SOME COLONIAL MANSIONS AND THOSE WHO LIVED IN THEM With Genealogies of the Various BY THOMAS ALLEN GLENN PHILADELPHIA PREFACE. WHEN the seventeenth century dawned a remarkable condition of affairs existed in England and in Europe. At that time, writes Edward Arber in his Pilgrim Fathers, "the human mind, awakening from the sleep of Feudalism and the Dark Ages, fastened on all the problems that are inherent to human society-problems which, even at the present day, are not half solved. In England, during that seventeenth century, men were digging down to the roots of things. They were asking, What is the ultimate authority in human affairs? Upon what does government rest? and for what purpose does it exist? And this clash of opinions. went on in all branches of human knowledge alike-in politics, in science, and in philosophy, as well as in religion." Green, in his History of the English People, points in even stronger terms to the convulsions of society at this time. "The work of the sixteenth century," he tells us, "had wrecked that tradition of religion, of knowledge, of political and social order which had been accepted without question by the Middle Ages. The sudden freedom of the mind from these older bonds brought a consciousness of power such as had never been felt before; and the restless energy, the universal activity of the Renascence, were but outer expressions of the pride, the joy, the amazing self-confidence with which man welcomed this revelation of the energies which had lain slumbering within him.' Out of all this confusion there arose a host of religious doctrines, each one clamoring for its rival's life. The converts to these peculiar views were singularly tenacious of their several beliefs, and quite ready to suffer the ultimate of martyrdom rather than yield a single inch to the existing laws or to their opponent's arguments and persecutions. These "followers of the Truth," indeed, appear to have taken the same savage delight in suffering, often without reason or purpose, as they did in tormenting those who differed with them as to the straightest path to heaven. To this social upheaval and chaos of beliefs we owe, in great measure, the first substantial settlement of the American Plantations. When the Church-of-England people began to oppose the Puritans in the great valley of the lower Trent, the Puritans withdrew to Holland, and came thence to Massachusetts Bay. When, during Cromwell's time, the Roundhead abused the Churchman, the latter sought refuge in Virginia. Likewise, years later, the persecuted Quaker found a refuge in New Jersey and in Pennsylvania, and the Catholic sought religious tolerance in Maryland. Here each brought his peculiar tenets, and here they continued to dispute whenever they were afforded or could beg an opportunity. These pious adventurers were, of course, only the nucleus around which the various colonies grew and flourished, but their blood is yet dominant and their influence still felt in many places where they landed upon our shores. You can trace the Puritan strain in New England; the Huguenot fire in New York, stirring somewhat, at times, the solemn Dutch fluid; the Quaker power in conservative Pennsylvania; the Irish element in Maryland; and the Cavalier tone in the South. Thus the great mass of the American people of to-day, barring the children of |