s Bowden's "History of the Friends in America," vol. I, p.
389

This seems to have been the first definite movement towards a Quaker
colony. Reports of it reached the ears of young Penn at Oxford and set
his imagination aflame. He never forgot the project, for seventeen is an
age when grand thoughts strike home. The adventurousness of the plan was
irresistible--a home for the new faith in the primeval forest, far from
imprisonment, tithes, and persecution, and to be won by effort worthy of
a man. It was, however, a dream destined not to be realized for many a
long year. More was needed than the mere consent of the Indians. In
the meantime, however, a temporary refuge for the sect was found in the
province of West Jersey on the Delaware, which two Quakers had bought
from Lord Berkeley for the comparatively small sum of 1000 pounds. Of
this grant William Penn became one of the trustees and thus gained
his first experience in the business of colonizing the region of his
youthful dreams. But there was never a sufficient governmental control
of West Jersey to make it an ideal Quaker colony. What little control
the Quakers exercised disappeared after 1702; and the land and situation
were not all that could be desired. Penn, though also one of the owners
of East Jersey, made no attempt to turn that region into a Quaker
colony.

Besides West Jersey the Quakers found a temporary asylum in Aquidneck,
now Rhode Island. * For many years the governors and magistrates were
Quakers, and the affairs of this island colony were largely in their
hands. Quakers were also prominent in the politics of North Carolina,
and John Archdale, a Quaker, was Governor for several years. They formed
a considerable element of the population in the towns of Long Island and
Westchester County but they could not hope to convert these communities
into real Quaker commonwealths.

* This Rhode Island colony should be distinguished from the
settlement at Providence founded by Roger Williams with which it was
later united. See Jones, "The Quakers in the American Colonies," p. 21,
note.

The experience in the Jerseys and elsewhere very soon proved that if
there was to be a real Quaker colony, the British Crown must give
not only a title to the land but a strong charter guaranteeing
self-government and protection of the Quaker faith from outside
interference. But that the British Government would grant such valued
privileges to a sect of schismatic