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With Sir William Penn’s passing in 1671, and his deathbed admonition that his son stay true to himself, young William Penn was both financially independent and liberated from worrying that his own activism on behalf of the Quakers would hurt his family. William now owned lands that generated income of around 2000 pounds a year, or roughly the wages of 100 laborers of the time.
Penn was a pious son of privilege who used his social, material, and intellectual advantages to advance his family’s business interests and the interests of Quakers, both as individuals and as a religious community. He would get tossed in jail at least once more for his religion, and he would use that time writing defenses of the Quakers and their theology that irritated the established church and its supporters to no end. By the second half of the 1670s he had written more than fifty books and pamphlets on religion and political theory, most of which would vex the English elites in general and local authorities in specific cases.
And, yet, by 1681 Penn would persuade King Charles II and his brother, James, Duke of York, to give him, as sole proprietor, an area of 34 million acres, the last land on the eastern seaboard of North America controlled by England.
How the heck did that happen?
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#212 William Penn Before Pennsylvania 1
#214 William Penn Before Pennsylvania 2: Penn on Trial
#210 The Quakers Invade West New Jersey
Primary references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)
Andrew R. Murphy, William Penn: A Life
Jean R. Soderlund (Editor), William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania: A Documentary History
Joseph E. Illick, Colonial Pennsylvania: A History
