PENN, WILLIAM ( 1644-1718), English Quaker and founder of Pennsylvania, son of Admiral Sir William Penn (1621-167o) and Margaret Jasper, a Dutch lady, was born at Tower Hill, Lon don, on Oct. 14, 1644. During his father's absence at sea he lived at Wanstead in Essex, and went to school at Chigwell close by, in which places he was brought under strong Puritan influences. Like many children of sensitive temperament, he had times of spiritual excitement ; when about twelve he was "suddenly surprised with an inward comfort, and, as he thought, an external glory in the room, which gave rise to religious emotions, during which he had the strongest conviction of the being of a God, and that the soul of man was capable of enjoying communication with Him." Upon the death of Cromwell, Penn's father, who had served the Protector because there was no other career open, remained with his family on the Irish estates which Cromwell had given him. On the resignation of Richard Cromwell he at once declared for the king and went to the court in Holland, where he was received into favour and knighted ; and at the elections for the convention parliament he was returned for Weymouth. Meanwhile young Penn studied under a private tutor on Tower Hill until, in October 1660, he was entered as a gentleman commoner at Christ Church. He appears in the same year to have contributed to the Threnodia, a collection of elegies on the young duke of Gloucester.
The rigour with which the Anglican statutes were revived, and the Puritan heads of colleges supplanted, roused the spirit of resistance at Oxford to the uttermost. With this spirit Penn, who was on familiar terms with John Owen (1616-1683), and who had already fallen under the influence of Thomas Loe the Quaker, then at Oxford, actively sympathized. He and others refused to attend chapel and church service, and were fined in consequence. There is no doubt that in January 1662 his father was anxious to remove him to Cambridge, and consulted Pepys on the subject ; and in later years he speaks of being "banished" from the college, of being whipped, beaten and turned out of doors on his return to his father, in the anger of the latter at his avowed Quakerism. A reconciliation was effected ; and Penn was sent to France to forget this folly. He appears to have entered into the gaieties of the court of Louis XIV., and to have become acquainted with Robert
Spencer, afterwards earl of Sunderland, and with Dorothy Sidney. Somewhat later he placed himself under the tuition of Moses Amyraut, president of the Protestant college of Saumur, and the exponent of liberal Calvinism, from whom he gained the patristic knowledge which is so prominent in his controversial writings. He afterwards travelled in Italy, returning to England in August 1664, with "a great deal, if not too much, of the vanity of the French garb and affected manner of speech and gait."' Until the outbreak of the plague Penn was a student of Lincoln's Inn. For a few days also he served on the staff of his f ather now great captain commander—and was by him sent back in April 1665 to Charles with despatches. Returning after the naval victory off Lowestoft in June, Admiral Penn found that his son had again become settled in seriousness and Quakerism. The admiral sent him in February 1666 with introductions to Or monde's court in Ireland, and to manage his estate in Cork. When the mutiny broke out in Carrickfergus Penn volunteered for serv ice, and acted under Arran, with the result that in May 1666 Ormonde offered him his father's company of foot, but, for some unexplained reason, the admiral demurred to this arrangement. It was at this time that the well-known portrait was painted of the great Quaker in a suit of armour; and it was at this time, too, that the conversion, begun when he was a boy by Thomas Loe in Ireland, was completed at the same place by the same agency.
On Sept. 3, 1667, Penn attended a meeting of Quakers in Cork, at which he assisted to expel a soldier who had disturbed the meeting. He was in consequence, with others present, sent to prison by the magistrates. From prison he wrote to Lord Orrery, the president of Munster, a letter, in which he first publicly makes a claim for perfect freedom of conscience. He was immediately released, and at once returned to his father in London, with the distinctive marks of Quakerism strong upon him. Penn now became a minister of the denomination, and at once entered upon controversy with two tracts, Truth Exalted and The Guide Mis taken. He appealed, not unsuccessfully, to Buckingham, who on Clarendon's fall was posing as the protector of the Dissenters, to use his efforts to procure parliamentary toleration.