But now it had come to their ears that a new governor was coming out
from England to rule over them, and they wondered anxiously what sort
of man he would prove to be. Governor Printz had been coarse and
violent; Governor Stuyvesant, hot-tempered, ambitious, and overbearing;
and terrible tales had been told of the cruelty of Governor Kieft.
There had been a long line of governors since Minuit’s time, both in
Delaware and in New York; and few of them had seemed to care for the
good of the poorer people. And now this new man was coming and, for all
they knew, might be the worst of all.
The name of the new Governor was William Penn. The Duke of York had
given Delaware to him, and King Charles the Second, had given him a
great tract of land farther to the North, which he called Pennsylvania.
More than this, the people did not know; but they often talked about
the new governor and wondered what he would be like, and when he would
come, as they sat around their fires in the early fall evenings.
Then they began to learn more about him; for his cousin, Captain
William Markham, came out to America to act as Governor till Penn could
come himself. They learned that Penn belonged to the Quakers—a strange,
new religious sect; and that it was the rule that Quakers must dress
very plainly and say “thee” and “thou” to people instead of “you” and
take off their hats to nobody, not even the King himself. That seemed
a strange thing indeed to the settlers, and they wondered how the King
liked it.
Penn had bought the land from King Charles, and his brother the Duke
for an absurd price—a price so small that the poorest farmer among them
all might have bought it if he had had the chance.
For all of Pennsylvania, with its wooded hills and fertile valleys and
well-stocked streams, he had paid only twelve shillings[12] and, at
Michaelmas, was to pay the King five shillings more.
For Delaware, he had paid ten shillings to the Duke of York; and every
Michaelmas he was to pay to the Duke, a rose. He was also to pay over
one half of the profits he drew from the southern part of Delaware.
Yes, any of the honest farmers might have bought the land at that
price, but then, the great people most probably would not have sold it
at all to anyone but their friend, William Penn.
Captain Markham was buying for Penn, from the Indians such rights as
they had in the land, and was paying them well—better than they had
ever been paid before—so perhaps the new governor was a generous, fair
minded man after all.
So, in talk and wonderings, the days slipped by. September had passed,
and October was almost gone, before the governor’s English ship, the
_Welcome_, was sighted coming up the river from the bay. The news of
its coming spread from house to house, and from farm to farm, and even
back into the country to the villages of the Indians.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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