchase of the mouth of the Susquehanna River” was one of the shortest and vaguest of his original purchases. He purchased the land from Machaloha, a Delaware whose right to sell it scholars have deemed “questionable.” Penn ignored any doubts, however, reasoning that he could use the purchase to show that Indians invested with the original right to the land recognized his ownership. As his biographers have pointed out, Penn’s purpose was “to solidify his claim and to notify the Lords of Trade,” the imperial organization that mediated disputes between colonies. Driven by a feud with his neighbor and guided by his understanding of the precedents imperial officials might privilege in a case before them, Penn took the actions he believed necessary to secure his domain.20
Figure 3. William Penn’s first purchases of Indian lands, shown here in aggregate. One of Penn’s first objectives was to secure title to the land bordering the Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers, believing that control of both arteries was essential to the future prosperity of his colony. Machaloha’s grant, the approximate extent of which is noted above, overlapped with other purchases of Penn’s. Penn made his purchase from Machaloha under duress, fearing that if he did not secure a claim to the land near the mouth of the Susquehanna from a Native representative, Lord Baltimore would win this valuable waterway. After Pencak and Richter, eds., Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods (University Park, PA, 2004).
Although the Susquehanna purchase instructed all settlers to “behave themselves justly and lovingly” toward the Indians, the dubious nature of the purchase suggests that when English colonies competed over land, Penn, like others, would push aside Native concerns. Indeed, such times laid bare the driving assumption of Penn’s enterprise: expansion was essential to colonial success in the Middle Colonies. In this early case, Penn surrendered some of his principles to preserve his larger vision. Indeed, Penn may have considered this treaty simply a short-term expedient that did not compromise his core principles because in 1701, he negotiated a new purchase with the Conestoga Indians, the group with the strongest claim to the land he had purchased from Machaloha.21
“The Securitie of the Fronteers”
Penn left for England aboard the Endeavour in 1684 to defend his case against Baltimore. He departed feeling confident, his optimism about the future of the colony buoyed by signs of success. Just before he left, he wrote his close friend John Alloway a letter brimming with enthusiasm, bragging that Philadelphia had about six hundred people and hundreds of homes. The city supported a tavern, and colonists constructed a three-hundred-foot-long dock that jutted out into the Delaware River to accommodate the more than forty-five ships arriving annually. Penn’s expansionary dreams were also coming to fruition. He boasted to another friend that Pennsylvania would eclipse its rival Maryland within seven years, and he told another with a little pride, if not vanity, “I must say, without vanity, I have led the greatest colony into America that ever any man did upon a private credit.”22
Matters back in England gave Penn more reason for cheer. Penn and Baltimore presented their case to the Lords of Trade, the body the Crown designated to mediate such disputes. Baltimore hoped to secure the Lower Counties and receive recognition of the fortieth degree as the boundary between the two colonies. Much to his chagrin, the Lords of Trade decided largely in Penn’s favor. They recognized Penn’s claim to the Lower Counties, thus ensuring he had access to the Delaware River. They refused to draw the exact boundary between the Lower Counties and Maryland, however, leaving the proprietors responsible for hashing it out. Moreover, the question of the fortieth degree remained unaddressed, largely because, with Pennsylvanian settlement still hugging the banks of the Delaware and Marylanders focusing more on their southern lands, this dispute seemed too far removed.23
Things then took a turn for the worse for Penn when in 1688 zones of invasion—that is, frontiers—began to appear on the geopolitical landscape of North America when England became embroiled in a war with France, known as King William’s War in North America. This war was the first that the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania, founded on the principle of pacifism, had to confront. Although Pennsylvania itself was well insulated from the fighting, imperial officials expected Pennsylvania’s government would aid its fellow colonies that were waging a war. For Penn, rumors circulated that he was a secret agent for the Catholic belligerent. He eventually faced charges of treason in England. The Crown, understandably, revoked his charter. Though treason was the key reason for its revocation, Penn’s pacifism was also a concern. The Crown worried that a pacifist colony would fail to provide the military protection for its frontiers that was expected of its colonial governments.24
Indeed, the colony’s wartime behavior proved that the administration’s fears had merit and that frontiers were something
