(1681), was granted to William Penn by King Charles II of England, in payment of a large debt he owed to Penn’s father, who had been an Admiral in the king’s navy. When his father died, 1670, William Penn inherited his estate. The area consisted of all the land between Maryland and New York. The following year Penn received from the Duke of York the territory that is now Delaware. William Penn had named the area “Sylvania,” meaning “woodland,” but King Charles II changed it to “Pennsylvania.” The state has since become known as “The Quaker State,” due to the members of the Society of Friends who helped found it.400
The Charter of Pennsylvania, 1681, stated:
Whereas our trusty and well beloved subject, William Penn, Esquire, son and heir of Sir William Penn, deceased, out of a commendable desire to enlarge our English Empire and promote such useful commodities as may be of benefit to us and our dominions, and also to reduce the savage natives by gentle and just manners to the Love of Civil Societe and Christian religion, hath humbly besought leave of us to transport an ample colony unto a certain country hereinafter describe in the parts of America not yet cultivated and planted.401