William Penn Landed In New Castle.

IT WAS in the year 1682, and Delaware had seen many changes since Peter Minuit and his little band of Swedes had landed on her wild shores. During those years the Swedes had been driven out by the Dutch, and the Dutch had afterward surrendered to the English; then the Dutch, growing stronger, had driven out the English; but again the English had taken possession and now owned all of what had once been New Netherlands and New Sweden. New Netherlands was now called New York, and it was the English Directors, (living in the town of New York, formerly New Amsterdam), who made the laws for Delaware.

Only a few English, however, had come to Delaware to live. The people of Wilmington (once Christinaham, or Christina Harbor) and of New Castle, were principally Dutch and Swedes. They were simple farmer people, raising crops and cattle and chickens, and they were very willing to keep the laws that the English at New York made for them. The Indians were still troublesome at times, but the settlers had their block-houses or forts to retreat to and were generally able to protect themselves.

But now it had come to their ears that a new governor was coming out from England to rule over them, and they wondered anxiously what sort of man he would prove to be. Governor Printz had been coarse and violent; Governor Stuyvesant, hot-tempered, ambitious, and overbearing; and terrible tales had been told of the cruelty of Governor Kieft. There had been a long line of governors since Minuit’s time, both in Delaware and in New York; and few of them had seemed to care for the good of the poorer people. And now this new man was coming and, for all they knew, might be the worst of all.

The name of the new Governor was William Penn. The Duke of York had given Delaware to him, and King Charles the Second, had given him a great tract of land farther to the North, which he called Pennsylvania. More than this, the people did not know; but they often talked about the new governor and wondered what he would be like, and when he would come, as they sat around their fires in the early fall evenings.

Then they began to learn more about him; for his cousin, Captain William Markham, came out to America to act as Governor till Penn could come himself. They learned that Penn belonged to the Quakers—a strange, new religious sect; and that it was the rule that Quakers must dress very plainly and say “thee” and “thou” to people instead of “you” and take off their hats to nobody, not even the King himself. That seemed a strange thing indeed to the settlers, and they wondered how the King liked it.