Beschreibung:

Manuscript document signed and sealed by Penn, with the signatures of three witnesses, acknowledging the receipt of twenty pounds "of lawful Englishe money" from Charles Marshall for one thousand acres in Pennsylvania.
N.p. [but London]: 20 August 1681. 1 p., single sheet (305 x 190 mm). Written on one side and docketed on the verso. Witnessed by Herbert Springett, Thomas Coxe, and Isaac Grimstone. Condition : small paper losses from ink burn through. the sale of land in pennsylvania to quaker mystic charles marshall "a man of meekness and charity, a promoter of peace and healer of discords, whose practice agreed with his preaching." Written in the first year of incorporation, this early land purchase was one of several made by Marshall (1637-98), a friend of Penn's and an important figure in the early history of the Quaker movement. Marshall and his family eventually extended their holdings to 6,000 acres, but he never visited his estates in the new province. At his death in 1698 they passed to his eldest son Beulah Marshall. Marshall was an enthusiastic preacher and author of numerous important religious works, as well as being a medical man: "variously styled 'chymist,' 'apothecary,' and 'medical practitioner.' Croese calls him a 'noted physician.' About 1668 he settled at Tytherton, Wiltshire, and published about 1681 'A Plain and Candid Account of the Nature, Uses, and Doses of certain experienced Medicines … A curious letter, dated Bristol, 2 Oct. 1681, in recommendation of certain medicines prepared by him, beginning 'Dear Friends all unto whom these may come,' and subscribed by Richard Snead and others, with a few lines by William Penn, and a further recommendation from Friends of London, was printed as a broadside in 1681 … [Because of his faith] he lost much property by distraints for tithes, and in 1682 was prosecuted by Townshend, vicar of Tytherton, and committed to the Fleet, where he remained two years" (ODNB).