Proprietorship.

Pennsylvania, like Maryland, New York, and the Carolinas, was a proprietary colony, the gift of the monarch to an individual or group of individuals. In the case of Pennsylvania the land north of Maryland and west of the Jerseys repaid a debt that the Crown owed to the Penn family. Adm. Sir William Penn aided the Stuart princes in exile during the English Civil War. The admiral's son, William, was a friend of both Charles, who would be restored to the throne in 1660 as Charles II, and his younger brother James, Duke of York, later James II. William Jr. had also become a Quaker, a religious sect feared and persecuted in England. With the grant of territory in 1681 Charles II had repaid a debt without it actually costing him anything since he had never invested in American lands. He also provided a means of...