William Penn MDS Selling 500 Acres in His 1-Year-Old Colony for Less Than a Penny an Acre!

1p manuscript document signed by Pennsylvania founder William Penn (1644-1718) along the bottom fold. [London]. April 24, 1682. On vellum, with a red wax signet seal attached to a vellum tab at bottom. Countersigned by three witnesses verso. Inscribed overall in gorgeous secretarial script, with a decorative scalloped top edge. Expected folds and minor discoloration verso. Else very good to near fine. 19" x 17" including the tab.

In part:

"This indenture made the four & Twentieth Day of April in the yeare of our Lord One thousand six hundred Eighty and two and in the four and Thirtieth yeare of the Reigne of King Charles the second over England +c Betweene William Penn of Warminghurst in the County of Sussex Squire of the one part And William Clark of Westminster in the County of Middy (?) Confettioner of the other part Witnesseth that the said William Penn for and in consideration of the summe of five shillings of lawfull money of England to him in hand paid by the said William Clark the Receipt wherof hee doth hereby acknowledge hath bargained and sold…ffive hundred Acres of Land…situate lying and being within the Province of Pensilvania…"

King Charles II granted a land charter of 45,000 square miles to William Penn--corresponding to parts of modern day Pennsylvania and Delaware--on March 4, 1681. Just thirteen months after the subsequent colony of Pennsylvania, or "Penn's Woods," was established, William Penn sold 500 acres to fellow Quaker William Clark (alternately spelled Clarke) for 5 shillings. This was a great deal: about 8.3 acres per penny!

The royal land grant made William Penn the largest private landowner in the world and enabled him to fashion a true "peaceable kingdom" in Pennsylvania. Penn's policies of religious tolerance, and of maintaining good relations with local Native Americans, attracted religious refugees and settlers alike. Yet Penn's charter violated the terms of an earlier charter granted to Lord Baltimore for the colony of Maryland, and conflict between Penn and Baltimore would continue for generations. The two points of contention concerned ownership of the Lower Counties on the Delaware River

and the precise location of the east-to-west boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania. In the 1760s, Penn and Baltimore family descendants consented to conducting a survey of this shared boundary, resulting in the Mason-Dixon line.

William Clark (died 1706) "was one of the early settlers at Lewes soon after the occupation by the English, and was one of the magistrates, a surveyor, and a member of Penn's Council." [John Thomas Scharf, "History of Delaware: 1609-1888" (1888)]. Clark attempted to mediate the land dispute between Penn and Baltimore, to no avail. Clark was elected from Sussex County to the first Assembly, at Chester, in 1682, and to Penn's first Council in 1683. Clark replaced one of the five original members of the Delaware Supreme Court after July 1684

he was styled "Justice in General." Clark became Speaker of the separate Assembly for the Lower Counties, at Newcastle, in 1706, and also served as president of the courts of Pennsylvania and the Lower Counties until his death (believed to have been caused by consuming too many cherries.)

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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