John Penn (governor) - Revolution and After

Revolution and After

The Penns were slow to perceive that the growing unrest which became the American Revolution would threaten their proprietary interests. After the War of Independence began at Lexington and Concord, John Penn watched with apprehension as Pennsylvania colonists formed militia companies and prepared for war. Soon after the Declaration of Independence was adopted, "Patriots" (or "Whigs") in Pennsylvania created the 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution. It replaced Penn's government with a Supreme Executive Council. With no real power at his command, Penn remained aloof and carefully neutral, hoping the radicals would be defeated or at least reconciled with Great Britain.

The war soon began to go badly for the revolutionaries. In August 1777, as General William Howe began his campaign to capture Philadelphia, Patriot soldiers arrived at Penn's Lansdowne estate near Philadelphia. They demanded that he sign a parole stating that he would do nothing to harm the revolutionary cause. Penn refused and was taken to Philadelphia, where he was kept under house arrest. As Howe's army drew close, the Patriots threatened Penn with exile to another colony, and he signed the parole. With Howe near Philadelphia, Patriot leaders decided to exile Penn to an Allen family estate in New Jersey called "the Union", about 50 miles (80 km) from Philadelphia in present Union Township. Anne Penn initially stayed in Philadelphia to look after family affairs while British forces occupied the city, but she later joined her husband in New Jersey.

After the British evacuated Philadelphia in 1778, John and Anne Penn returned to the city in July of that year. The new government of Pennsylvania required that all residents take a loyalty oath to the Commonwealth or face confiscation of their property. With the consent of his family, John Penn took the oath. While this protected Penn's private lands and manors, the Pennsylvania Assembly passed the Divestment Act of 1779. This confiscated about 24,000,000 acres (97,000 km2) of unsold lands held by the proprietorship, and abolished the practice of paying quitrents for new purchases. As compensation, John Penn and his cousin were paid £130,000. While it was a fraction of what the lands were worth, it was a surprisingly large sum, as in some areas Loyalist properties were taken without compensation. Penn retired to Lansdowne and waited out the final years of the war, which ended in 1781.

For several years after the war, Penn and his cousin, John Penn "of Stoke", who had inherited three-fourths of the proprietorship and received that portion of the settlement, lobbied the Pennsylvania government for greater compensation for their confiscated property. John Penn "of Stoke" lived in Pennsylvania from 1783 to 1788. Failing there, they travelled to England in 1789 to seek compensation from Parliament. It awarded the Penn cousins a total of £4,000 per year in perpetuity. (Penn "of Stoke" stayed in England for the rest of his life, serving as a Member of Parliament in the early 1800s.)

Returning to Pennsylvania, John Penn lived the rest of his life with his family quietly at Lansdowne. After his 1795 death, Penn was buried under the floor of Christ Church, Philadelphia, the only proprietor to be buried in Pennsylvania. Some older accounts state that his remains were eventually taken back to England, but there are no records of this.