their interests in this single legislature because it would allow the people to stay united in their struggles against a proprietor or, if Penn lost the government, a royal governor.33
People at the time and historians since have commended the Frame of 1701 for being innovative and democratic, and point to its longevity as a sign of its success. It was, as its preamble declared, “better adapted to answer the present circumstances and conditions” of colonists. But along with significant changes, there were important continuities that historians have missed and that left the colony ill-prepared for future circumstances. For one thing, the proprietor still possessed an immense amount of potential power, even as the new Frame took a great deal of his immediate powers. Most of this residual power rested in the proprietor’s control over expansion. The proprietor had at his disposal a land office, a surveyor-general, and deputy surveyors. Every landowner would need to work through these offices to have land legally recognized. The proprietor also continued to levy annual quitrents from landowners and could use force to evict squatters.34
Aside from such strong control over land ownership, the proprietary branch managed many of the administrative and coercive powers of the government. The charter conferred to the proprietor enormous powers over commerce and its regulation. The institution could collect export and import duties and handle all licensing and fee collection, and claimed the right to control travel on all waterways, including the sole right to license ferries. Such revenue was not insignificant. In 1765, the income from the collection of fees was so great that the proprietor could, if necessary, pay for the lieutenant governor’s salary without having to rely on any Assembly support. As captain-general, the proprietor was also responsible for diplomacy with natives and military defenses in the time of war. Finally, the proprietor appointed the judges for the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and, of course, the lieutenant governor, who would serve as the proprietor in residence in Philadelphia.35
The proprietor’s administrative power was even stronger on the local level because of his power to appoint county officials. The county was the main political unit of Pennsylvania. Each county had a series of offices meant to enforce law and to provide a level of local self-government. Each county had only two solely elective county offices: the three county commissioners and six tax assessors. When it came to county commissioners, the proprietor often appointed the first county commissioners, but after the county was formally established, these offices became elective. Beyond that, nearly every other office—at least ten—either was appointed directly by proprietary officials or was elective-appointive. Within the county, the proprietor directly appointed the recorder of deeds (an office, one historian notes, that was “of great significance for the daily and continuing life of the county”), the register of wills, the prothonotary, clerks of the courts, and sealer of weights and measures. The sheriff and coroner were elective-appointive because the proprietor had to select from the two highest vote getters. Notably, the Assembly had the power of only one appointment: the unpopular collector of excise. The proprietor’s power to appoint these offices resided primarily in powers implied in the Frame of 1701. In previous frames, the elected Provincial Council had controlled many of these appointments, but because the Frame of 1701 did not explicitly state how each office was to be appointed, the proprietor retained the powers the council once held.36
The most powerful of the proprietor’s local appointments was the justice of the peace. The justices convened the three major courts that handled legal disputes and law enforcement: the Court of Quarter Sessions, the Court of Common Pleas, and the Orphan’s Court. Through these courts, the justices oversaw the building of roads, the punishment of crimes, the mediation of civil disputes, and the care of the poor. They also held additional appointive powers through their position on the Court of Quarter Sessions. The court appointed town constables in the same way the proprietor appointed the sheriff and all town overseers of the poor. With so many roles, most of which dealt with the enforcement of law, the justice of the peace often served as the colonial government’s chief representative in areas of new settlement. The final important proprietary office on the county level was the county surveyor who was appointed by the surveyor-general, who was himself a direct proprietary appointment.37
All totaled, through direct proprietary appointment, elective-appointment, or appointment by proprietary institutions like the Court of Quarter Sessions, nearly every official on the county level was a proprietary office and those that were not were often elected on the local level. For the most part, the direct appointments took the form of political patronage, especially as the colony developed. Edward Shippen described the offices as “lucrative posts,” and he personally benefited from his close alliance with the proprietorship. In fact, many justices of the peace held concurrent offices, providing for a very healthy salary. Even the elective-appointive offices had the feel of patronage. The lieutenant governor did occasionally select the lowest vote getter for sheriff if he was thought to be better able to serve the proprietorship’s interest, and the lieutenant governor could withhold payment for services if he disagreed with the way the sheriff performed.38
It would be a mistake to diminish the centrality of these proprietary officials to creating the bonds upon which a governing contract was based. Rather, these local officeholders played a crucial role in connecting local communities to the sometimes distant colonial government. These proprietary appointees lived in the towns and counties they served and had to interact with their neighbors and peers frequently in both official and unofficial capacities. In areas in which the Assembly’s role was weak, local administrators served as what one historian described as the “transmitters” and “translators” of local concerns to proprietary officials back east much as representatives were to do in the Assembly. These local proprietary representatives were thus the conduit through which colonists in newly established communities could negotiate with their government. Indeed, as the colony dealt with expanding its legal and political jurisdiction in the years that followed the Frame’s drafting, the retained administrative and policing powers of the proprietor grew in significance and served as the most powerful institutions in new settlers’ political lives.39
If most of these county, land, and legal offices were part of the proprietary institution and thus under the control of the proprietor, the Assembly served as the other major institution of the colonial government because it operated largely free from proprietary influence because all of its members were elected by and served to protect the interest of their constituents. The legislature had a variety of powers at its disposal to check the proprietor and to shape official policy. It could pass laws and taxes, regulate commerce and colonial behavior and distribute public funds on special projects.
In theory, these two institutions formed the foundation for the colonial government. In theory, at least, they would work together to advance the colony’s interests, with the Assembly passing initiatives that the governor could execute through his control of the administrative powers of government. But they were also independent institutions that could be at odds with what direction the colonial project should take. Moreover, their decidedly separate spheres of influence meant that institutional rivalries could develop, as the first decades of the colony showed. In the decades to come, as Pennsylvania grew and the proprietor exercised these retained powers, the rivalry between Assembly and proprietor would become acute once again. In time, in many areas of recent settlement, proprietary power would supersede that of the legislature, much to the Assembly members’ dismay.
Indeed, the rush to write a frame in 1701 also caused another oversight that only made the inherent tension between these two institutions worse. In every previous frame in which Penn or his representatives participated, the document outlined a plan for how the representative institutions of the colony would change over time because Penn anticipated growth. The Frame in no way addressed what Penn saw as an inevitable political development: political expansion and population growth. This ambiguity created uncertainty between both institutions and among colonists that, in time, destabilized the government as people fought for the political power to fill this hole. While Penn had reservations about the document, he accepted it with the hopes that it could be changed if he held onto the proprietorship.40
Before
