The two Williams reconciled months later. Sir William sent young William to France, in the hope that the influence of French society would steer his wayward son back on a path within acceptable boundaries. While William enjoyed the frills of Paris — he appreciated fine clothes, fine food, and fine wine — he spent much of his time in the town of Saumur, where he studied with Moses Amyraut, a famous theologian known for his ideas about religious freedom. William returned to England in 1664. Samuel Pepys wryly noted that while William had acquired learning, he had also returned home with “a great deal, if not too much, of the vanity of the French garbe and affected manner of speech and gait — I fear all real profit he hath made of his travel will signify little.” Perhaps Sir William found small comfort in the fact that his son, while still sober in religious practice, at least dressed fashionably.
For a short time, William studied law at Lincoln’s Inn, the same place where George Calvert had studied. But, as preparations were under way for a new war against the Dutch, he left Lincoln’s Inn and joined his father, who was back in command of the Royal Navy. During this time, William became better acquainted with the Duke of York, who, in addition to being the king’s brother and the navy’s lord high admiral, was Sir William’s good friend. Occasionally, William acted as a courier between the duke and the king.
In 1666, occupied with the war, Sir William sent his son to Ireland to manage the estate at Macroom. While there, William attended Quaker meetings, finding himself increasingly in agreement with the sect’s beliefs and practices — although he continued wearing fashionable clothes. Ironically, the Penns had received Macroom when Oliver Cromwell had stripped lands from Irish Catholics in retribution for the civil war. William knew the Quakers preached toleration. Did he ever consider that his family had benefited from political retaliation and religious persecution?
By autumn 1667, William had joined the Quakers. Shortly thereafter, he found his commitment to the group and its beliefs tested. At the end of a Quaker meeting, the authorities seized William and several other Quakers and threw them in jail. Their imprisonment was short, however, and by November William was back in England, where again he chafed at parental boundaries. Sir William vehemently disagreed with his son’s religious choice, and the two Williams became estranged. William remained a Quaker, writing and preaching publicly about his beliefs. As a result, he was imprisoned three times during the years 1668 to 1671. The trial that led to his second imprisonment tested the boundaries of English law and became one of the most important court cases in England’s history.
On August 14, 1670, several hundred Quakers, including William Penn and his friend William Mead, gathered for worship on Gracechurch Street, in London. Penn and Mead were arrested, but not for preaching. They were charged with attempting to incite a riot. An account of their trial stated that Penn and Mead did “Preach and Speak” in contempt of the king and of his law, thus disturbing and terrorizing many of the king’s loyal subjects.
The trial began on September 3, 1670, with an eyebrow-raising exchange, not about rioting but about hats. A Quaker man never removed his hat when meeting someone. Doffing one’s hat was a sign of subservience and, therefore, contrary to the Quaker belief in equality. When Penn and Mead entered the court, they were not wearing their hats. At the court’s order, an official grabbed the men’s hats and put them on their heads. When Penn stood in front of the judge, he was asked why he had not removed his hat, as was required as a sign of respect to the court. Adhering to Quaker beliefs, Penn answered, “Because I do not believe that to be any Respect.” In response, the judge fined both Williams forty marks, a hefty sum of money, for “Contempt of the Court.” To which Penn replied, “I desire it may be observed, that we came into the Court with our Hats off . . . and if they have been put on since, it was by Order from the Bench; and therefore not we, but the Bench [that] should be fined.”
Penn refused to acknowledge the indictment for breaking the law, saying, “I desire you would let me know by what Law it is you Prosecute me, and upon what Law you ground my Indictment.” He wasn’t seeking a fight, but he knew that by not citing a specific law, the court was crossing a legal boundary. It was violating his legal right to know which law he had broken. When the court refused to specify, stating simply that he had violated “the Common-Law,” Penn stated, “The Question is not whether I am Guilty . . . but whether this Indictment be Legal. It is too general and imperfect an Answer to say it is the Common-Law. . . . For where there is no Law, there is no Transgression.”
Penn testified that the gathering on Gracechurch Street had been solely for worship and not to incite a riot. His testimony convinced the jury. They returned a verdict that Penn was guilty only of speaking on Gracechurch Street. And everyone knew that speaking was not a crime. The judge ordered the jury to reconsider its verdict, but it returned with the same decision. Angered, the judge told the jury:
Gentlemen, you shall not be dismis[sed], till we have a Verdict that the Court will accept; and you shall be lock’d up, without Meat, Drink, Fire, and Tobacco: You shall not think thus to abuse the Court; we will have a [guilty] Verdict by the Help of God, or you shall starve for it.
As Penn pointed out, a jury’s verdict “should be Free, and not Compelled.” The judge had completely trampled the boundaries of English law, which guaranteed the right to a trial by jury. Before Penn was removed from the court, he spoke publicly to the jury: “You are Englishmen, mind your Priviledge, give not away your Right.” Juror Edward Bushel replied, “Nor will we ever do it.”
Bushel and the other jurors refused to change their verdict. The judge fined the members of the jury forty marks each and ordered them imprisoned until the fine was paid. Then he fined and imprisoned Penn and Mead for the only violation he could: contempt of court for not removing their hats at the beginning of the trial.
Penn intended to remain in prison with the jurors, but he received word that Sir William was ill and near death. Reluctantly, he allowed the payment of his fine so he could be at his dying father’s bedside. Sir William died less than two weeks later. William junior was twenty-five years old.
While William grieved, the jury, still in jail, sued the judge of Penn’s trial on the grounds that a jury had the right to decide a verdict without a judge’s interference or coercion. A new judge ruled in their favor. This important right is one of the central foundations of law in the United States. Today, it is still a legal boundary that a judge cannot cross.
WILLIAM PENN continued to seek toleration for Quakers in England. In December 1670, he was arrested again. During his trial, he unhesitatingly defended the individual’s right to worship free from government persecution, asserting that his preaching and writing were not illegal or harmful to either the government or the king. Even so, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London for six months. In 1674, he renewed his acquaintance with the Duke of York and for the first time in six years, returned to King Charles’s court, where he lobbied against the persecution of Quakers. Meanwhile, militant Protestants had whipped the general public into anti-Catholic fervor, even casting doubts on the king’s loyalty to England. They also cast doubts on those who associated with the king, including Penn. Because Quakers worshipped differently from members of the Anglican Church, they felt persecution’s spillover effects. For several years, Quakers had been emigrating from England to America, especially to East and West Jersey, where they had purchased large land tracts. Penn found the idea of a land — a refuge — for Quakers appealing, and he approached King Charles II about establishing a colony in America.
In addition to being on good terms with the king and the Duke of York (who owned extensive properties in America), William had financial leverage that sweetened the pot. When Sir William was an admiral in the Royal Navy, he had loaned the king money for supplying the navy with food supplies at a time when the king’s coffers were low. King Charles II owed Sir William sixteen thousand pounds, the debt still unpaid at Sir William’s death, in 1670.
In May 1680, young William petitioned the king for a colony in America. He secured the king’s approval both by agreeing that the granting of the colony would settle the debt owed to his family and by presenting the grant as “a profitable plantation to the crown,” much the way George Calvert had.
On March 4, 1681, William Penn received King Charles II’s royal charter for the colony of Pennsylvania. The charter stipulated that the colony was “to extend Westwards [from the Delaware River] five degrees in longitude . . . to be bounded on the North, by the beginning of the three and fortieth degree of Northern latitude, and on the south, by a circle drawne at twelve miles distance from [the town of] New Castle” and “by a straight line Westwards, to the limits of Longitude above mentioned” along the fortieth degree north parallel of latitude. The charter was very similar to the one King Charles I had given to George and Cecil Calvert. King Charles II named the colony Pennsylvania after his valued friend Sir William. (Sylvania means “forest land” in Latin.)
IN ENGLAND, people pay for goods and services with monetary units called pounds, shillings, and pence. Until the twentieth century, one pound was equal to twenty shillings, and one shilling was equal to twelve pence (there were 240 pence to the pound). During the 1630s, it cost about 6,600 pounds to build an average warship for the Royal Navy.
Pounds, shillings, and pence were also used in England’s North American colonies. During the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when these monies were scarce in the colonies, colonists most often settled bills by paying with valuable commodities produced in their colony. For example, Marylanders paid with tobacco, while other colonists used beaver skins or even wampum, a Native American form of currency consisting of shell beads threaded onto strings or woven into wide belts.
In the eighteenth century, each of England’s colonies in North America began producing its own currency, still using the denominational names of pounds, shillings, and pence. Despite the similarity in names, however, a colonial pound could not be substituted one to one for an English pound, nor did one colony’s pound equal that of another. To avoid confusion, an English pound was called a pound sterling. In 1764, a colonist shopping in Philadelphia for a pair of men’s shoes made in England could expect to pay between eight and fifteen shillings a pair; a fine men’s hat might cost thirty shillings.
In 1767, Maryland became the first American colony to issue paper currency in dollars. By royal decree, a colonial dollar was the equivalent of four shillings and six pence sterling.
This six-dollar bill was printed in Maryland in 1770. The reverse features images of strawberry and mint leaves, along with the phrase “Tis death to counterfeit.”
Using his many contacts, especially those in the Quaker community, Penn quickly spread the word that land was for sale in Pennsylvania. He published a promotional tract that extolled his new province as a land of promise and targeted all potential immigrants, not just Quakers. In fact, Penn did not mention religion in the ad. Like George Calvert, William Penn — who was in debt — hoped that Pennsylvania’s resources would bring him profit, so his ad emphasized the profits to be reaped from land, agricultural goods, and commerce. He sought not only people who could buy land but also those willing to rent, and even those willing to come as indentured servants, on terms similar to those offered by the Calverts in Maryland. As Penn wrote to a friend, he intended his province to be “the seed of a nation.”
In August 1682, the Duke of York gave William two more deeds for an area called the Three Lower Counties (now the state of Delaware), located on the peninsula surrounded by Delaware Bay, Chesapeake Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean. A boundary line divided the Three Lower Counties from Maryland, which shared the peninsula. Charles Calvert — Cecil Calvert’s son, the third Lord Baltimore and Maryland’s governor — found his colony dwarfed by Penn’s new land grants.
With plans under way for his own passage to the new colony, Penn wrote a letter stating his personal boundaries as the proprietor to the people who already lived there, so they would know what to expect:
God has given me an understanding of my duty and an honest mind to do it uprightly. I hope you will not be troubled at your change and the king’s choice. . . . You shall be governed by laws of your own making, and live a free and, if you will, a sober and industrious people. I shall not usurp the right of any, or oppress his person.
He sent agents to Pennsylvania with instructions to obtain land on the west bank of the Delaware River for the province’s capital city, to be named Philadelphia, from two Greek words that mean “brotherly love.” He also instructed his agents to buy large tracts of land from the Lenni-Lenape (called Delaware Indians by the English) who lived in the region.
Penn emphasized his ideal of a colony that welcomed and tolerated diverse peoples. In October 1681, his passage to the colony delayed, he sent a separate letter to the Lenni-Lenape. In this letter, William acknowledged that European colonists had treated Indians with unkindness and injustice. He wrote that he regretted the animosities between Indians and colonists and the bloodshed that had occurred, and he assured the Indians that he held them in high regard and intended nothing but peace and friendship. He also wrote that just as he expected fair, equal treatment for himself in British courts, he intended similar justice for all of Pennsylvania’s inhabitants, Indians and colonists alike.
Penn boarded the ship Welcome for Pennsylvania on August 29, 1682. Although he was excited to visit his new colony, he left England with mixed feelings. Earlier that year his mother, Margaret, had passed away, and he was leaving his wife, Gulielma, and their two sons and daughter behind. Just weeks before the Welcome sailed, he sent them a letter that ended, “So farewell to my thrice dearly beloved wife and children. Yours, as God pleases, in that which no waters can quench, no time forget, nor distance wear away, but remains forever.” It would be months, if not years, until he would see them again. Yet his family was always in his mind. Letters to each of his children were among the last he wrote before the ship sailed.
Storms and pirates were only two of the potential hazards that passengers on the Welcome faced. Serious injury and illness were equally hazardous due to limited medical care while at sea. News that a smallpox epidemic had broken out on the ship terrified the colonists. In the following weeks, the disease killed thirty-one people — almost one-third of the Welcome’s passengers. Penn, who had survived the disease at age three, was immune. Fellow passenger Richard Townsend later wrote that Penn showed compassion for the sick and helped meet their needs with care.
PINPOINTING A LOCATION on the earth’s surface is made easy using a grid of lines called the parallels of latitude and the meridians of longitude. Parallels of latitude encircle the earth horizontally. Meridians of longitude encircle the earth vertically, through the North and South Poles, and intersect parallels of latitude perpendicularly.
Lines of latitude and longitude are measured in degrees. Because each line completely encircles the earth, it measures 360 degrees. Lines of latitude and longitude are further divided into minutes and seconds — 60 minutes equals one degree, and 60 seconds equals one minute. The equator, at zero degrees latitude, divides the earth into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. All other parallels of latitude are written in a way that indicates how many degrees north or south of the equator they are located. Traveling north from the equator, you would eventually reach the North Pole, at a point called 90 degrees north (90° N). In the same manner, traveling south, you would eventually reach the South Pole, at 90 degrees south (90° S). Since there is no meridian of longitude comparable to the equator, mapmakers use the meridian along which Greenwich, England, lies as zero degrees longitude. This meridian is called the prime meridian. Each meridian of longitude is noted as being up to 180 degrees east or 180 degrees west of the prime meridian. Both latitude and longitude must be included to identify a specific location. Philadelphia is 39°57 ′ N/75°9 ′ W.
The Welcome sailed into Delaware Bay on October 24. Almost at once,
Penn invited the Duke of York’s agents to a meeting on board the ship. During the meeting, he showed them the deeds signed and sealed by the duke. Later, the agents relinquished control of the Three Lower Counties to him, symbolically presenting the land to him with a key to the fort at New Castle, a chunk of turf with a twig on it, and a bowl filled with river water and soil.
Penn disembarked from the Welcome and traveled up the Delaware River, first landing in the town of Upland (now Chester) and then moving on to Shackamaxon, just north of the site chosen for Philadelphia. He attended a whirlwind of political and religious meetings during the following months. He met with colonists — Quakers, Anglicans, Swedes, and Dutch — and set up the provincial government. Penn’s legislative assembly included many Quakers, but he also extended representation to non-Quakers living in the Three Lower Counties. By the end of 1683, Penn had purchased large tracts of land along the west bank of the Delaware River from the Lenni-Lenape. A treaty between Penn and the Lenni-Lenape contained language to establish an honest, peaceful relationship that respected the boundaries of each culture. Both parties expressed hopes that future relations, particularly in the fur trade, would prove profitable for all.
To better understand the issues of his colony, William Penn invited representatives from many different communities to attend a provincial conference.
In 1682, the Lenni-Lenape presented this wampum belt to William Penn as they discussed a treaty. The belt indicated that a very serious matter was under discussion.
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