who also temporarily replaced Penn as Pennsylvania’s governor, instructing him that New York’s neighbors should offer defensive aid. The geopolitics of frontiers drove the request. Albany was the chief frontier in England’s grand imperial vision of its North American domain because it was the site at which they expected a French invasion. Without New York’s successful “defence of Albany, its frontiers against the French,” the Crown warned, the English colonies to the south would “not be able to live, but in Garrison.” A shared concern about frontiers was thus supposed to compel colonies to cooperate. Further, the Crown’s orders revealed something about life on frontiers: they were militarized zones—“garrisons”—in which people lived in constant fear of invasion.25
Fletcher traveled to Pennsylvania to make his case for men and money, noting that “the securitie of the fronteers” in New York depended on Pennsylvania’s support. Such a request, New Yorkers believed, was a pittance compared with what they were already doing in Pennsylvania’s interest because the strength of New York’s frontiers secured Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania deferred, confirming for imperial officials that Pennsylvania, under its current regime, was incapable of fulfilling one of its chief responsibilities to the empire: managing frontiers. As a frustrated Fletcher wrote to the Board of Trade in 1694, “They [Quaker Pennsylvanians] will rather die than resist with carnal weapons,” a sentiment that portended the fractious future of frontier politics in Pennsylvania.26
“Better Adapted to Answer the Present Circumstances and Conditions”
Penn eventually won his charter back in 1694 as the war wound down. He then prepared to return to Pennsylvania. Continuing strife with his personal affairs, however, kept Penn away until 1699, when he finally visited again. Penn found a much-changed colony when he arrived. In his absence, Philadelphia had undergone explosive growth and had begun to look more like a town than some small colonial outpost. There were many taverns, a courthouse, and all sorts of houses, from mansions of stone and slate to ramshackle huts. Within two years of his return, the population of the city passed two thousand souls, making it one of the largest settlements in British North America. Most of the new arrivals were Quakers attracted by Penn’s promise of a refuge that protected liberty of conscience and provided a just government. The economy boomed as well. When Penn left in 1684, trade to the colony was just dribbling in. By 1699, the trickle had become a strong and steady flow.27
Two issues preoccupied Penn’s time in the colony, both of which dealt with establishing the colony he wished to have. First, he was concerned about Indian affairs. Violence between Indians and colonists on the western fringes of settlement were fraying his once strong ties to Pennsylvania’s Native neighbors. Strengthening these relations was a top priority. He did so because he wanted to keep the peace that was so important to his Quaker faith. He also knew that losing Indian allies on the Susquehanna, which seemed possible, could hurt his expansionary visions. The Indian settlement on the banks of the river was a bustling hub of trade and travel. It was here that strife seemed most pressing because Penn knew that this site, with its access to the vast interior and its trade networks, was a key part of his future plans.28
The Conestoga, the most influential of the many groups then residing in the Indian town, were the focus of Penn’s diplomatic foray. In April, a delegation of Conestogas joined by the Shawnees, another powerful group on the Susquehanna, hiked to Philadelphia to reestablish good relations with Penn. Penn reassured his neighbors that his intentions remained unchanged. He promised that they would receive “the full and free privileges and immunities of all the said laws as any other inhabitants,” extending the same protection that Penn’s proprietorship gave to all colonists to include the Indians present. Penn also strengthened trade agreements and regulations. Penn’s words convinced the Conestogas to agree to a deal that would last for over sixty years, only ending because the Paxton Boys killed it. The Conestoga’s representatives ceded control of the eastern banks to Penn so long as they could continue to inhabit their settlement without interference. By doing so, they gave Penn even better title to the land in dispute with Baltimore, and they secured a piece of independence from colonization efforts. Penn then did a remarkable thing. To show his allies that the two were truly of “one head and one heart” who could “live in true friendship and amity as one people,” he visited their community for several days, also taking time to scout out its potential as a future site for a Pennsylvania trading city.29
With Indian affairs on stronger footing, Penn turned to the second issue that troubled him. The government in Philadelphia had spun out of his control. In the years since he had left, the colony went through three different governments. From the moment Penn landed in 1682, colonists complained that his initial Frame with its large Assembly was too unwieldy for colonial life. In the years since Penn’s initial visit, they also had grown anxious about the proprietor’s powers, especially his right to collect quitrents, what they saw as a feudal form of taxation that had no place in their colony. Penn saw things differently, admitting to a friend “though I desire to extend religious freedom, yet I want some recompense for my trouble.” In 1701, when Penn returned, the colony was governed by an unofficial frame of government that colonists put in place as a temporary solution after Penn’s charter was returned. One of Penn’s objectives on his return was to regain some control by creating a new frame of government.30
Penn had changed in these years as well. Most notably, he had grown more jealous of his proprietary powers as he fended off assaults on his charter and fretted about finances. He worried about what would become of his colony and of his interest in it if he ceded too much authority to the colonists who, to his eyes, seemed more interested in their private affairs than in the vision he held for the colony. Penn often expressed frustration at colonists’ intransigence throughout these years—once pleading with colonists to show more deference, writing “for the love of God, me, and the poor country, be not so governmentish; so noisy and open in your dissatisfaction” and another time flippantly threatening to sell the colony to the Crown. He wanted to draft a new and official constitution that better reflected his own vision for the colony and preserved more of his proprietary authority than the previous frames.31
English affairs once again intruded on Penn’s visit, however, and ruined his plans to draft a new frame more acceptable to him. In 1701, with still no frame agreed upon, reliable reports reached Penn that he might again lose the colony to the Crown. If there was no official governing document in place when Penn lost his charter, then the Crown could design the government any way it pleased, which certainly would have spelled the end of Penn’s vision and threatened the freedom of conscience that the predominantly Quaker colonists enjoyed. While rushing to leave for England, Penn decided to let colonists design the document as they wished. He asked a select group of leading colonists to write the document “quickly.” Penn did so because he knew that colonists needed a formal frame of government in place to protect them should a royal government replace a proprietary one.32
Penn’s decision to give his colonists carte blanche produced a constitution unlike any other, though its form represented the logical culmination of the political culture that had developed within the proprietary colony. After an initial period of warm feelings toward the proprietor, colonists by 1701 saw the primary political problem in Pennsylvania as a struggle between the people and their interest and the proprietor and his prerogative. In each frame that followed Penn’s first one, colonists pushed for greater power in the Assembly at the expense of proprietary authority. If anything, while Penn was away, fear of proprietary rule—if not of the proprietor himself—had lodged in the minds of most colonists, and they saw a legislature as a check against the potential for a grasping proprietorship.
The government they designed in 1701 enshrined this struggle. The Frame of 1701 went further than any other frame in empowering the Assembly. Previously, the colonial government had an upper house called the Provincial Council that exerted strong legislative powers, but the new frame transformed this body into an advisory board appointed by the governor. Instead of the bicameral structure Penn had always preferred, the colonists wanted a unicameral legislature composed of four representatives
