This conquest, bloodless and easy as it was, was fraught with momentous consequences.  It brought New England into closer relations with Maryland and Virginia by creating a link between them, binding them together; it gave England command of the spot designed by nature to be the commercial and military centre of the Atlantic sea-board, and confirmed a possession of it that was never thereafter seriously disturbed, until the colonies themselves disputed it.  Had New Amsterdam remained Dutch, dividing, as it did, New England from the South, there would never have been any question of revolution or independence.  The flash of that little white flag on that September day, decided the fate of the continent.

* * * * *

The Duke of York, being of a generous disposition and having many claims upon him, used a portion of the great territory granted him in America to reward his friends, and thereby laid the foundation for another great commonwealth with a unique history.  New Jersey was given jointly to Sir George Carteret and Lord Berkeley, and in 1673, Lord Berkeley sold his share, illy-defined as the “southwestern part,” to a Quaker named Edward Byllinge.  Byllinge soon became insolvent, and his property was taken over by William Penn and two others, as trustees, and the seeds sown for one of the most interesting experiments in history.

There are few figures on the page of history more admirable, self-poised, and clear-sighted than this quiet man.  He was born in London in 1644, the son of a distinguished father, and apparently destined for the usual career at the court of England.  But while at Oxford, young Penn astonished everybody and scandalized his relatives by joining the Society of Friends, or Quakers, founded by George Fox only a short time before.  His family at once removed him from Oxford and sent him to Paris, in the hope that amid the gayeties of the French capital he would forget his Quaker notions, but he was far from doing so.  He returned home after a time, and his father threatened to shut him up in the Tower of London, but he retorted that for him the Tower was the worst argument in the world.  We get some amusing glimpses of the contention in his household.

“You may ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ other folk as much as you like,” his angry father told him, “but don’t you dare to ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ the King, or the Duke of York, or me.”

The Quakers insisted upon the use of “thee” and “thou,” alleging that the use of the plural “you” was not only absurd, but a form of flattery, and this manner of address has been persisted in by them to this day.  Penn, of course, continued to use them, much to his father’s indignation, and even went so far as to wear his hat in the king’s presence, an act of audacity which only amused that merry monarch.  The story goes that the king, seeing young Penn covered, removed his own hat, remarking jestingly, “Wherever I am, it is customary for only one to be covered”; a neat reproof, as well as a lesson in manners which would have made any other young man’s ears tingle, but Penn calmly enough replied, “Keep thy hat on, Friend Charles.”