William Penn
The Quakers in America
Jul 16, 2006 Mary Trotter Kion
Penn's Early Years
William Penn, born in London in 1644, was the son of an English admiral. William was expected to follow in his father's footsteps and become a good Anglican royalist. However, one day at his father's Irish estate, William heard one of the first preachers of the Society of Friends, also known as Quakers. William broke down in tears he was so touched. Being fluent in Greek and Latin, he was expected, by his father, to attend Oxford. William was expelled after refusing to participate in the school's Anglican rituals. William's father then sent him on a grand tour of the continent, hoping that contact with baser temptations would change him. But William, instead of submerging himself in numerous fleshpots, visited a French Calvinist college. William's father next forced him to read for the law at Lincoln's Inn. Unfortunately, the Great Fire of London, in 1666, left those plans in ashes. Soon William was back home on his father's farm in Ireland.
As if by providence, when William Penn arrived home again in Ireland there was the Quaker preacher who had so profoundly stirred his emotions sometime before. This time William accepted the man's challenge to practice the Quaker faith.
William Penn the Quaker
William Penn, now a devoted Quaker, landed in jail four times for what he believed. These incarcerations did not convince him to recant his Quaker faith. In stead, Penn went on to compose some forty-two books defending the Quakers. While promoting and defending his beliefs, and landing in jail for them, William Penn was wed. In time, he fathered four children, one of whom managed to survive infancy.
During these years, prominent Englishmen were obtaining grants from the king and founding new colonies in America. Penn, too, took this opportunity to enable him to establish a Quaker colony devoted to freedom of conscience. He obtained a charter for Pennsylvania in 1681 where, hopefully the Quakers could live in peace.
A Different Set of Folks
The Quakers, also known as Society of Friends, were an offshoot of the Puritan movement in England. They were different, however, from most Puritans and other Christian churches in that they held to no specific creed. There were no set beliefs to which the Quakers subscribed. They had no professional clergy and no sacraments or liturgy. Rather than emphasizing the outward aspect of Christianity they looked to the inward relationship with God and their religion.
A Peaceful People
In the view of the Quakers the outward forms of religion virtually meant nothing. They were pacifists and were probably looked down upon by non-Quakers as afraid to stand up and fight, thus forfeiting any respect they might gain otherwise.
Trading One Persecution for Another
In England, the Quakers had been persecuted, especially from about 1660 to 1689. The so-called crimes they had committed ranged from holding meetings that were against the law, refusing to take oaths, and their failure to support the established church.
When the Quakers came in considerable numbers to America they at first found their lives, in relationship to being Quakers, very little different than it had been in England. In Salem, Massachusetts in 1658, the Puritans, of all people, were the ones who were doing their pious best to persecute the Quakers. In Massachusetts the authorities verbally degraded the Quakers by insisting they had no morals and that any actually believing Quaker woman was nothing more than a "Quaking slut."
In June, a town meeting was held at the ship Tavern in Salem to discuss the latest Quaker problem. Recently, the town constables had raided the house of one Nicholas Phelps. There, they had interrupted a Quaker meeting in progress. The constables arrested nineteen of those attending the meeting and tossed them into jail to await trial the following week.
This was not the first clash the Massachusetts Puritans had had with Quakers. Two years earlier, a Captain George Corwin discovered two Quakers aboard his ship, the Swallow, that had at the time been anchored in Boston Harbor. The two Quaker heretics had been arrested at once, inspected for marks indicating that they were witches, and then sent back to the ship to await deportation.
Quaker Beatings, Whippings, and Hanging
To halt the flood of Quakers coming to Massachusetts the authorities, in 1656, passed a law imposing a hundred-pound fine on any sea captain transporting Quakers into the colony. Punishments were also administered to any one that was found to be harboring a Quaker. If this failed, whippings were administered to any Quakers found on land. But whippings were not the only form of punishment for non-Puritan religious convictions handed out in Massachusetts. Such as the case as Quaker Mary Dryer and two other Quakers who were hanged. But still the Quakers came to America and Massachusetts.
Sources:
Carson, Clarence B. A Basic History of the United States, volume 1: The Colonial Experience, 1607-1774. American Textbook Committee, Wadley, Alabama, 1987.
Hill, Frances. The Salem Witch Trials Reader. DeCapo Press, 2000.
Lindsay, David. Mayflower Bastard: A Stranger Among the Pilgrims. St. Martin's Press, New York, 2002.
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