BIO: William Penn, Quaker statesman (30 Jul 1718) WILLIAM PENN, QUAKER STATESMAN (30 JUL 1718) This series includes biographical sketches of about ten Quakers. Most sketches are accompanied by sections on various topics related to the Quaker movement. A Table of contents, enabling the reader to find material on various Quakers and various aspects of Quakerism, can be reached by clicking . A reading list, sorted according to topic, can be reached by clicking . $$$ WILLIAM PENN AND HIS BEGINNINGS AS A QUAKER William Penn was born in 1644, son of the distinguished Admiral Sir William Penn, who was close to King Charles II. When young William was twelve, he heard a traveling Quaker preacher, and was much impressed. When he was sixteen, he was sent to Oxford <51:46 N 1:15 W>, but was expelled the next year for attending unauthorized prayer meetings. His father sent him abroad for a while, and then set him to manage his Irish <@ 53 N 7 W> estates. There, at the age of twenty-three, he heard again the same preacher as before, and was "convinced" on the spot. His father told him, "You may 'thee' and 'thou' whom you please, except for the King, the Duke of York, and myself." Penn would not agree to these three exceptions, and was barred from his father's house. He immediately wrote a book called SANDY FOUNDATIONS SHAKEN, a book on the Trinity, which Trueblood calls "controversial and superficial." For this, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he wrote his masterpiece, NO CROSS NO CROWN, a stirring call to Christian discipleship and commitment. In 1669, being freed, he wrote INNOCENCY WITH HER OPEN FACE, a work in which he modified, explained, and essentially withdrew, the anti-Trinitarian statements of his first book. In 1670, he wrote THE GREAT CASE OF LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE, presenting the case for complete religious toleration by the state on theological, scriptural, rational, historical, and pragmatic grounds. In 1677 Penn visited the Rhineland <@ 50 N 7 E>, where he met members of persecuted "peace groups" such as the Amish and the Mennonites. He later invited them to settle in his new colony, which accounts for the presence on a large scale in Pennsylvania <@ 41 N 78 W> and some neighboring areas of what are called the "Pennsylvania Dutch." $$$ WILLIAM PENN ON TRIAL In September 1670, Penn was the central figure in a trial that is a landmark not only in the history of religious freedom, but still more in the history of English law. He was chief speaker at a large and tumultuous Quaker meeting in London <51:30 N 0:10 W>, and was afterwards arrested, along with one William Meade. (In 1681, Meade married Sarah Fell, the step-daughter of Fox. Penn and Meade eventually disagreed, since Penn was a friend of the Stuart kings and Meade sought their overthrow.) They were charged with fomenting a riot, and tried by jury. The judges were blatantly hostile to the defendants, but the legal case broke down completely. The witnesses for the prosecution admitted that, because of the size and noisiness of the meeting, they could not hear what Penn had actually said. Penn demanded to see a copy of the law he was accused of breaking, and the judges shouted him down. He replied: "Is this justice or true judgement? Must I therefore be taken away because I plead for the fundamental laws of England? However, this I leave upon your consciences who are of the jury, and my sole judges, that if these ancient fundamental laws which relate to liberty and property, and are not limited to particular persuasiveness in matters of religion, must not be indispensably maintained and observed, who can say he hath right to the coat on his back?" The jury found Penn's arguments persuasive. They found Meade "Not Guilty", and Penn "Guilty of Speaking in Gracious Street" (i.e. "Gracechurch Street"). There was no legal penalty for simply speaking, and they knew it. They were sent back, to be locked up without food or drink until they rendered an acceptable verdict. After three days, they simply brought in a verdict of Not Guilty for both defendants. The court fined them for this verdict, and sentenced them to be imprisoned until the fines were paid. They were imprisoned accordingly, but (according to one of my sources) Penn's dying father paid the fine, and they were released. They then sued for false imprisonment, and won. The Court of Common Pleas ruled that NO JURY CAN BE FINED FOR ITS VERDICT. The case is known as Bushell's Case (named for the jury foreman), and a monument stands today before the courthouse (the Old Bailey?) to mark this milestone in English law. $$$ WILLIAM PENN AND THE AMERICAN COLONIES Penn dreamed of helping to establish a just society. We still have the original manuscript of his FRAME OF GOVERNMENT in his own handwriting, with comments written in by John Locke and Viscount Sidney. He realized that a just order cannot be imposed from above, and he wrote (in THE PEACE OF EUROPE, I think): Any government is free to the People under it (whatever be the frame) where the Laws rule, and the People are a Party to those laws, and more than this is Tyranny, Oligarchy, or Confusion. Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them. And as Governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend on men, than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it: but if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it in their turn. In 1674, what is now northern New Jersey <@ 40 N 72:30 W> was colonized by Quakers. The constitution of the colony outlawed slavery, capital punishment, and debtor's prison, and provided that whenever an Indian was tried for any offense, half the jury should consist of Indians. In 1682, Penn and other Quakers bought northern New Jersey from its proprietor, and not long after, the Duke of York gave Penn what is now the state of Pennsylvania (with Delaware <@ 39 N 75:30 W> thrown in), in discharge of a debt owed by the Duke to Penn's father. Penn enthusiastically set to work to produce a society governed by sound Quaker principles and common sense. He laid out the city of Philadelphia <40 N 75:10 W>, with broad, straight streets running at right angles. In one direction, they were called First Street, Second Street, and so on; and in the other, they were Oak Street, Chestnut Street, and so on. Each house was to stand on its own lot, with space on all sides between the house and the property line. In contrast with some other colonists, Penn recognized the Indians as rightful owners of the territory the government of England had given him, and he proceeded to negotiate with them for the purchase of lands he proposed to settle. (Note that Penn was not the first colonist to buy the land from the Indians. Richard Baxter (in A CHRISTIAN DIRECTORY, 1673) says of the New England <@ 42:10 N 72 W> settlers, "...they take not so much as the native's soil from them but by purchase...they enslave none of them nor use them cruelly....") Voltaire was not far from the truth when he wrote: "It was the only treaty made by the settlers with the Indians that was never sworn to, and the only one that was never broken. In subsequent Indian attacks on the expanding white settlements, no Quaker was ever harmed." Penn's sons and successors did not uphold his practice of scrupulous fairness in dealing with the Indians. In 1737, nearly twenty years after the death of William Penn, his son Thomas Penn, not a Quaker, made a treaty with the Indians for the purchase of land extending for a distance of one-and-a-half days' walk. This was a common method of measuring land, and was understood to be a normal walking pace. But this time, the walk was taken by two trained athletes, over a path from which the underbrush had been carefully cleared, and the runners were provided with pack horses for their supplies and boats ready to help them across streams. The Indians never forgot this. In the frontier wars, only one instance is recorded in which a Quaker farm was attacked by Indians, and that was the farm of a man complicit in the Walking Purchase. The Indians of the Pennsylvania region, regarding themselves as betrayed by those they had come to trust, allied themselves with the French when the French and English fought. When the war extended into Pennsylvania, the Governor (not a Quaker) declared war, and the Quaker members of the Assembly resigned. After the war, they organized "The Friendly Association for gaining and preserving peace with the Indians by Pacific Measures." Though they would not pay war taxes, they assessed themselves a greater sum to be used in compensating the Indians for past injuries, including the "Walking Purchase." Pennsylvania was established as a colony to be run on Quaker principles. In Rhode Island, Quakers held the governorship for thirty-six successive terms. The first governor of East Jersey was a Quaker. In North Carolina <@ 37 N 80 W>, Quakers at one time held the governorship and half the legislature. Probably many Americans have a vague impression that Penn became a permanent resident of Pennsylvania. In fact he visited it only twice, for about two years each time, in September 1682-August 1684, and again in 1699-1701. With the fall of the Royal House of Stuart in 1689, he lost the favor and protection of the government in England, and he ended his years in poverty and ill health. He died in Berkshire <@ 51:20 N 1:00 E>, 30 July 1718.