The World of William Penn 9781512801965

Table of contents :
Contents
Tables
Maps
Abbreviations
Introduction
William Penn Reconsidered
1. The Personality of William Penn
2. The Young Controversialist
3. Penny Wise and Pound Foolish: Penn as a Businessman
4. A Representative of the Alternative Society of Restoration England?
5. William Penn, 1689–1702: Eclipse, Frustration, and Achievement
Penn’s Britain
6. Agricultural Conditions in England, circa 1680
7. The World Women Knew: Women Workers in the North of England During the Late Seventeenth Century
8. Out of the Mainstream: Catholic and Quaker Women in the Restoration Northwest
9. The Irish Background to Perm’s Experiment
10. Quakerism: Made In America?
Penn’s America
11. “The Peaceable Kingdom”: Quaker Pennsylvania in the Stuart Empire
12. Brother Miquon: Good Lord!
13. From “Dark Corners” to American Domesticity: The British Social Context of the Welsh and Cheshire Quakers' Familial Revolution in Pennsylvania, 1657–1685
14. William Penn’s Scottish Counterparts: The Quakers of "North Britain" and the Colonization of East New Jersey
15. Promoters and Passengers: The German Immigrant Trade, 1683–1775
Meeting House and Counting House
16. Puritanism, Spiritualism, and Quakerism: An Historiogmphical Essay
17. The Affirmation Controversy and Religious Liberty
18. Quaker Discipline and Order, 1680–1720: Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and London Yearly Meeting
19. The Early Merchants of Philadelphia: The Formation and Disintegration of a Founding Elite
20. The Great Quaker Business Families of Eighteenth-Century London: The Rise and Fall of a Sectarian Patriciate
Notes on Contributors
Index

Citation preview

The World of WILLIAM PENN

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The World of

WILLIAM

PENN+

edited by Richard S. Dunn and Mary Maples Dunn w UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS Philadelphia

1986

Preparation and publication of this volume has been assisted by the Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies Copyright © 1986 by the University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The World of William Penn Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Penn, William, 1644-1718. 2. Pennsylvania —History— Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775. 3. Quakers — Pennsylvania — History. 4. Pioneers — Pennsylvania — Biography. 5. Quakers — Pennsylvania — Biography. 6. Quakers—England — History—17th century. I. Dunn, Richard S. II. Dunn, Mary Maples. F152.2.W65 1986 974.8'02'0924 [B] 86-6970 ISBN 0-8122-8020-2 Designed by Adrianne Onderdonk Dudden

To our fellow editors of The Papers of William Penn: Edwin Bronner David Fraser Alison Hirsch Craig Horle Richard Ryerson Jean Soderlund Scott Wilds Joy Wiltenburg Marianne Wokeck

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Contents

Tables

xi

Maps

xiii

Abbreviations xv Introduction xix WILLIAM PENN RECONSIDERED 1

The Personality of William Penn

3

MARY MAPLES DUNN

2

The Young Controversialist

15

HUGH BARBOUR

3

Penny Wise and Pound Foolish: Penn as a Businessman

37

RICHARD S. DUNN

4 A Representative of the Alternative Society of Restoration England? J. R. JONES

55

5 William Penn, 1689–1702: Eclipse, Frustration, and Achievement 71 CAROLINE ROBBINS

viii

THE WORLD OF WILLIAM PENN

PENN'S BRITAIN 6

Agricultural Conditions in England, circa 1680 87 JOAN THIRSK

7

The World Women Knew: Women Workers in the North of England During the Late Seventeenth Century 99 CAROLE SHAMMAS

8

Out of the Mainstream: Catholic and Quaker Women in the Restoration Northwest 117 MICHAEL J. GALGANO

9

The Irish Background to Penn's Experiment

139

NICHOLAS CANNY

10 Quakerism: Made in America?

157

RICHARD T. VANN

PENN'S AMERICA 11 "The Peaceable Kingdom:" Quaker Pennsylvania in the Stuart Empire 173 STEPHEN SAUNDERS WEBB

12 Brother Miquon: Good Lord!

195

FRANCIS JENNINGS

13 From "Dark Corners" to American Domesticity: The British Social Context of the Welsh and Cheshire Quakers' Familial Revolution in Pennsylvania, 1657–1685 215 BARRY LEVY

14 William Penn's Scottish Counterparts: The Quakers of "North Britain" and the Colonization of East New Jersey 241 NED LANDSMAN

15 Promoters and Passengers: The German Immigrant Trade, 1683–1775 259 MARIANNE S. WOKECK

ix Contents MEETING HOUSE AND COUNTING HOUSE 16 Puritanism, Spiritualism, and Quakerism: An Historiographical Essay 281 MELVIN B. ENDY, JR.

17 The Affirmation Controversy and Religious Liberty 303 J. WILLIAM FROST

18 Quaker Discipline and Order, 1680–1720: Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and London Yearly Meeting 323 EDWIN B. BRONNER

19 The Early Merchants of Philadelphia: The Formation and Disintegration of a Founding Elite 337 GARY B. NASH

20 The Great Quaker Business Families of Eighteenth-Century The Rise and Fall of a Sectarian Patriciate 363 JACOB M. PRICE

Notes on Contributors 401 Index 407

London:

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Tables

7.1

The Women who Transacted Business with the Fell Household by Marital Status, 1673-78. 103

7.2

Occupational Group, Sex, and Marital Status of Those Supplying Goods and Services to the Fell Household, 1673- 78. 105

7.3

Goods and Services Supplied to the Fell Household by Sex of Suppliers, 1673-78. 108-109

8.1

"Additions" in the Lancashire Recusancy Registers, 1678-79: Men with Catholic Wives. 123

9.1

Depositions by English Settlers in Munster, 1642.

10.1

Origins of British Friends as Shown in Certificates Received in Philadelphia, 1681-1750. 159

10.2

Occupational Distribution of Bristol Men's Monthly Meeting, 1 682-1 704, and of Male Quaker Emigrants from Bristol . 1 61

13.1

323 Personal Estates of "Middling" Northwest Men, 1660-91.

13.2

Land and Lease Bequests in 253 Northwest Wills, 1660-91 .

13.3

Children under 18 Years in 15 St. Asaph Parishes, c. 1681-84.

13.4

Patterns of Bequest in 253 Northwest Wills, 1660-91 .

144

228

221 223 225

xii

THE WORLD OF WILLIAM PENN

13.5 Hearth Assessments in Selected Merionethshire Parishes, 1664. 232 13.6 Estimated Annual Agricultural Income of 49 Quakers in Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, and Merionethshire, based on Tithe Seizures, 1660-85. 233

19 A

Religious Affiliation of the Philadelphia Merchants.

19.2

The Personal Wealth of Philadelphia Merchants at Death.

19.3 First-Generation Philadelphia Merchants. 19.4 Second-Generation Philadelphia Merchants. 20.1

354

354

355-358 359-362

Characteristics of 14 London Quaker Business Families.

369

Maps

3.1 John Thornton and John Seller. A Map of Some of the South and Eastbounds of Pennsylvania in America. London, 1681. HSR (Detail.) 44

3.2

The Geographical Origins of First Purchasers, 1681-1685

9.1

William Penn's Ireland

47

140

12.1 William Penn's Purchases Jrom the Indians, 1682-1684 199 14.1 The Delaware Valley, 1680-1684 242

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Abbreviations

APS American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia

BL

British Library, London CCRO Chester County Record Office, Chester, England

CSPD Anne Everett Green, et al, eds., Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1603-1704, 85 vols. (London, 1857-1972). CUCRO Cumbria County Record Office, Carlisle, Cumbria, England DNB Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, eds., Dictionary of National Biography, 63 vols., plus supplements (New York and London, 1885-1900) FLL Library of the Religious Society of Friends, London GSP Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia HCL Haverford College Library, Haverford, Pennsylvania

xvi Abbreviations HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission HSP

Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia JFHS Journal of the Friends Historical Society (London) LCRO Lancashire County Record Office, Preston, Lancashire, England Micro. The Papers of William Penn, Microfilm edition, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (1975), fourteen reels plus guide. References are to reel and frame Minutes of the Provincial Council Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1852) NLW National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, Cardiganshire, Wales

NNRO Norfolk and Norwich Record Office, Norwich, Norfolk, England PA

Samuel Hazard, et al, eds., Pennsylvania Archives (Philadelphia and Harrisburg, 1852- ) Penn, Select Works William Penn, Select Works, 4th ed., 3 vols. (London, 1825; reprint, New York, 1971) Penn, Works [Joseph Besse, ed.], A Collection of the Works of William Penn, 2 vols. (London, 1726; reprint, New York, 1974) PMHB Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography PRO Public Record Office, London

PWP Mary Maples Dunn and Richard S. Dunn, eds., The Papers of William Penn (Philadelphia, 1981); multivolume series in progress

xvii

Abbreviations

TCD Trinity College Library, Dublin

Thirsk, Agrarian History, 4 H. P. R. Finberg, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 4, 1500-1640, ed. Joan Thirsk (Cambridge, 1967) Thirsk, Agrarian History, 5 H. P. R. Finberg, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 5, pt. I, 1640-1750, ed. Joan Thirsk (Cambridge, 1984); vol. 5, pt. II, 1640-1750, ed. Joan Thirsk (Cambridge, 1985). Tolles, Meeting House Frederick B. Tolles, Meeting House and Counting House: The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia, 1682-1763 (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1948) Vann, Development of Quakerism Richard Vann, The Social Development of English Quakerism, 1655-1755 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969) WCRO Westmorland County Record Office, Kendal, Eng. WMQ William and Mary Quarterly

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Introduction

William Penn was incontestably one of the seminal figures of the late seventeenth century. He played a crucial role in protecting and sustaining the Quaker movement during its worst period of persecution; he was a major writer of religious, political, and didactic treatises; he championed religious toleration, civil rights, participatory government, interracial brotherhood, and international peace at a time when all of these noble causes were thoroughly unpopular; he participated conspicuously in English public life, parading his heterodox opinions for four decades; and he founded a thriving colony, arguably the most successful colony in America. Yet Penn has never been an easy person to understand or appreciate. Partly this is because he combined so many seemingly contradictory attibutes: he was at one time or another a rebellious son, a doting parent, a persecuted martyr, a deferential courtier, a religious enthusiast, a political lobbyist, a patrician gentleman, a weighty Friend, a polemical disputant, a sententious moralist, a shrewd entrepreneur, an improvident spendthrift, a visionary idealist, and an absentee landlord. Penn's Quakerism has generally mystified or irritated the secular-minded observers of his career. Penn's close association with the autocratic and impolitic James II has sullied his credentials as a political liberal. And Penn's sojourn in debtor's prison has raised embarrassing doubts about his basic competence and practical sense. There are other obstacles to understanding this man. He was truly a hybrid Anglo-American, the only major actor on the seventeenth-century colonial scene whose achievements in the Old World were approximately equivalent in significance to his achievements in the New World. Penn's counterparts in Massachusetts such as John Winthrop and John Cotton, or

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in Virginia such as Captain John Smith and Sir William Berkeley, had very peripheral careers in England by comparison. And none of the other lords proprietor who founded colonies in the New World, nor the royal governors who came over to represent the crown, had anything like his personal impact in America. This means that the historian must take a transatlantic view of William Penn and follow his activities on both sides of the ocean, for his successes and failures in England and in America were always closely interrelated. Furthermore, Penn's milieu was exceptionally wide and variegated, and his circle of acquaintance was very large. He lived simultaneously in a Quaker world and in a non-Quaker world, and he knew personally many hundred people in both worlds. He preferred the country to the city, but spent much of his life in London, Bristol, Dublin, and Philadelphia. He was a south-of-England man, but journeyed a number of times to the "dark corners" of northern Britain, where many Quakers lived. He made four long visits to Ireland and lived nearly a decade there altogether, more than twice the time he spent in Pennsylvania. He made several lengthy trips to France, Holland, and Germany. All of these travels are important in understanding his career, for Penn's experiences in the various regions of the British Isles and in Europe all helped to shape his actions as a colonizer in America. Thus anyone who studies this extraordinarily energetic man needs to recreate the multifaceted seventeenth-century environment in which he lived and worked. This volume, a collaborative effort by twenty specialists in AngloAmerican political, economic, intellectual, religious, and social history, is designed to address most of the interpretive problems described above. The undersigned editors have been working on this book for a number of years. Since 1978 we have been supervising an edition of The Papers of William Penn in five volumes, and at an early stage in this project we decided that we wanted to celebrate in a big way the three hundredth anniversary of Penn's royal charter for Pennsylvania in March 1681 —and coincidentally the publication of our first volume of Papers — by holding a public conference entitled, "The World of William Penn." A conference committee was formed, funds were raised, twenty-two panelists agreed to present papers, and the conference took place in Philadelphia on 19-22 March 1981. The high individual quality of the papers presented at this meeting, and their unified character when taken as a whole, encouraged us to convert these conference papers into a collection of essays. The University of Pennsylvania Press (which is publishing The Papers of William Penn) agreed to produce this book. Nineteen of the twenty-two panelists at the conference are represented in this volume. We regret that the other three panelists — Bernard Bailyn, Daniel Hoffman, and Margaret Spufford — were unable for various good reasons to contribute their papers, but in partial substitu-

xxi Introduction

tion Mary Maples Dunn (who was not a panelist at the conference) has written the opening essay for this collection. We have arranged the twenty essays into four sections. In the opening section the five essays bear directly on William Penn himself, much more so than in the rest of the book. Here the five authors present a variety of perspectives on Penn's behavior at critical junctures in his life. Mary Maples Dunn frames this discussion with a broadly argued essay on Penn's inner world, in which she discusses his emotional makeup and personality. Drawing upon her editorial work with Penn's personal correspondence, Dunn assesses his relations with his parents, and his two wives (as well as with other women), with fellow Quakers, and with social superiors and social subordinates. The next four essays focus more specifically upon particular stages of Penn's career. Hugh Barbour examines Penn's religious writings in the years 1668-75, immediately after his convincement. Barbour, a specialist in seventeenth-century Quaker apologetics, explores why the young Penn was such a combative writer, discusses the character of his theological debates, and considers their impact upon his future development. Richard S. Dunn then looks at Penn's performance as a businessman in the years 1672-85, when he achieved his greatest entrepreneurial success but also plunged heavily into debt. Drawing upon his editorial work with Penn's business records, Dunn examines Penn's relationship with his steward Philip Ford and traces the connections between Penn's experience as an AngloIrish landholder and his selling of Pennsylvania. In an essay that overlaps with Dunn's chronologically, J. R. Jones considers Penn's close association with James II during the years 1673-88. Jones, who is a specialist in English Restoration political history, explores Penn's role at the Stuart court and his views on Catholicism and absolutism in order to account for his "alternative" role in Restoration politics. The final essay in this section by Caroline Robbins explores Penn's writings on moral and didactic themes during the years 1689-1702. Robbins, a specialist in English intellectual history, focuses here on a series of Penn's books and pamphlets remarkably different in nature from the early debate tracts analyzed by Barbour. She argues that Penn achieved high intellectual distinction as a writer during these otherwise frustrating years. The next group of five essays considers various formative features of Penn's environment in England and Ireland. Joan Thirsk, a specialist in agrarian history, launches this discussion with a broad survey of farming conditions in England at the time Penn was recruiting farmers for Pennsylvania. Thirsk explores the development of agricultural diversification and new specialty crops in the 1670s and 1680s; her emphasis on modernization in English agriculture compares interestingly with Canny's commentary on farming in Ireland, Levy's on Wales, and Landsman's on Scotland. The next two essays discuss the economic and social circumstances of women in northern England, where Quakerism was particularly strong and where

xxii

Introduction

Penn recruited some of his colonists. Carole Shammas, a specialist in Anglo-American economic history, analyzes the household account book of Margaret Fox, the Quaker matriarch, to get a close look at the pattern of female labor and employment in Lancashire during the 1670s. From this evidence Shammas deduces that the great majority of women in this locality worked at one time or another during their lives as peddlers or day laborers or live-in servants, and that they were segregated into these inferior and low-paying jobs by males who took the more attractive work. Michael J. Galgano, a specialist in Restoration social history, sets up a comparison between two large groups of religious outcasts in northern England: Quaker women and Catholic women. He finds that by every measure the female Quakers challenged the Anglican establishment more combatively and uncompromisingly than their Catholic counterparts and also experienced much harsher persecution. Nicholas Canny, a specialist in early modern Irish history, next surveys the character of English settlement in Munster, where Penn was a large landholder. Canny argues that the English planters of Penn's day had considerably less chance for success in Munster than their predecessors who had initiated English settlement there before 1641, because land, labor, and capital were all getting scarce in Ireland by the Restoration era. Richard T. Vann, a specialist in British Quaker demography, rounds out this section by discussing a central question: How many of the people who emigrated from England and Ireland with Penn in the 1680s were Quakers? Surveying a large mass of statistical evidence from Quaker registers, Vann contends that "only a minority of the first settlers of Pennsylvania were British Quakers in good standing," but he goes on to argue that many of these emigrants converted to Quakerism once they reached America. With the third group of essays the scene shifts to America. Stephen Saunders Webb, a specialist in British imperial history, first examines the circumstances under which Penn obtained his charter for Pennsylvania in 1680-81. Since Webb believes that the thrust of Stuart colonial policy at this time was toward purposeful military centralization, he regards Penn's proprietary grant for a Quaker colony as an anomaly to be explained by his excellent court connections and perfect timing. Webb also stresses that Penn had to accept severe restrictions on his proprietary privileges during the course of the charter negotiations. In the next essay, Francis Jennings, a specialist in Indian history, explores Penn's diplomatic relations with the Delawares, Iroquois, and other tribes. Like Webb, Jennings sees Penn as an anomaly: he was one of very few Englishmen in the seventeenth century who treated the native Americans with elementary justice and decency. But Jennings also stresses that Penn was trying to expand his territorial claims vis-a-vis New York and Maryland through Indian diplomacy, and that he expected to obtain trading profits from his chain of friendship with the Indians. The next three essays are all transatlantic, following particular

xxiii

Introduction

ethnic groups of settlers from the Old World to the New. Barry Levy, a specialist in American colonial family history, discusses the Quakers from Wales and from the Welsh border county of Cheshire who migrated to Pennsylvania in the 1680s and 1690s. Levy argues that the Quakers who lived in Wales and Cheshire were so handicapped by poverty and mortality that they could neither sustain independent family life nor protect and nurture their children. But by moving to Pennsylvania these people achieved a radical change: autonomy for their households, love and nurture for their families, and independence for their children. In a parallel essay, Ned Landsman, another American colonial social historian, discusses the Quakers from Scotland who migrated to New Jersey in the 1680s. Landsman argues that these Scottish Quakers were more interested in joining up with fellow Scots than with fellow Friends, and so they chose East New Jersey rather than Pennsylvania. Once settled in America, they soon abandoned Quakerism while retaining other peculiarly Scottish social and cultural traditions. Marianne S. Wokeck, a specialist on colonial Pennsylvania, concludes this section by examining one of Penn's most distinctive legacies: the promotion of migration from Germany into Pennsylvania, which began in the 1680s and became a mass movement in the mid-eighteenth century. To explain the dynamics of this migration, Wokeck focuses on the merchants who organized the trade and on the immigrants who came over, and she shows how this business changed character as the volume of German migration rose, peaked, and ebbed. The final group of essays comments upon the central dualism in Penn's life and in Quaker history—the tension, sometimes creative and sometimes corrupting, between the Friends' inward spiritual faith and their external work ethic. The late Frederick B. Tolles embraced both sides of this subject in his admirable book, Meeting House and Counting House. Our authors are more modest. Three of them discuss the meeting house and two the counting house. Melvin B. Endy, a specialist on the history of early Quakerism, initiates the meeting house discussion with doctrinal definitions. He argues that it is a mistake to describe the seventeenth-century Quakers as extremist Puritans. They were a Spirit-oriented group, doctrinally distinct from Puritanism, and linked much more closely to other Spiritualists such as the Familists, Seekers, and Ranters. J. William Frost, another historian of early Quakerism, examines why Penn and his fellow Friends made such a major point of refusing to swear oaths. Frost shows how the oath controversy tended to distance Quakers from all other sects, and how the long struggle to work out an acceptable alternate form of affirmation produced bitter internal quarrels among Friends, during which they lost sight of many of the original issues. Edwin B. Bronner, also a specialist in early Quaker history, takes up the question of institutional organization among Friends and compares the development of yearly meetings and of disciplinary rules in England and America. Bronner minimizes the organizational distinc-

xxiv

Introduction

tions between Philadelphia and London Quakers and argues that the two communities kept in close touch through the exchange of books and epistles, and the frequent transatlantic visits of Public Friends. Turning to the counting house, the final two essays offer a broad comparison between the Quaker merchants of Philadelphia and London. Gary B. Nash, a specialist in early American urban history (among other topics), identifies the principal Philadelphia merchants of 1681-1740, and shows that Quaker merchants active during the first generation (1681-1710) failed to perpetuate themselves and were replaced by a new merchant elite (1711-40) of quite different character. Nash argues that these second-generation merchants were more successful businessmen than their predecessors, but were far less active in politics, and were also no longer predominantly Quakers in religious affiliation. Some of these findings are echoed by Jacob M. Price, a specialist in economic history (among other topics), as he traces the fortunes of fourteen great Quaker business families in eighteenth-century London. Since Price focuses on particular families that sustained their business firms over several generations, and that intermarried with the other leading Quaker business families, he naturally finds less discontinuity than Nash. But Price does see significant long-range changes: by 1790 most of his families had shifted from overseas trade into banking and brewing, and as they accumulated great wealth and entrenched themselves in the British upper middle class, they deserted the Society of Friends for the Church of England. In the course of preparing this volume the editors have had a great deal of help from many people. We wish to thank the Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies, the Institute of Early American History and Culture, the Conference on British Studies, and the Conference of Quaker Historians and Archivists for pooling forces ecumenically to sponsor the conference of March 1981 that launched this book. We thank Stephen B. Baxter, Jacob M. Price, and Thad W. Tate for joining us in devising the conference program, and Richard R. Beeman and Ann F. Stanley for doing such a fine job of managing the conference. We especially thank the National Endowment for the Humanities, the McLean Contributionship, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, the Public Committee for the Humanities in Pennsylvania, the Shoemaker Fund, and the Society of the College at the University of Pennsylvania for funding the conference and thereby making this book possible. We thank Craig W. Horle for his crucial and expert editorial assistance. Marjorie George, Margaret Yasuda, Marianne Wokeck, and Joy Wiltenburg all helped with word processing, and Scott M. Wilds did the coding. Deborah Stuart was our copy editor, and Adrianne Onderdonk Dudden was our designer. We thank Ingalill Hjelm and her colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania Press for all of their help with this project. And lastly, we know that it is custom-

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ary in perorations such as this to thank one's spouse most of all — which we can scarcely do — and so instead we offer our gratitude to the eighteen historians who have joined us in this collaborative effort to understand and appreciate the world of William Penn. RICHARD S. DUNN MARY MAPLES DUNN

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WILLIAM PENN RECONSIDERED

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MARY MAPLES DUNN

1