James Claypoole's Letter Book, London and Philadelphia, 1681-1684 (review)

Book Reviews113 In spite of his undoubted ability and idealism and unparalleled opportunity, Penn's career is usually nowadays regarded as everywhere unsuccessful. Certainly his public as well as his private life had defeats enough to break the stoutest heart, as even today it makes the modern spectator's heart bleed for him. He had again and again to steer a difficult course. His life is described correctly but less emotionally (p. 198) as "a complex and important man's involvement in the crucial issues of his day." Even at the nadir of his affairs in Pennsylvania "with dogged determination, he met and overcame the threats to his proprietary claims, property, and power. ... He ended his days in penury, solitude, and self-pity, and few would have discovered greatness in him. . . . For all his mistakes, and in large part from religious motives, he helped to create a secular world and a new empire enjoying a new freedom." So the author, herself no Quaker, is able to end her fascinating volume, because with painstaking objectivity and understanding she has faithfully traced the changing factors in a complicated and rarely immediately successful career. Haverford, PennsylvaniaHenry J. Cadbury James Claypoole's Letter Book, London and Philadelphia, 1681-1684- Edited by Marion Balderston. San Marino, California: The Huntington Library. 1967. 256 pages. $7.50. A London merchant in the seventeenth century found it almost necessary to keep a record of his correspondence. Mail was slow and irregular, memory was short, accounts were complicated by exchange and discounts and hard to collect. Therefore James Claypoole was not unique in having his letters copied into a book until it was filled—about a thousand letters or 450 closely written pages, from May 1681 to April 1684. The last few of them were written from Philadelphia where he arrived with his wife and seven children in early October, 1683, though his letters had long anticipated this migration. Indeed, the writer had been involved in the plans of Penn for Pennsylvania and even with the sale of shares in East Jersey. The MS letter book has been at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania since 1852. Sporadic use has been made of it. Here we have printed in extenso much of its contents, with summary of omitted letters or parts. Even with the omissions there remains a good deal of repetition. The major contents are about shipments, prices, and accounts from a merchant with contacts in Ireland, Holland, and other parts of Europe, and in America from Boston to Barbados. Mrs. Balderston with her superb knowledge of ships, masters, and cargoes from the London port books of the period is well qualified to identify and explain where necessary the details of these dealings. She makes good use of the 1677 directory of London merchants (once misdated 1667, p. 24). But more than many business letter books Claypoole's deals with many other subjects and is in a wider context. He became "near nobility" by 114Quaker History the marriage of his brother to Oliver Cromwell's daughter, and was acquainted with sundry nobles in England. He had been apprenticed and married in Germany and could write to merchants there in their own language. But he and his wife Helena had joined Friends, and for readers of these pages their extensive Quaker contacts are of major interest. For example, his servant Edward Haistwell, a principal copyist of his letters, had been companion of George Fox for a year and a quarter, 1677-1678, including a long journey to the Continent. His journal of that journey, which has been published, exhibits the same writing (and short hand) as in the letter book, as the facsimiles in each show. Before that, I may add, he had lived as a lad at Swarthmore, and transactions for him there are entered under Neddy (or Edw.) "Haistwhitle." Fox himself and Robert Barclay and William Penn were only three of Claypoole's acquaintances and correspondents. He was a Quaker of some note in the City, active on committees and concerns like the redemption from slavery of Friends taken captive in Algiers. He was involved very early in the affairs of Pennsylvania, so early that he can refer...