The interval of peace during which English governors in America could give their thoughts to the suppression of piracy proved all too short. “Queen Anne’s War” followed close upon the heels of King William’s, and the French and Indians became once again more threatening than the buccaneers. Nevertheless some important affairs of peace were settled before the storm of war broke again. For one thing, Mr. Penn was able once more to put in order the government of Pennsylvania. For two years (1692-1694) he had been deprived of his province, because, as every one knew, he had been on very cordial terms of friendship with James Stuart, the discredited King, and it was charged that he had taken part in intrigues against the new sovereign. But it was easy for him to prove, when the matter was dispassionately looked into, that he had done nothing dishonorable or disloyal, and his province was restored to him. In 1699 he found time to return to America and reform in person the administration of the colony. Bitter jealousies and sharp factional differences had sprung up there while affairs were in confusion after the coming in of William and Mary, and the two years Mr. Penn spent in their correction (1699-1701) were none too long for the work he had to do. He did it, however, in his characteristic healing fashion, by granting privileges, more liberal and democratic than ever, in a new charter. One chief difficulty lay in the fact that the lower counties by the Delaware chafed because of their enforced union with the newer counties of Pennsylvania; and Mr. Penn consented to an arrangement by which they should within three years, if they still wished it, have a separate assembly of their own, and the right to act for themselves in all matters of local government. Self-government, indeed, was almost always his provident cure for discontent. He left both Pennsylvania and the Delaware counties free to choose their own courts,—and Philadelphia free to select her own officers as an independently incorporated city. Had he been able to give his colony governors as wise and temperate as himself, new troubles might have been avoided as successfully as old troubles had been healed. [Illustration: WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE BEFORE THE FIRE, 1723]