ownership of West
Jersey; and to prevent a lawsuit, so objectionable to Quakers, the
decision was left to William Penn, then a rising young Quaker about
thirty years old, dreaming of ideal colonies in America. Penn awarded
Fenwick a one-tenth interest and four hundred pounds. Byllinge soon
became insolvent and turned over his nine-tenths interest to his
creditors, appointing Penn and two other Quakers, Gawen Lawrie, a
merchant of London, and Nicholas Lucas, a maltster of Hertford, to hold
it in trust for them. Gawen Lawrie afterwards became deputy governor of
East Jersey. Lucas was one of those thoroughgoing Quakers just released
from eight years in prison for his religion. *

* Myers, "Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West Jersey, and
Delaware", p. 180.

Fenwick also in the end fell into debt and, after selling over one
hundred thousand acres to about fifty purchasers, leased what remained
of his interest for a thousand years to John Edridge, a tanner, and
Edmund Warner, a poulterer, as security for money borrowed from them.
They conveyed this lease and their claims to Penn, Lawrie, and Lucas,
who thus became the owners, as trustees, of pretty much all West Jersey.

This was William Penn's first practical experience in American affairs.
He and his fellow trustees, with the consent of Fenwick, divided the
West Jersey ownership into one hundred shares. The ninety belonging to
Byllinge were offered for sale to settlers or to creditors of Byllinge
who would take them in exchange for debts. The settlement of West Jersey
thus became the distribution of an insolvent Quaker's estate among his
creditor fellow religionists.

Although no longer in possession of a title to land, Fenwick, in 1675,
went out with some Quaker settlers to Delaware Bay. There they founded
the modern town of Salem, which means peace, giving it that name because
of the fair and peaceful aspect of the wilderness on the day they
arrived. They bought the land from the Indians in the usual manner,
as the Swedes and Dutch had so often done. But they had no charter or
provision for organized government. When Fenwick attempted to exercise
political authority at Salem, he was seized and imprisoned by Andros,
Governor of New York for the Duke of York, on the ground that, although
the Duke had given Jersey to certain individual proprietors, the
political control of it remained in the Duke's deputy governor. Andros,
who had levied a tax of five per cent o