Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/261

Rh righteousness." This work caused a great excitement by its bold opposition to the doctrine of the Trinity as commonly received, and Penn was apprehended and imprisoned in the tower for nine months, during which he wrote his principal and most popular theological work, "No Cross, no Crown; a discourse showing the Nature and Discipline of the Holy Cross of Christ." By the interference of the duke of York he was at length released and permitted to live in his father's house. The admiral would not admit him to his presence, but he gave him through his mother a commission to go again to Ireland to look after his estates. On his return Penn was reconciled to his father, and lived with him on good terms till the latter's death in September, 1670. Before that event the son had once more been arrested for preaching in the streets; but the jury, after a remarkable trial (during which they were kept for two days and nights without food, fire, or water), brought in a verdict of not guilty, for which each juryman was fined 40 marks and sent to Newgate; while Penn and his companion were also fined and imprisoned for contempt in wearing their hats in presence of the court. They appealed to the court of common pleas, where the decision of the lower court was reversed, and the great principle of English law established that it is the right of the jury to judge of the evidence independent of the dictation or direction of the court. The admiral bequeathed to his son an estate of £1,500 a year, with large claims against the government; and thenceforth the cares of business and the duties of his lay ministry seem to have equally divided the time of Penn. In March, 1671, while preaching in a meeting house in London, he was arrested and committed to the tower, and was soon afterward tried under the conventicle act, but acquitted for want of testimony. The magistrates, however, required him to take the oath of allegiance, which he refused to do from conscientious scruples about swearing, and was sentenced to Newgate for six months. While in prison he wrote and published four treatises, one of them entitled "The great Case of Liberty of Conscience," which is a good comprehensive statement of the principle of religious toleration. On regaining his liberty he made a tour in Holland and Germany, interceding with the rulers of those countries in behalf of the persecuted Quakers; and on his return home in the beginning of 1672 he married Gulielma Maria, daughter of Sir William Springett, and went to reside at Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire, but afterward settled at Dorminghurst, Sussex. The next few years were devoted to preaching and to defending by his pen the doctrines of the Quakers from various assailants, in reply to whom he published a numerous series of laborious tracts and books. In 1674 a dispute between Fenwick and Byllinge, both Quakers, about their proprietary rights in the New Jersey Quaker colonies, being submitted to Penn, he decided in favor of Byllinge, who subsequently, being too much embarrassed to improve his property, made it over to Penn and two of his creditors as trustees. Penn immediately engaged with zeal in the work of colonization, and in 1681 obtained from the crown, in payment of a debt of £16,000 due to his father, a patent for the territory now forming the state of Pennsylvania. The charter vested the perpetual proprietaryship of this vast region in him and his heirs, on the fealty of the annual payment of two beaver skins. He designed at first to call his territory New Wales, and afterward suggested Sylvania as applicable to a land covered with forests; but the king peremptorily ordered the name Pennsylvania to be inserted, in honor, as he said, of his late friend the admiral, William Penn having in vain asked the secretary to change the name, lest it should subject him to the imputation of vanity, and even offered him 20 guineas for so doing. In February, 1682, Penn became, with 11 others, a joint purchaser of East Jersey, which was already a flourishing colony. Aided by the advice of Sir William Jones, and of Henry, the brother of Algernon Sidney, he drew up a liberal scheme of government and laws for his colony, and in September, 1682, embarked for the Delaware, reaching that river after a voyage of six weeks. He was received with great enthusiasm, and after several meetings for conference and treaties with the Indians, he made his famous treaty with them under a large elm tree at Shackamaxon, now Kensington, probably on the last day of November, 1682. A numerous assembly of the Delawares, Mingoes, and other Susquehanna tribes met on this occasion, and formed with the Quakers a treaty of peace and friendship, the only treaty, says Voltaire, "never sworn to and never broken." Soon afterward he laid out the plan of Philadelphia, to which he gave its name in the hope that brotherly love might characterize its inhabitants. He purchased the land where the city stands of the Swedes, who had purchased it of the Indians. He now devoted himself zealously to his duties as governor, and made treaties with 19 Indian tribes; and so long as any of the aborigines remained in Pennsylvania or its neighborhood, their traditions bore testimony to the strong impression which the justice and benevolence of Mignon, as the Delawares called him, or of Onas, as he was styled by the Iroquois, made on their savage hearts. Penn visited New York and New Jersey; and after meeting with the general assembly of the province at New Castle in May, 1684, he intrusted his government to a council, and in August sailed for England, leaving a prosperous colony of 7,000 people. During his absence the Quakers had suffered severe persecution in England, and Penn's first care was to intercede in their behalf with the king, from whom he obtained the promise of entire relief at an early period. Charles II.