TRUE STORIES OF GREAT AMERICANS
WILLIAM PENN
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[Illustration: Wm Penn]
WILLIAM PENN
BY
RUPERT S. HOLLAND
AUTHOR OF
"HISTORIC BOYHOODS," "THE KNIGHTS OF THE GOLDEN SPUR," ETC.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1915
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1915,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1915.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
WILLIAM PENN GOES TO COLLEGE 1
CHAPTER II
THE EARLY QUAKERS 9
CHAPTER III
WILLIAM PENN TRAVELS 18
CHAPTER IV
THE YOUNG QUAKER COURTIER 25
CHAPTER V
PENN HELPS HIS FRIENDS 36
CHAPTER VI
PENN BECOMES A MAN OF WEALTH 44
CHAPTER VII
PENN IN POLITICS 55
CHAPTER VIII
FIRST VISIT TO PENNSYLVANIA 68
CHAPTER IX
WHAT PENN FOUND IN AMERICA 86
CHAPTER X
TROUBLOUS DAYS IN ENGLAND 94
CHAPTER XI
PENN IN DISFAVOR 109
CHAPTER XII
PENN GOES TO AMERICA AGAIN 122
CHAPTER XIII
AT COURT AND IN PRISON 139
CHAPTER XIV
PENN'S WORK COMPLETED 151
CHAPTER XV
PENNSYLVANIA UNDER PENN'S DESCENDANTS 158
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM PENN _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
ADMIRAL SIR WILLIAM PENN 28
PENN'S CREST _in text_ 43
PENN'S SEAL _in text_ 67
THE LETITIA HOUSE _in text_ 74
THE TREATY TREE 76
PENN'S WAMPUM BELT _in text_ 84
PENN'S BIBLE AND BOOK-PLATE 100
THE SLATE-ROOF HOUSE _in text_ 127
PENN'S DESK _in text_ 130
TABLET TO THE MEMORY OF WILLIAM PENN 156
FOUR OF WILLIAM PENN'S GRANDCHILDREN 162
WILLIAM PENN
CHAPTER I
WILLIAM PENN GOES TO COLLEGE
The middle of the seventeenth century was a very exciting time in
England. The Cavaliers of King Charles the First were fighting the
Roundheads of Oliver Cromwell, and the whole country was divided into
King's men and Parliament's men. On the side of Cromwell and the
Parliament was Admiral William Penn, who had in 1646 been given command
of a squadron of fighting ships with the title of Vice Admiral of
Ireland, and who had proved to be an expert navigator and sea-fighter.
He had married Margaret Jasper, the daughter of an English merchant who
lived in Rotterdam, and when he went to sea, he left his wife and
children in the pretty little English village of Wanstead, in the county
of Essex.
The Admiral's son William was born on October 14, 1644, when four great
battles of the English Civil War had already been fought: Edge Hill,
Newbury, Nantwich, and Marston Moor. The Roundheads were winning the
victories, and these Puritan soldiers, fired with religious zeal, and
taking such striking names as "Praise God Barebones" and "Sergeant Hew
Agag in Pieces before the Lord," were battering down castles and
cathedrals, smashing stained-glass windows and pipe organs, and showing
their hatred of nobles and of churchmen in every way they could think
of. The wife of Admiral Penn, however, lived quietly in her country
home, and by the time William was five years old the Cavaliers had lost
the battle of Naseby, had surrendered Bridgewater and Bristol, and King
Charles the First had been beheaded. A new England, a Puritan England,
had taken the place of the old England, but the boy was too young to
understand the difference. He knew that his father was now fighting the
Dutch, but he was chiefly interested in the games he played with his
schoolmates at Wanstead and with the boys from the neighboring village
of Chigwell.
Now Admiral Penn had fought on the side of the Roundheads because the
English navy had sided with the Parliament, while the English army had
largely sided with the king, and not from any real love of Oliver
Cromwell and the Puritans. He was indeed a Royalist at heart, and had
very little patience with the new religious ideas that were becoming so
popular in England. The people in Wanstead, however, were mostly
Puritans, and young William, boy though he was, heard so much about
their religion that he became a little Puritan like his playmates. Some
of the fathers and mothers boasted that they had seen "visions," and
soon the children were repeating what their parents said. Strange
experiences of that kind were in the air, and so little William Penn,
when he was only eleven, claimed that he had himself met with such an
adventure, and seen a "vision" too.
The news of this story of William's would have annoyed his father, but
the Admiral was too much concerned at the time with his own difficulties
to give much heed to his son. Admiral Penn had sent word secretly to the
exiled son of Charles I. that he would enter his service against Oliver
Cromwell, and the latter heard of it, and when the Admiral returned to
England, Cromwell had him clapped into the Tower of London to keep him
out of mischief. Mrs. Penn and her children went up to London and lodged
in a little court near the Tower, where they might at least be near the
Admiral. Presently the Admiral, stripped of his commission, was
released, and left London for a country place in Ireland that Cromwell
had given him for his earlier services. There he stayed until the
Royalists got the better of the Roundheads, and Charles II. was placed
on the English throne. Then Admiral Penn hurried to welcome the new
king, was made a knight for his loyalty, and began to bask in the full
sunshine of royal favor. He was now a great figure at court, was a man
of wealth, and a close friend and adviser to the king's brother, James,
Duke of York, Lord High Admiral of England. Being so thoroughly a
Royalist and Church of England man himself, it never occurred to him
that his son William was already more than half a Puritan.
The Admiral sent his son to the aristocratic Christ Church College at
Oxford when William was sixteen, and entered him as a gentleman
commoner, which gave him a higher social standing than most of the
students. The father meant his son to be a courtier and man of fashion,
and wanted him to make friends among the young aristocrats of Oxford.
But Oxford University, like the rest of England, had felt the Puritan
influence during the days when Cromwell was Lord Protector, and although
the Cavaliers did everything they could to restore the revelries and
sports of the good old times of Charles the First, some of the soberer
notions of the Puritans still stuck to the place.
The Puritans were fond of long sermons and much psalm-singing, and shook
their heads at all games and light entertainments. The Royalists stopped
as much psalm-singing as they could, while they themselves got up Morris
dances and May-day games and all kinds of masques and revels. Sometimes
they went too far in their desire to oppose the Puritans, and indulged
in all sorts of dissipations. Young William Penn, and many other boys at
college, thought the Royalists were too dissolute, and leaned toward the
Puritan standards; but he was the son of a knight and a courtier, as
well as being naturally fond of sports and gayety, and so he did not
dress so soberly nor attend so many sermons as some of his college
friends. When the king's brother, Henry, Duke of Gloucester, died of
smallpox, Oxford University issued a volume of verses, called
"Threnodia," on the duke's death, and young William Penn sent in some
Latin lines for the volume. In some matters he was a strong king's man,
but in others he was more fond of the stricter Puritan notions. Withal
he was a fairly good student, a popular young fellow, and something of
an athlete. He might very well have graduated and followed his father to
the king's court at London had not a new and strange religious party
caught his wide-awake attention while he was at college.
When William Penn went to Oxford, some people in England were beginning
to be called Quakers, or, as they preferred to be known, Friends. They
were almost as much opposed to the Puritans as they were to the
Royalists, who belonged to the Church of England. They were a religious
sect, and more. They refused to pay the tithes or taxes for the support
of the Established Church, they refused to take an oath in the law
courts, they would wear their hats in court and in the presence of
important persons. They called every one by his first name, and would
not use any title, even that of Mister; "thee" and "thou" took the place
of "you," although those pronouns had customarily only been used to
servants. Nothing gave so much offense to a Royalist as to have a Quaker
say "thee" or "thou" to him. They preached in taverns and in highways,
and walked the streets uttering prophecies of doom in a loud singsong
voice. Either because of this trembling mode of speech, or because their
leader, George Fox, had bade the magistrates tremble at the word of the
Lord, they were called Quakers.
It seemed to both the Churchmen and the Puritans that these Quakers
were breaking away from all forms of religion; they did not believe in
baptism nor in the communion service; they would not listen to clergymen
or hired preachers, and often they sat silent in their meetings, only
speaking when one of them felt inspired to address them. Quietness was
their watchword, and so they condemned all sports and games, theaters,
dancing, card playing; they disapproved of soldiers and of fighting;
they kept out of politics, and they dressed as soberly as possible.
Their leader, George Fox, was a strange person, very brave but very
excitable, and he managed to rouse discussion wherever he went. Again
and again he was put in jail; he was stoned and abused and laughed at;
but such was his power that more and more people came to follow him, and
admired and reverenced and loved him.
It may seem strange that the Quakers should have appealed so strongly to
a youth like William Penn, who was a gentleman commoner at the most
aristocratic college in England, a good-looking, popular, sport-loving
fellow, surrounded by the sons of noblemen and courtiers. The answer
must be that he was by nature serious-minded and very much interested in
questions of religion. More than that, he had in him a strong streak of
heroism which made it easy for him to throw his whole soul into a cause
that appealed to him. Whatever Penn was he was never lukewarm, but
ardent and fiery and always tremendously in earnest.
He left Oxford after about two years, and there is a story that he was
expelled because he and some friends refused to obey a college rule
about the wearing of gowns and tore off the surplices that were worn by
the Church of England students. He had heard the Quaker preacher Thomas
Loe, and although he had not actually joined the Society of Friends he
was already largely of a mind to. From college he went to his father's
house in London, and then Admiral Sir William Penn found that his son
was not at all the worldly-minded youth he had hoped, but a young man of
quite a different sort. He did not care for the life of a cavalier or
court gallant, but wanted to go to strange religious meetings. The
Admiral begged and entreated, threatened and stormed, used arguments and
even blows, and finally in a fit of rage drove his son from his house.
But Lady Penn pleaded for her son, and the Admiral at length allowed
William to return to his home.