We have, dating from 1698, a history of Pennsylvania by one Gabriel Thomas, full of interesting information. Philadelphia was already a "noble and beautiful city," containing above 2,000 houses, most of them "stately," made of brick; three stores, and besides a town house, a market house, and several schools. Three fairs were held there yearly, and two weekly markets, which it required twenty fat bullocks, besides many sheep, calves, and hogs, to supply. The city had large trade to New York, New England, Virginia, West India, and Old England. Its exports were horses, pipe-staves, salt meats, bread-stuffs, poultry, and tobacco; its imports, fir, rum, sugar, molasses, silver, negroes, salt, linen, household goods, etc. Wages were three times as high as in England or Wales. All sorts of "very good paper" were made at Germantown, besides linen, druggets, crapes, camlets, serges, and other woollen cloths. All religious confessions were represented. In 1712, such his poverty, the good proprietary was willing to sell to the Crown, but as he insisted upon maintenance of the colonists' full rights, no sale occurred. English bigots and revenue officials would gladly have annulled his charter, but his integrity had gotten him influence among English statesmen, which shielded the heritage he had left even when he was gone. It is particularly to be noticed that till our Independence Delaware was most intimately related to Pennsylvania. Of Delaware the fee simple belonged not to Penn, but to the Duke of York, who had conquered it from the Dutch, as they from the Swedes. Penn therefore governed here, not as proprietary but as the Duke's tenant. In 1690-92, and from 1702, Delaware enjoyed a legislature by itself, though its governors were appointed by Penn or his heirs during the entire colonial period. CHAPTER V. MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, CAROLINA [1675] The establishment of Charles II. as king fully restored Lord Baltimore as proprietary in Maryland, and for a long time the colony enjoyed much peace and prosperity. In 1660 it boasted twelve thousand inhabitants, in 1665 sixteen thousand, in 1676 twenty thousand. Plantation life was universal, there being no town worthy the name till Baltimore, which, laid out in 1739, grew very slowly. Tobacco was the main production, too nearly the only one, the planters sometimes actually suffering for food, so that the raising of cereals needed to be enforced by law. For long the weed was also the money of the province, not disused for this even when paper currency was introduced, being found the less fluctuating in value of the two. Partly actual over-production and partly the navigation acts, forcing all sales to be effected through England, fatally lowered the price, and Maryland with Virginia tried to establish a "trust" to regulate the output. [Illustration: Charles, Second Lord Baltimore.]