Penn had not neglected to fulfil his promise to the Pennsylvanians and immediately after his arrival had ordered his son to leave as soon as possible for Philadelphia; but it was with great reluctance that he did so, for during his father’s absence the pleasure-loving youth had abandoned himself to every form of dissipation, to the great detriment not only of his health, but of his pocket. To send him out to America alone without restraint or guardianship of any kind meant merely a continuation of his dissolute career, with perhaps ruin and disgrace to the honorable name he bore. Nor was the young man any better pleased with the idea, and it was not till his father had opened his eyes to the seriousness of the situation and agreed to pay his debts that he yielded and promised to go without further protest. Before he sailed Penn wrote to some of the Friends in Philadelphia begging them to watch over his son with fatherly care and solicitude. All seemed to go well at first with young William. He troubled himself little, to be sure, as to the province or its affairs, preferring rather to spend his time in hunting and fishing; but the evil spirit in him soon broke out afresh, and he plunged once more into a life of wild excess, defying all the laws of the country, and after he had succeeded in squandering huge sums of money and making himself thoroughly detested, he went back to England, unbidden and unregretted. The payment of these new debts contracted by his son caused Penn great financial embarrassment, which was still further increased by the unexpected and extortionate demands of a creditor. This was the successor of his former advocate and man of business, who at the time of Penn’s first journey to America had advanced him the sum of twenty-eight hundred pounds in exchange for which and ostensibly as a mere matter of form he had induced his unsuspecting client to sign a bond pledging the whole province of Pennsylvania as security. Now without any warning an account of fourteen thousand pounds was sent in to Penn with the threat that an attachment would be served if this sum were not immediately paid. After investigating this fraudulent account, he declared himself willing to settle for some four thousand pounds, all to which the creditor was justly entitled. This the latter refused to accept, however, and the owner of Pennsylvania was forced to go to a debtors’ prison as the assembly of that colony refused to make him any advances or even pay the revenues owing to him. In this emergency Penn offered for the sum of twenty thousand pounds to sell his whole province to Queen Anne, who, as the second daughter of the dethroned King James the Second, had succeeded to the throne on the death of William the Third, in 1702. She refused to take it, however, and at length he managed by great effort to raise between seven and eight thousand pounds, with which his false creditor finally agreed to content himself, Penn thereby procuring release.