Governor Keith took care to increase his popularity with the assembly, and thereby to advance his own personal interest in a greater degree than was compatible with his allegiance to the proprietary’s family. Having managed to free himself from the control of the council, who were men respecting their oaths and friends of the Penn family, he incurred the displeasure of the widow of the great Quaker, and in 1726 was superseded by Patrick Gordon. Keith and his friend David Lloyd had vainly endeavored to persuade Hannah Penn that her views concerning the council’s participation in legislative matters were erroneous, and that the council was in fact created for ornamental purposes and to be spectators of the governor’s actions. This opinion of Keith was of course in opposition to the instructions which he had received. Fully to understand the condition of affairs, we must remember that the government of this colony was as much the private property of the proprietary as the soil; and that in giving instructions to his deputy and establishing a council to assist the deputy by their advice, the proprietary did no more than a careful business man would do when compelled to absent himself from his place of business,—or at least such were the views of the Penns. The even tenor of political life in Pennsylvania, the greater part of whose inhabitants were either Quakers, religiously opposed to any kind of strife, or Germans, totally ignorant of the modes of constitutional government, was somewhat disturbed during the first two or three years of Gordon’s administration by Keith’s intrigue as a member of the assembly, to which he was soon chosen. We are told that he endeavored by “all means in his power to divide the inhabitants, embarrass the administration, and distress the proprietary family.” He grew, however, as unpopular as he had been popular; and when he finally returned to England, where he died about 1749, the colony again enjoyed quiet for several years. Governor Gordon had in his earlier life been bred to arms, and he had served in the army with considerable repute until the end of Queen Anne’s reign. As a soldier he had learned the value of moderation; and not forgetting it in civil life, his administration was distinguished by prudence and a regard for the interests of the province, while his peaceful Indian policy secured for the colony a period of almost unprecedented prosperity. Planted in 1682, nearly fifty years later than her neighbors, Pennsylvania could boast in 1735 that her chief city, Philadelphia, was the second in size in the colonies, and her white population larger than that of Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas.