West Mt. Airy: Yesterday and Today
February, 2014 (Yesterday and Today in West Mt. Airy, Article 13)
WILLIAM PENN, OUR PROPRIETOR
by Burt Froom
This is the first of three articles about the founder of Philadelphia, William Penn, who is too
gigantic of a figure to understand easily. Today, we shall meet William Penn. Next month, we
will discuss his Quaker political philosophy. In April’s article, we will appraise Penn’s impact
on our society. I admit that I am not a Friend, and I am meeting William Penn for the first time. I
value the faith of my Quaker friends and hope you will meet William Penn in new ways. Thank
you for your trust.
William Penn (1644-1718), was the son of the English Admiral Sir William Penn and Margaret
Jasper, descendant of a Dutch family whose father was a rich merchant. Penn’s father served in
the Commonwealth navy during the English Civil War, and was rewarded by the Protector,
Oliver Cromwell, with estates in Ireland. Penn was educated by private tutors, at Chigwell
Grammar School in Essex, and at Oxford University. There, young William developed a quiet,
more introspective personality compared to his robust father. As John Moretta points out in his
2007 book, William Penn and the Quaker Legacy, Admiral Penn was like the legendary
adventurers Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake of earlier generations. Admiral Penn
commanded the easy seizure of the island of Jamaica from Spain for England, in 1655.
Although Penn sought to copy the manliness and courage of his father, he grew into a somber
young man given to reading. The estrangement from his father’s world, the overwhelming
influence of his mother, and the feeling of being alone fed his mystical streak and led him to
become a Quaker. When he was 11, he had his first mystical experience. In a moment of
solitude, while he was praying, he felt a sudden inward peace, enlightenment in himself and a
brightening of the room around him. This was his “discovery of God,” an experience unlike
anyone in his family. His father was frequently away at sea on prolonged voyages, and was
unable or unwilling to instruct his son in his values and the demands of a military life.
It was not until age 12, on the family estate, that young Penn spent much time with his father,
Then, Penn learned the manners and responsibilities of a gentleman and courtier, including
sword play. But unfortunately, it was too late for Penn to embrace his father as a friend and
confidant, and as a model of behavior. Penn read the Bible with fervor. At 13, he felt himself
destined to live a holy life, but he concealed these inclinations carefully from his father. Penn
was now exposed to the Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers).
In 1660, following Cromwell’s death in 1658, Charles II was restored to the throne. Sir William
Penn was then welcomed back to London as an important member of the royal court. Young
William Penn studied at Oxford, where he was friends with more pious students, and he studied
law for two years at Lincoln’s Inn. The admiral sent Penn to study in France and maybe become
more worldly. The Great Plague, which struck London in 1665, killed 70,000 Londoners. The
Quakers impressed Penn with their courage while caring for the sick. William Penn converted to
the Quakers. He was now an aristocrat giving up his privileges, an unarmed man in an armed
world, a Quaker.
William Penn at age 22, wearing armor as an army
officer in Ireland, before becoming a Quaker.
The Conventicle Act of 1664 forbid meetings of more than five persons, and the 1665 Five Mile
Act resulted in the imprisonment of 15,000 Quakers during the reign of Charles II. Admiral
Penn was furious at his son for disrespecting the king. Penn said he was obeying God. No matter
how Penn sought to escape his father’s world, he remained all his life an inextricable part of his
father’s milieu, the son of a personal friend of Charles II. Penn used his skills as a writer and
speaker for the cause of liberty. His published tracts were widely influential.
Penn was incarcerated in the Tower of London for nine months from late 1668 on charges of
blasphemy for his refutation of the Trinity and Jesus’s divinity. He was released from the Tower
in 1669 when he modified his views to accept the more orthodox view of Jesus. Quakers now
suffered the full wrath and bigotry of the Anglican Church. Quaker meeting houses were policed
and worshippers arrested. Penn decided to challenge the Conventicle Act. He was arrested again
for causing “unlawful and tumultuous assembly” by talking to Friends on the street outside of
meeting. This was the famous “Bushel Case” of 1670. The jurors refused to find Penn guilty of
sedition and fomenting insurrection. Penn refused to pay a fine. He and the jurors were sent to
the infamous Newgate Prison until they would deliver the right verdict which the judge sought.
The Bushel Case was eventually tried by England’s highest court, the House of Lords, who
decided that a jury must have the right to hand in a verdict based on the facts as the jurors see
them without coercion from the judge.
By his acts of civil disobedience, Penn sought to transform society and assert fundamental rights
for every Englishman or woman, including liberty of conscience. Penn embraced Quaker
pacifism. Admiral Penn paid his son’s fine so he could leave prison to say farewell. Sir William
told his son, “I charge you to do nothing against your conscience.” William Penn and his father
found reconciliation. Penn began traveling about England, preaching Quaker truth. He was
arrested again for violating the Conventicle Act in 1671. He hoped to convince England that it
was persecution, not dissent, that destroys government, religion, prosperity and peace.
During this time, Penn became seriously interested in George Fox’s idea of an American refuge
for Quakers. In 1680, William Penn formally appealed to King Charles for a land bounded by the
Delaware River, New York, and Maryland, to be a Quaker colony. Penn proposed an
arrangement in which the king would make restitution of the money (16,000 pounds) that
Admiral Penn once “loaned” to the king, by making a land grant to William Penn, Jr. In addition,
King Charles shrewdly hoped that these troublesome Quakers would leave England in large
numbers. In April 1681, Penn’s charter from the king made him the “True and Absolute
Proprietor” of an empire of 45,000 square miles, about half the size of Great Britain. No private
citizen in English history ever possessed so much land.
King Charles insisted that Penn call his “country” “Pennsylvania” in honor of Admiral William
Penn. The new colony was inhabited by one thousand or so Dutch and Swedish settlers, Penn
promised the settlers that they would “be governed by laws of your own making.” By the year
1700, there were 18,000 people living in Pennsylvania. And Philadelphia, with 4,500 residents,
was the third largest city in British North America, after Boston and New York..
Penn’s proprietary powers far exceeded those of Lord Baltimore in Maryland or the Lords
Proprietary in the Carolinas. Penn welcomed non-Quakers (to the dismay of Quakers), promising
them all equal rights and opportunities. Penn wanted to create an ideal Christian society, a “holy
experiment.” He wanted to prove that Quaker beliefs were compatible with good government.
However, Penn never conceived of Pennsylvania as a radically egalitarian society. His essential
conservative thinking asserted itself.
Penn recruited widely to attract wealthy Quaker merchants as colonists. He established the Free
Society of Traders to expand economic development. The majority of the first colonists were
from England. Pennsylvania was meant to be meritocracy, rule by persons who have the right to
make decisions for the commonweal by demonstrating superior decision-making ability. Penn’s
political thinking was fluid and pragmatic. He was both conservative and humane, a product of
his faith and his patrician values. He desired to be an architect of brotherhood, to create a better
society. His legacy endures. Surprisingly, William Penn actually resided in Pennsylvania for less
than four years during two visits, (1682-1684 and 1699-1701). Otherwise, he chose to live in
England to defend his ownership of Pennsylvania against his enemies, while chosen
representatives exercised his proprietary authority.
William Penn married twice: His first wife was Guilielma Maria (“Guli”) Springett (1644-1696),
the strikingly beautiful daughter of William Springett and Lady Mary Proude, Penn’s age and
heiress of a London Quaker merchant’s fortune. They had eight children, of whom three
survived childhood: Letitia (1678-1746), married to William Aubrey; William Jr. (“Billy”),
married to Mary Jones; and Springett (1675-1696), his father’s favorite. Guli died at age 52.
William Penn’s second wife was Hannah Margaret Callowhill (1671-1726). They married in
1696, when she was 25 and Penn was 52. Hannah was of a wealthy Quaker family. They had ten
children. Surviving infancy were: John Penn (1700-1746), never married; Thomas Penn (17011775), who married Lady Juliana Fermor; and Richard Penn, Sr., (1705-1771).
Hannah Penn inherited Pennsylvania from William and she administered the colony effectively
as proprietor until her death by stroke eight years after Penn’s. John and Thomas Penn followed
Hannah as proprietors, but they renounced their father’s Quaker religion and became Anglicans.
They were accused of robbing the Indians, who trusted Penn, in the 1737 Walking Purchase
scandal – which made them rich.
Penn owned as many as 14 slaves in the late 1680s, but increased Quaker anti-slavery protests
forced Penn to use white indentured servants on his estate by the time of his second sojourn
there. He still owned two slaves, Yaffe and Chevalier, when he returned to England. He
manumitted them in 1712, but they were “retained” by the Penn family until they died in the late
1740s. Some Friends followed Penn’s example by freeing their slaves. Penn insisted that every
human being was a creature of God, equal in God’s sight, but he saw nothing wrong with
controlling the labor of workmen, white or black.
Penn’s sincere policy of cultivating the goodwill of the Lenni-Lenape Indians of Pennsylvania
contributed significantly to the colony’s rapid growth and financial success. His policy of respect
and amity allowed the colony to enjoy prolonged peace with the nearby tribes. The LenniLenape numbered about 5,000 people at Penn’s arrival. In his first meeting with them, he told the
Indians, “The King of the Country where I live, hath given me a great Province but I desire to
enjoy it with your Love and Consent, that we may always live together as neighbors and
friends…”
Since before his first visit to Pennsylvania, Penn’s steward was Philip Ford, who paid Penn’s
bills. It was Penn’s habit to sign bills from Ford without inspecting them because he trusted Ford.
Ford claimed Penn owed him large sums. With Pennsylvania as collateral, Penn then sold
Pennsylvania to Ford, to pay his alleged debts! At age 62, in 1708, Penn suffered the humiliation
of a seven month imprisonment in the Fleet, London’s famous debtor’s prison. Then John
Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough and Lord Chancellor, intervened for his fellow aristocrat to
lower the debt and get Penn released. Penn was now bankrupt and had to accept gifts from
wealthy friends. How could this disgrace have happened? John Moretta suggests that Ford
resented Penn’s lavish life style which Ford labored to build without compensation from Penn.
But Moretta points out that Penn’s inability to live modestly within his means as a Quaker was a
“character defect” that led to his destitution.
After suffering three strokes in 1712, William Penn lived on in his English estate until 1718,
tended by his wife, but without memories, unaware of visitors or his surroundings. As Moretta
puts it, “It was Penn’s faith-inspired vision of creating in the wilderness of North America a
place where all who came would be guaranteed fundamental human rights that no one should be
denied…” Today, William Penn still presides over the citizens of his City of Brotherly Love,
from his perch atop the City Hall Tower.
I want to thank West Mt. Airy residents, Quaker docent Marlena Santoyo, Quaker Tom
Armstrong, and Susan Bockius, for their help in understanding William Penn, and Jaime Kehler
for his editorial help. I am indebted to author John A. Moretta, for his book William Penn and
the Quaker Legacy, upon which I have drawn extensively for this and the next two articles about
William Penn.