William Penn

by Rupert Sargent Holland

Admiral Sir William Penn, Father of William Penn.

From the portrait by Peter Van Dyke.

The people of the court and town in the England of Charles II. were a very dissipated and unprincipled set. Most of the fashionable people were proud of their lack of morals, and the plays, the writings, and even the speech of the ruling class were coarse and vulgar beyond belief. William Penn saw all this, and his nature, being on a higher plane and more serious than that of his father's friends, turned instinctively to those who were living clean and respectable lives. In the jumble of new ideas and new religions he found comfort in the simplest and quietest sect; and now, having publicly declared himself a Quaker, he asked permission to be one of their preachers.

The Quakers were glad to have a man of William Penn's education and position join their ranks, and when he was twenty-four, he was accepted as one of their regular preachers. Several other men of his own type joined the new sect at about the same time, and these men, having better judgment than the earliest leaders, began to do away with the rather extreme preachings of Fox, and taught a simple and easily understood Christianity. Penn himself kept his cavalier dress, and even continued for a time to wear his sword, which was a sign of a person of fashion. He asked the advice of George Fox about keeping his sword, and the latter, in spite of his extreme views, said, "I advise thee to wear it as long as thou canst."

The new recruit made himself very useful to the religious party he had joined. Besides preaching, he wrote a number of tracts, the first of which he called "Truth Exalted." In this he attacked, according to the custom of the times, all religious views that differed from his own, and answered the criticisms of other sects. He was even more useful in interceding for Quakers who had been put in prison. Having friends at court, and being still regarded as something of a courtier, he could appeal to the officers of state better than others of the new sect. His arguments in favor of setting the Quaker prisoners at liberty were listened to respectfully by the high officials, but his requests at that time were not granted.

The young preacher and tract writer soon had his hands full with heated arguments and stormy disputes. He wrote a pamphlet called "The Guide Mistaken," and at about the same time two men who belonged to the congregation of the Presbyterian preacher Thomas Vincent in London became Quakers. Thomas Vincent was very angry and called Penn unpleasant names. Thereupon Penn and his friend George Whitehead challenged Vincent to an open debate in the latter's church. The challenge was accepted.

Penn and Whitehead went to Vincent's church, which was crowded, and as they pushed their way forward Vincent denounced them in no measured words. The two Quakers joined in the wordy warfare, and began a heated religious argument, while the congregation hissed and flung at them such names as "blasphemers" and "villains." Vincent himself kept interrupting, and at length, pretending to be shocked at what the two men were saying, began to pray for them. The people blew out the candles that lighted the church and tried to eject the two Quakers. The meeting ended in uproar, as was usually the case in the religious debates of those days.

Not in the least daunted by the harsh and unkind criticisms that were showered on him from all sides, Penn wrote more pamphlets, criticizing the religious views of some of the older sects, and calling many of their ideas relics of the ignorance and superstition of the Middle Ages. He was a clear and powerful writer and showed his satisfaction in stating in black and white the views that had led him to believe that truth was to be found in the religion of the Quakers rather than in any other creed. This was doubtless more satisfactory to him than holding noisy and hot-tempered arguments with opponents on street corners or in public halls, and won for him the reputation of being the ablest of all the early Quaker leaders. Samuel Pepys, of the famous Diary, says thus frankly of Penn's pamphlet, "The Sandy Foundation Shaken," "I find it so well writ as I think it is too good for him ever to have writ it; and it is a serious sort of book and not fit for everybody to read." Pepys is nothing if not outspoken, and his view was doubtless the same as that held by many fashionable people who knew the twenty-four-year-old author and considered him a strange, misguided young man.

Although Penn might have been allowed to preach as he pleased in the fields or market-places, it became quite another matter when he printed his views and scattered them broadcast throughout England. The Bishop of London read one of William Penn's pamphlets and decided that the writer was denying the fact of the divinity of Christ. That had been made a crime by act of the English Parliament. The young man was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London, and though his cavalier friends tried to get him out they met with no success, and for some time they were not allowed even to see him. Some one told him that the Bishop of London had determined that he must either publicly recant his impious views or spend the rest of his life in the prison of the Tower. Penn calmly and boldly wrote: "All is well: I wish they had told me so before, since the expecting of a release put a stop to some business; thou mayst tell my father, who I know will ask thee, these words: that my prison shall be my grave, before I will budge a jot; for I owe my conscience to no mortal man; I have no need to fear; God will make amends for all; they are mistaken in me; I value not their threats and resolutions, for they shall know I can weary out their malice and peevishness, and in me shall they all behold a resolution above fear; conscience above cruelty, and a baffle put to all their designs by the spirit of patience.... Neither great nor good things are ever attained without loss and hardships. He that would reap and not labor, must faint with the wind and perish in disappointments; but an hair of my head shall not fall without the Providence of my Father that is over all." Brave words these to be written by a youth in a cell of the Tower of London with small prospect of leaving it!