Penn, William (1644-1718)

William Penn (1644-1718)

Founder of pennsylvania

Sources

Background. William Penn was born to the ranks of privilege, connection, and wealth. His father, Sir William Penn, was a friend of the Stuart kings, an admiral in the Royal Navy, and a large landowner in Ireland. Penn’s mother was Margaret Jasper Vanderschuren, daughter of a merchant living in Ireland and widow of a Dutch merchant. She and her family fled Ireland for London in 1641 when the Catholic Irish began war against immigrant Protestants. There in 1643 she met and married William Penn Sr. Their elder son and major heir, William, was born in 1644, a time of troubles. The English Civil War was raging, and the king was a prisoner in Scotland. There was religious turmoil as Well, and some, such as George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, were preaching throughout England. The elder Penn himself was arrested on suspicion of treason but shortly thereafter released. In 1654 the admiral headed for the West Indies in what was to be a strike against Spanish Hispaniola. This grand expedition ended in failure, and on his return Penn Sr. was imprisoned again. Upon his release Penn Sr. decided that England was not safe, and in 1656 he moved the family to Ireland. The end of the civil war and the restoration of the Stuart kings in 1660 were good for the Penn family since the admiral was friends with both Charles II and his brother and heir, James. That same year William was sent to study at Christ Church, Oxford.

Religious Doubts. William Penn Jr. had his first religious experience at the age of ten or eleven. When he was thirteen Thomas Loe, an itinerant Quaker, visited Ireland and was invited to the Penn home. It was Penn’s first brush with Quakerism, although it did not lead then to his conversion. At Oxford, Penn realized his need for a more personal faith than the Church of England provided him. In the spring of 1662 he was expelled for absenting himself from compulsory chapel. Meanwhile, laws were passed against the Quakers. Sir William’s answer to the increasingly religious bent of his son was to steep him in worldly society, so young Penn was sent off to France, the center of polite culture. But William left Paris and the royal court at Fontainebleau and enrolled in the Protestant Academy of Saumur where he stayed for a year and a half.

The Quaker. In 1666 Penn Jr. sailed for Ireland to handle the family estates. The next year he again encountered the Quaker minister Loe and this time underwent an intense religious awakening. He began attending Quaker meetings and was briefly imprisoned in Cork because of them. He also wrote his first public statement against religious intolerance, protesting the injustice of such treatment for the sake of conscience. His father called him back to England where it was reported, “Mr. Will Pen, who is lately come over from Ireland, is a Quaker again, or some very melancholy thing; that he cares for no company, nor comes into any.” But Penn did care for Quaker company and at age twenty-four became a minister. He preached, was arrested and jailed, and published various tracts about his beliefs, the most famous being No Cross No Crown (1669). In 1670 Adm. William Penn died, leaving young William not only a tidy fortune but also a considerable debt from the Crown. After yet another stint in jail he left to spread the word in Germany and Holland. He would later urge these people to settle in Pennsylvania.

The Proprietor. In 1680 Penn reminded Charles II of the account owed him, but rather than money Penn asked for a tract of land north of Maryland. Knowing persecution firsthand, he hoped to establish a refuge for Quakers where other religious and ethnic minorities would also be welcome. The next year Penn was named proprietor of Pennsylvania (literally Penn’s Woods). In 1682 he arrived in America, stayed two years, but then returned to England to help fellow Quakers fight a renewed round of persecution and to settle the southern boundary of his colony, which was also claimed by Lord Baltimore. The overthrow of James II in 1688 and the installation of William and Mary meant trouble for Penn, who now no longer had a personal relationship with the Crown. His absence from Pennsylvania also fostered discontent, and his authority slipped there as well. In 1692 the Crown stripped Penn of his proprietorship, but it was restored two years later. Penn was back in Pennsylvania by 1697 and faced growing opposition from those who wanted the Crown to take over the colony. Again he stayed for two years, during which he presided over legal reforms that gave some power to an elected assembly, and signed one of the few treaties with the Native Americans that brought a prolonged peace. But affairs in England again called him home; Penn returned there in December 1701, never again to see his colony.

Last Years. Penn’s last years were spent fighting those in America who wished to end the proprietary and dealing with debts at home that threatened to ruin him. The colony was a success, yet it had not made much money for Penn. Rents and land purchases went unpaid. In 1707 Penn chose debtor’s prison rather than pay what were probably justifiable debts. Five years later he began negotiating with the Crown for the sale of Pennsylvania, but during these arrangements he suffered a series of strokes that disabled him. He lingered on until 1718, and his colony remained in family hands until the American Revolution.

Sources

The Diary of Samuel Pepys, edited by Robert Latham and William Matthews, 11 volumes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970–1983).

Richard S. Dunn and Mary Maples Dunn, eds., The World of William Penn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986);

Catherine Owens Peare, William Penn: A Biography (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1957).