PENN (WILLIAM)

Indenture signed ("Wm Penn"), granting to William Yardley, 500 acres in "that Tract or Part of Land in America with the Islands therein conteyned... erected... into a Province or Signory by the Name of Pensylvania", 21 March 1681[/2]

Footnotes

'A PROVINCE OR SIGNORY BY THE NAME OF PENSYLVANIA' – A DEED OF SALE OF 500 ACRES TO A 'FIRST PURCHASER' IN THE FLEDGLING COLONY, made just seventeen days after Penn had been granted his charter by the King on 4 March 1682, as recited at the outset of our deed – "Whereas King Charles the Second by his Letters Patents under the greate seale of England bearing date the fourth day of March... hath given and granted unto the said William Penn his heirs and Assignes All that Tract or part of Land in America with the Islands therein conteyned and thereunto belonging as the same is bounded on the East by Delaware River... and hath erected the said Tract of Land into a Province or Signory by the Name of Pensylvania in order to the establishing of a Colony and Plantation in the same".

The present grant predates the first of Penn's prospectuses for his new colony, A Brief Account of the Province of Pennsylvania Lately Granted by the King, published that April. It is one of those to the so-called 'First Purchasers', made so that Penn could recoup his expenses and undertake his 'Holy Experiment' in establishing the new colony, principally as a refuge for fellow Quakers such as the recipient. William Yardley (1632-1693) of Rushton Spenser, Staffordshire, had like many Quakers suffered persecution, and was to emigrate with his family to the new colony soon afterwards, surveying his new property in Makefield Township that September and naming it Prospect Farm that December. He was to serve as a member of Falls Monthly Meeting, as a member of the Assembly and the Provincial Council, and as a Justice of the Peace and Sheriff of Bucks County, one of the colony's original three counties (see The Papers of William Penn, Volume 2: 1680-1684, p.531, March 1684). He was to die of smallpox in the winter of 1702-3, and the property passed to a nephew, who established the village that became Yardleyville, now known as Yardley.

The Yardleys had connection to Penn himself, William's wife Jane being sister-in-law of James Harrison, Penn's advisor. The other signatories witnessing the deed were also members of the circle: Thomas Rudyard served as Acting Governor of New Jersey on behalf of the Quakers, and came from the same part of the country as Yardley; Herbert Springett was a cousin of Penn's wife; while Thomas Cox, a rich Quaker merchant, had lent money to Penn to enable him to secure the charter. Three more recent inhabitants of Yardley have docketed the deed as having been examined at Yardley, namely: Algernon S. Cadwallader, the first Burgess [Mayor] of Yardley Borough, in 1882, Augustus S. Cadwallader in 1933, and John [?] M. Yardley in 1944 (see Vince Profy, Yardley, 1999).

The deed remains in the possession of the Yardley family.