The Free Society of Traders in Pennsylvania was a joint stock company chartered in 1682, consisting of mainly of investors in England, to develop Penn’s new colony of Pennsylvania and (in Penn’s original conception) intended to play a key role in the colony’s governance. The latter plan didn’t work out owing to resistance in the lower house of the colonial assembly, but the society continued operation as a land company until 1724.
I found this drawing of a seal from a receipt issued by the society in 1682 in Justin Winsor’s 1884 Narrative and Critical History of America, vol 3, p. 498, on Google Books:
http://www.americanheraldry.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=1225&stc=1&d=1375501505
On the assumption that the vertical lines on the field are intended to be hatching for Gules, I did this emblazonment, which I’ve placed in our roll of early American arms, under "F."
Interesting. Whose arms are in the canton?
Dear Arian,
The arms that appear in the canton are those of the family of Penn (Argent on a fess sable three plates). The crescent for difference is presumably for William Penn, the founder of the Province (and modern State) of Pennsylvania. These arms were allowed to William Penn’s father at the Visitation of Buckinghamshire in 1634. Some three hundred years earlier, The Parliamentary Roll circa 1310 blazons these arms for Sir John de la Penne.
John
liongam;100101 wrote:
Dear Arian,
The arms that appear in the canton are those of the family of Penn (Argent on a fess sable three plates). The crescent for difference is presumably for William Penn, the founder of the Province (and modern State) of Pennsylvania. These arms were allowed to William Penn’s father at the Visitation of Buckinghamshire in 1634. Some three hundred years earlier, The Parliamentary Roll circa 1310 blazons these arms for Sir John de la Penne.
John
Thanks John. I guess I should have known that they were William Penn’s arms.
