Sold – William Penn in Pennsylvania: He Sells Land to One of His Original Grantees

Founder and Proprietor of Pennsylvania, a colony whose tolerance set an important precedent which the entire nation would one day follow. In the summer of 1682, a small fleet left England bound for the new colony of Pennsylvania, filled with Quakers who had bought land to found a settlement there. These were the original grantees, and most had parcels of 500 or 1,000 acres. Penn saw the venture, in his famous words to his friend and land agent for Pennsylvania, James Harrison, as a “holy experiment,” which would become, as he confidently predicted, “the seed of a nation.”

Penn’s ship The Welcome arrived in Philadelphia on October 27, 1682, and his work of building Pennsylvania began. He imagined a “free…sober and industrious people” living by their own laws, so in that year he delineated these laws in his First Frame of Government. His personal governance was wise, benevolent and liberal. Penn remained in the colony just until August 1684, when he returned to England to pursue a dispute with Lord Baltimore. He spent another two years in Pennsylvania in 1699-1701. This stay was marked by many useful measures, and by efforts to ameliorate the condition of the Indians.

Thus, Penn spent less than four years in Pennsylvania. The ship Friends Adventure was part of Penn’s fleet, and Luke Brinly (also spelled Brindley) of Leek, Staffordshire, England was a passanger on board. The craft left Liverpool on July 14, 1682, and arrived in America on September 28, a month before Penn. Brinly settled in Bucks County, which he served as sheriff in 1684. He obviously wanted more land than his original allocation, and approached Penn in 1683.

William Penn Autograph Document Signed, 1 page large 8vo. “Received this seaventh day of the seaventh month [September] 1683 of Luke Brinly by ye hands of James Harrison fifty shillings being in part of pay for one hundred acres of land in ye County of Bucks, I say received by me, Wm. Penn.”

This document, with its numerous lines in Penn’s hand and its large clear signature, evidenced Brinly’s purchase of additional land, in what must be one of the earliest land transactions to take place within Pennsylvania itself. Penn’s autograph is generally found in today’s market only on documents written out by others, most of which were signed while he was in England. A handwritten document signed in Pennsylvania is now a rarity.