William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania and one of the most distinguished members of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, a preacher and writer, was born in London, October 14, 1644.
His father was Admiral Sir William Penn, of the English Royal Navy, and his mother was Margaret Jasper, a remarkable Dutch lady, of Rotterdam.
While the Admiral was off on the seas, his wife and little son resided on one of his estates at Wanstead in Essex.
William Penn went to school at Chigwell, near by, where he was apparently under influences largely Puritan. At the age of eleven strong religious conviction came suddenly upon him.
His boyhood days were lived during the Protectorate. The Admiral, after receiving honors and riches from Cromwell, had so timed his change of loyalty as to gather in a good share of the rewards distributed at the time of the Restoration.
He was in a condition to send his son to the most aristocratic of Oxford Colleges, and at the age of fifteen, William Penn became a “Gentleman Commoner of Christ Church.”
Through the preaching of Thomas Loe he became a convert to the doctrine of the Quakers. The results were not exactly Quakerly, however, for in company with a friend, he forcibly tore from the backs of fellow students the “popish rags,” as surplices were called by the zealous Puritans of the day.
For this he left college, whether by the action of the authorities or not does not clearly appear.
He went to his home and announced himself a Quaker. His father intended him for a high career in the state, and no news could have been more unwelcome than this. His father turned him out of the house. The mother reconciled them, and the youth was sent to France, with a hope that gay society in Paris might redeem him from his almost morbid soberness.