The sufferings of the people to whom he was attached led William Penn to seek for them an asylum in the New World, and his efforts on their behalf were blessed, as we have seen, by their establishment in West Jersey. This great and benevolent act, this planting of “the truth” on a new and prolific soil, led to the extension of still more magnificent plans of philanthropy; and in 1681 William Penn applied to Charles II. for an extensive tract of land, lying on the other side of the Delaware, in liquidation of the debt due to his father. Had Penn demanded the amount of the debt itself from the lavish and impoverished monarch, he would have asked in vain; but to ask the payment of a debt by a grant of land was to make the thing easy to the monarch, while to William Penn the land had fourfold the value of the money. The application was seconded by the Duke of York, who had ever shown a friendly interest in the son of his former naval associate. Besides which, it has been said, that belonging to a persecuted sect himself, he had strong sympathy with a man who, like Penn, had suffered so unflinchingly for conscience-sake. “At length, after many waitings, watchings, solicitings and disputes in council,” writes William Penn, “my country was confirmed to me under the great seal of England. God will bless and make it the seal of a nation.” Penn, now in the thirty-seventh year of his age, became the sovereign of a vast province, which was called by the king, PENNSYLVANIA, though Penn himself would have dispensed with the first syllable of the name, as being a species of self-glorification; but the monarch insisted upon its retention. In April, 1681, Penn issued his proclamation as absolute proprietary, in the following words, addressed to his subjects in the New World:— “My Friends,—I wish you all happiness here and hereafter. These are to let you know that it hath pleased God in his providence to cast you within my lot and care. It is a business that, though I never undertook before, yet God has given me an understanding of my duty and an honest mind to do it uprightly. I hope you will not be troubled at your change and the king’s choice, for you are now fixed at the mercy of no governor that comes to make his fortune great. You shall be governed by laws of your own making, and live a free, and if you will, an industrious people. I shall not usurp the right of any, or oppress his person. God has furnished me with a better resolution, and has given me his grace to keep it. In short, whatever sober and free men can reasonably desire for the security and improvement of their own happiness, I shall heartily comply with. I beseech God to direct you in the way of righteousness, and therein prosper you and your children after you.—I am, your true friend, WILLIAM PENN.”