When Pennsylvania Was the Earthly Paradise

An imaginative 1920s rendering by J. L. G. Ferris shows Penn arriving at what looks like an early Halloween party.

(Library of Congress)

On October 29, 1682—325 years ago today—William Penn, the largest private landowner in the world, arrived in what is now Chester, Pennsylvania, after an arduous trip across the Atlantic. He planned to build a utopia of spiritual fulfillment and social harmony, a “Holy Experiment.” That aspect of the experiment was destined to fail, and he himself would lose his wealth and die nearly penniless, but his ideas about personal liberty, religious tolerance, and liberal government would have a decisive, lasting influence on the character of America.

Penn had been born in 1644, when the Thirty Years War was devastating central Europe even as a vicious Civil War pitted Puritans against Anglicans in England. Penn’s father, also named William, was a naval officer with the political savvy to thrive both under Oliver Cromwell and, after the 1660 Restoration, under King Charles II as well. Admiral Penn gained lucrative estates in Ireland for his victories over the Dutch, and the family prospered.

From an early age, William Penn the son was an adventurous thinker. He was expelled from Oxford for his resistance to Anglican orthodoxy. In 1666, at the age of 22, he fell under the influence of one of the many religious sects that had emerged amid the turmoil of the Civil War. Members of what would later be called the Religious Society of Friends followed the teachings of George Fox, who preached that an Inner Light, not the dictates of any formal religion, should serve as a person’s spiritual guide. Because Friends sometimes trembled on discovering this mystical inspiration, they became popularly known as Quakers.

King Charles, whose father had been beheaded by Cromwell’s fanatics, ruthlessly suppressed heterodoxy in all its forms. Penn, with important connections at court and prospects of a comfortable life as an aristocrat, put everything at risk when he followed his creed. He wrote religious pamphlets, and the city’s Anglican bishop had him locked in the Tower of London for eight months. Refusing to recant, he proclaimed, “My prison shall be my grave before I will budge a jot; for I owe my conscience to no mortal man.” Freed at the king’s behest, he continued to preach the Quaker faith. He was tried and acquitted in a landmark case that established the independence of English juries.

Quakers were already forming settlements in America, and in 1681 Penn petitioned the King for a land grant. Partly to erase a debt to Penn’s father, partly to free himself of a troublesome sect, Charles bestowed an enormous area on the Quaker leader—most of the territory between New York and Lord Baltimore’s domains to the south. The king insisted on the name Pennsylvania for the new colony, in honor of Penn’s father.

Penn’s venture in America was not purely idealistic; he stood to make a fortune in land sales too. He became America’s first real estate promoter, touting the opportunity across Europe and suggesting that the land would “bestow thrice more in All Necessaries and Conveniences” to lucky buyers than they could get in England. The property sold handily, but it never brought Penn the wealth he hoped for.

The first settlers embarked while Penn was still formulating his “Frame of Government,” which would regulate colonial affairs and, tellingly, limit his own power as proprietor. It was the first constitution to specify a method for its own amendment, and it established a civil society on open, democratic principles.

The Quaker settlement, which also welcomed persons of other faiths, served as a counterweight to the authoritarian, backward-looking Puritan establishment in Massachusetts. The Puritan leader John Winthrop had adjudged democracy “the meanest and worst of all forms of government.” Among the enlightened principles that the Quakers put forth was more equitable and humane treatment of women.

Penn understood that he would have to purchase land from the native inhabitants, mainly chiefs of the Lenni Lenape, or Delaware, tribe. He became proficient in the Indians’ language and treated them with rare scrupulous fairness. His signing of a Great Treaty with the Indians is enshrined in legend, but it lacks documentation. Because Quakers refused to swear oaths, Voltaire, an admirer of Penn’s, called it the only known contract “which was never sworn to and never broken.”

After two years in the new colony, Penn returned to England to argue a boundary dispute with Maryland before the king. But then the Catholic King James II was overthrown in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and replaced by King William of Orange and Queen Mary. Penn found himself on the wrong side of courtly intrigue and had to go into hiding.

He continued to write, proposing a forward-looking “Parliament of Europe” to quell the perennial discord among nations. In 1697 he suggested that the English establish an American Congress, with delegates from all the colonies, “to debate and resolve of such measures as are most advisable for their better understanding and the public tranquility and safety.” The English government rejected the idea.

Restored to royal favor, he finally returned to America in 1699. He pushed for compulsory education in a prototype of a public school system. He drew up a plan for Philadelphia that had a regular grid of streets and a surrounding ring of well-spaced homes. The scheme differed from the pattern of European cities but became the norm in America.

He had planned to stay in America for the rest of his life but was forced to hurry back to England in 1701 to head off a revocation of his charter. He would never return. For years he struggled to disentangle himself from the debt that had resulted from careless business dealings. In 1712 he suffered a debilitating stroke; he died six years later.

In 1984 President Ronald Reagan declared William Penn an honorary citizen of the United States. Given his early and effective advocacy of ideas that have formed the foundation of our society, the honor was richly deserved.

—Jack Kelly writes often for American Heritage magazine and is the author of Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics—A History of the Explosive That Changed the World (Basic Books).