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William Penn

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William Penn

William Penn (October 14, 1644 – July 30, 1718) was founder and "Absolute Proprietor" of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English North American colony and the future U.S. state of Pennsylvania. He was known as an early champion of democracy and religious freedom and famous for his treaty with the Lenape Indians.

William Penn is one of the founding fathers of the United States and the only one among them to have single-handedly created a democratic constitution and ruled a huge territory a century before 1776. Well ahead of his time, Penn wrote and urged for a Union of all the English colonies in what was to become the United States of America. The democratic principles that he set forth in the Pennsylvania Frame(s) of Government served as an inspiration for the United States Constitution. As a pacifist Quaker, Penn considered the problems of war and peace deeply, and included a plan for a United States of Europe, "European Dyet, Parliament or Estates," in his voluminous writings.

Religious beliefs

Although born into a distinguished Anglican family and the son of Admiral Sir William Penn, Penn joined the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, at the age of 22. Quakers obey the "inner light", which they believed to be directly from God, refuse to take up arms, and historically refused to bow or take off their hats to any man. Penn was a close friend of George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, and in 1696 was married in an earlier building on the site of Quakers Friars in Bristol. These were times of turmoil, just after Oliver Cromwell's death, and the Quakers were suspected as heretics because of their principles which differed from the state-imposed religion and because of their refusal to swears oaths of loyalty to Cromwell or the King. Quakers obeyed the command of Jesus not to swear, reported in the Gospel of Matthew, 5:34.

Penn's views were extremely distressing to his father, Admiral Sir William Penn, who had through naval service earned an estate in Ireland and hoped that Penn's charisma and intelligence would be able to win him favor at the court of Charles II. In 1668, Penn was imprisoned for writing a tract (The Sandy Foundation Shaken) which attacked the doctrine of the trinity.

Penn traveled frequently with George Fox, through Europe and England, in their ministry. He also wrote a comprehensive, detailed explanation of Quakerism along with a testimony to the character of George Fox, in his introduction to the autobiographical Journal of George Fox.

Persecutions

Penn was educated at Chigwell School where he had his earliest religious experience. Thereafter, young Penn's religious views effectively exiled him from English society—he was sent down (expelled) from Christ Church, Oxford for being a Quaker, and was arrested several times. Among the most famous of these was the trial following his arrest with William Meade for preaching before a Quaker gathering. Penn pleaded for his right to see a copy of the charges laid against him and the laws he had supposedly broken, but the judge, the Lord Mayor of London, refused—even though this right was guaranteed by the law.

Despite heavy pressure from the Lord Mayor to convict the men, the jury returned a verdict of "not guilty". The Lord Mayor then told the jury, "If that be your verdict, your verdict be damned." and not only had Penn sent to jail again (on a charge of contempt of court), but also the full jury. The members of the jury, fighting their case from prison, managed to win the right for all English juries to be free from the control of judges and to judge not just the facts of the case, but the law itself. This case was one of the more important trials that shaped the future concept of American freedom (see jury nullification) and was a victory for the use of the writ of habeas corpus as a means of freeing those unlawfully detained. The persecution of Quakers became so fierce that Penn decided that it would be better to establish a new, free, Quaker settlement in North America. Some Quakers had already moved to North America, but the New England Puritans, especially, were as negative towards Quakers as the people back home, and some of them had been banished to the Caribbean.


Family

He first married Gulielma Maria Springett (1644-1694), daughter of William S. Springet and Lady Mary Proude Penington. They had three sons and four daughters.

His second marriage was to Hannah Margaret Callowhill (1671-1727), daughter of Thomas Callowhill and Anna (Hannah) Hollister. William Penn married Hannah when she was 24 and he was 52. They had eight children in twelve years. The first died in infancy. The other children were:

  • John Penn (1699-1746), never married.
  • Thomas Penn (1702-1775), married Lady Juliana Fermore, fourth daughter of Thomas, first Earl of Pomfret.
  • Margaret Penn (b. 1704)
  • Richard Penn (1706-1771)
  • Dennis Penn (b. 1707, d. before 1727)
  • Hannah Penn (b. 1708)

Penn's family line still resides in England, America and Australia.

Posthumous honors

Bronze statue of William Penn atop Philadelphia City Hall

On November 28, 1984 Ronald Reagan, upon an Act of Congress by Presidential Proclamation 5284 declared William Penn and his second wife, Hannah Callowhill Penn, each to be an Honorary Citizen of the United States.

There is a widely told, probably apocryphal, story that one time when Fox and Penn met, Penn expressed concern over wearing a sword (a standard part of dress for people of Penn's station), and how this was not in keeping with Quaker beliefs. George Fox responded, "Wear it as long as thou canst." Later, according to the story, Penn again met Fox, but this time without the sword; Penn said, "I have taken thy advice; I wore it as long as I could."

There is a statue of William Penn atop the City Hall building of Philadelphia, sculpted by Alexander Milne Calder. At one time, there was a gentlemen's agreement that no building should be higher than Penn's statue. One Liberty Place was the first of several buildings in the late 1980s to be built higher than Penn. The statue is referenced by the so-called Curse of Billy Penn. A lesser-known statue of Penn is located at Penn Treaty Park, on the site where Penn entered into his treaty with the Lenape. In 1893, Hajoca Corporation, the nation’s largest privately held wholesale distributor of plumbing, heating and industrial supplies, adopted the statue as its trademark symbol.

A common misconception is that the smiling Quaker shown on boxes of Quaker Oats is William Penn. The Quaker Oats Company has stated that this is not true. Also it is a common fact that he was indeed a ninja.

Notes

  1. Moretta, John (2007). William Penn and the Quaker Legacy. New York: Pearson Longman. ISBN 0321163193. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help); Text "author" ignored (help)
  2. Brace, Keith (1996). Portrait of Bristol. London: Robert Hale. ISBN 0709154356. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  3. Journal of George Fox (retrieved September 25, 2007)
  4. Lehman, Godfrey (1996). The Ordeal of Edward Bushell. Lexicon. ISBN 9781879563049. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  5. Proclamation of Honorary US Citizenship for William and Hannah Penn by President Ronald Reagan (1984)

External links

Penn's works online

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