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William Penn Essay

Decent Essays

William Penn

William Penn was born and raised in England, but he is well known for what he did in the Americas. First and foremost, William Penn was a religious nonconformist and writer: he wrote numerous religious books over his lifetime. Second, Penn is responsible for the “holy experiment”: the colony of Pennsylvania. He was a Quaker advocate, and as a proprietor had the opportunity to practice the Quaker Peace testimony.

Penn was interested in religion from the time he was a child. When he was twelve years old he had the opportunity to hear testimony from a traveling Quaker minister, Thomas Loe. Penn was touched by Loe’s message, and sought the ‘authentic Christian message’ rather then focusing on ‘institutional’ religion. At the …show more content…

He wanted to get the word out about his religion and he wasn’t going to be discouraged. After William was released, he wrote Innocency with Her Open Face, and wrote a number of other works on his Quaker faith.

In 1681, Penn and 11 other Quakers brought the Proprietary rights to east New Jersey. King Charles II owed Penn’s father, Admiral Sir William Penn, and in return Penn persuaded the king to grant him a “vast province on the west bank of the Delaware River” (Samuel, 2000). It was named Pennsylvania, which means Penn’s woods, after his father. Penn decided that his colony was going to be different from the rest of the colonies in that they were going to be a Quaker based colony. He believed in a “divine right of government” and formed the government of Pennsylvania as a “holy experiment” in governing. This type of government is considered being ahead of its time as it set forth a representative form of government. The penal system was designed to reform not just punish, and “all prisoners except capital prisoners were entitled to bail, work houses were substituted for dungeons and the death penalty was limited to murder and treason”. Also, Penn instituted public education and designed Philadelphia and other towns to promote health and fire safety. Being that Penn was in charge of the colony, he was given the opportunity to practice the Quaker Peace Testimony. He realized that a lot of the land that he was living on

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