OF LANCASTER COUNTY. 77 



The scliism among the Quakers, occasioned by George Keith, deserves 

 to be briefly noticed. The first public school in the city of Philadelphia 

 was established in 1689, and placed under the direction of George Keith, 

 a Scotchman by birth and a surveyor in the colony of New Jersey. He 

 was much respected among the Quakers as a talented and scholarly man, 

 who had distinguished himself as a writer and as the companion of Wil- 

 liam Penn in his travels in German}-. But he had an overbearing dis- 

 position and irascible temper, and was fond of disputation. He held it 

 unlawful for the civil authority to use force in the execution of the law 

 and fell off from the principles of his sect, maintaining among other 

 things that the inward lirjlit was not necessary to salvation. This was 

 very galling to the Quakers with whom he had been connected for eight 

 and tAventy years. They arraigned him before the monthly meeting, 

 with the only result of increasing his exasperation, to which he gave 

 vent in bitter and disrespectful language. The cause was referred to the 

 yearly meeting at Burlington, and to the general meeting at London. 

 Keith, waxing more wrathful and vituperative, and gathering separate 

 meetings, he was at last formally disowned in 1692, while he succeeded 

 in forming a considerable party of adherents in Pennsylvania, and in 

 making his ecclesiastical difficulties a matter of civil concern. 



In the preceding year [1692] a small sloop had been stolen by a pirate 

 from the wharf in Philadelphia, and a warrant of hue and crv had been 

 issued to take the criminal, who was seized and brought into the city. 

 Keith denounced this act of the magistracy as violating the principles of 

 the Quakers against carrying arms and the emplo3"ment of force. He 

 actually indulged in insulting and menacing language against the Gov- 

 ernor, and sought in printed pamphlets to bring the magistrates and the 

 government into contempt. The printer (William Bradford, who had 

 set up the first printing press in Philadelphia) was brought into court, 

 and treating the court contemptuously, he was ordered to be imprisoned, 

 although the sentence was not carried into effect; his printing press had 

 been some time before taken from him. Keith also, and one of his 

 friends, in consequence of a printed defence entitled "Plea of the Inno- 

 cent," in which they personally abused Samuel Jennings, one of the 

 judges, were brought into court, fined in the sum of five pounds each, 

 but the fines were never exacted. 



Keith and his adherents now made a great outcry, complainhig of re- 

 ligious persecution; but the numerous publications which appeared at 

 the time show it to have been unfounded; the judges, however, deemed 

 it necessary in August, 1692, to issue a declaration setting forth Keith's 

 illegal conduct in slandering and insulting the Governor and other au- 

 thorities, declaring him to have only been punished for those parts of 

 his writings which contained these offences, and not for any of his 



