William Penn Indenture
Items that are truly ephemeral in nature exist for
a period of time, customarily as long as it takes for them to
do their job, and then are discarded or disappear. A few, however,
manage to survive the years. A seventeenth century indenture from
England that has recently surfaced is a splendid example.
Penns name is synonymous with Pennsylvania and has been
since 1681 when King Charles II of England granted him the province
that bears his name. Charles owed the estate of Penns father,
an admiral in the Royal Navy, £15,000 and to settle the
debt, Penn petitioned the king for land in America where he hoped
to establish a colony that would emphasize religious freedom and
toleration. Charles, never a wealthy man in monetary terms it
is said, quickly acceded, figuring that a land grant was an easy
and expeditious way for him to satisfy his obligation. As well,
he hoped that Penn would promote trade between America and Britain
to the benefit of the English and introduce Christianity to the
native population. History tells us that Penn first wanted to
call the colony New Wales and then, because of objections within
the Royal circle, Sylvania; however, Charles insisted on honoring
Penns father by naming it Pennsylvania.
After considering what he had been given, Penn realized
that if his colony were to survive and prosper, he would need
direct access to the Atlantic Ocean. Consequently, he asked for
peninsular land southeast of Pennsylvania, amounting to what is
now the state of Delaware. The kings brother, James, Duke
of York and Albany and Earl of Ulster and Britains future
King (1685-1688), owned this expanse of real estate due to his
military victories over the Dutch, who had earlier populated the
area. Because James was also beholden to Penns father for
helping him during wartime, he accommodated Penns request.
Eager to see his new land Penn set sail for America
on August 31, 1682 and arrived about eight weeks later, on October
27. Just before he left, James turned over Delaware--familiarly
called the lower counties of Pennsylvania in colonial times--to
Penn, using four separate documents: a Royal Patent, a deed of
feoffment, and two indentures of lease. All were executed on August
24, 1682. They are now at the Delaware Public Archives in Dover.
However, for some inexplicable reason, a fifth document
relating to the transfer of Delaware has survived the years, an
indenture that James signed on August 21, 1682, giving Penn the
town of New Castle otherwise called Delaware and All that tract
of Land lying within the compass or Circle of twelve miles about
the same situate lying and being upon the River Delaware in America
and all Islands in the said River Delaware.... In other words,
through this indenture James intended to give Penn northern Delaware.
Written on parchment, the indenture is about 550
words long and is a document typical of its time and kind. It
is headed with a calligraphic flourish so that no one could question
its importance. The heraldic device in the upper left corner identifies
it as a Royal document with a crown over a shield bearing the
words: HONI SOIT QUI MALY PENSE (shame on him who thinks evil).
The person who wrote it used a careful hand, though modern readers
may have some difficulty deciphering some of his letters, words,
and sentences. In addition, spelling and capitalization are inventive
compared to todays standards. At the bottom is a signature,
just one name, James, and what appears to be the remnant of a
cord that once held the official red-colored wax seal that has
been lost to time.
The indenture begins with a date--the one
and twentieth day of August In the four and thirtieth year of
the Raigne of Our Soveraigne Lord Charles the Second--and
continues by identifying James and William Penn as the dramatis
personae. Penns father is then singled out for special regard
and memory. Next, the territory of the land grant is identified
and the terms of the transfer are explained, including the payment
yearly & every year to his said Royall Highness his
heirs and Assigns the Rent or Sume of five shillings of Lawfull
money of England at the feast of St. Michael th archangel.
Apart from some legal terminology that follows, the substance
of the indenture ends here. It was entered in the Office of Records
for the province of New York on November 21, 1682--New York because
the Crown administered Delaware from there.
Curiously enough, the indenture had a second life
a century later. On the back someone wrote: Inrolled in
the Rolls Office of the State of Pennsylvania In Patent Book No.
1 page 480 Witness my Hand & Seal of Office the 7th Day of
February 1783 John Morris. This patent book, used to record
clear title and rights to property owners in Pennsylvania, still
exists and is in the state archives of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg.
Perhaps someone was acting on behalf of Penns descendants,
attempting to claim land ownership on the eve of American independence?
During the Revolutionary War, though, the Pennsylvania General
Assembly passed the Divestiture Act, which relieved the Penn family,
loyalists to the Crown, of all lands not already surveyed and
deeded to them.
What was this document, then? How did it get to
America? Why does it exist? We may never know the answers to these
questions. Conjecture suggests, though, that it was a rough draft
or an early version of one of the agreements between James and
Penn that was promulgated on August 24, a week before Penn left
England for America. James signed it, there are remnants of a
seal, and presumably it was ready to be entered into the official
record, but it was not. There are several differences between
this indenture and the one signed on August 24 that may help explain
why. Perhaps James and Penn rethought the agreement and, independently
of one another, decided to add luster to it for their own purposes?
The later version says that Penn would have the land forever,
while the earlier one makes no mention of any period of time.
The later version gives the English monarch free use of
all ports wais and passages into through and out of the bargained
prmises, but this is not mentioned in the earlier version.
Finally, in the August 24 indenture, His Royal Highness appointed
lawyers John Moll and Ephraim Marman to represent his interests
in Delaware; there were no attorneys named in the August 21 document.
There is no way of knowing when or how the indenture got to America.
The series of four documents now housed at the Delaware Public
Archives in Dover remained in England with succeeding generations
of members of the Penn family at their countryseat, Stoke Pogis,
until 1811. In that year, John Penn, Williams great-grandson,
gave them and perhaps other documents to Philadelphian John R.
Coates, an agent of the Penn family who represented their estate
interests in America. Coates brought them to the United States
and they passed through his descendants until 1909, when they
were donated to the state of Delaware. But, the August 21 indenture
was in America in 1783. How did it get out of England? Was it
here all the while? Was it used in Harrisburg in 1783 and then
returned to the Penns in England, finding its way to America with
This indenture is a true piece of ephemera. It should
not have survived, though it has. An unnamed scribe created it
for a specific purpose on August 21, 1682, but that purpose was
soon invalidated by further deliberations between the Royal Family
and William Penn. Did the scribe use it as the basis for what
he wrote on August 24? Did he simply neglect to discard it, or
was there another reason why it was never thrown away? Why did
the state of Pennsylvania consider it a legal document in 1783
when the actual indenture was at Stoke Pogis? Though definite
conclusions are impossible to make, we are nonetheless very grateful
that it has survived the years. It is now in the library collection
of Ephemera Society institutional member Winterthur Museum, Garden
and Library, near Wilmington, Delaware.
E. Richard McKinstry
Substantial portions of this article originally appeared in the
fall 2001 issue of Winterthur Magazine.