RHODESIA AND PENNSYLVANIA.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—On reading iu the communicated article in your issue of March 29th the statement that Mr. Rhodes was "the first subject of the Crown to give his name as an official title to a portion of the Empire," I was about to call your attention, as Mr. R. W. Hale has done in your issue of May 3rd, to the case of Pennsylvania, but refrained; for the following extract from a letter of March 5th, 1681, from William Penn to his friend Robert Turner, shows, in spite of a somewhat puzzling parenthesis, that Pennsylvania is not, strictly speaking, an exception to the above statement :— "This day my country was confirmed to me under the Great Seal of England, with large powers and privileges, by the name of Pennsylvania ; a name the King would give it in honour of my father. [Admiral Sir William Penn had died in 1670.] I chose New Wales, being, as this, a pretty hilly country, but Penn being Welsh for a head, as Penmanmoire in Wales, and Penrith in Cumberland, and Penn in Buckinghamshire, the highest land in England, called this Pennsylvania, which is the high or head woodlands ; for I proposed, when the Secretary, 'a Welshman, refused to have it called New Wales, Sylvania ; and they added Penn to it, and though I much opposed it, and went to the King. to have it struck out and altered, he said it was past, and would take it upon him ; nor could twenty guineas move the Under- Secretary to vary the name [Is bribery even to avert a personal honour excusable ?] ; for I feared lest it should be looked on as a vanity in me, and not as a respect in the King, as it truly was, to my father, whom he often mentions with praise."
Can similar evidence be furnished of the precise origin of the name "Rhodesia." ?—I am, Sir, &c., Sct vile Club.
HOWA_RD HODGKIN.
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