Macaulay, History of England, iv. 31). On 20 Aug. 1694 the governorship of Pennsylvania, of which he had been temporarily deprived (21 Oct. 1692), was restored to him. He now resumed the practice of itinerant preaching, between which and literary work he divided the next few years. At Deptford in 1697 he had an audience of Peter the Great, whom he induced to attend some quaker meetings. The impression then made on the czar was not fugitive. During the Danish campaign of 1712 he attended a quakers' meeting at Friedrichstadt, Holstein, accompanied by the chiefs of his staff. The spring and summer of 1698 Penn occupied in visiting the principal quaker meetings in Ireland.
In 1699 he returned to Pennsylvania, with the intention of settling there for the rest of his life. He landed at Chester on 1 Dec., proceeded at once to Philadelphia, and met the assembly in the following January. He resided first at the ‘Slateroof House,’ Philadelphia, afterwards at Pennsbury Manor, below Trenton on the Delaware. The course of events in the colony had been far from smooth. Penn's constitution had proved unworkable from the outset. The provincial council, in which were vested the executive and the legislative initiative, was too numerous for the former, and not numerous enough for the latter function. It had accordingly been superseded by a commission of five, while the general assembly had usurped the legislative power and the control of the judiciary. In this revolution Penn acquiesced with a good grace, and exerted himself to compose a feud which had become chronic between the province and the territories. In this, as also in an attempt to pass bills introducing marriage among the negro slaves now held in large numbers by the settlers, and for the protection of the Indian population, he failed. He passed, however, an act extending the benefit of criminal justice to the slaves. While thus striving to mitigate the evils of slavery he did not scruple to hold slaves himself, though he made provision by his will for their manumission.
Meanwhile supply was hardly to be had from the assembly, and the colonies remained without a defensive force. In this position of affairs intelligence reached Penn, in 1701, that a bill was before parliament for the conversion of the province and territories into crown colonies. He accordingly returned to England, landing at Portsmouth towards the middle of December. The bill lapsed on the death of William III (8 March 1701–2), but Penn remained in England. He was well received by Queen Anne on presenting, after the prorogation of parliament (25 May), an address from the general assembly of quakers in grateful acknowledgment of her declaration for the maintenance of the Toleration Act, and resided for a time in the neighbourhood of Kensington Palace, then at Knightsbridge, afterwards at Brentford (1706–10), and finally at Ruscomb, Berkshire, where he died.
His declining years were embittered by interminable disputes between the province and the territories, the misconduct of his son, William Penn, and the chicanery of his steward, in whom he had placed implicit confidence. His pecuniary embarrassments, which occasioned his residing for nine months within the rules of the Fleet prison (1707), compelled him to mortgage his American proprietary rights, and eventually to make overtures for the sale of them to the crown. The negotiations were arrested by several apoplectic seizures which he had in 1712, and were not resumed. He sank slowly, and died on 30 July 1718. His remains were interred on 5 Aug. in the burial-ground belonging to the meeting-house at Jordans, near Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire.
Penn married twice. His first wife—born in 1643 or 1644, married at Chorley Wood, Rickmansworth, on 4 April 1672, died at Hoddesdon on 23 Feb. 1693–4, buried at Jordans—a woman of great beauty and saintly character, was Gulielma Maria, daughter of Sir William Springett of Brayle Place, Ringmer, Sussex, a parliamentary officer, who died at the siege of Arundel Castle on 3 Feb. 1643–4. Her mother, Mary, daughter of Sir John Proude, remarried, in 1654, Isaac Penington, a quaker [see under Penington, Isaac, 1616–1679]. By her Penn had issue three sons and four daughters. Of the daughters, three died in infancy; the fourth, Letitia, married William Aubrey, a merchant, died without issue, and was buried at Jordans on 6 April 1746. Of the sons, the eldest, William, died in infancy; the second, Springett, died without issue on 10 April 1696, and was buried at Jordans; the youngest, William, to whom Penn devised his English and Irish estates, married Mary Jones, renounced quakerism, deserted his wife, and died at Liège in 1720, leaving, with one daughter, Gulielma Maria—who married Charles Fell—two sons, Springett (died without issue in 1730) and William. The latter married, first, Christiana, daughter of Alexander Forbes, and, secondly, Ann Vaux, and had issue, by his first wife (d. 1733, buried at Jordans 9 Nov.), a daughter, Christiana Gulielma, married in
