William Penn

by George Hodges

The thoughts with which Penn's mind was occupied during the years of hiding appear in his book, "Some Fruits of Solitude." Robert Louis Stevenson found a copy of it in a book-shop in San Francisco, and carried it in his pocket many days, reading it in street-cars and ferry-boats. He found it, he says, "in all places a peaceful and sweet companion;" and he adds, "there is not a man living, no, nor recently dead, that could put, with so lovely a spirit, so much honest, kind wisdom into words."

"The author blesseth God for his retirement," so the book begins, "and kisses the gentle hand which led him into it; for though it should prove barren to the world, it can never do so to him. He has now had some time he can call his own; a property he was never so much master of before; in which he has taken a view of himself and the world, and observed wherein he hath hit and missed the mark. And he verily thinks, were he to live his life over again, he could not only, with God's grace, serve him, but his neighbor and himself, better than he hath done, and have seven years of his life to spare."

Government and Religion have the longest chapters in this volume of reflections, as being the matters in which William was most interested. "Happy that king," he says, "who is great by justice, and that people who are free by obedience." "Where example keeps pace with authority, power hardly fails to be obeyed, and magistrates to be honoured." "Let the people think they govern, and they will be governed." "Religion is the fear of God, and its demonstration good works; and faith is the root of both." "To be like Christ, then, is to be a Christian." "Some folk think they may scold, rail, hate, rob, and kill too: so it be but for God's sake. But nothing in us, unlike him, can please him." So the book goes, page after page, always serious and sensible, full of simplicity and kindliness, cheerful and brotherly and unfailingly religious. It is the work of one who is trying his best to live for his brethren and in Christ's spirit.

Another significant writing of this period is Penn's "Plan for the Peace of Europe." The calamities of the war then in progress on the Continent gave him arguments enough for the desirableness of peace. The means of peace is justice, and the means of justice is government. It is plain to all that a state wherein any private citizen might avenge himself upon his neighbor would be a place of confusion and distress. "For this cause they have sessions, terms, assizes, and parliaments, to overrule men's passions and resentments, that they may not be judges in their own cause, nor punishers of their own wrongs." Penn proposes that the same relation between peace and justice which is enforced between citizen and citizen be also enforced between nation and nation. "Now," he says, "if the sovereign princes of Europe ... for love of peace and order [would] agree to meet by their stated deputies in a general Diet, Estates or Parliament and there establish rules of justice for sovereign princes to observe one to another; and thus to meet yearly, or once in two or three years at the farthest, or as they shall see cause, and to be stiled, The Sovereign or Imperial Diet, Parliament or State of Europe: before which Sovereign Assembly should be brought all differences depending between one sovereign and another that cannot be made up by private embassies before the sessions begin; and that if any of the sovereignties that constitute these imperial states shall refuse to submit their claim or pretensions to them, or to abide and perform the judgment thereof and seek their remedy by arms, or delay their compliance beyond the time prefixt in their resolutions, all the other sovereignties, united as one strength, shall compel the submission and performance of the sentence, with damages to the suffering party, and charges to the sovereignties that obliged their submission; ... peace would be procured and continued in Europe." The principle of international arbitration, the Conference at the Hague, and all like meetings which shall be held hereafter, are thus foreshadowed.

These two productions of Penn's season of retirement—the "Fruits of Solitude," and the "Plan for the Peace of Europe"—illustrate again the two qualities which make him singularly eminent among the founders of commonwealths. He was at once a philosopher and a statesman; he was interested alike in religion and in politics. There have been many politicians to whom religion has been of no concern. There have been many religious persons in high positions who have been so shut in by church walls that they have been incapable of a wider outlook; they have accordingly been narrow, prejudiced, and often unpractical people; they have been blind to the elemental social fact of difference; they have hated the thought of toleration. Penn was almost alone among the good men of our era of colonization in being at the same time a man of the world and a man of the other world.

Penn came out of his exile in 1693 burdened with misfortune. He had been deprived of his government; he was sadly in debt; he had lost many of his friends. His colonists in Pennsylvania declined to lend him money. His brethren in England drew up a confession of wrong-doing for him to sign: "If in any things during those late revolutions I have concerned myself either by words or writings, in love, pity or good will to any in distress [meaning the king] further than consisted with Truth's honor or the Church's peace, I am sorry for it." But he would not sign. To these troubles was added a greater grief in the death of his wife. "An excellent wife and mother," he said of her, "an entire and constant friend, of a more than common capacity, and greater modesty and humility; yet most equal and undaunted in danger." A brave soul, no doubt, as befitted her parentage, and of a devout and consecrated spirit.

But William was ever of a serene and cheerful disposition. Neither loss, nor disappointment, nor bereavement could shut out the sun. His religious faith strengthened him. "We must needs disorder ourselves," he had written in his "Fruits of Solitude," "if we only look at our losses. But if we consider how little we deserve what is left, our passions will cool, and our murmurs will turn into thankfulness." "Though our Saviour's passion is over, his compassion is not. That never fails his humble, sincere disciples; in him they find more than all that they lose in the world."

During the six years which followed, this strong confidence was justified. He regained his government and his good name. He also married a second wife, Hannah Callowhill, a strong, sensible, and estimable Quaker lady of some means, living in Bristol.

The only satisfactory information as to the personal appearance of Penn in mature life is that which is given by Sylvanus Bevan. Bevan was a Quaker apothecary in London, who had a remarkable gift for carving portraits in ivory. After Penn's death, he made such a portrait of him from memory. The men who had known William liked it greatly. Lord Cobham, to whom Bevan sent it, said, "It is William Penn himself." It represents him in a curled wig, with full cheeks and a double chin—a pleasant, masterful, and serious person. Clarkson says that in his attire he was "very neat, though plain." Penn advised his children to choose clothes "neither unshapely nor fantastical;" and he illustrated to King James the difference between the Roman Catholic and the Quaker religions by the difference between his hat and the king's. "The only difference," he said, "lies in the ornaments that have been added to thine." His dress was probably that which was common to gentlemen in his day, but without extremes of color or adornment. For some time after becoming a Quaker he wore his sword, having consulted Fox, who said, "I advise thee to wear it as long as thou canst." Presently Fox, seeing him without it, said, "William, where is thy sword?" To which Penn replied, "I have taken thy advice: I wore it as long as I could."

The sober cheerfulness of Penn's attire comported well with his conversation. It is true that Bishop Burnet, who did not like him, says that "he had a tedious, luscious way of talking, not apt to overcome a man's reason, though it might tire his patience." But Dean Swift enjoyed him, and testified that "he talked very agreeably and with great spirit." The Friends of Reading Meeting even noted that he was "facetious in conversation," and there is a tradition of a venerable Friend who spoke of him "as having naturally an excess of levity of spirit for a grave minister." A handsome, graceful, and even a merry gentleman it was who married Hannah Callowhill.