A Sylvan City

Admiral Sir William Penn had it all planned for his eldest son: Oxford, the court of Louis Quatorze, Lincoln’s Inn, a peerage, a family. Then the boy came home, refused to uncover before father or king, and the Admiral turned him out of doors.

What followed was eight months and sixteen days in a solitary dungeon in the Tower. Newgate. Trials. A dying father who left nearly everything to the contumacious and disappointing Quaker son anyway, along with a debt the King owed him of nearly fifteen thousand pounds.

The son asked to be paid in land.

On the first of September the Welcome weighed anchor at Deal. By the time she reached the Delaware, nine weeks out, the smallpox had killed thirty. Where the city was meant to stand, on the narrow neck of land between the Delaware and the Schuylkill, there were three Swedes, a few log huts, and a little fort of logs filled in with sand and stones. What Penn carried was a plan, his constant companion. It showed a High Street a hundred feet wide, a public square of eight acres in the exact centre, and detached houses with trailing plants. “A greene country towne.”

Twenty-three vessels followed him within six months. Everyone aboard wanted to stay, and not a house had been built.

He had wanted to call the province Sylvania, for the forests. The King put Penn in front of it, for the Admiral. Penn offered twenty guineas to have it changed.