A Concise Biographical Sketch of William Penn

by Charles Evans

In the afternoon they held another meeting with them, which was also so remarkably favored, that William Penn says: "Well, let my right hand forget its cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, when I shall forget the loving-kindness of the Lord, and the sure mercies of our God to us, his travailing servants, that day."

Subsequently, on their return towards Holland, these Friends again stopped at Herwerden, and upon informing the Princess of their arrival, they were again gladly received by her and her friends. A meeting being held with them and some others whom they had invited, the next morning, William Penn states in his journal: "About eight the meeting began, and held till eleven, several persons of the city, as well as those of her own family, being present. The Lord's power very much affected them, and the Countess was twice much broken while we spoke. After the people were gone out of the chamber, it lay upon me from the Lord to speak to them two—the Princess and the Countess—with respect to their particular conditions; occasioned by these words from the Princess, 'I am fully convinced; but oh! my sins are great.' While I was speaking, the glorious power of the Lord wonderfully rose, yea, after an awful manner, and had a deep entrance upon their spirits; especially the Countess, so that she was broken to pieces: God hath raised, and I hope fixed, his own testimony in them."

The next day they had a parting interview in the chamber of the Princess, which was equally favored. "Magnified be the name of the Lord; He overshadowed us with His glory. His heavenly, breaking, dissolving power richly flowed among us, and his ministering angel of life was in the midst of us."

During the time of severe suffering through which Friends were passing in Great Britain after the Restoration, as was natural, on finding that redress or abatement of their grievances was almost beyond hope, they seriously entertained a project for finding homes somewhere beyond the reach of their fellow-men, who seemed bent on extirpating them, by the slow process of the cruel punishments inflicted for their religious faith. George Fox, in common with several other prominent members, seriously contemplated the purchase of a tract of land from the Indians in North America; where, not the whole body of Friends in Great Britain, but such as felt themselves free to leave their native land, might emigrate and enjoy the right of worshipping the Almighty according to the dictates of their consciences.

Josiah Cole, while engaged in religious service in America, was commissioned to look out, and enter into treaty for such a resting-place; and at one time he had several interviews with the chiefs of the Susquehanna Indians, in order to treat with them for a part of their territory. Owing to a war coming on between that tribe and another, the proposed purchase fell through.

In 1676 William Penn, as trustee for the creditors of Edward Billinge, one of the proprietors of West Jersey, and afterwards by the purchase of a proprietary right in East Jersey, became concerned in the colonization of that Province. Others were associated with him in the undertaking, among whom were several of his own Society, under whose management a peaceful settlement was effected. A form of government was agreed on for West Jersey, and a declaration of fundamental principles, to be incorporated in it, consented to; among which was the stipulation, "No person to be called in question or molested for his conscience, or for worshipping according to his conscience."

Many Friends of good estates, and highly esteemed for their religious standing and experience, crossed the Atlantic to this land of liberty, and between 1676 and 1681 about fourteen hundred had arrived and settled; principally in the country bordering the eastern shore of the Delaware. These immigrants suffered the privations and hardships incident to beginning civilized life in an unbroken wilderness, surrounded by savages, who were dependent in great measure upon the uncertain supplies of the chase for their own sustenance, and who rarely laid up much in store for future wants. But, by uniform uprightness in all their dealings with these children of the forest, and their Christian kindness towards them, they soon gained their good-will, and, in times of scarcity, excited their sympathy; so that often they were relieved by voluntary offerings of corn and meat from these untutored red men, when it seemed as though otherwise they must have suffered for food.

Proud, in the preface to his "History of Pennsylvania," gives in a note an account of these trials, drawn up by one of the Friends who settled in New Jersey, containing the following passages:

"A providential hand was very visible and remarkable in many instances that might be mentioned, and the Indians were even rendered our benefactors and protectors. Without any carnal weapon, we entered the land and inhabited therein, as safe as if there had been thousands of garrisons; for the Most High preserved us from harm, both of man and beast." "The aforesaid people (Friends) were zealous in performing their religious services; for having at first no meeting-house to keep a public meeting in, they made a tent or covert of sail-cloth to meet under; and after they got some little houses to dwell in, then they kept their meetings in one of them till they could build a meeting-house."

In the course of the business which necessarily claimed his attention in the colonization of the province of New Jersey, William Penn naturally had his thoughts frequently directed towards the settlements of his countrymen on the far-distant shores of America; and having been disappointed in the part he took in English politics, in an unsuccessful effort to procure the election of his friend, Algernon Sidney, to Parliament, his interest in that part of the world increased, as his mind became occupied with the idea of settling a free colony in the pathless wilderness on the other side of the Atlantic; where men should live under an elective government, enact the laws by which they were to be controlled, admit of no master, but all share in equal rights, and rest in the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty. Witnessing the success that attended the removal of Friends to New Jersey, where they were freed from the cruel persecution they had endured while in Great Britain, under which their brethren at home were still suffering grievously, he became desirous to obtain the control of such portion of the yet unappropriated territory over which the King of England claimed the sovereignty, as would enable him to found a colony, and "make a holy experiment"—as he called it—of opening an asylum for the oppressed of every land; where there should be secured equality of political and civil rights, universal liberty of conscience, personal freedom, and a just regard for the rights of property.