The Palatine Emigration. 



109 



or Pennsylvania as their future home. In regard to Penn- 

 sylvania they had been for a long time well disposed, by 

 the visits of William Penn himself to Germany, to the 

 Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, to Anna Maria Schurman, 

 to the Labadists and other pietists in 1677. There were 

 also many Quakers in Germany and Holland. In suc- 

 ceeding years Penn had caused emigration circulars to be 

 distributed in Germany. Pastorius, the founder of Ger- 

 mantown in 1683, had published such a circular, copies of 

 which still exist. Of course he invokes the character of 

 Penn as a motive to settle there. One writer declares that 

 he had seen such a circular which had been printed at 

 Frankfort in this very year 1709. 



A stimulus had been applied to give the greatest acti- 

 vity to the operations of these agents, by the success of 

 two bands of Palatines amounting to fifty-three persons 

 who had reached -England in 1708. When their pastor, 

 Rev. J. De Kockerthal, a Lutheran minister, applied di- 

 rectly to the queen for relief, although she had previously 

 written to the diplomatic agents abroad that she could by 

 no means consent to spend the public money and encourage 

 the elector Palatine's subjects to leave their country with- 

 out his consent, yet on their proven poverty, they were 

 subsisted for a shilling a day at the public expense, and 

 were finally sent to New York with the new governor, 

 Lord Lovelace. These were the Palatines who first settled 

 at Newburgh, although some of them afterwards removed 

 west of Albany. 



Reference has been made by some to a proclamation of 

 the queen in their behalf favoring emigration this same 

 year, of the existence of which I can obtain no evidence, 

 and think that the act by which they were made denizens 

 of the kingdom must have been confounded with it. 



Another cause alleged as the occasion of this emigration, 

 was the enactment by parliament of a law for a general 



