The American Encyclopedia of History, Biography and Travel / Comprising Ancient and Modern History: the Biography of Eminent Men of Europe and America, and the Lives of Distinguished Travelers.

by Thomas H. Prescott

Attracted by Penn’s reputation for just and honorable dealing, and by reports of the flourishing condition of the settlement, ships were arriving in quick succession with new settlers from different countries of the old world. Seeing the success of his project thus so far happily realized, Penn, who had now been two years in America, resolved to return to England. His reasons for doing so were twofold. In the first place, a dispute had arisen between him and Lord Baltimore, the proprietor of the adjoining province of Maryland, as to the boundaries of their respective territories; and this dispute had at length become so warm, that there was no hope of settling it except by being personally present to represent the state of the case to the home government. Again, intelligence had reached Penn in America that the dissenters in the mother country, and especially those of his own persuasion, were suffering greater persecutions than ever; and even if he had not hoped to effect something in their behalf by his personal influence at court, it was Penn’s nature, wherever he saw persecution going on, to desire to be in the midst of it, either to help the sufferers, or at least to write against the oppressors. Accordingly, on the 12th of August, 1684, William Penn set sail for England, having made all necessary arrangements for the government of the colony during his absence. The supreme power was vested in the provincial council; as president of which he named Thomas Lloyd, a Quaker preacher, who had emigrated from Wales.

In February, 1685, four months after Penn’s return to England, Charles II died, and was succeeded by his brother the Duke of York, under the title of James II. It has already been mentioned that the duke had always manifested a liking for Penn, at first as the son of his friend, Admiral Penn, and afterwards on account of his own merits. This liking he continued to exhibit in a very marked manner after his accession to the crown; and Penn, to improve the opportunities of usefulness which his free access to the king afforded him, took up his residence at Kensington, in order to be near the palace. The following passage from Gerard Croese’s history of the Quakers will give an idea of the intimate terms on which Penn was with James II. ‘William Penn,’ says Croese, ‘was greatly in favor with the king, and the Quakers’ sole patron at court. The king loved him as a singular and sincere friend, and imparted to him many of his secrets and counsels. He often honored him with his company in private, discoursing with him of various affairs, and that not for one, but many hours together, and delaying to hear the best of his peers, who at the same time were waiting for an audience. Penn being so highly favored, acquired thereby a number of friends. Those also who formerly knew him, when they had any favor to ask at court, came to, courted, and entreated Penn to promote their several requests. Penn refused none of his friends any reasonable office he could do for them, but was ready to serve them all, but more especially the Quakers, and these wherever their religion was concerned. They ran to Penn without intermission, as their only pillar and support, who always caressed and received them cheerfully, and effected their business by his interest and eloquence. Hence his house and gates were daily thronged by a numerous train of clients and suppliants, desiring him to present their addresses to his majesty. There were sometimes there two hundred or more.’ Earl Buchan, in his life of Fletcher of Saltoun, relates an instance of Penn’s great influence at the court of James II. By his advice many exiled Presbyterians were permitted to return to their native country, and among others Sir Robert Stuart of Coltness, who had taken refuge in Holland. On his return, however, Sir Robert ‘found his estate and only means of subsistence in the possession of the Earl of Arran, afterwards Duke of Hamilton. Soon after his coming to London he met Penn, who congratulated him on his being restored to his native country. Coltness sighed, and said, “Ah, Mr. Penn, Arran has got my estate, and I fear my situation is about to be now worse than ever.” “What dost thou say?” says Penn; “thou surprisest and grievest me exceedingly. Come to my house to-morrow, and I will set matters right for thee.” Penn went immediately to Arran. “What is this, friend James,” said he to him, “that I hear of thee? Thou hast taken possession of Coltness’s estate. Thou knowest that it is not thine.” “That estate,” says Arran, “I paid a great price for. I received no other reward for my expensive and troublesome embassy in France than this same estate; and I am certainly much out of pocket by the bargain.” “All very well, friend James,” said the Quaker; “but of this assure thyself, that if thou dost not give me this moment an order on thy chamberlain for two hundred pounds to Coltness, to carry him down to his native country, and a hundred a-year to subsist on till matters are adjusted, I will make it as many thousands out of thy way with the king.” Arran instantly complied; and Penn sent for Sir Robert, and gave him the security.’

Although it is certain that, in thus acting the part of private adviser to the king, William Penn had the good of the country in view; and although there can be no doubt that, in that capacity, he rendered many services to the cause of civil and religious liberty, yet the prudence of his conduct in so mixing himself up with court affairs is somewhat questionable. At all events, his intimacy with the king subjected him to many imputations and suspicions, which it was difficult to clear away. The efforts of James to restore the supremacy of the Roman Catholic church being then the great subject of interest in the nation, it was concluded that Penn was privy to all the king’s plans and measures; that he was coöperating with him for the overthrow of Protestantism; in short, that he was a Papist. The absurdity of such rumors would have been evident to any one who had taken the trouble to look back on Penn’s former life; but in a time of public excitement, the extravagance of a story is no security against its being believed. Members of the Church of England, Protestant dissenters of all denominations, even the Quakers themselves, joined in the cry against Penn, and he became one of the most unpopular men in England. To say that he was a Papist, was not enough; he was stigmatised as a Jesuit, wearing the mask of a Quaker, in order the better to accomplish his purposes. It was currently reported that he had been educated at St. Omer’s; that he had taken priest’s orders at Rome; that the pope had given him a dispensation to marry; and that he was in the habit of officiating at the celebration of mass before the king at Whitehall and St. James’. Of these rumors Penn took no notice, except when they reached him through some of his friends, who were anxious that he should take some steps to exculpate himself. On such occasions he used to say that he had a personal regard for the king, and that he believed him to mean well, and at heart to be in favor of toleration; that as for the king’s secret and arbitrary schemes for the restoration of the Catholic religion, he knew nothing of them; that his aim had ever been to use his influence ‘to allay heats, and moderate extremes, even in politics;’ and that the only ground on which he could conceive the charge of his being a Papist to have been founded, was his anxiety to admit all sects alike to the benefits of religious freedom.

These representations were of no avail in clearing his reputation with the public; and accordingly, in the year 1688, when James II was expelled from the kingdom, and William of Orange appointed his successor, Penn was one of those who were likely to suffer from their friendship with the fallen monarch. Four different times he was arrested and examined on a charge of being a Jesuit, and a secret partisan of the exiled king; but no instance of guilt could be proved against him. On one of these occasions, when he was examined before King William in council, a letter was produced which James II had sent to Penn, but which government had intercepted. In this letter James desired Penn ‘to come to his assistance, and to express to him the resentments of his favor and benevolence.’ On being asked why King James wrote to him, Penn replied that this was no fault of his; that if the king chose to write to him, he could not prevent it. As for the king’s meaning in the letter, he supposed it was that he should assist in an attempt to restore him to the throne. This, however, he had no intention to do. He had always loved King James, and had received many favors from him and he should be willing to render him any private service he could, but nothing more. This candid and manly defense produced its effect, and Penn was discharged.

Wearied out with these annoyances, and having no great public duty now to detain him in England, seeing that the toleration he had so long struggled for was realised, at least to a great extent, under the government of King William, Penn was anxious to return to his American colony, where his presence was greatly desiderated, on account of various differences which had broken out among the settlers. He was preparing to set sail in 1690, when his departure was prevented by a fresh charge of treason preferred against him by a wretch of the name of Fuller, who was afterwards publicly declared to be a cheat and impostor, but whose true character was not then known. Not wishing to run the risk of being convicted on the oath of such a man, who would not scruple, of course, as to the means he would employ in making out his case, Penn lived in great seclusion in London for several years, occupying himself in writing replies to the letters he received from America, and in composing numerous tracts on subjects congenial to his tastes and disposition. In the year 1693, his misfortunes reached their height. Early in the year he was deprived of the governorship of Pennsylvania, which was annexed, by royal commission, to that of the province of New York. Towards the end of the same year his wife died. Before this time, however, a reaction had begun in his favor. His own character began to be better appreciated by King William, while that of his accuser, Fuller, became disgracefully notorious. Accordingly, Penn being admitted to plead his cause before the king and council, was honorably acquitted; and shortly after, by a royal order, dated the 20th of August 1694, he was reinstated in his government.

It was not, however, till the year 1699 that Penn returned to Pennsylvania, from which he had been absent about fifteen years. The interval of five years between his restoration to the governorship and his return to the colony was spent in preaching tours through England and Ireland, and in conducting those controversies out of which he appeared to be out of his natural element. In 1696 he contracted a second marriage with Hannah, daughter of Thomas Callowhill, a merchant of Bristol; and not long afterwards his eldest son, by the former marriage, died in his twenty-first year.

Accompanied this time by his wife and family, Penn returned to America in November 1699, and immediately commenced revising the conduct of his substitutes during his absence, and adopting new measures for the good of the colony. A discussion has been raised as to the wisdom and disinterestedness of Penn’s government of Pennsylvania during this his second visit, and indeed during the latter part of his proprietorship; some contending that he did not show the same liberality as at the outset, and others defending him from the charge. Among the former, the most distinguished critic of Penn is Benjamin Franklin, whose judgment is, that Penn began his government as a man of conscience, proceeded in it as a man of reason, and ended it more as a man of the world. Penn’s most zealous apologist against this charge of Franklin is his biographer, Mr. Clarkson. To examine minutely the arguments on both sides, would not answer any good purpose; it may be sufficient to remark, that the charge of Franklin is founded on certain changes introduced by Penn into the political constitution of Pennsylvania, to increase his own authority as governor, and that it does not effect the general spirit in which Penn fulfilled his important trust, which was uniformly that of mildness, justice, and benevolence. It was not to be expected that a constitution or frame of government prepared on the other side of the Atlantic by the mere pen, and transplanted to the new world, would satisfy the actual wants of the colony, or require no change. Accordingly, that there should be differences of opinion between the colonists and the governor on some points, or among the various classes of the colonists themselves, was natural enough; the merit of Penn and the early Pennsylvanians was, that, notwithstanding these differences, the general spirit of the administration was healthy and tolerant. ‘Governments,’ said Penn himself, ‘depend upon men, rather than men upon governments. Like clocks, they go from the motion which men give them. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad. If it be ill, they will cure it. No government could maintain its constitution, however excellent it was, without the preservation of virtue.’ Thus it was that, although Pennsylvania at its commencement had its political disputes, it had a security for prosperity in the character of its founders.

Two objects which occupied a great share of Penn’s attention in his capacity of governor of Pennsylvania, were the condition of the negroes who had been imported into the settlement, and the civilization of the North American Indians with whom the colonists were brought into contact. ‘Soon after the colony had been planted,’ says Mr. Clarkson, ‘that is in the year 1682, when William Penn was first resident in it, some few Africans had been imported; but more had followed. At this time the traffic in slaves was not branded with infamy as at the present day. It was considered, on the other hand, as favorable to both parties: to the American planters, because they had but few laborers in comparison with the extent of their lands; and to the poor Africans themselves, because they were looked upon as persons thus redeemed out of superstition, idolatry, and heathenism. But though the purchase and sale of them had been adopted with less caution upon this principle, there were not wanting among the Quakers of Pennsylvania those who, soon after the introduction of them there, began to question the moral licitness of the traffic. Accordingly, at the yearly meeting for Pennsylvania in 1688, it had been resolved, on the suggestion of emigrants from Crisheim, who had adopted the principles of William Penn, that the buying, selling, and holding men in slavery was inconsistent with the tenets of the Christian religion. In 1696, a similar resolution had been passed at the yearly meeting of the same religious society for the same province. In consequence of these noble resolutions, the Quakers had begun to treat their slaves in a manner different from that of other people. In 1698, there were instances where they had admitted them into their meeting-houses, to worship in common with themselves.’

Penn, on his return, keenly took up the cause of the negroes, both in his private capacity as a member of the Society of Friends, and in his public one as governor. ‘He began to question,’ says Mr. Clarkson, ‘whether, under the Christian system, men ought to be consigned to unconditional slavery; whether they ought to be bought and sold. This question he determined virtuously, and in unison with the resolutions of the two forementioned yearly meetings of the Quakers. He resolved, as far as his own powers went, upon incorporating the treatment of the negroes, as a matter of Christian duty, into the discipline of the religious body to which he belonged. He succeeded; and a minute was passed by the monthly meeting of Philadelphia, and properly registered there, by which a meeting was appointed more particularly for the negroes once every month; so that, besides the common opportunities they had of collecting religious knowledge by frequenting the places of public worship, there was one day in the month in which, as far as the influence of the monthly meeting extended, they could neither be temporally nor spiritually overlooked. Having secured their good treatment in a certain degree among those of his own persuasion, his next object was to secure it among others in the colony, on whom the discipline of the Quakers had no hold, by a legislative act. This was all he could do at present. To forbid the bringing of slaves into the colony was entirely out of his power. He had no command whatever over the external commerce of the mother country. He was bound, on the other hand, by his charter, to admit her imports, and at this moment she particularly encouraged the slave trade. His first step, then, was to introduce a bill into the assembly which should protect the negroes from personal ill treatment, by fair trials and limited punishments, when they committed offenses; and which, at the same time, by regulating their marriages, should improve their moral condition. This he did with a view of fitting them by degrees for a state of freedom; and as the bill comprehended not only those negroes who were then in the province and territories, but those who should afterwards be brought there, he hoped that it would lay the foundation of a preparatory school for civilization and liberty to all of the African race.’ This bill, unfortunately, he was unable to carry, at least in its full extent. But the good effects of his exertions, so far as they did succeed, were ultimately seen. From the time that the subject of negro treatment was introduced into the discipline of the Pennsylvanian Quakers by Penn, it was never lost sight of by that body. Individual Quakers began to refuse to purchase negroes, others to emancipate those in their possession; and at length it became a law of the society that no member should hold slaves. In the year 1780, not a Quaker possessed a slave in Pennsylvania; and from that time slavery dwindled away in the state, till, in the year 1810, there were only eight hundred slaves in Pennsylvania, in a population of nearly a million.

Penn’s success with the Indians was similar. Unable to do much for them legislatively, he did much by his example and influence, visiting them personally, and trying by all means to establish a friendly commercial intercourse with them. Whatever advances in the arts of civilized life were made in the early part of the eighteenth century by the Indian tribes of the northwest, were due originally to William Penn; and for more than fifty years after his death, his name was remembered among them as that of a ‘true and good man.’