Individual Details

Event

the surviving trustees in Pennsylvania, named in Penn's will; and the younger children of William Penn, Jr.1 This suit in the Exchequer Court, after many delays, during which Dennis Penn, Henry Gouldney (one of the mortgagees), the Earl of Oxford, and Hannah Penn all died, was decided favorably to the will July 4, 1727. The " family deed sextipartite," to which an allusion has been made, was then framed, by which it was agreed that John Penn should have half the Pennsylvania and Delaware property, Thomas one-fourth, and Richard one-fourth, and that John's share should be charged with certain money payments to Margaret (Freame).

Event

About 1728 he appears to have been engaged in business of some sort in London, and to have had a partner. He writes to his brother John, April 26 of that year, and signs the letter " Thomas Penn and Company;" in it he speaks of " my business on partnership, of which I some time since acquainted thee.

Event

In 1729/30, January 13 and 14, " Indentures of Lease and Release" were executed by the two surviving trustees of the old Ford mortgage, Joshua Gee and John Woods, to the three brothers, in the shares agreed on, half to John, a quarter to Thomas, and the other quarter to John and Thomas, as trustees for Richard.

Event

In September, 1731, he was a party to a further settlement. Under this agreement, William Penn, 3rd, Letitia Aubrey, and Charles Fell and his wife, Gulielma Maria Penn, agreed to relinquish their claims in the province and government to John, Thomas and Richard Penn for £5500 payable to William, 3rd, now heir of the eldest branch of the family. Excepted and reserved to William was "the Palace of Pennsbury" with 4000 acres contiguous to it; the individual 10,000-acre tracts devised to Letitia Aubrey, and to William, 3rd, and Gulielma Maria under the will of the Founder, and any other lands deeded, granted or patented to them by the Founder. Richard's one-quarter share, however, was to be held in trust by John and Thomas, apparently because of some disapproval of his recent marriage.

Event

At the death of his father, Thomas was in his seventeenth year,—an apprentice, as we have seen, with Michael Russell, in London. Apparently he resided in the city from that time until he came to Pennsylvania in 1732. Here he stayed nine years, and in 1741 returned to England.
Thomas Penn's residence in Philadelphia covered nine years,—the later period of Governor Gordon's administration, and his death; the interval, 1736-38, in which James Logan was acting Governor; and the first three years of Governor Thomas's perturbed administration. During these nine years the State-House, now Independence Hall, was built and Christ Church was given its present dimensions, the " Indian Walk" took place, and the great Indian Council of 1736 was held in the Friends' meeting-house at Second aud Market Streets. This was the period when the " Palatine" German immigration was at full height, and the Scotch-Irish were also coming freely.

Leaving England in the summer of 1732, Thomas Penn reached the Delaware in August, and landed at Chester on the 11th of that month. An express rode with a letter from him to Governor Gordon, at Philadelphia, and that official hastened to receive him with due honor. The Governor, " and all the members of the Council who were able to travel, accompanied with a very large number of gentlemen," set out next day for Chester, waited on him, and paid him their compliments in due form. That he was embarrassed by the ceremonial, as the story attributed to Keimer the printer, cited in Watson, avers, is not very probable; he does not appear to have been a person unequal to the demauds of the station he occupied, whether it might be that of mercer's apprentice or something higher. The company dined at Chester, then set out for Philadelphia, and near the city the mayor, recorder, and aldermen, " with a great body of people," met the party and extended the civic welcome. There was general anxiety to see the visitor, for since the brief stay of William, Jr., twenty-eight years before, and his angry departure, there had been none of the family of the Founder seen here. There were crowds in the streets as the cavalcade entered, and women aud children gathered on the balconies and door-stoops to see the new arrival,—" a son of William Penn!" That they found a personable man we may infer from the portraits of him.

The stories which were told afterwards of Thomas Penn, the outcome of his stay here, are preserved by the omnivorous Watson, and may be read in his "Annals." They represent his manners as cold. This may have been. I presume him to have been a self-contained and somewhat formal man, with little disposition to what in a later day has been called " gush." The democratic colonists doubtless tried him by the tradition, then still fresh among them, of his father's gracious and graceful manner, and they are said to have found his brother John, when he came two years later, a more affable person. We may take from Watson the story of that worthy Welshman, descendant of the bards of Cambria, the Reverend Hugh David, who visited Thomas Penn to read him a congratulatory poem recalling the honorable connection of the Penns with the royal house of Tudor, and who retired from the presence much disappointed. Relating his experience afterwards to Jonathan Jones, of Merion, Hugh said with great disgust," He spoke tome but three sentences: 'How dost thou do?' 'Farewell !' ' The other door!'" It is past denial that such brevity of speech and lack of poetic appreciation must figure poorly in the Welsh chronicle.

Thomas Penn addressed himself with energy to the Proprietary affairs. The situation had greatly changed since the days of continuous outlay and no income in the first years of the settlement, and of perpetual struggle to balance income and outgo in the period when the Founder broke down. There was now a large revenue from the sale of lands and quit-rents, and the expense of the government could be sustained by the increasing numbers of the people.

Event

May of 1732, the descent of the Pennsylvania property was established between the three brothers. In the event of the death of any one of them, his share was to go to his eldest son in tail male with remainder to his second, third and other sons successively.

Event

With these matters settled, Thomas, accompanied by his brother-in-law Thomas Freame, sailed for Pennsylvania, arriving at Chester 11 August 1732. During his nine-year stay in Philadelphia, Thomas had a small house built on the Springettsberry Manor lands adjoining the city, near the present Twentieth and Hamilton Streets, and embellished the grounds with a great variety of plants and trees. His elder brother John, and his sister Margaret Freame and her young son joined him, arriving 19 September 1734. John remained only a year, but Margaret Freame stayed until the news of her husband's death in the late spring of 1741. She and her brother Thomas then returned to England, arriving at Plymouth late the following November.

Event

June 24, 1735, Samuel Preston and James Logan, surviving trustees in Pennsylvania under the will, released the estates on their part. The will of the Founder was thus established, and the enjoyment of the Proprietary rights lodged in the possession of the three surviving sons of his second wife.

There had been some question in the minds of the young Proprietaries what use to make of their inheritance. Prior to Springett Penn's death, in 1730 (? 1731), a negotiation with him had been on foot to sell to him and his brother William a life-right in the Proprietorship, and there was another negotiation for the purchase by John, Thomas, and Richard of all Springett's claims. After his death the claims of William Penn, 3d, were extinguished by the payment to him of five thousand five hundred pounds
This sum was secured to him by a mortgage, and on this he borrowed two thousand five hundred pounds of Alexander Forbes, his father-inlaw. The mortgage was finally extinguished by the three Proprietaries, January 29, 1740/41.

Event

He had been inclined to think, as is shown in a letter from Margaret Freame to their brother John Penn, in 1736, that he was doing in Pennsylvania the chief work for the united Proprietary interest, and should have corresponding compensation. He suggested, she wrote John, that he should be paid three thousand pounds for his expenses in managing the family affairs here,—two thousand pounds by John and one thousand pounds by Richard.1

1"Proprietary Government in Pennsylvania," by William Robert Shepherd. New York, 1896. 2 Copy of letter in Historical Society of Pennsylvania collections.

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While in Pennsylvania Thomas Penn engaged in some commercial ventures. John Barclay—one of the sons of Robert Barclay, author of the famous Quaker book, the " Apology"—was a merchant in Dublin, Ireland, and to him Thomas consigned flaxseed and flour.

Event

in a letter of October 9, 1749, to Richard Peters,' he had spent, year by year, almost the whole of his income. " People imagine, because we are at the head of a large province," he says, " we must be rich; but I tell you that for fifteen years, from 1732 to 1747, I laid by [only] about £100 a year."

Marriage

At the Church of St. George, Hanover Square, London, on 22 August 1751, Thomas Penn married LADY JULIANA FERMOR, born in 1729, daughter of Thomas, Earl of Pomfret. They entertained some thoughts of coming to Pennsylvania the following year, but the birth of their first child in 1752 prevented it, and they never came to the province.

Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Charlotte, later Governess to the daughters of George III.
(Her sister Anne's widower Thomas Dawson - Viscount Cremorne - remarried Philadelphia Freame, who was also a Lady-in-Waiting.)

Thomas Penn married, August 22, 1751, Lady Juliana Fermor, fourth daughter of Thomas, first Earl of Pomfret. The Gentleman's Magazine for September, 1751, reports the marriage:

" Aug. 22. Hon. Thos. Penn (one of the two proprietors of Pennsylvania) was married to Lady Juliana Fermor, youngest1 daughter to the E. of Pomfret."

And the Pennsylvania Gazette, November 14,1751, has the following paragraph :

" By Capt. Hinton [ship "Philadelphia," John Hinton, from London] there is advice that the Honourable Thomas Penn Esq; one of our Proprietaries, was married the 22nd of August last, to the Lady Juliana Fermor, youngest daughter of the Right Honourable the late2 Earl of Pomfret."

In a letter to Richard Peters, September 29,1751, Thomas Penn wrote,—

" As some of your letters are of a private nature, I shal now reply to such of them as I have not taken notice of in my letter of business, but first I shall tell you that for some time before I met with that unfortunate, and what had like to have been fatal accident, I had determined on a change of life, and had settled all the necessary points and made visits to the lady, which I resumed on my return to Berkshire, and wee consummated our marriage the 22nd of hist month. This necessarily engaged my mind as well as person til finished, that I could not sit down to write, but as my grand business is now finished, and I am happily settled with a companion possessed with those qualities that must render a reasonable man happy as well as of a Family remarkable for their affection to each other, and into which I have been received with marks of the greatest regard, I shall now sit down as a correspondent to answer all my friends' letters. "... Wee are turning our thoughts toward Pennsylvania, and if I should be prevented from embarking the very next summer, if I live till the spring after, I make no doubt of being ready then." 1

The " unfortunate" and nearly " fatal accident" alluded to above I have not found described in the Penn papers, though it is, I am told, referred to in some of them. It is said that Thomas and his brother Richard were riding in a coach out of London, and having pistols with them,—for fear of highwaymen, probably,—one of the weapons, in handling, was accidentally discharged, causing a peculiar and serious wound upon Thomas's person. Evidently this occurrence was a few months earlier than August, 1751.

Lady Juliana Fernior was born in 1729, and was therefore much younger—some twenty-seven years—than her husband, being, in fact, a woman in her youth at the time of her marriage. There are several portraits of her preserved,2 and one of these, a small full-length, painted by Peter Van Dyck (a descendant, it is said, of the great Van Dyck) about the time of the marriage, represents her as a well-looking lady, in her wedding-dress of white silk, made in a style which illustrates strikingly the fashion of the time, the skirt being spread out by hoops to enormous dimensions sidewise. She stands near the fireplace of a handsome room, presumed to be in her father's house in Albemarle Street, London.

This marriage was an event of high importance to Thomas Penn and to all of his family, most of whom, we may feel sure, had theretofore regarded him as a confirmed bachelor, —he was nearly fifty,—and had been not inconsiderate how his valuable estate as well as his present bounties would be ultimately bestowed.

Event

In 1760, Thomas Penn acquired the country estate of Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire which he made his principal home.

Event

About 1771, he suffered a stroke of palsy from which he never fully recovered.

Death

He died on 21 March 1775, in London where he had gone in failing health to spend the winter. His widow survived him twenty-six years, dying at Ham, Surrey, 20 November 1801, in her seventy-third year. Both are buried in the church at Stoke Poges.



Thenceforward for almost thirty years, to his death in 1775, he was the chief of the Penn family and a figure of the first importance in the public afFairs of Pennsylvania. Throughout the period following his return to England he was continually in correspondence with the Lieutenant-Governors and other officials, and with his legal and business representatives in Pennsylvania, and the mass of letters from and to him, in the collections now owned by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, is so extensive that it has been fully examined by but few persons.

Thomas Penn's letters bear the mark of an energetic, prudent, and capable man. His and the other Proprietary correspondence, Mr. W. R. Shepherd says,1 after a fuller and more careful inspection than almost any one else has given, is creditable to the writers. " Our real cause for surprise," he thinks, " should be that in their voluminous correspondence with their officers in the Province, so few harsh and unkindly expressions appear."

Burial: Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, England