8. See above, VII, 374 n.

9. See below, p. 402.

1. ALS in Royal Society of Edinburgh.

2. William R. Shepherd, History of Proprietary Government in Pennsylvania (N.Y., 1896), pp. 84–9.

3. See above, p. 151.

4. See below, pp. 391–2.

5. It may be pointed out that soon after the publication of the Historical Review the book was violently attacked, both in general and on particular points, by the Proprietors or their supporters, but the editors have found no contemporary allegation, published or unpublished, that the Estimate itself was spurious, other than Penn’s remark quoted above. See, for example, the hostile review in The Critical Review: or, Annals of Literature, VIII (1759), 108–15, and a long, anonymous criticism in what appears to be the same clerical hand that is found on several papers emanating from the office of Ferdinand J. Paris, APS.

6. If the Estimate is authentic and BF’s conclusion (in the first paragraph of his Remarks below) is correct that Penn drew up this Estimate while he was residing in Pa., it must have been prepared between 1732 and 1741, probably before 1735, when the Gilbert Manor was sold to Samuel McCall. PMHB, III (1879), 454.

7. The Proprietors derived revenue from the granting of land to individuals in two major ways: the original purchase money, and the annual quitrent (a fixed payment, theoretically in perpetuity, in commutation of all feudal dues to which the Proprietors might be entitled as lords of the soil). The rates stipulated for grants changed several times. Before 1713, though there were many individual variations, the purchase price was generally £5 per hundred acres and the quitrent (always payable in sterling or the equivalent in local currency) was one shilling per hundred acres. In 1713, or soon after, the purchase price was increased to £10 per hundred, and in 1719 the quitrent was raised to 2s. per hundred. In 1732 Thomas Penn advanced the purchase price to £15 10s. per hundred acres and the quitrent to a halfpenny per acre (4s. 2d. per hundred). These rates exceeded those of neighboring colonies and resulted in substantial emigration. The Penns made some reductions in the 1750s in the purchase price on new grants and in 1765 set it at £5 sterling per hundred acres but raised the quitrent to a penny per acre (8s. 4d. per hundred). Shepherd, Proprietary Government, pp. 34–5.

8. In this and the following entries dealing with properties on which the Proprietors were entitled to quitrents, the capital value of proprietary rights is calculated at twenty times the annual quitrent yield. In converting the sterling amounts into Pa. currency £100 sterling are equated to £165 Pa. currency, which BF conceded was “near the Medium,” but see below, p. 378, for BF’s comment on the proprietary receiver general’s action in charging a landowner for many years at a much higher rate.

9. In 1706 James Logan, provincial secretary, prepared and sent to William Penn in England a quitrent roll of the province (referred to in the next entry). 2 Pa. Arch., VII, 65. Probably the “old Rent” mentioned here represents the total shown on that roll.

1. That is, between 1706 and 1732.

2. The arithmetic of this calculation is simple: £150 (the difference between the annual rents mentioned in entries 3 and 4 above) multiplied by 11 years gives £1650 sterling, which, converted at 165 percent, equals £2722 10s. Pa. currency. It is not clear, however, what the difference between total annual rents due for lands granted during two separate periods has to do with arrearages, or what specific 22-year period is involved in “the Time of the other Arrearages,” or why half that time should be used for such a computation.

3. Under the royal charter Penn had authority to provide ferries, though various Assemblies contested his exclusive control over them.

4. William Penn and his heirs retained for themselves numerous parcels of land, both large and small. They erected several into what they called manors and often leased out portions of these or other tracts to tenants for cultivation. The properties named in the list of holdings here recorded were located as follows: Conestoga, in Lancaster Co., near the town of Lancaster; Gilbert, in the present Montgomery Co., including parts of Pottstown and Pottsgrove; Springfield, in Montgomery Co., almost directly north of Philadelphia on Whitpaine’s Creek; Highland, in Bucks Co., on the Delaware River in Upper Makefield Township; Springton, in northeastern Chester Co., on the east branch of Brandywine Creek; Vincent, in northern Chester Co., near the Schuylkill River; Richland, in northwestern Bucks Co., mostly in Richland Township; Springettsbury, probably the manor in the Fairmount area, now part of Philadelphia, not the large manor of the same name in York Co.; Streiper’s Tract, in Bucks Co., on the Delaware River in Tinicum Township. A map showing the location of most of these Penn properties and many others not here listed, prepared by Fred J. Gorman, is in PMHB, LXVII (1943), 92.

5. When William Penn was granting lots in the city, he accorded special treatment to many of those on the bank of the Delaware between Front St. and the river. There were restrictions on the height of buildings and the quitrent was to be increased at the end of every fifty years to an amount equaling one-third of the then rental value of the property. Charles P. Keith, Chronicles of Pennsylvania (Phila., 1917), I, 81; Shepherd, Proprietary Government, p. 37 n.

6. During the early years of the eighteenth century protracted negotiations took place between William Penn and the royal officials for the surrender of the government of Pa. to the Crown. In 1712 agreement was reached and a deed prepared by which Penn and his heirs were to yield all rights of government (but not the rights to the soil) in return for payment of £12,000 in four years. Penn received £1000 on account, but before he had formally executed the deed he suffered an incapacitating stroke. His continued ill health, the tangled state of his finances, and changes in the government prevented further action, and when the Whigs returned to power in 1714 the matter was dropped. Winfred T. Root, The Relations of Pennsylvania with the British Government, 1696–1765 (N.Y., 1912), pp. 349–65.

7. BF’s note. As indicated in the next note but one above, the quitrent was to be increased at the end of fifty years to one-third of the then current rental value.

8. For many of the “bank lots” the change in quitrent was to occur during the middle 1730s.

9. While it is impossible to suggest more accurate figures now, BF’s estimates of the increased capital value of many of these properties during a period of twenty or twenty-five years seem excessive.

1. Perhaps the charge for recording the transfers of title to Fisher, although under Thomas Penn warrants specified the payment of one year’s quitrent at every alienation. Shepherd, Proprietary Government, p. 33.

2. In this restatement the accountant eliminated all charges for interest and quitrents from the dates of the initial filings to the dates of issuance of the warrants for survey.

3. Brackets in the original.

4. On the west side of the Susquehanna River at Harris’s Ferry; see above, VI, 254 n.

5. It is not clear how BF arrived at the conclusion that the lands disposed of up to the time of the Estimate and those disposed of since then each totaled one tenth of the total land in the province. According to his calculation in the next paragraph each tenth would amount to 3,536,160 acres.

6. In estimating the potential value of the remaining eight-tenths of Pa. and the potential capitalized value of the quitrent income to be derived from it, BF made two very dubious assumptions:

a. All the remaining area in the province—valleys, plateaus, mountains, river beds, and bodies of water—was equally salable at the set price of £15 10s. per hundred acres, regardless of its suitability for settlement.

b. All lands would yield quitrents at a halfpenny an acre, although it was common knowledge in Pa. that there were already a great many squatters occupying lands for which they had paid no purchase money or quitrent, in spite of the efforts of the proprietary agents to collect (Shepherd, Proprietary Government, pp. 49–53, 71–2). What BF could not know was that, when finally surveyed, the total area of Pa. has proved to be not 55,252.5 square miles, but only 45,302.33. Iris Richey, ed., The Pennsylvania Manual, 1961–1962 (Vol. 95), p. 754.

7. According to Shepherd (Proprietary Government, p. 47) the surveyors often failed to set aside the proprietary tenths of new tracts before settlers swarmed in “and the proprietors had to content themselves with land which had been avoided by the settlers because of its worthlessness.”

8. Brackets in the original.

9. See above, V, 349–50 n, and map facing p. 225.

1. BF had already included this tenth among the lands to be sold at £15 10s. per hundred acres, mentioned in the entry immediately above.

2. See above, pp. 210–11.

3. For an understanding of the account and the discussion of it the following summary or the procedure in making land grants in Pa. may be helpful: The prospective buyer normally filed in the provincial secretary’s office a claim for the land he desired, though often only the number of acres would be indicated, not the specific location within a general area. The secretary would issue to the surveyor general a warrant to lay out and survey the land in question. When the surveyor general or his deputies had performed this task he executed and returned a certificate of survey. After receiving this document and a certificate from the receiver general of payment of the purchase price, the commissioners of property (later the governor) would issue a patent under the great seal, which was recorded by the provincial secretary. In theory, these steps should follow each other in short order, but in practice many years often elapsed between them. The Proprietors intended that the purchase price (“consideration money”) should be paid at the time of the first application, but often the prospective grantee made only a partial down payment, or even none at all. The proprietary agents later assessed interest on the unpaid balance of the purchase price and on the stipulated quitrent from this earliest date in the transaction, though settlers believed they were not liable for either until the warrant for the survey was issued. Shepherd, Proprietary Government, pp. 26–38.

4. Apparently the date on which Jacob Job had initially filed for the land. Recomputation shows that in all entries in this account, and in the restatement which follows it, interest was charged at the rate of 6 percent per annum. It was calculated as simple interest for the period indicated in each entry but the receiver general compounded it from one period to the next.

5. Apparently Job (or Fisher if he had bought Job’s interest by then) paid £15 down on the purchase price on the date the warrant for survey was issued.

6. Charged from the date of Job’s initial application and converted to Pa. currency at a very high rate of exchange.

7. Apparently the date on which Thomas Cooper had initially filed for the land.

8. Cooper’s (or Fisher’s) down payment at the time of the warrant.

9. Charged from the date of Cooper’s initial application.

1. Perhaps the charge for recording the transfers of title to Fisher, although under Thomas Penn warrants specified the payment of one year’s quitrent at every alienation. Shepherd, Proprietary Government, p. 33.

2. In this restatement the accountant eliminated all charges for interest and quitrents from the dates of the initial filings to the dates of issuance of the warrants for survey.