The Papers of William Penn, Volume Three: 1685-1700 (review)

50Quaker History but his most fully used sources seem to be the 44 manuscript volumes of "the Great Book of Sufferings," the Minutes of the Meeting for Sufferings and other Quaker manuscripts (from which Joseph Besse condensed his two-folio Collection ofthe Sufferings of 1753). Admitting that "religious criminality is rather unexciting," Horle remains remarkably impartial and alert to misuses of laws by any party. His introduction on the social roles and goals of early Friends draws mainly on other scholars but avoids cliches and theology. His chapter on the "Wilderness" of the English Law should make clearer to Americans the centrality of unwritten precedents in the Common Law, and the overlapping jurisdictions of justices of the peace at Quarter Sessions, judges of the central royal courts at the assizes, and the church and other courts. He spells out the duties of sheriffs, bailiffs, constables and other court officers who harassed Friends. A precise and detailed but less original chapter surveys separately the main periods in the religious policies of English rulers, cabinets and Parliments. Horle goes on to present the most careful chapter in our time of the variety of ways that laws could be and were used to imprison Quakers over tithes, oaths, meetings for worship, marriages and other offenses. Physical brutality against Friends was unrestricted. Many of Horle's best stories are told in footnotes. Running twice more through the events and period up to 1688, Horle then turns to Quakers' responses, first by their prophetic defiance, then by their carefully argued petitions and tracts, and from 1688 onwards by the elaborate ways Friends and their lawyers dealt with indictments in the law courts. He shows the shift implied in Quaker attitudes to society, and Friends' limited success by any of these methods of resistance. In a surprisingly brief closing chapter he shows that Quakers nevertheless survived laws meant to destroy them because of the sympathy of many individual judges and neighbors. He might have shown how this shift in non-Quaker attitudes was related to Friends' own interpretation of their world mission, as well as giving fuller examples. Two compact appendices show how carefully Horle has mastered the data on the contrasting patterns of offences of which Friends were convicted in the four corners of England and on the incompetence of some lawyers willing to help Quakers; but otherwise this is a detailed but not statistical book. Earlham CollegeHugh Barbour The Papers of William Penn, Volume Three: 1685-1700. General Editors Mary Maples Dunn and Richard S. Dunn. Editors Marianne S. Wokeck, Joy Wiltenburg, Alison Duncan Hirsch, and Craig W. Horle. Phila.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986. xix, 794 pp., index. $47.45. Gratitude and admiration are the first two words that come to mind as one peruses the next-to-last volume to be published of The Papers of William Penn. Volume 3 of the five-volume project covers the years 1685-1700. This monumental and invaluable undertaking that Professors Dunn and Dunn have overseen as general editors will greatly facilitate the work of historians (political, social, economic, religious), biographers, and theologians. As in previous ones, this volume exhibits the same high standards of organization , exact reproduction of texts, illuniating headnotes, and copious and fascinating endnotes. Volume 3 presents extensive material from the turbulent years of Penn's time in England riding the crest of the wave of his influence Book Reviews51 at court during James IPs rule and the subsequent trough of suspicion under William and Mary. The painfulness and mistakes of his absentee proprietorship , his tireless efforts on behalf of religious tolerations, the personal tragedies of the death of his wife, Gulielma, and eldest son, Springett, his second marriage to Hannah Callowhill, the controversy swirling around George Keith, the founding of public schools in Philadelphia, his efforts to communicate with Peter the Great during his English visit, and his return to a much changed Pennsylvania are all well documented here. This and the entire handsome set of volumes present the materials for taking the measure of Penn. The vigor and complexity of his life is extraordinary: businessman, policitian, friend, Quaker leader, architect, writer, lobbyist for religious toleration and for Pennsylvania. Amidst these many...