Rupert Sargent Holland

“ Sir John, knowing that the Quakers were opposed to all oaths, called on Penn to swear that he would never take up arms against the king, and also to take a solemn oath that he would never try to make any change of government either in church or state. This oath Penn refused to take, saying that the Quakers were opposed to all fighting as well as oath-taking. "If I cannot fight against any man (much less against the king) ," said he, "what need I to take an oath not to do it? Should I swear not to do what is already against my conscience to do?" ”

“ Shall the multiplied oppressions which thou continuest to heap upon innocent English people for their peaceable religious meetings pass unregarded by the Eternal God? Dost thou think to escape his fierce wrath and dreadful vengeance for thy ungodly and illegal persecution of his poor children? ”

“ Penn sent a special letter to the Indians. "Now the great God hath been pleased to make me concerned in your part of the world," he wrote them, "and the King of the country where I live hath given me a great province therein; but I desire to enjoy it with your love and consent, that we may always live together as neighbors and friends; else what would the great God do to us who hath made us (not to devour and destroy one another, but) to live soberly and kindly together in the world?" ”

“ Penn was now a very practical, businesslike man, and he meant to add to his fortune by means of his new province, and also to become a man of great influence. He intended to show that a people like the Quakers could build up a community where liberty should be the watchword, where war should be frowned upon, and where every man should have a chance to own land and cultivate it. ”

“ The reason the Quakers absorbed many of the other sects and grew so rapidly, and doubtless the chief reason why they appealed so strongly to the liberal mind of young William Penn, was that they set forth as their aim the definite plan of returning to primitive Christianity in its simplest form. To those men and women who thought that all religion had become hopelessly corrupt through the ignorance and fraud and cruelty of the priesthood that had so long controlled the church, the Quaker leaders tried to show that original Christianity was as pure and simple as ever. ”

“ William Penn was always a deeply religious and honorable man, thoroughly sincere, and indomitable in his defense of what he believed to be the truth. He was a great man, for he led the new sect of Quakers through their early trials; he had the vision to build them a new home beyond the seas and to set them standards of liberty and government that were far in advance of his time. His faults of judgment were many; he too often trusted the wrong men, and frequently he showed himself a child in caring for money matters. ”

“ Admiral Penn had managed to accumulate a very considerable fortune, and as a result William, the eldest son, became a rich man. His family was a prominent one, he had many influential friends, and now had plenty of money; so it was thought that he would naturally become a cavalier and gentleman of fashion. He soon made it clear, however, that he meant to retain the simple way of living adopted by the Quakers. Friends of his own age made fun of him, saying it was preposterous that a man of his means and abilities should spend his time with such dull people as those of the new religion. ”

“ He dealt fairly with settlers and Indians, probably more fairly than any other governor of an American colony, and the Indians seemed to appreciate his fair dealing more than did the white men. The colony owed something to his guidance, but a great deal more to the noble spirit of liberty of religion in which he founded it. There is to be found what has made the name of William Penn illustrious and beloved, for he had a great vision of human liberty and he worked mightily to make that vision become a reality. ”

“ Young Penn was enjoying life on his father's estate and at the duke's court in Dublin, and was decidedly the courtier and man of affairs; when one day, being in Cork on business, he happened to hear the preaching of Thomas Loe, a man he had already heard at Oxford. The message of that sermon lay in the words, "There is a faith which overcomes the world, and there is a faith which is overcome by the world." It made a deep impression on the young man. ”

“ The Civil War between Charles I. and Parliament was also largely a war between the men of the Church of England and the Puritans. Then, when the Puritans had won a place for themselves and a certain amount of power, they in their turn became conservative, and wanted to impose their own beliefs and religious observances upon the rest of England.
By this time, however, men had grown so used to freedom of thought in religious matters that every little group had its own peculiar creed. Any man of an original turn of mind could start a new sect and win converts. ”

“ For centuries England, as well as all of Western Europe, had taken its creed directly from the Pope and his clergy, no more doubting the truth of what was told them than a child doubts the truth of the multiplication-table. But at length certain men of unusual independence of mind, men such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, became restless under the arbitrary teachings of the Pope and dared to question whether the priests were always right, no matter what they said. ”

“ Neither great nor good things are ever attained without loss and hardships. He that would reap and not labor, must faint with the wind and perish in disappointments; but an hair of my head shall not fall without the Providence of my Father that is over all." Brave words these to be written by a youth in a cell of the Tower of London with small prospect of leaving it!
In his gloomy prison William Penn, like Cervantes and Walter Raleigh and John Bunyan, took to writing a book, one that he called "No Cross, No Crown." ”

“ There was probably no finer type of man among those who settled the colonies of North America than this broadminded, well-balanced, shrewd, and yet ideal-loving Quaker courtier, with his profound sense of justice, and his determination to deal fairly by all,—both settlers and Indians. ”

“ He was a man of action, a man who was naturally fond of court life, who liked power, who was restless and eager, and who would have made a better soldier than a statesman. While he lived in Pennsylvania he lived up to his idea of a great landed proprietor and governor, and he liked to be regarded as the leading man among the Quakers both in Pennsylvania and in England. ”

“ The Quakers did not believe in warfare, but the men on the Pennsylvania frontiers, Scotch-Irish, Swiss, and Germans, had to arm and form companies for self-protection after General Braddock's defeat by the French and Indians. They felt that they ought to have some help, financial if no other, from the wealthy people in the eastern part of the [Pg 162] province; and at length they succeeded in getting the Assembly to vote for supplies. When it came to raising this money, the property of the Penns had to be taxed, and this gave the greatest offense to Thomas and Richard Penn in England. ”

“ The Quakers kept out of the dispute between the Church of England and the Catholics as well as they could, following the advice of Penn, who told his people to keep away from all worldly controversies. "Fly as for your lives," he wrote them in a letter, "from the snares therein, and get you into your watch-tower, the name of the Lord." He urged the Protestants to treat the followers of other creeds more fairly, trying to show them that in their persecution of others the Protestants were themselves guilty of doing the very things which they had most feared from others. ”

“ The colonists were men of energy and resource; they built substantial houses rapidly, and before long residences with pointed roofs, balconies, and porches were common sights, while an enterprising man named Carpenter built a quay three hundred feet long, where a ship of five hundred tons could be moored. Penn was justly proud of the achievements of his colonists. To Lord Halifax he wrote, "I must without vanity say, I have led the greatest colony into America that ever any man did on private credit;" ”

“ Now Admiral Penn had fought on the side of the Roundheads because the English navy had sided with the Parliament, while the English army had largely sided with the king, and not from any real love of Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans. [Pg 3] He was indeed a Royalist at heart, and had very little patience with the new religious ideas that were becoming so popular in England. The people in Wanstead, however, were mostly Puritans, and young William, boy though he was, heard so much about their religion that he became a little Puritan like his playmates. ”

“ Being so ardent by nature, he determined that his faith should overcome the temptations that surrounded him. He would fight by the side of those who believed in the simple teachings of early Christianity and who were unhampered by the forms and ceremonies the other churches had imposed upon their members. Thomas Loe's sermon was the spark that set Penn's zeal ablaze. ”

“ On all sides men and women were plotting for their own advancement, too often changing their religion to suit their ambitions of the moment. Penn, who would preach to a Quaker meeting, and then go to the king's chambers, where he would meet Catholics and priests, seemed to be acting after the general fashion of the time, but nevertheless his intimacy with the king caused gossip and some suspicions of his motives. ”

“ William Penn, 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; which is a pleasant thing after his being abroad so long and his father such a hypocritical rogue. ”

“ When the authorities thought the incorrigible young man must surely have learned his lesson in the wretched prison, they set him free again. He had spent half of the last three years in jails.
When he was at length liberated, he went abroad for a time, traveling in Holland and Germany, perhaps because his stay in Newgate had injured his health, perhaps to give the suspicions [Pg 50] concerning him a chance to disappear. Yet, even on these journeys, whenever Penn found people showing any interest in the Quaker faith, he stopped and explained it fully to them. ”

“ A man who tried to obtain some special privileges from him paid him the following noble tribute: "I [Pg 65] believe he truly does aim more at justice and righteousness, and spreading of truth, than at his own particular gain."
Meantime, several ships carrying settlers started for America, and Penn sent out three agents to choose a site for a town and deal with the Indians of the neighborhood. He told these agents to examine the different creeks on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River in order to choose one that should allow boats to go up into the country. ”

“ Once let a man who had been as prominent and popular as William Penn fall into disfavor and scores of enemies will spring up to steal away his good name. So it was then, and many a time in the years that were to come he must have longed for the free, outdoor life of his colony across the seas where he had been so happy. ”

“ When William reached Ireland, he found the lot of the Quakers was then no better than it had [Pg 37] been before. Their very virtues—for they were generally a hard-working and thrifty people—had set many against them. Indeed, nearly all the Quakers in Cork had been lodged in prison. Even in prison, however, they managed to carry on their affairs; for, said Penn, they turned the jail into "a meetinghouse and a workhouse, for they would not be idle anywhere." ”

“ The new recruit made himself very useful to the religious party he had joined. Besides preaching, he wrote a number of tracts, the first of which he called "Truth Exalted." In this he attacked, according to the custom of the times, all religious views that differed from his own, and answered the criticisms of other sects. He was even more useful in interceding for Quakers who had been put in prison. Having friends at court, and being still regarded as something of a courtier, he could appeal to the officers of state better than others of the new sect. ”

“ Most of the people of Pennsylvania, and particularly the Quakers, were very glad to have Penn with them again. He was a man well able to govern, but not generally successful in choosing others to govern for him. There was one man, Colonel Quarry, who had been sowing dissension and distrust of Penn in the province, but Penn sent for him, and after a talk, Quarry admitted that he had been wrong and the two became friends. ”

“ William Penn had studied at Oxford, had traveled and mixed with gay people on the Continent, had been entered as a law student at Lincoln's Inn, had been employed by the Duke of Ormond in Ireland, and now had decided to throw in his lot with the people of this new religion that had suddenly sprung up in England and who called themselves by the simple name of Friends. He stayed in Ireland, looking after his father's business at Kinsale, still wearing the bright clothes of a cavalier, but he went regularly to all the meetings of Quakers that were held in Cork. ”

“ The revival of the classical learning of Greece and Rome and the invention of the printing-press helped this new freedom of thought greatly. The first books to come from the printing-presses were copies of the Bible, which had formerly been beyond the reach of all but the priests, and as men soon translated the Scriptures from Latin into English and French and German and other languages, the people gradually became able to read the Old and New Testaments for themselves. ”

“ Penn saw that he must not lose the good opinion of the [Pg 95] king if he were to have any success in his dispute with Lord Baltimore, a nobleman who had great influence at court; at the same time he found that many Quakers were being ill-treated for their religion and felt called upon to help them. The case of one man in particular appealed to him, Richard Vickris, a quiet man who had been sentenced to execution because he refused to take an oath and who had broken certain statutes for the suppression of dissenters. ”

“ People in Holland and Germany, as well as in England, had now felt the new spirit of religious liberty, so that William Penn and George Fox found more men and women in those countries eager to listen to their teachings than they had found elsewhere. ”

“ To understand the history of William Penn we must have a clear idea of the Quaker faith in the time of Charles II. All through the Middle Ages the Christian Church, which was the Roman Catholic Church, had built up a network of beliefs that people took for granted, so that men never used their minds where religion was concerned, but were, to all intents and purposes, merely children, believing whatever the priests told them to believe. ”

“ Men and women who wished liberty to worship God in their own way went to America and founded communities with that principle as their basis, while others in England began to show their independence of the Established Church, and began to league themselves together as Presbyterians or Lutherans, under a number of different names, and many were often spoken of as Puritans. ”

“ It may seem strange that the Quakers should have appealed so strongly to a youth like William Penn, who was a gentleman commoner at the most aristocratic college in England, a good-looking, popular, sport-loving fellow, surrounded by the sons of noblemen and courtiers. ”

“ But he could not make Sir John and the other judges believe in his innocence. "You will be the heading of parties and drawing people after you," said Sir John, doggedly, and ordered Penn taken to Newgate, the worst prison in London, where Quakers were herded with criminals of the lowest types. ”

“ William Penn still had many friends at court, and it was doubtless largely through their efforts that he succeeded in having the bill to take Pennsylvania away from him withdrawn from Parliament. There were a number of prominent men in the government, however, who thought that none of the American colonies should be owned by private persons, but that all should be directly under the Crown, and these men soon offered another bill much like the earlier one. To defeat this, Penn and Lord Baltimore joined hands and ceased to wrangle over the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland. ”

“ Sydney was defeated, but William Penn now became known as something of a politician as well as a religious leader.
In 1680 Penn began to work out a plan that had been in the minds of George Fox and other Quakers for some time, namely, to obtain from the king a grant of land in America where the Quakers might establish a settlement for themselves. They had [Pg 58] already seen the Puritans cross the Atlantic and found the colony of Massachusetts Bay, where they were free to establish their own religion, and they had seen the Catholics go to Maryland under the guidance of Lord Baltimore. ”

“ Half a century later, however, when William Penn's son Thomas was the governor, the Lenni-Lenape, or Delaware Indians, from whom Penn had bought much land, became uneasy at the encroachments of some of the settlers, and asked to have a distance, stated in the old agreement to be "as far as a man can go in a day and a half," definitely determined. Thomas Penn, the governor of Pennsylvania, and the chiefs of the Delawares agreed that the distance should be determined by a walk to take place on September 19, 1737. ”

“ The middle of the seventeenth century was a very exciting time in England. The Cavaliers of King Charles the First were fighting the Roundheads of Oliver Cromwell, and the whole country was divided into King's men and Parliament's men. On the side of Cromwell and the Parliament was Admiral William Penn, who had in 1646 been given command of a squadron of fighting ships with the title of Vice Admiral of Ireland, and who had proved to be an expert navigator and sea-fighter. ”

“ Similar treaties had been made between the settlers and the natives for years in that neighborhood and in other parts of North America. The only thing that made Penn's treaties really remarkable was that the Quaker proprietor actually kept his promises. The Indians came to regard this as remarkable, after they had dealt with other white men, and spread the word that Penn, or Onas, as the Iroquois called him, or Mignon, as the Delawares called him, was really a man of his word. In time this unusual reputation of William Penn [Pg 85] spread across the sea to England and to France. ”

“ CHAPTER XII Penn goes to America Again
King William had taken the government of Pennsylvania away from William Penn probably because he thought that a colony governed by a Quaker friend of James Stuart might easily become a prey to French greed. But when the king and Penn became reconciled, the province was given back to Penn, in August, 1694. Although he was anxious to see his new city of Philadelphia again, it was not until five years later that Penn was able to cross the Atlantic. ”

“ He left Oxford after about two years, and there is a story that he was expelled because he and some friends refused to obey a college rule about the wearing of gowns and tore off the surplices that were worn by the Church of England students. He had heard the Quaker preacher Thomas Loe, and although he had not actually joined the Society of Friends he was already largely of a mind to. From college he went to his father's house in London, and then Admiral Sir William Penn found that his son was not at all the worldly-minded youth he had hoped, but a young man of quite a different sort. ”