William Penn Was America's First Great Champion for Liberty and Peace

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William Penn Was America's First Great Champion for Liberty and Peace
Penn was a remarkable diplomat for religious toleration.
by Jim Powell, fee.org

[This essay by the Cato Institute’s Jim Powell was first published by
FEE in October 1995.]

William Penn was the first great hero of American liberty. During the
late 17th century, when Protestants persecuted Catholics, Catholics
persecuted Protestants, and both persecuted Quakers and Jews, Penn
established an American sanctuary which protected freedom of
conscience. Almost everywhere else, colonists stole land from the
Indians, but Penn traveled unarmed among the Indians and negotiated
peaceful purchases. He insisted that women deserved equal rights with
men. He gave Pennsylvania a written constitution which limited the
power of government, provided a humane penal code, and guaranteed
many fundamental liberties.

For the first time in modern history, a large society offered equal
rights to people of different races and religions. Penn’s dramatic
example caused quite a stir in Europe. The French philosopher
Voltaire, a champion of religious toleration, offered lavish praise.

“William Penn might, with reason, boast of having brought down upon
earth the Golden Age, which in all probability, never had any real
existence but in his dominions.”

Penn was the only person who made major contributions to liberty in
both the New World and the Old World. Before he conceived the idea of
Pennsylvania, he became the leading defender of religious toleration
in England. He was imprisoned six times for speaking out courageously.
While in prison, he wrote one pamphlet after another, which gave
Quakers a literature and attacked intolerance. He alone proved capable
of challenging oppressive government policies in court—one of his
cases helped secure the right to trial by jury. Penn used his
diplomatic skills and family connections to get large numbers of
Quakers out of jail. He saved many from the gallows.

Despite the remarkable clarity of Penn’s vision for liberty, he had a
curious blind spot about slavery. He owned some slaves in America, as
did many other Quakers. Anti-slavery didn’t become a widely shared
Quaker position until 1758, 40 years after Penn’s death. Quakers were
far ahead of most other Americans, but it’s surprising that people
with their humanitarian views could have contemplated owning slaves at
all.

Early Life

There were just two portraits of Penn painted during his lifetime, one
depicting him as a handsome youth, the other as a stout old man. A
biographer described young Penn’s

“oval face of almost girlish prettiness but with strong features, the
brusqueness of the straight, short nose in counterpoint to the almost
sensuous mouth. What gives the face its dominant character are the
eyes, burning with a dark, luminous insistence ... it is known from
verbal descriptions that Penn was fairly tall and athletic.
Altogether, the young man must have been both handsome and
impressive.”

William Penn was born on October 14, 1644, in London. The most
specific description of his mother, Margaret, came from a neighbor,
the acid-tongued diarist Samuel Pepys who described her as a
“well-looked, fat, short old Dutch woman, but one who hath been
heretofore pretty handsome.” She did the child-rearing, since her
husband, William Penn Sr., was seldom at home. He was a much
sought-after naval commander because he knew the waters around
England, could handle a ship in bad weather and get the most from his
crew. Admiral Penn had a good personal relationship with the Stuart
kings and for a while served their most famous adversary, the Puritan
Oliver Cromwell.

Left mostly to himself, young William became interested in religion.
He was thrilled to hear a talk by Thomas Loe, a missionary for the
Society of Friends—derisively known as Quakers. Founded in 1647 by the
English preacher George Fox, Quakers were a mystical Protestant sect
emphasizing a direct relationship with God. An individual’s
conscience, not the Bible, was the ultimate authority on morals.
Quakers didn’t have a clergy or churches. Rather, they held meetings
where participants meditated silently and spoke up when the Spirit
moved them. They favored plain dress and a simple life rather than
aristocratic affectation.

After acquiring a sturdy education in Greek and Roman classics, Penn
emerged as a rebel when he entered Oxford University. He defied
Anglican officials by visiting John Owen, a professor dismissed for
advocating tolerant humanism. Penn further rebelled by protesting
compulsory chapel attendance, for which he was expelled at age 17.

His parents sent him to France where he would be less likely to cause
further embarrassment and he might acquire some manners. He enrolled
at l’Académie Protestante, the most respected French Protestant
university, located in Saumur. He studied with Christian humanist Mose
Amyraut, who supported religious toleration.

Back in England by August 1664, Penn soon studied at Lincoln’s Inn,
the most prestigious law school in London. He learned the common law
basis for civil liberties and gained some experience with courtroom
strategy, which was fortunate; he was going to need it.

Admiral Penn, assigned to rebuilding the British Navy for war with the
Dutch, asked that his son serve as personal assistant. Young William
must have gained a valuable inside view of high command. Admiral Penn
also used his son as a courier delivering military messages to King
Charles II. Young William developed a cordial relationship with the
King and his brother, the Duke of York, the future King James II.

Penn’s quest for spiritual peace led him to attend Quaker meetings
even though the government considered this a crime. In September 1667,
police broke into a meeting and arrested everyone. Since Penn looked
like a fashionable aristocrat rather than a plain Quaker, the police
released him. He protested that he was indeed a Quaker and should be
treated the same as the others.

Penn drew on his legal training to prepare a defense. Meanwhile, in
jail, he began writing about freedom of conscience. His father
disowned him, and young Penn lived in a succession of Quaker
households. He learned that the movement was started by passionate
preachers who had little education. There was hardly any Quaker
literature. He resolved to help by applying his scholarly knowledge
and legal training. He began writing pamphlets, which were distributed
through the Quaker underground.

In 1668, one of his hosts was Isaac Penington, a wealthy man in
Buckinghamshire. Penn met his stepdaughter Gulielma Springett, and it
was practically love at first sight. Poet John Milton’s literary
secretary Thomas Ellwood noted her “innocently open, free and familiar
Conversation, springing from the abundant Affability, Courtesy and
Sweetness of her natural Temper.” Penn married Gulielma on April 4,
1672. She was to bear seven children, four of whom died in infancy.

Meanwhile, Penn attacked the Catholic/Anglican doctrine of the
Trinity, and the Anglican bishop had him imprisoned in the notorious
Tower of London. Ordered to recant, Penn declared from his cold
isolation cell: “My prison shall be my grave before I will budge a
jot; for I owe my conscience to no mortal man.”

By the time he was released seven months later, he had written
pamphlets defining the principal elements of Quakerism. His best-known
work from this period: No Cross, No Crown, which presented a
pioneering historical case for religious toleration.

The Conventicle Act

He wasn’t free for long. To curb the potential power of Catholics,
notably the Stuarts, Parliament passed the Conventicle Act, which
aimed to suppress religious dissent as sedition. But the law was
applied mainly against Quakers, perhaps because few were politically
connected. Thousands were imprisoned for their beliefs. The government
seized their properties, including the estate of Penn's wife’s family.

He decided to challenge the Conventicle Act by holding a public
meeting on August 14, 1670. The Lord Mayor of London arrested him and
his fellow Quakers as soon as he began expressing his nonconformist
religious views. At the historic trial, Penn insisted that since the
government refused to present a formal indictment—officials were
concerned the Conventicle Act might be overturned—the jury could never
reach a guilty verdict. He appealed to England’s common-law heritage:

"If these ancient and fundamental laws, which relate to liberty and
property, and which are not limited to particular persuasions in
matters of religion, must not be indispensably maintained and
observed, who then can say that he has a right to the coat on his
back? Certainly our liberties are to be openly invaded, our wives to
be ravished, our children slaved, our families ruined, and our estates
led away in triumph by every sturdy beggar and malicious informer—as
their trophies but our forfeits for conscience’s sake.”

The jury acquitted all defendants, but the Lord Mayor of London
refused to accept this verdict. He hit the jury members with fines and
ordered them held in brutal Newgate prison. Still, they affirmed their
verdict. After the jury had been imprisoned for about two months, the
Court of Common Pleas issued a writ of habeas corpus to set them free.
Then they sued the Lord Mayor of London for false arrest. The Lord
Chief Justice of England, together with his 11 associates, ruled
unanimously that juries must not be coerced or punished for their
verdicts. It was a key precedent protecting the right to trial by
jury.

Penn had become a famous defender of liberty who could attract several
thousand people for a public talk. He traveled in Germany and Holland
to see how Quakers there were faring. Holland made a strong impression
because it was substantially free. It was a commercial center where
people cared mainly about peaceful cooperation. Persecuted Jews and
Protestants flocked to Holland. Penn began to form a vision of a
community based on liberty.

He resolved to tap his royal connections for his cause. With the
blessing of King Charles II and the Duke of York, Penn presented his
case for religious toleration before Parliament. They would have none
of it because they were worried about the Stuarts imposing Catholic
rule on England, especially since the Duke of York had converted to
Roman Catholicism and married a staunch Catholic.

The Founding of Pennsylvania

Penn became convinced that religious toleration couldn’t be achieved
in England. He went to the King and asked for a charter enabling him
to establish an American colony. Perhaps the idea seemed like an easy
way to get rid of troublesome Quakers. On March 4, 1681, Charles II
signed a charter for territory west of the Delaware River and north of
Maryland, approximately the present size of Pennsylvania, where about
a thousand Germans, Dutch, and Indians lived without any particular
government.

The King proposed the name “Pennsilvania” which meant “Forests of
Penn”—honoring Penn’s late father, the Admiral. Penn would be
proprietor owning all the land, accountable directly to the King.
According to traditional accounts, Penn agreed to cancel the debt of
16,000 pounds which the government owed the Admiral for back pay, but
there aren’t any documents about such a deal. At the beginning of each
year, Penn had to give the King two beaver skins and a fifth of any
gold and silver mined within the territory.

Penn sailed to America on the ship Welcome and arrived November 8,
1682. With assembled Friends, he founded Philadelphia—he chose the
name, which means “city of brotherly love” in Greek. He approved the
site between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. He envisioned a
10,000-acre city, but his more sober-minded Friends thought that was
overly optimistic. They accepted a 1,200-acre plan. Penn named major
streets including Broad, Chestnut, Pine, and Spruce.

Penn was most concerned about developing a legal basis for a free
society. In his First Frame of Government, which Penn and initial land
purchasers had adopted on April 25, 1682, he expressed ideals
anticipating the Declaration of Independence:

“Men being born with a title to perfect freedom and uncontrolled
enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature ... no
one can be put out of his estate and subjected to the political view
of another, without his consent.”

Penn provided that there would be a governor—initially, himself—whose
powers were limited. He would work with a Council (72 members) which
proposed legislation and a General Assembly (up to 500 members) which
either approved or defeated it. Each year, about a third of members
would be elected for three-year terms. As governor, Penn would retain
a veto over proposed legislation.

His First Frame of Government provided for secure private property,
virtually unlimited free enterprise, a free press, trial by jury and,
of course, religious toleration. Whereas the English penal code
specified the death penalty for some 200 offenses, Penn reserved it
for just two—murder and treason. As a Quaker, Penn encouraged women to
get an education and speak out as men did. He called Pennsylvania his
“Holy Experiment.”

Penn insisted on low taxes. A 1683 law established a low tax on cider
and liquor, a low tariff on imports and on exported hides and furs. To
help promote settlement, Penn suspended all taxes for a year. When the
time came to reimpose taxes he encountered fierce resistance and had
to put it off.

Penn’s First Frame of Government was the first constitution to provide
for peaceful change through amendments. A proposed amendment required
the consent of the governor and 85 percent of the elected
representatives. Benevolent though Penn was, people in Pennsylvania
were disgruntled about his executive power as proprietor and governor.
People pressed to make the limitations more specific and to provide
stronger assurances about the prerogatives of the legislature. The
constitution was amended several times. The version adopted on October
28, 1701, endured for three-quarters of a century and then became the
basis for Pennsylvania’s state constitution, adopted in 1776.

Collecting rent due to Penn as proprietor was always a headache. He
never earned enough from the colonies to offset the costs of
administration which he paid out of his personal capital. Toward the
end of his life, he complained that Pennsylvania was a net loss,
costing him some 30,000 pounds.

Penn’s practices contrasted dramatically with other early colonies,
especially Puritan New England which was a vicious theocracy. The
Puritans despised liberty. They made political dissent a crime. They
whipped, tarred, and hanged Quakers. The Puritans stole what they
could from the Indians.

Penn achieved peaceful relations with the Indians—Susquehannocks,
Shawnees, and Leni-Lenape. Indians respected his courage because he
ventured among them without guards or personal weapons. He was a
superior sprinter who could out-run Indian braves, and this helped win
him respect. He took the trouble to learn Indian dialects, so he could
conduct negotiations without interpreters.

From the very beginning, he acquired Indian land through peaceful,
voluntary exchange. Reportedly, Penn concluded a “Great Treaty” with
the Indians at Shackamaxon, near what is now the Kensington district
of Philadelphia. Voltaire hailed this as “the only treaty between
those people [Indians and Christians] that was not ratified by an
oath, and that was never infringed.” His peaceful policies prevailed
for about 70 years, which has to be some kind of record in American
history.

Defending Pennsylvania

Penn faced tough challenges defending Pennsylvania back in England.
There was a lot at stake because Pennsylvania had become the best hope
for persecuted people in England, France, and Germany. Charles II
tried to establish an intolerant absolutism modeled after that of the
French King Louis XIV. Concerned that Pennsylvania’s charter might be
revoked, Penn turned on his diplomatic charm.

Behind the scenes, Penn worked as a remarkable diplomat for religious
toleration. Every day, as many as 200 petitioners waited outside
Holland House, his London lodgings, hoping for an audience and help.
He intervened personally with the King to save scores of Quakers from
a death sentence. He got Society of Friends founder George Fox out of
jail. He helped convince the King to proclaim the Acts of Indulgence
which released more than a thousand Quakers—many of whom had been
imprisoned for over a dozen years.

Penn’s fortunes collapsed after a son was born to James II in 1688. A
Catholic succession was assured. The English rebelled and welcomed the
Dutch King William of Orange as William III, who overthrew the Stuarts
without having to fire a shot. Suddenly, Penn’s Stuart connections
were a terrible liability.

He was arrested for treason. The government seized his estates. Though
he was cleared by November 1690, he was marked as a traitor again. He
became a fugitive for four years, hiding amidst London’s squalid
slums. His friend John Locke helped restore his good name in time to
see his wife, Guli, die on February 23, 1694. She was 48.

Harsh experience had taken its toll on Penn. As biographer Hans Fantel
put it,“he was getting sallow and paunchy. The years of hiding, with
their enforced inactivity, had robbed him of his former physical
strength and grace. His stance was now slightly bent, and his enduring
grief over the death of Guli had cast an air of listless abstraction
over his face.”

His spirits revived two years later when he married 30-year-old Hannah
Callowhill, the plain and practical daughter of a Bristol linen
draper.

But he faced serious problems because of his sloppy business
practices. Apparently, he couldn’t be bothered with administrative
details, and his business manager, fellow Quaker Philip Ford,
embezzled substantial sums from Penn’s estates. Worse, Penn signed
papers without reading them. One of the papers turned out to be a deed
transferring Pennsylvania to Ford who demanded rent exceeding Penn’s
ability to pay.

After Ford’s death in 1702, his wife, Bridget, had Penn thrown in
debtor’s prison, but her cruelty backfired. It was unthinkable to have
such a person govern a major colony, and in 1708 the Lord Chancellor
ruled that “the equity of redemption still remained in William Penn
and his heirs.”

In October 1712, Penn suffered a stroke while writing a letter about
the future of Pennsylvania. Four months later, he suffered a second
stroke.

While he had difficulty speaking and writing, he spent time catching
up with his children whom he had missed during his missionary travels.
He died on July 30, 1718. He was buried at Jordans, next to Guli.

Long before his death, Pennsylvania ceased to be a spiritual place
dominated by Quakers. Penn’s policy of religious toleration and
peace—no military conscription—attracted all kinds of war-weary
European immigrants. There were English, Irish, and Germans,
Catholics, Jews, and an assortment of Protestant sects including
Dunkers, Huguenots, Lutherans, Mennonites, Moravians, Pietists,
and Schwenkfelders. Liberty brought so many immigrants that by the
American Revolution, Pennsylvania had grown to some 300,000 people and
became one of the largest colonies. Pennsylvania was America’s first
great melting pot.

Philadelphia was America’s largest city with almost 18,000 people. It
was a major commercial center—sometimes more than a hundred trading
ships anchored there during a single day. People in Philadelphia could
enjoy any of the goods available in England. Merchant companies,
shipyards, and banks flourished. Philadelphia thrived as an entrepôt
between Europe and the American frontier.

With an atmosphere of liberty, Philadelphia emerged as an intellectual
center. Between 1740 and 1776, Philadelphia presses issued an
estimated 11,000 works including pamphlets, almanacs, and books. In
1776, there were seven newspapers reflecting a wide range of opinions.
No wonder Penn’s “city of brotherly love” became the most sacred site
for American liberty, where Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of
Independence, and delegates drafted the Constitution.

By creating Pennsylvania, Penn set an enormously important example for
liberty. He showed that people who are courageous enough, persistent
enough, and resourceful enough can live free. He went beyond the
natural right theories of his friend John Locke and showed how a free
society would actually work. He showed how individuals of different
races and religions can live together peacefully when they mind their
own business. He affirmed the resilient optimism of free people.

Jim Powell, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is an expert in the
history of liberty. He has lectured in England, Germany, Japan,
Argentina and Brazil as well as at Harvard, Stanford and other
universities across the United States. He has written for the New York
Times, Wall Street Journal, Esquire, Audacity/American Heritage and
other publications, and is author of six books.

https://fee.org/articles/william-penn-was-americas-first-great-champion-for-liberty-and-peace

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