Penn, William

William (1644-1718), an English Quaker, the founder of Pennsylvania. He was born in London. His father was an admiral in the English navy. His mother was a Dutch woman of good family. The admiral, evidently somewhat of an adventurer, served Cromwell with vigor and changed over to the Stuarts so promptly at the oncoming of the Restoration as to obtain place and reward. Young William was entered as a gentleman commoner at Christ Church, Oxford. He entered college with Puritan ideas, and joined a body of young men who resented and opposed the efforts of authorities to make all students conform to the observances of the English Church. Two or three facts in this period of his life stand out. He was noted as an athlete. He was one of a party that fell upon some students who were wearing surplices and tore off the hated vestments. He relates that at the end of two years he left college and returned home a Quaker, only to be flogged and turned from the door by his irate father. Soon after, however, the admiral sent him to France to forget his foolishness. He returned to London in 1664 with "a great deal, if not too much, of the vanity of the French garb and affected manner of speech and gait." During the years that followed Penn saw various service in the navy and army, yet seems to have settled himself into Quakerism, making a point of "thee" and "thou," and refusing, after a stormy interview, to agree to remove his hat even in the presence of the king, the king's brother, and his own father.

King Charles and his advisers had little religious principle, but none the less aimed to crush out all forms of worship other than the Church of England. Penn shared the fate of other dissenters. He was fined and imprisoned, but to no avail. Hearing on one occasion that a file of soldiers was to be sent to arrest him he returned word, "Send thy lacquey, I know the way to Newgate." Nevertheless he appears to have taken a prominent, even a muscular, part in Quaker meetings. On one occasion, at least, he showed his zeal for the faith by pitching out headlong a rowdy who undertook to create a disturbance. He wrote a number of tracts and extended works in favor of toleration in religious matters. A sentence from One Project for the Good of England Shows the editorial style of the writer and the nature of the problems discussed:

But since the industry, rents, and taxes of the Dissenters are as current as their neighbor's, who loses by such narrowness more than England? . . . Till it be the interest of the farmer to destroy his flock, to starve the horse he rides and the cow that gives him milk, it cannot be the interest of England to let a great part of her sober and useful inhabitants be destroyed for things that concern another world.

At death Admiral Penn left his son William a considerable income, a landed property, and a claim against the king for $72,000 on account of money loaned in time of need. With a fortune at command Penn began to look about for ways and means of colonizing the Quakers in the New World, where they might be free from annoyance. With some friends he bought New Jersey from its English proprietors. In 1681, in consideration of the debt owed his father, he obtained from the king a grant of land on the north of Maryland running westward from New Jersey, "on the west limited as Maryland, northward as far as plantable." The latter phrase was interpreted as three degrees. By virtue of his charter Penn was made owner and governor of this vast tract, to be known as Pennsylvania in honor of his father, the Admiral.

Penn was placed really in the position of a "constitutional king." He had great authority, but the settlers were also given rights (as in all colonies) to share in the government. He set to work colonizing his new possessions, and drew up a constitution for the government of the settlers in which he still further limited his own powers. He provided for a council or legislature of seventy-two members, twenty-four to be chosen each year. All offices except that of governor, were filled by popular election. Under the Great Law of Pennsylvania, passed by the first assembly, religious toleration was granted to the extent that any Christian was permitted to vote, hold office, and enjoy his own form of worship unmolested. Disputes were to be settled by arbitration instead of by lawsuits. In October, 1682, Penn visited the New World. The assembly met at once.

In the following month he made a treaty with the Indians. The details are not known. Benjamin West, the painter, has followed tradition in representing the conference as held under a spreading elm tree. "We meet," Penn is represented as saying, "on the broad pathway of good faith and good will. No advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness and love." At all events, Penn and his friends bought lands from the Indians honorably, and were not involved in the wars that devastated other colonies. This was the only Indian treaty "never sworn to and never broken." The elm under whose branches the treaty was made was blown down in 1810. A small monument marks the spot. The belt of wampum delivered by the chiefs to Penn is still preserved.

After a stay of two years Penn returned to England. When, a few months later, Charles died and the king's brother, James, the Duke of York, an ardent Catholic, came to the throne, Penn became a man of influence. The king desired religious tolerance for the sake of the Catholics. The Church of England was too firmly established to be subverted; therefore King James was glad to recognize dissenters of all sorts. He was pleased to have the support of William Penn, a leading Quaker in his realm, for whom, moreover, he had a kindly feeling. Penn secured the release of 1,200 Quakers who were lying in prison. At the time of Monmouth's rebellion and the Bloody Assizes, he wrote: "About 300 hanged in divers towns in the West, about 1,000 to be transported. I begged twenty of the king." James' reign was short. When he fled to France and William and Mary ascended the throne Penn fell under suspicion on all sides. The Catholic friends of James thought Penn truckled to the new Protestant king, the Protestants distrusted him for his old friendship for James, and the Quakers doubted his steadfastness in the Quaker faith. He was deprived of the governorship of his province. His rents were held back. Domestic sorrow came on him. A favorite son resident at Philadelphia became a notorious profligate. Matters mended somewhat before Penn's death. He acquired standing at court and was restored to the confidence of the Quakers. His fortune was spent, however, in behalf of Pennsylvania. An immense sum was stolen by a dishonest steward. Penn appears to have been a poor man of business.

In 1699 he made a second visit to Pennsylvania, returning again to England in 1701. Penn's relations with Pennsylvania were never wholly satisfactory. Although the colony was founded on a liberal plan and owed its prosperity largely to the paternal influence and wisdom of Penn, little gratitude was shown. The settlers chafed under the petty rents exacted. They seem to have regarded Penn rather as an overgrown patroon to be shaken off.

Penn died in 1718 and was buried in a quiet churchyard in Buckinghamshire, England. The most touching tribute came from the Indian sachems whom he had known in far off Pennsylvania. They sent a message to the widow of "Brother Onas," and a package of choice beaver skins for a cloak to protect her "while passing through the wilderness without a guide."

In 1790 perpetual squabbles with Penn's heirs were brought to a close by an agreement on the part of the commonwealth to pay an annual sum of $20,000. In 1884 the claims of the Penn heirs were bought off by the state for the round sum of $335,000.

"William Penn," says John Fiske," was by far the greatest man among the founders of American commonwealths."