Addenda: April 1694 | British History Online

Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies: Volume 17, 1699 and Addenda 1621-1698. Originally published by His Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1908.

'Addenda: April 1694', in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies: Volume 17, 1699 and Addenda 1621-1698, (London, 1908) pp. 633-634. British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/colonial/america-west-indies/vol17/pp633-634 [accessed 18 April 2024]

April 1694



April 19. Whitehall.	1,318. Order of the King in Council. Referring the petition of the Agents for the Pennsylvania Charter to Lords of Trade and Plantations for report.
	Here follows, Petition of the Agents for the Pennsylvania Charter. Some five months since you granted us a Charter, on our entertaining certain proposals put forward on your behalf, for the produce of pitch and tar, determinable at will after five years. Having complied with all formalities, we sent forward two ships, are fitting out another, have bought 60,000 acres of land and have launched into divers contracts, unprofitable except for that purpose. A stop however is laid upon it pending the issue of some debates before the Lords of Trade relating to a charter there depending on behalf of New England, an ancient Colony at odds with one another, and as different from Pennsylvania in its infancy as in its forwardness, "and without opposition is likely to happen them, should their "success be governed by the others, whose is now wholly at an "end upon the undertakings of some Eastland merchants promising "to do the same thing.—These premises considered, your Petitioners "humbly pray Your Majesty (forasmuch as they are so forward in "their preparation) and that their charter is conditional and "temporary, and, in case the Eastland merchants shall act against "their interests and come up to your Majesty's designs, or your "Petitioners forget theirs and fall short of their securities, "or for any other supposed mischief or inconvenience, is (after "five years) incontrovertibly determinable by the very words of the "order, in your great justice to the promise given them and the "assurance they have placed in it, to take off all lets from the "passing their said charter, so as to pass the seals to be able to lay "hold of the present opportunity of a ship they are sending thither "towards answering Your Majesty's so great intent." An extremely obscure document owing to the style. [Board of Trade. Trade Papers, 13. pp. 100–102.]