PENN 



4562 



PENNELL 



the strength he derived from 

 civilized standards. As a law- 

 giver for that colony, in an 

 age of religious persecution, 

 he made religious liberty the 

 corner stone of his civil struc- 



ence at court to give the boy every advantage 

 in education and to start him on the road to 

 political advancement. While William was at- 

 tending school in Essex, he came under the re- 

 ligious teachings 

 of the Puritans 

 and began to lead 

 a life of unusual 

 strictness. At the 

 age of sixteen he 

 entered the aris- 

 tocratic Christ 

 College in Oxford 

 University, but so 

 disliked the Epis- 

 copal form of WILLIAM PENN 

 worship that he As tne honored founder of a 

 tore the surplices S reat colony he did not in his 

 , dealings with savages abuse 

 from the backs of 



the students. An 



English Quaker, 



Thomas Loe, 



completely con- ture ' 



verted him to the Quaker beliefs, and the boy 



left college in disgust over what he called the 



"popish" ceremonies. 



He announced to his father that he was a 

 Quaker, and was promptly driven from the 

 house. His mother interceded for him, and his 

 father sent him to France and Italy, in the 

 hope that the fashionable life abroad might 

 cure him of his religious zeal. He returned 

 with every sign of Quakerism gone, and his 

 happy father gave him the responsible position 

 of manager of several large Irish estates. Again, 

 however, he met Loe, and became once more a 

 Quaker, this time never to backslide. Penn 

 began to preach, refused to take off his hat to 

 the king, and wrote such radical pamphlets 

 denying orthodox views on the Trinity that he 

 was imprisoned in the Tower of London for 

 eight months. There he wrote No Cross, No 

 Crown, one of the noblest English books on 

 Christianity. 



The death of his father in 1670 made him a 

 wealthy man, but he continued his daily preach- 

 ing and once more was confined in the Tower 

 for addressing unlawful congregations. Release 

 came soon, however, and he visited Germany, 

 where he became acquainted with many citizens 

 of liberal religious views. This accounts mainly 

 for the great number of German settlers in 

 Pennsylvania a few years later. In 1675 Penn 

 bought from a Quaker a large part of Western 

 New Jersey, and found members of the perse- 

 cuted sect so eager to seek refuge there that he 



petitioned Charles II to repay in American land 

 an old debt that had been due his father. The 

 king granted him the territory now comprising 

 Pennsylvania and part of Maryland, and gave 

 him absolute power to rule it as he wished. He 

 opened the land for colonists and they emi- 

 grated by thousands. A Frame o] Government 

 was written by Penn as a code of laws, and 

 this is still regarded as one of the most liberal 

 charters, or constitutions, ever issued. His trea- 

 ties with the Indians were so fair and generous 

 and were so strictly kept that for more than 

 a century very few redmen would attack a 

 Quaker. Prosperity resulted from every vm- 

 ture the colonists made, and their principal 

 town, Philadelphia ("City of Brotherly Love"), 

 grew with astonishing rapidity. 



Penn was a great favorite with Charles II 

 and James I, who admired his courage and 

 smiled good-naturedly over his "thou" and 

 "thee" style of talking; but when William and 

 Mary came to the throne Penn found himself 

 suspected of various plots against the govern- 

 ment, chief among which was a charge of at- 

 tempted bribery in connection with pardons. 

 For three years he was in hiding in London, 

 while dissension aroused by other religious sects 

 than his own threatened to ruin the Pennsyl- 

 vania colony. In 1693, however, he was de- 

 clared innocent of conspiracy, and in 1699 he 

 again visited Pennsylvania. He soon adjusted 

 all. troubles and wrote a constitution which was 

 so wise and liberal that the people used it until 

 the colony became a state. 



In 1701 the plan of King William to declare 

 Pennsylvania a royal province caused Penn to 

 return quickly to London. There false claims 

 for debts were pressed against him so harshly 

 that he allowed himself to be thrown into Fleet 

 Prison rather than pay them. This confine- 

 ment shattered his health, and when he was 

 released in 1709 he no longer possessed the 

 spirit of former days. In 1710 he suffered a 

 stroke of paralysis, but lived until July 30, 

 1718. These last years were brightened some- 

 what by the colonists' belated appreciation of 

 his work for them and by the extraordinary 

 growth and prosperity of Pennsylvania. Stat- 

 ues to his memory stand in Philadelphia and 

 New York. E.D.F. 



Consult Penn's Memoirs, edited by Clarkson ; 

 Fisher's The True William Penn; Hodges' Wil- 

 liam Penn; Grant's Quaker and Courtier, the 

 Life and Work of William Penn. 



PENNELL, pen' el, JOSEPH (1860- ), an 

 American etcher, illustrator and author. He 



