To Penn especially this idea appealed with irresistible force now that he had at last given up hope of ever securing these rights in England. But whither? Not in Holland or Germany was to be found the longed-for freedom. Refugees in those countries were scarcely less oppressed and persecuted than at home. It was across the sea that Penn’s thoughts flew, to the silent primeval forests of the New World, where no tyrannical power yet held sway; where every man was the builder of his own fortune and the master of his destiny, unfettered by iron-bound laws and customs; where a still virgin Nature, adorned with all the charms of a favored clime, invited to direct communion with the Creator of all things and inspired a peace of mind impossible to secure elsewhere. There was the place to found the commonwealth of which he had dreamed. All that as a boy he had heard from his father’s lips of that wondrous new Paradise beyond the seas; all that as a youth with his intense longing for freedom his fancy had painted of such an ideal community; all that as a man he had learned from the letters of emigrants who had already reached this land of promise, all this combined to create an inspiring vision that ever unfolded fresh beauties to his mind. And when, in 1676, Penn was unexpectedly brought into actual contact with this country, no doubt it seemed to him like the finger of God pointing out to him the land of his dreams. In that year Charles the Second, who had already disposed of various English conquests and possessions in North America, made over to his brother James, Duke of York, the province of New Netherlands, ceded to him by the Dutch after their defeat in 1665. This was that fertile tract of country lying between the Delaware and Connecticut Rivers, where the Dutch West Indian Trading Company had already made some settlements. The Duke of York kept only a part of this territory, however; that which was named for him, New York. The territory between the Hudson and Delaware Rivers he gave in fee to two noblemen, Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, the latter of whom, having been formerly governor of the channel island of Jersey lying off the French coast, called his part New Jersey. Both these provinces granted full freedom of government and of belief to all sects—a matter not so much of principle perhaps as of policy, to attract thither victims of the penal laws in England, for the greater the number of colonists who settled in these still sparsely populated territories, the more their value and their revenues would increase. Nor were these calculations unfounded. Hundreds of Puritans, among whom were many Quakers, took advantage of this opportunity to seek new homes, and their industry and perseverance soon brought the land to a state of most promising productiveness. Finding the care of these distant possessions burdensome, however, Lord Berkeley sold his share for a thousand pounds to one Edward Billing through his agent John Fenwick.