The Political Writings of William Penn

Introduction. William Penn: His Life, His Times, and His Work

Penn i-xxviii.indd 11 1/17/12 8:55 AM INTRODUCTION William Penn: His Life, His Times, and His Work William Penn was born in London on 14 October 1644, and died in Buckinghamshire on 30 July 1718. His life spanned the two great political and religious upheavals in seventeenth-century England: the Civil Wars of the 1640s and the 1688 Revolution. Son of an admiral who served the parliamentarian cause during the Civil Wars and Commonwealth but who made his peace with the restored monarchy after 1660, Penn found himself involved in the turmoil of the 168os because of his friendship with King James II and his relentless pursuit of religious liberty. Expelled in 1662 from Christ Church College, Oxford, for religious nonconformity , Penn traveled to France and studied for a time at the Protestant Academy at Saumur. He later returned to England and studied law at Lincoln's Inn, then converted to Quakerism in 1667 while in Ireland on business for his father. His conversion marked the beginning of a lifelong career as religious controversialist, preacher, writer, and spokesman for the Society of Friends (or, as they were commonly known, Quakers).1 During the course ofa public career that spanned over four decades, Penn worked tirelessly to promote religious liberty as a general principle as well as to advance the specific interests of Friends and his colonizing endeavor in America. This volume reprints Penn's primary political writings from the 1670s and 168os, writings that illustrate his approach to toleration as an English, a European, a Christian, and indeed a human value, and which provide a background against which to view Penn's efforts to achieve a level of religious liberty in America that was not possible in his homeland. The Society of Friends had emerged from the religious and political ferment of the English Civil Wars, and their denial of the Trinity, their doctrine of inner light, and their refusal to swear oaths and show social deference instantly attracted charges ofanarchism, atheism, and disloyalty. William Penn 1. The best account of Penn's religion is Melvin B. Endy, Jr., William Penn and Early Quakerism (Princeton, 1973). An invaluable new source on the Friends is Rosemary Moore, The Light in Their Consciences: The Early Quakers in Britain 1646-1666 (University Park, Pa., 2000). The most important primary sources are George Fox's Journal (London, 1694); and Penn, A briefaccount of the rise and progress of the people, called Quakers (London, 1694). Penn i-xxviii.indd 12 1/17/12 8:55 AM {xii} INTRODUCTION had ample opportunity to respond to these accusations: Not only was he a man ofmeans, but he also put his several imprisonments to good use, writing many tracts defending his particular religion and advocating liberty of conscience as a principle. Penn spent the decade following his conversion writing and traveling throughout England, Europe, and America on behalfofQuaker causes. He was also increasingly interested in the possibility of founding a colony based on principles of religious freedom. In 1681, calling on an old friendship and debts owed his father by the Crown, Penn received his colonial charter from Charles II. The next year he crossed the Atlantic, and, in the following spring, the first Pennsylvania General Assembly adopted the Frame ofGovernment by which the colony would be ruled for the next ten years. Although business and legal matters, including a protracted border dispute with Lord Baltimore and activities on behalf of toleration in England, would keep Penn away from Pennsylvania for most of his remaining days, he always considered his colony an attempt to instantiate the principles of political and religious liberty he articulated in his writings. Penn's close association with James-and his support for the king's extralegal efforts to implement toleration -landed him under house arrest after the 1688 Revolution. Financial woes were almost continuous for Penn as well, and he spent time in debtor's prison in 1708. A series ofstrokes incapacitated him in 1712, and he died six years later. As the reader of this volume will soon discover, William Penn's political writings present an impassioned and richly articulated- though not always highly systematic-vision of the political, philosophical, theological, and pragmatic foundations of liberty of conscience. For Penn, religious liberty was part and parcel of English liberty more generally, a fundamental right and a necessary element of legitimate government. Penn's arguments for liberty ofconscience followed all ofthe conventional routes rehearsed in English political rhetoric over...