512 



NOTES AND QUEKIES. 



[No. 161. 



&c., Nov. 7, 1S62. Our correspondent appears to pos- 

 sess the second edition in 8vo,, London, 1664.] 



Velitations and Pickerings. — What do these 

 words mean ? They occur in the following pas- 

 sage of Jeremy Taylor's Doctrine and Practice of 

 Jiepentance, chap. viii. sect. viii. : 



" We must remember that infirmities are but the 

 relics and remains of an old lust, and are not cured but 

 at the end of a lasting war. They abide even after the 

 conquest, after their main body is broken, and therefore 

 cannot at all be cured by those light velitations and 

 pickerings of single actions of hostility." 



Uneda. 



Philadelphia. 



[Velitation, from velites, a stirmishing, a contest in 

 words (Bailey); Pickeering, {roia pickeer, skirmishing 

 (Ash.)] 



National Armorials. — In what book can I find 

 a heraldic description of the national arms of the 

 present period, of all the nations which have any 

 such arms ? R. L. 



Tavistock, Devon. 



[In the Great Exhibition was a square enamel plate 

 representing the arms of all the nations of Europe, and 

 which will probably be noticed in the Official Descrip- 

 tive and Illustrated Catalogue, 3 vols., 1851. The ceil- 

 ing of the Royal Exchange quadrangle is also painted 

 with the arms of the European nations. Consult also the 

 following work : Armorial Universel, par Leon Curmer.] 



" The grand Concern of England." — Who was 

 the author of a pamphlet published in 1673, en- 

 titled The grand Concern of England explained, 

 cited in Our Iron Roads ; and where can the said 

 pamphlet be found ? Saintterbe. 



[A copy is in the British Museum. See the old 

 Catalogue under Anglia. Press-mark, 1138, b. 14.] 



WILLIAM PENN WAS A SLAVEHOLDER. 

 (Vol. vi., p. 150.) 

 Your correspondent Thomas Crosfield, who 

 desires to clear the skirts of the great Quaker of 

 the sin of slaveholding, which is charged upon him 

 in Bancroft's History of the United States, will 

 find it exceedingly difficult to sustain a vindica- 

 tion of what he supposes " a calumny." There is 

 no doubt but that Penn held slaves, and died a 

 slaveholder. The articles of " The JFree Society 

 of Traders," a Penpsylvanian company, the charter 

 of which was agreed upon in London in 1682, and 

 of which corporation Penn was a member, con- 

 tained a clause, that if the society should receive 

 blacks for servants, they should make them free in 

 fourteen years, upon condition that they would 

 give to the society's warehouse two- thirds of what 

 they were capable of producing on such parcel of 



land as should be allotted them by the society, 

 with the necessary tools. But, say the articles, 

 " if they will not accept of these terms, then they 

 shall remain servants till they will accept of it." 

 (Watson's Annals of Philadelphia, vol. ii. p. 262.) 

 The Society of Traders bought twenty thousand 

 acres of land in Pennsylvania. In a letter from 

 Penn to James Harrison, dated 25 th eighth month, 

 1685, speaking of some servants he had sent over 

 to his colony to work on his private manor of 

 Pennsbury, he says, " It were better they were 

 blacks, for then a person has them while they live.'* 

 In a letter to the same (4th of tenth month) he 

 writes, " The blacks of Captain Allen I have as 

 good as bought ; so part not with them without 

 my order." (See Life of William Penn, by Samuel 

 M. Janney: Philadelphia, 1852.) 



Shortly after this, in 1688, the German Friends 

 of Cresheim, Philadelphia county, brought before 

 the yearly meeting a paper " concerning the law- 

 fulness and unlawfulness of buying and keeping 

 negroes." Nothing material was then done ; but 

 in 1696 the yearly meeting issued advice to its 

 members, " that Friends be careful not to encou- 

 rage the bringing in of any more negroes." At 

 the monthly meeting in 1700, Governor Penn laid 

 before the members " a concern that hath laid 

 upon his mind for some time, concerning the 

 negroes and Indians." He recommended that care 

 should be taken of " their spiritual welfare ; " but 

 he did not recommend emancipation. But the fact 

 that William Penn did own slaves is settled by his 

 will, made in Pennsylvania in 1701, which was 

 placed in the hands of James Logan, and in which 

 was this clause : " I give to my blacks their free- 

 dom, as is wider my hands already ; and to old Sam 

 one hundred acres, to be his children's, after he 

 and his wife are dead, for ever." This looks as if 

 Penn had already manumitted them ; but, if he 

 had, the deed was never delivered to them, nor 

 did the negroes know of it ; in fact, he died a slave- 

 holder, which is proved by a letter from James 

 Logan to Hannah Penn, 11th third month, 1721, 

 which is now in possession of the Historical So- 

 ciety of Pennsylvania. In that epistle, written 

 after William Penn's death, Logan says : 



" The proprietor, in a will left with me at his de- 

 parture hence, gave all his negroes their freedom-, 

 but this is entirely private ; however, there are very few 

 left. Sam died soon after your departure; and his 

 brother James very lately. Chevalier, by a written 

 order from his master, had his liberty several years 

 ago ; so that there are none left but Sal, whom Letltia 

 (Penn's daughter) claims, or did claim, as given to her 

 when she went to England, but how rightfully I know 

 not. These things you can best discuss. 



" There are, besides, two old negroes quite worn, 

 that remained of three I received eighteen years ago of 

 E. Gibbs' estate in Newcastle county " (Delaware); 

 (See Janney 's Life of Penn, p. 424.) 



