Frontier Country. Patrick Spero

the county, the proprietor directly appointed the recorder of deeds (an office, one historian notes, that was “of great significance for the daily and continuing life of the county”), the register of wills, the prothonotary, clerks of the courts, and sealer of weights and measures. The sheriff and coroner were elective-appointive because the proprietor had to select from the two highest vote getters. Notably, the Assembly had the power of only one appointment: the unpopular collector of excise. The proprietor’s power to appoint these offices resided primarily in powers implied in the Frame of 1701. In previous frames, the elected Provincial Council had controlled many of these appointments, but because the Frame of 1701 did not explicitly state how each office was to be appointed, the proprietor retained the powers the council once held.³⁶

      The most powerful of the proprietor’s local appointments was the justice of the peace. The justices convened the three major courts that handled legal disputes and law enforcement: the Court of Quarter Sessions, the Court of Common Pleas, and the Orphan’s Court. Through these courts, the justices oversaw the building of roads, the punishment of crimes, the mediation of civil disputes, and the care of the poor. They also held additional appointive powers through their position on the Court of Quarter Sessions. The court appointed town constables in the same way the proprietor appointed the sheriff and all town overseers of the poor. With so many roles, most of which dealt with the enforcement of law, the justice of the peace often served as the colonial government’s chief representative in areas of new settlement. The final important proprietary office on the county level was the county surveyor who was appointed by the surveyor-general, who was himself a direct proprietary appointment.³⁷

      All totaled, through direct proprietary appointment, elective-appointment, or appointment by proprietary institutions like the Court of Quarter Sessions, nearly every official on the county level was a proprietary office and those that were not were often elected on the local level. For the most part, the direct appointments took the form of political patronage, especially as the colony developed. Edward Shippen described the offices as “lucrative posts,” and he personally benefited from his close alliance with the proprietorship. In fact, many justices of the peace held concurrent offices, providing for a very healthy salary. Even the elective-appointive offices had the feel of patronage. The lieutenant governor did occasionally select the lowest vote getter for sheriff if he was thought to be better able to serve the proprietorship’s interest, and the lieutenant governor could withhold payment for services if he disagreed with the way the sheriff performed.³⁸

      It would be a mistake to diminish the centrality of these proprietary officials to creating the bonds upon which a governing contract was based. Rather, these local officeholders played a crucial role in connecting local communities to the sometimes distant colonial government. These proprietary appointees lived in the towns and counties they served and had to interact with their neighbors and peers frequently in both official and unofficial capacities. In areas in which the Assembly’s role was weak, local administrators served as what one historian described as the “transmitters” and “translators” of local concerns to proprietary officials back east much as representatives were to do in the Assembly. These local proprietary representatives were thus the conduit through which colonists in newly established communities could negotiate with their government. Indeed, as the colony dealt with expanding its legal and political jurisdiction in the years that followed the Frame’s drafting, the retained administrative and policing powers of the proprietor grew in significance and served as the most powerful institutions in new settlers’ political lives.³⁹

      If most of these county, land, and legal offices were part of the proprietary institution and thus under the control of the proprietor, the Assembly served as the other major institution of the colonial government because it operated largely free from proprietary influence because all of its members were elected by and served to protect the interest of their constituents. The legislature had a variety of powers at its disposal to check the proprietor and to shape official policy. It could pass laws and taxes, regulate commerce and colonial behavior and distribute public funds on special projects.

      In theory, these two institutions formed the foundation for the colonial government. In theory, at least, they would work together to advance the colony’s interests, with the Assembly passing initiatives that the governor could execute through his control of the administrative powers of government. But they were also independent institutions that could be at odds with what direction the colonial project should take. Moreover, their decidedly separate spheres of influence meant that institutional rivalries could develop, as the first decades of the colony showed. In the decades to come, as Pennsylvania grew and the proprietor exercised these retained powers, the rivalry between Assembly and proprietor would become acute once again. In time, in many areas of recent settlement, proprietary power would supersede that of the legislature, much to the Assembly members’ dismay.

      Indeed, the rush to write a frame in 1701 also caused another oversight that only made the inherent tension between these two institutions worse. In every previous frame in which Penn or his representatives participated, the document outlined a plan for how the representative institutions of the colony would change over time because Penn anticipated growth. The Frame in no way addressed what Penn saw as an inevitable political development: political expansion and population growth. This ambiguity created uncertainty between both institutions and among colonists that, in time, destabilized the government as people fought for the political power to fill this hole. While Penn had reservations about the document, he accepted it with the hopes that it could be changed if he held onto the proprietorship.⁴⁰

      Before Penn left, he decided to take one final, controversial step to try to preserve his colony from a Crown takeover. The Crown was facing another war with France. While Penn remained a dogged pacifist in his personal beliefs, he proved less doctrinaire in his governmental policy once he realized that the Crown might revoke his charter if his colony proved recalcitrant in defending imperial frontiers. In 1701, as Penn prepared to return to England to protect his colony, he aligned his stance on frontiers to fit imperial prerogatives.⁴¹

      Penn made his case for raiding defense monies to the Assembly before he left for England. He had received a personal request from the Crown to raise funds to support New York’s frontiers, which Penn thought might make for a strong inducement for the legislature to act. In a speech to the Assembly, he described New York “as a frontier government” because its vulnerability left it “exposed to a much greater expence in proportion to the other colonies” due to potential invasion by Indian and French enemies. Penn asked the legislature to offer financial support to this “frontier government,” which he argued would serve the interests of the empire without contravening Quaker principles of peace. Aid to a neighboring colony was not the same as active support of war, he contended. The Assembly, meanwhile, remained unyielding: New York would go without Pennsylvania help.⁴²

      From the colony’s founding, then, government support for and policy toward frontiers, competition with neighbors over land, proprietary oversight of Indian diplomacy, and tensions between the Assembly and proprietor defined the colony’s politics. After Penn departed in 1701 and succeeded in defending himself in England, the colony settled into a period of relative peace and harmony. No one seemed to notice that the much-vaunted Frame of 1701 contained the seeds for the colony’s demise. Indeed, the founding’s fatal flaw—the failure of the Frame of 1701 to create an explicit means for the government to handle expansion and to manage zones that could become frontiers—remained submerged until the colony experienced the growth Penn so deserved.

      CHAPTER 2

      Growth Arrives

      After departing in 1701, William Penn would never again see his colony, though the management of it consumed his mind, his time, and his health. The confrontational politics in Philadelphia continued on the same course, English politics always threatened Penn’s position, and Penn’s finances grew worse. He even considered selling the colony to cover his debts before suffering a stroke in 1712 that left him crippled until his death in 1718. His widow, Hannah, assumed oversight of the colony until her death six years later. Aided