But who was to be the fortunate or unfortunate object of all these plans and conceptions of power and grandeur,--the one on whom would devolve all the prestige of founding a new order of barons,--whose will might be the arbiter and maker of titles for American families in the new regime of nobility and aristocracy? CHAPTER XIV In 1699 the ebb and flow of the Delaware’s tide were slipping placidly by the City of Brotherly Love, when the founder of Dorminghurst first saw the sphere of his future labors. He was but five and twenty years of age, and the good ship Canterbury brought him hither as secretary of the Proprietor and Governor of Pennsylvania. He was tall and athletic; a fine scholar, versed in Latin, Greek, French and Spanish. He was a member of the Society of Friends. Imbued with all the ambition of a young, vigorous and refined manhood, James Greydon prospered under the patronage of his benefactor, William Penn. He attended to all the official correspondence of the Colony of Pennsylvania, and to all the private accounts and business of the Proprietor of the Colony. He was a faithful steward to a good and liberal man. He attended all the meetings which William Penn held with the Indian tribes for the purpose of buying lands west of the Susquehanna. The details of these vast transactions rested in the able hands of James Greydon. All that tract of land lying on both sides of the Susquehanna and the lakes adjacent, in or near the Province of Pennsylvania, was confined at this time by several treaties entered into with the Conostogas, the Shawnees, the Iroquois, the Susquehannas and the Onondagas,--all of whom loved Penn and his friends; so that the language of the treaty had these remarkable words of brotherly relationship: “They shall for ever hereafter be as one head and one heart, and live in true friendship and amity as one people.” When Penn was obliged to return to England in 1701, the management of his personal and real estate in the Colony was left to James Greydon. Greydon, therefore, had to receive the Indian deputations, as well as to superintend all the fur traffic with the tribes for the benefit of the proprietor’s estate. He could hardly escape becoming a large landlord by the opportunities thrust into his way in the routine of his duties. However, the mere acquirement of riches was not gratifying to James Greydon. He not only wished to establish his family comfortably in the enjoyments of a large estate, but he cherished even more highly those graces of mind and body, which accompany the love of books and learning. Consequently, a few years after his establishment in the Colony and his marriage to a daughter of a wealthy merchant, he consolidated his earnings into several large tracts of land between Philadelphia and the settlement of Friends called Germantown. He named the estate “Dorminghurst.”