Coke, and later to the Cobham family. Thomas's son John, grandson
of the founder, greatly enlarged and beautified the place and far
down into the nineteenth century it was one of the notable
country seats of England. This John Penn also built another
country place called Pennsylvania Castle, equally picturesque and
interesting, on the Isle of Portland, of which he was Governor.



Chapter VI. The French And Indian War

There was no great change in political conditions in Pennsylvania
until about the year 1755. The French in Canada had been
gradually developing their plans of spreading down the Ohio and
Mississippi valleys behind the English colonies. They were at the
same time securing alliances with the Indians and inciting them
to hostilities against the English. But so rapidly were the
settlers advancing that often the land could not be purchased
fast enough to prevent irritation and ill feeling. The
Scotch-Irish and Germans, it has already been noted, settled on
lands without the formality of purchase from the Indians. The
Government, when the Indians complained, sometimes ejected the
settlers but more often hastened to purchase from the Indians the
land which had been occupied. "The Importance of the British
Plantations in America," published in 1731, describes the Indians
as peaceful and contented in Pennsylvania but irritated and
unsettled in those other colonies where they had usually been
ill-treated and defrauded. This, with other evidence, goes to
show that up to that time Penn's policy of fairness and good
treatment still prevailed. But those conditions soon changed, as