William Penn

by Rupert Sargent Holland

Penn looked these accusers squarely in the face. "We have the unhappiness to be misrepresented," he answered, "and I am not the least concerned therein. Bring me the man that will dare to justify this accusation to my face, and if I am not able to make it appear that it is both my practice and all my friends' to instill principles of peace and moderation (and only war against spiritual wickedness, that all men may be brought to fear God and work righteousness), I shall contentedly undergo the severest punishment all your laws can expose me to.

"As for the king, I make this offer, that if any living can make it appear, directly or indirectly, from the time I have been called a Quaker (since from thence you date me seditious), I have contrived or acted anything injurious to his person, or the English government, I shall submit my person to your utmost cruelties, and esteem them all but a due recompense. It is hard that I, being innocent, should be reputed guilty; but the will of God be done. I accept of bad reports as well as good."

But he could not make Sir John and the other judges believe in his innocence. "You will be the heading of parties and drawing people after you," said Sir John, doggedly, and ordered Penn taken to Newgate, the worst prison in London, where Quakers were herded with criminals of the lowest types.

People with money could hire rooms for themselves at Newgate and so avoid some of the discomforts of that vile place, and Penn spoke to his jailers about having a private room, but they answered him so abusively and insultingly and charged him so much for a private room that he said he preferred to share the lot of the poorest criminals. And there this man of wealth and education bravely stayed for six months, writing a number of essays and a spirited religious pamphlet. When the authorities thought the incorrigible young man must surely have learned his lesson in the wretched prison, they set him free again. He had spent half of the last three years in jails.

When he was at length liberated, he went abroad for a time, traveling in Holland and Germany, perhaps because his stay in Newgate had injured his health, perhaps to give the suspicions concerning him a chance to disappear. Yet, even on these journeys, whenever Penn found people showing any interest in the Quaker faith, he stopped and explained it fully to them. But in most places the new sect was looked upon as something very strange, and its members were suspected of designs against the government, so very few were anxious to learn about it.

In the autumn of 1671 Penn returned to England, and, for the first time in a number of years, lived a quiet life, giving over preaching and arguing and writing fiery pamphlets. He was twenty-seven years old, and he had fallen in love with a Quaker girl named Gulielma Maria Springett, or, as she was called by her friends, Guli Springett. Penn now busied himself in looking about for a suitable home in which to start housekeeping.

The father of William Penn's sweetheart was a young Puritan officer, who had been killed when only twenty-three years old at the siege of Bamber. Guli was born a few weeks later. Her mother, like many other people at that time, was neither satisfied with the religion of the Church of England nor that of the Puritans. Some time after her husband's death she married Isaac Pennington, and both became Quakers. So Guli was brought up in the new religion. They all lived quietly in Buckinghamshire until his neighbors began to complain to the authorities that Isaac Pennington was "talking Quaker doctrines." Then he was put in prison, and his wife and Guli wandered from one place to another.

Guli had a considerable fortune, and her charms brought her many suitors, even though her stepfather had fallen under the displeasure of the government. But she preferred the young and ardent Quaker who had himself suffered imprisonment so often in the same good cause; and in the spring of 1672 Guli and William were married. They made their home in the country, at Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire. They were comfortably well-to-do, and as the marriage was a very happy one, it might have been predicted that William Penn would become a prosperous country squire and have done with all religious discussions that were so likely to lead to a cell in the Tower of London.

At about the same time the king, Charles II., issued a proclamation, which was known as the Declaration of Indulgence, by the terms of which he did away with all the laws against the Quakers, Presbyterians, Baptists, Roman Catholics, and all who dissented from the Church of England. There was only one objection to this decree, and that was that the king issued it by his own act, and without the approval of Parliament, which meant that Charles II. had it in mind to try to rule without Parliament if it could be managed. The Declaration of Indulgence released over four hundred Quakers from prison, and in view of that benefit Penn and others were willing to overlook for the time the king's attempt to rule solely by his own will.

From his home in the country Penn began to make short trips through Kent and Sussex and Surrey, preaching the Quaker doctrines, a free lance who served without pay and purely because he loved the work. Occasionally he took his wife with him on his travels. They went together to Bristol to welcome the Quaker leader George Fox on his return from America, and hear from him what progress the new faith was making in the strange new country across the Atlantic Ocean.