PENN, WILLIAM. — English Quaker, founder of Pennsylvania, born at Tower Hill (London) on 14 October 1644, died at Ruscombe (England) on 30 July 1718. Brought up under Puritan influence, from his student years at Oxford, where, after Cromwell’s death, the Anglican Restoration was taking place, he sympathized with the Quaker movement (v. QUACCHERI).
Expelled from the University (1662) for his religious nonconformity, he was sent to the Continent, where for some time he attended the Huguenot Academy of Saumur. Having embraced Quakerism during a stay in Ireland (1667), he became its pastor and propagator upon his return to England. The publication of a pamphlet of religious controversy earned him nine months’ imprisonment in the Tower of London (1668–69). In prison he wrote his principal work, No Cross, No Crown, an eloquent defence of his faith and a violent indictment of bad morals. After a period of controversies with Presbyterians and Baptists and of struggles against the constituted authorities, in which he fought strenuously in favour of religious toleration and political liberalism; after numerous arrests and several journeys to the Continent for missionary purposes, in 1681 he obtained from the Crown, in payment of a debt inherited from his father, a grant of a vast territory in the New World, which was called Pennsylvania. Reaching America in 1682, he took up his position as governor of the possession and gave it a constitution intended to make it a Christian “State” according to the principles of Quakerism. Having established freedom of worship there and friendly relations with the neighbouring Indian tribes, he returned to England in 1684, where he took an active part in the political events and religious struggles of the time. His battle in favour of toleration, including towards Catholics,
was particularly courageous. Deprived and then reinstated in the office of governor of Pennsylvania, he returned to the colony in 1699 and reorganized its government. Returning to his homeland in 1701, he resumed his position there as leader of the dissenters.