The sturdy independence and passive combativeness manifested upon this occasion formed, as we shall hereafter see, one of the most prominent characteristics of the emigrant from Jamaica; and there are some other circmustances which support the conclusion that he was the person thus commemorated. Driven, as we may safely suppose, from England to the West Indies, and thence to Pennsylvania, by the persecution which followed his sect, he had now experienced the hardest buffetings of adverse, fortune, and soon began to bask in the sunshine of a quiet but secure prosperity. Surrounded by men of his own creed, he throve greatly, and rapidly passed into the successive stages of a merchant and a gentleman. In January, 1689-90, he bought from Penn another lot on Higli street for the purpose of erecting quays and wharves, and he now owned all the ground on the north side of that street between Second street and the Delaware River.
In January, 1688, William Bradford, the celebrated pioneer printer, issued proposals for the publication of a large “house Bible” by subscription. It was an undertaking of momentous magnitude. No similar attempt had yet been made in America; and in order that the cautious burghers of the new city should have no solicitude concerning the unusually large advances required, he gives notice that “Samuell Richardson and Samuell Carpenter of Philadelphia are appointed to take care and be assistant in the laying out of the Subscription Money, and to see that it be imployed to the use intended.” A single copy of this circular, found in the binding of an old book, has been preserved. In 1688, Richardson was elected a member of the Provincial Council, a body which, with the governor or his deputy, then possessed the executive authority, and which, in its intercourse with the Assembly, was always exces-
