led
executive offices in the Government, and waged relentless war against
the Quaker majority which controlled the Legislature. During Penn's
lifetime the Churchmen were naturally opposed to the whole government,
both executive and legislative. They were constantly sending home to
England all sorts of reports and information calculated to show that the
Quakers were unfit to rule a province, that Penn should be deprived of
his charter, and that Pennsylvania should be put under the direct rule
of the King.

They had delightful schemes for making it a strong Church of England
colony like Virginia. One of them suggested that, as the title to the
Three Lower Counties, as Delaware was called, was in dispute, it should
be taken by the Crown and given to the Church as a manor to support
a bishop. Such an ecclesiastic certainly could have lived in princely
state from the rents of its fertile farms, with a palace, retinue,
chamberlains, chancellors, feudal courts, and all the appendages of
earthly glory. For the sake of the picturesqueness of colonial history
it is perhaps a pity that this pious plan was never carried out.

As it was, however, the Churchmen established themselves with not a
little glamour and romance round two institutions, Christ Church for the
first fifty years, and after that round the old College of Philadelphia.
The Reverend William Smith, a pugnacious and eloquent Scotchman, led
them in many a gallant onset against the "haughty tribe" of Quakers, and
he even suffered imprisonment in the cause. He had a country seat on
the Schuylkill and was in his way a fine character, devoted to the
establishment of ecclesiasticism and higher learning as a bulwark
against the menace of Quaker fanaticism; and but for the coming on of
the Revolution he might have become the first colonial bishop with all
the palaces, pomp, and glory appertaining thereunto.

In spite of this opposition, however, the Quakers continued their
control of the colony, serenely tolerating the anathemas of the
learned Churchmen and the fierce curses and brandished weapons of the
Presbyterians and Scotch-Irish. Curses and anathemas were no check
to the fertile soil. Grist continued to come to the mill; and the
agricultural products poured into Philadelphia to be carried away in the
ships. The contemplative Quaker took his profits as they passed; enacted
his liberalizing laws, his prison reform, his charities, his peace with
the savage Indians; allo