Historedia
Episode 1 of 2

Charter Grant

When
1681
Where
Province of Pennsylvania
Part of
Founding of Philadelphia

King Charles II granted William Penn a charter for Pennsylvania in 1681 to offset debts owed to Penn's father.

In 1681, Charles II granted Penn an area of land corresponding to present-day Pennsylvania and Delaware. This was done in partial repayment of a debt owed to Penn's father, the admiral and politician Sir William Penn, establishing the legal foundation for the colony.

Sources

  1. Philadelphia Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-21
  2. William Penn Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-05

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.