John Penn

“ PENN, RICHARD (1736–1811) , colonist, second son of Richard Penn (d. 1771) , by his wife Hannah, daughter of Richard Lardner, M.D., was born in 1736. William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, was his grandfather, and John Penn (1729–1795) [q. v.] his elder brother. In 1771 he was appointed by his uncle, Thomas Penn [q. v.] , and his father, two of the first proprietaries of Pennsylvania, to be deputy-governor of the province during the absence of his brother John in England. He arrived in Philadelphia on 16 Oct. ”

“ Sir John Robinson, the Lieutenant of the Tower of London, said to him, "I vow, Mr. Penn, I am sorry for you; you are an ingenious gentleman, all the world must allow you and do allow you that, and you have a plentiful estate. Why should you render yourself unhappy by associating with such a simple people?" ”

“ Letitia, who had married William Aubrey, had already received a dower, and later received ten thousand acres of land in Pennsylvania, as did each of the younger William's children, Gulielma, Maria, Springett, and William. The remainder of Penn's estate went to his second wife, Hannah Penn, and her five children, John, Thomas, Margaret, Richard, and Dennis. Hannah Penn had practically all the powers over the province that her husband had wielded, and she used them capably, proving a most excellent business woman. ”

“ By his second wife Penn had six children, four of whom, John, Thomas, Margaret, and Richard, ultimately became the joint owners of Pennsylvania.
Penn now moved to the English city of Bristol, where he continued making plans for his province, and preaching and arguing with people who did not approve of his religion. The Quakers were then doing a certain amount of missionary work, and the story goes that Penn sought out a young Russian prince who was studying shipbuilding in England, and gave him Quaker books which he explained to him. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ From early boyhood Penn united a taste for athletic sports with a strong bent towards mystical pietism. At Oxford he corresponded with Dr. John Owen [q. v.] , and listened to the discourses of the quaker Thomas Loe. He was sent down for nonconformity in October 1661. On his return home his father, the admiral, finding other methods powerless to reclaim him, sent him abroad to divert his mind. ”

“ 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." ”

“ William Penn could look with no little degree of pride upon his work. If ever man was justified in being proud, he was. Looking upon the result of his work, he, with righteous exultation, wrote to Lord Halifax, "I must, without vanity, say I have led the greatest colony into America that ever man did upon private credit, and the most prosperous beginnings that ever were in it are to be found among us."
Penn bade the colonists farewell, with the brightest hopes for the future, saying, "My love and my life are to and with you, and no water can quench it, nor distance bring it to an end. ”

“ Penn's meanness is the subject of frequent remark in the ‘Diary.’ But compared with the opportunities he had had both under the Commonwealth and under the corrupt administration of Charles II, Penn was a poor man, and may be supposed to have exercised a rigid, perhaps narrow, economy, anxious to increase his estate in view of a promised peerage, the hope of which was frustrated by his son's becoming a quaker. ”

“ The courtly Penn had praised the goodwife's cheer,
And quoted Horace o'er her home brewed beer,
Till even grave Pastorius smiled to hear.
In such a home, beside the Schuylkill's wave,
He dwelt in peace with God and man, and gave
Food to the poor and shelter to the slave.
For all too soon the New World's scandal shamed
The righteous code by Penn and Sidney framed,
And men withheld the human rights they claimed. ”

“ We may make the ambitious heroes, whom the world admires, blush for their shameful victories. [Pg 34] To the poor, dark souls around about us we teach their rights as men.'"
After the treaty, Penn again journeyed through New Jersey to New York and Long Island, visiting friends and preaching with his usual fervor and earnestness. Then he returned to the Delaware, and, on the seventh day of November, he went to Uplands (now Chester) , where he met the first provincial assembly of his province. ”

“ William Penn was the son of Sir William Penn, an admiral in the navy of the Commonwealth and a friend of Charles II. At Oxford young William Penn was known as an athlete and a scholar and a linguist, a reputation he maintained in after life by learning to speak Latin, French, German, Dutch, and Italian. After becoming a Quaker, he was taken from Oxford and traveled in France, Italy, and Ireland, where he was imprisoned for attending a Quaker meeting. ”

“ The principal authority for the Life of Penn is Granville Penn's Memorials of the professional Life and Times of Sir William Penn—a valuable but crude compilation of materials rather than a Life. Besides this, Hepworth Dixon's Life of William Penn; Pepys's Diary ”

“ The Quaker pilgrims of Pennsylvania, seeking the same object by different means, have not been equally fortunate. The power of their testimony for truth and holiness, peace and freedom, enforced only by what Milton calls "the unresistible might of meekness," has been felt through two centuries in the amelioration of penal severities, the abolition of slavery, the reform of the erring, the relief of the poor and suffering,--felt, in brief, in every step of human progress. But of the men themselves, with the single exception of William Penn, scarcely anything is known. ”

“ Under circumstances of more than ordinary difficulty, it has endeavored to maintain the Great Testimony. The spirit of its culture has not been a narrow one, nor could it be, if true to the broad and catholic principles of the eminent worthies who founded the State of Pennsylvania, Penn, Lloyd, Pastorius, Logan, and Story; men who were masters of the scientific knowledge and culture of their age, hospitable to all truth, and open to all light, and who in some instances anticipated the result of modern research and critical inquiry. ”

“ A great many Friends had emigrated to America, and two had become proprietors of New Jersey. The first event that drew Penn's particular attention to America was when he was called upon to act as umpire between the two Quaker proprietors of New Jersey. Having the New World thus thrust upon his attention, the young convert to the new religion began to look with longing eyes across the Atlantic for a home for himself and his persecuted brethren. ”

“ James, as a Catholic, had in some sort a common interest with his dissenting subjects, and the declaration was for their common relief. Penn, conscious of the rectitude of his own motives and thoroughly convinced of the Christian duty of toleration, welcomed that declaration as the precursor of the golden age of liberty and love and good-will to men. He was not the man to distrust the motives of an act so fully in accordance with his lifelong aspirations and prayers. ”

“ According to this, Penn was ‘a rogue,’ ‘a counterfeit rogue,’ ‘a cunning rogue,’ ‘a very cowardly rogue,’ ‘a mean rogue,’ ‘a hypocritical rogue,’ ‘a coward,’ ‘a coxcomb,’ ‘a very villain,’ ‘the falsest rascal,’ ‘as false a fellow as ever was born,’ all which, when read by the light of other entries, would seem to mean that Penn, as Pepys's official superior, had sometimes to give him orders, sometimes, perhaps, to find fault with him ”

“ As soon as William Penn had accomplished his purpose, he made immediate preparations for going to America, and within a week after the bargain was officially settled, he sailed in the ship Welcome, with one hundred emigrants, in August, 1682. Many of his emigrants died from small-pox on the voyage; but with the remainder he arrived, early in November, at New Castle, where he found almost a thousand emigrants. In addition to these, there were about three thousand old settlers—Swedes, Dutch, Huguenots, Germans and English—enough to form the material for the solid foundation of a State. ”

“ Hence, while he was always ready to minister to temporal suffering wherever it came to his notice, he made no efforts to remove its political or social causes. In this respect he differed widely from some of his illustrious contemporaries. Penn, while preaching up and down the land, and writing theological folios and pamphlets, could yet urge the political rights of Englishmen, mount the hustings for Algernon Sydney, and plead for unlimited religious liberty ”

“ In this circle originated the Frankfort Land Company, which bought of William Penn, the Governor of Pennsylvania, a tract of land near the new city of Philadelphia. The company's agent in the New World was a rising young lawyer, Francis Daniel Pastorius, son of Judge Pastorius, of Windsheim, who, at the age of seventeen, entered the University of Altorf. He studied law at, Strasburg, Basle, and Jena, and at Ratisbon, the seat of the Imperial Government, obtained a practical knowledge of international polity. ”

“ Pastorius seems to have been on intimate terms with William Penn, Thomas Lloyd, Chief Justice Logan, Thomas Story, and other leading men in the Province belonging to his own religious society, as also with Kelpius, the learned Mystic of the Wissahickon, with the pastor of the Swedes' church, and the leaders of the Mennonites. He wrote a description of Pennsylvania, which was published at Frankfort and Leipsic in 1700 and 1701. His Lives of the Saints, etc., written in German and dedicated to Professor Schurmberg, his old teacher, was published in 1690. ”

“ For in the word was life, and that life is the light of men: life in the word, light in men; and life in men too, as the light is obeyed: the children of the light living by the life of the word, by which the word begets them again to God, which is the regeneration and new birth, without which there is no coming into the kingdom of God: and to which whoever comes, is greater than John; that is, than John’s dispensation, which was not that of the kingdom, but the consummation of the legal, and fore-running of the gospel-times, the time of the kingdom. ”

“ The meeting was opened as is usual, when Brother Penn arose and read a portion of the 20th chapter of John, and then talked about fifteen minutes, which seemed to awaken a very deep interest throughout the entire congregation. At the close of this talk quite a number of wives, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters arose one after another and in great earnestness asked prayer for their loved ones. While singing the last song, the writer asked Brother Penn to remain and conduct a service at night, which he positively refused to do, saying that he must go home. ”

“ Penn always dealt fairly with the Indians, and they trusted him far more than they did most of the white men. He traveled through New Jersey, New York, and Maryland, being eager to see the country and also to spread Quaker influence as widely as he could in the new world. The life of a country gentleman suited him to perfection, and he was undoubtedly much happier in Pennsylvania than he had been when a courtier at Whitehall in London, or striving to make other people believe that King James was as worthy a king as he himself thought him. ”

“ Such afternoons the buses are crowded into line like elephants in a circusparade. Morningside Heights to Washington Square, Penn Station to Grant’s Tomb. Parlorsnakes and flappers joggle hugging downtown uptown, hug joggling gray square after gray square, until they see the new moon giggling over Weehawken and feel the gusty wind of a dead Sunday blowing dust in their faces, dust of a typsy twilight. ”

“ Penn remained shut out from the world, and deprived of opportunity to serve the cause of truth and righteousness, and his brethren of the same faith, except by his pen, for more than two years; his character stained in the estimation of some, and his valuable services forgotten by many others, who, perhaps, thought he had indeed fallen to rise no more. But there were men of eminence who had never believed William Penn guilty of the crime laid to his charge, and were awaiting the right opportunity to have justice done to his position and character. ”

“ In his dealings with the Indians and their chiefs, Penn manifested his accustomed magnanimity and justice. The capital city, Philadelphia, was planned on a scale commensurate with Pennsylvania's expected greatness. Penn's family was in England. Hearing that his wife was ill and that his friend Algernon Sidney had perished on the scaffold, he sailed for England. During the reign of James II. Penn was continually at court. James had been his father's friend, and he had always been glad and prompt to help Penn himself. The overthrow of James was in more than one respect a misfortune for Penn. ”