The History of the Americans

It is the spring of 1681. The “exclusion crisis,” an insurgency in Parliament proposing to exclude the king’s brother, James, Duke of York, from the line of succession, was reaching its climax. Even so, on March 4 King Charles II found time to grant William Penn a vast territory extending from the west bank of the Delaware River to a longitude equal to the then western border of Maryland. It was now William Penn’s role, as sole proprietor of Pennsylvania, to fill it up with people. He would do a remarkable job, especially under the challenging circumstances, relying heavily on his … pen. Along the way he would write a practical and moral defense of English colonialism at a time when many of the movers and shakers in London were arguing against it.

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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

Richard S. Dunn, “William Penn and the Selling of Pennsylvania, 1681-1685,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Oct. 14, 1983

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

William Penn returned from Ireland in August 1670, and soon found himself arrested, along with fellow Quaker William Mead, for preaching to a crowd in public in violation of “the common law,” an ambiguity that would play out during their momentous trial. The trial would end in their acquittal, notwithstanding egregious intimidation of the jury by the judge, the Lord Mayor Sir Samuel Starling. Among other exciting moments, Starling threw the principled foreman of the jury, Edward Bushel, in jail. Bushel’s suit for a writ of habeas corpus would lead to a verdict that established an inviolate principle in Anglo-American law, that judges may not intimidate juries.

Penn and Mead were acquitted under the glare of remarkable publicity for the day, and the case would establish Penn as a nationally famous advocate for Dissenting religion.

After his acquittal, Penn finally made it home to visit his dying father, Sir William Penn, with whom he reconciled in a poignant father-son moment.

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#212 William Penn Before Pennsylvania 1

#208 What You Need to Know About English Politics in the 1680s 1: The Exclusion Crisis

Primary references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

Andrew R. Murphy, William Penn: A Life

Julius J. Marke, “The Trial of William Penn,” Litigation, Fall 1979.

Robert and Marilyn Aitken, “Bushell’s Case,” Litigation, Winter 2010.

The purpose of this episode is very simple:  If you find yourself driving in your car with others this weekend (or on some future Fourth of July) and you and your passengers – perhaps they are your children and now they are a captive audience at your mercy – might enjoy hearing the Declaration of Independence and knowing just a little bit about the heroic signers of it, play this episode!

For those of you too down-to-earth to say “semiquincentennial,” happy 250th Fourth everybody, and please pass this around to anybody who you think might be interested in it.

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The Declaration of Independence (National Archives transcription)

[Announcement: From November 4 through 6, 2026, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is hosting its inaugural Soapbox free speech conference in Philadelphia, the city where so many of America’s defining debates over liberty began. I and the wife of the pod will be there and would love to hoist one with listeners of the History of the Americans. More compellingly, there will be several far more famous podcasters for whom free speech is an important value. Were he able to attend, William Penn would be there too, probably as a keynote speaker.

Soapbox will bring together leading writers, comedians, scholars, and others for three days of lively debate and thought-provoking conversations about free expression, history, law, culture, and current events. Learn more and grab early-bird tickets before July 4 at soapbox.fire.org, link in the episode notes.  Listeners of The History of the Americans Podcast can use promo code HISTORY in all caps to save an additional $50 on their tickets. I hope to see you there.]

This episode is about William Penn, founder of three American colonies, before he founded them. The best way to describe the story to be told here is with a quotation from David Hackett Fischer, in his book Albion’s Seed:

[The] “Delaware culture area” developed not by some random process of social selection, but from the conscious will and purpose of its Quaker founders. The leading role was played by one founder in particular, William Penn, who served Pennsylvania, Delaware, and also West Jersey as lawgiver, social planner, organizer, tireless promoter, and regulator of the immigration process. The cultural history of this region cannot be understood without knowing something about the mind and character of this extraordinary man.

William Penn was a bundle of paradoxes – an admiral’s son who became a pacifist, an undergraduate at Oxford’s Christ Church who became a pious Quaker, a member of Lincoln’s Inn who became an advocate of arbitration, a Fellow of the Royal Society who despised pedantry, a man of property who devoted himself to the welfare of the poor, a polished courtier who preferred the plain style, a friend of kings who became a radical Whig, and an English gentlemen who became one of Christianity’s great spiritual leaders.

This episode and the next will explore the mind and character “of this extraordinary man.”

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Primary references for this episode

David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America

Andrew R. Murphy, William Penn: A Life