It was in 1661 that the first Yearly Meeting of Friends in America was established in Rhode Island, and in 1672 the government of the colony was in their hands. The Dutch of New Amsterdam did not hold as broad views of religious liberty as were entertained by their kinsfolk in Holland; but while the Quakers were severely dealt with in that city, on Long Island they were allowed to live in comparative peace. In Maryland the treatment of the Friends, severe at times, grew more and more tolerant, and when Fox visited them in 1672 he found many to welcome him; and probably the first letter from a Meeting in England to one in America was directed to that of Maryland. In Virginia the Episcopalians were less liberal than their neighbors in other provinces. The intolerance with which Dissenters were met drove many beyond her borders, and thus it was that some Friends gathered in the Carolinas.
The outbreak of the Fifth Monarchy men in 1660, immediately after the restoration of Charles II., dispelled any hopes which the Quakers might have gathered from that monarch’s proclamation at Breda, since they were suspected of being connected with that party. It is at this time that we find the first evidence that Fox and his followers wished to obtain a spot in America which they could call their own; and the desire was obviously the result of the troubles which they encountered, both in England and America. Before this was accomplished, however, the Quakers experienced many trials. In 1661 Parliament passed an Act for their punishment, denouncing them as a mischievous and dangerous people.
In 1672 Charles II. issued his second declaration regarding liberty of conscience, and comparative quiet was for a few years enjoyed by his Dissenting subjects. In 1673 Parliament censured the declaration of the King as an undue use of the prerogative. The sufferings of the Quakers were then renewed. It is unnecessary to repeat in detail the penalties inflicted under the various Acts of Parliament. Fox was repeatedly imprisoned, and many of his followers died in confinement from ill usage. In 1675 West Jersey was offered for sale. The advantages its possession would afford were at once appreciated by the men of broad views who had obtained control of the Quaker affairs. Fox favored the scheme. Some of his followers felt that to emigrate was to fly from persecution and to desert a cause; but Fox, with more wisdom, had as early as 1660 proposed the purchase of a tract of land in America. Between 1656 and 1675 he and his devoted followers were from time to time braving all kinds of danger in the propagation of their faith throughout the English colonies in America. Their wanderings often brought them into contact with the Indians, and this almost always led to the friendliest of relations.[776]
William Penn possessed more influence with the ruling class of England than did any other of the followers of Fox. His joining the Friends in 1668 is a memorable event in the history of their Society. The son of Admiral Sir William Penn, the conqueror of Jamaica, and of his wife Margaret, daughter of John Jasper, of Amsterdam, he was born in London Oct. 14, 1644, the year in which Fox began to preach to his neighbors in Leicestershire. The Admiral was active in bringing about the restoration of the Stuarts, and this, together with his naval services, gave him an influence at Court which would have enabled him to advance the interests of his son.
[There are papers on the portraits of Penn in Scribner’s Monthly, xii. 1, by F. M. Etting, and in the Mag. of Amer. Hist., October, 1882. Cf. also Penn. Mag. of Hist. vol. vi. pp. 174, 252. The above cut represents him at twenty-two. It follows a large private steel plate, engraved by S. A. Schoff, of Boston, with the aid of a crayon reduction by William Hunt, and represents an original likeness painted in oils in 1666 by an unknown artist, possibly Sir Peter Lely. It was one of two preserved at Stoke Poges for a long time, and this one was given in 1833 by Penn’s grandson, Granville Penn, to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. (Catalogue of Paintings, etc., belonging to the Historical Society, 1872, no. 50.) There are other engravings of it in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History, i. 361; in Janney’s Life of Penn; in Stoughton’s William Penn; and in Watson’s Annals of Philadelphia. A portrait by Francis Place, representing Penn at fifty-two, is engraved from the National Museum copy of the original in Gay’s Popular History of the United States, ii. 487. It was discovered in England in 1874, and its story is told in Mr. Etting’s paper. There is another engraving of it in Egle’s Pennsylvania. Maria Webb’s Penns and Peningtons (1867) gives an account of a recently discovered crayon likeness. (Cf. Catalogue of Paintings, etc., belonging to the Historical Society, 1872, p. 27.) A steel engraving was issued in Germany some years since, purporting to be from a portrait by Kneller,—which is quite possible,—and this engraving is reproduced a little larger than the German one in the Mag. of Amer. Hist., October, 1882. The likeness best known is probably the one introduced by West in his well-known picture of the making of the Treaty. In this, West, who never saw Penn, seemingly followed one of the medallions or busts made by Sylvanus Bevan, a contemporary of Penn, who had a natural skill in cutting likenesses in ivory. One of these medallions is given in Smith and Watson’s American Historical and Literary Curiosities, i. pl. xv., and in the Mag. of Amer. Hist., October, 1882. Bevan’s bust was also the original of the head of the statue, with a broad-brim hat, which has stood in the grounds of the Pennsylvania Hospital since John Penn, son of the Proprietary, bought it from the estate of Lord Le Despenser at High Wycombe, and gave it to the hospital. The same head was again used as the model of the wooden bust which was in the Loganian Library, but was destroyed by fire in 1831. Proud’s History of Pennsylvania (1797) gives an engraving of it; and the likeness in Clarkson’s Life of Penn is also credited to one of Bevan’s busts. Inman’s picture, which appears in Janney’s Penn and in Armor’s Governors of Pennsylvania, is to be traced to the same source, as also is the engraving in the Encyclopædia Londiniensis.
Penn is buried in the graveyard at Jordan’s, twenty miles or so from London; and the story of an unsuccessful effort by the State of Pennsylvania to secure his remains, encased in a leaden casket, is told in The Remains of William Penn, by George L. Harrison, privately printed, Philadelphia, 1882, where is a view of the grave and an account of the neighborhood. There is a picture of the grave in the Pennsylvania Historical Society. Cf. Catalogue of Paintings, etc., belonging to the Historical Society (1872), no. 151; and Mrs. S. C. Halls article in National Magazine, viii. 109; and Mag. of Amer. Hist., October, 1882, p. 661.—Ed.]
But while a student at Oxford, the young Penn chanced to hear the preaching of Thomas Loe, a Quaker, and so impressed was he by it that he ceased to attend the religious services of his College. For this he was expelled from the University. His father, after a brief impulse of anger which this disgrace caused, sent him to Paris, and in that gay capital the impressions made by the Quaker preacher were nearly effaced. From Paris he went to Saumur and became a pupil of Moses Amyrault, a learned professor of the French Reformed Church. At the conclusion of his studies he travelled in France and Italy, and in 1664 returned to England,—a fashionable gentleman, with an “affected manner of speech and gait.” The dreadful scenes which occurred the next year in London during the Plague again turned his thoughts from worldly affairs. To overcome this seriousness his father sent him to Ireland. While there, an insurrection broke out among the soldiers at Carrickfergus Castle, and he served as a volunteer under Lord Arran in its suppression. The Viceroy of Ireland was willing to reward this service by giving him a military command, but Admiral Penn refused his consent. It was at this time that the accompanying portrait was painted. While in Ireland, Penn again came under the influence of the preaching of Loe, and in his heart became a Quaker. He was shortly afterwards arrested with others at a Quaker meeting. His conduct alienated his father from him, but a reconciliation followed when the Admiral learned how sincere the young Quaker was in his views.
Penn wrote industriously in the cause, and endeavored by personal solicitation at Court to obtain for the Quakers more liberal treatment. Imprisoned in the Tower for heresy, he passed his time in writing No Cross, No Crown. Released through his father’s influence with the Duke of York, he was soon again arrested under the Conventicle Act for having spoken at a Quaker meeting, and his trial for this offence is a celebrated one in the annals of English law.