It took all kinds of people to make up America.  Most of them were humble folk led by such sturdy members of the middle class as Captain John Smith and John Rolfe of Virginia, Miles Standish and William Bradford of Plymouth.  Because of this fact, the Story of America is a chronicle of plain people seeking and often achieving a  better life than the ones they had in the Old World.   Regardless, whether people came to America for a better way of life, or for religious freedom from the Church of England, such as the Pilgrims, Puritans, and Quakers, they had to have encouragement and financial support of the upper class, men whose position and wealth enabled them to found and develop new plantations in America.

No individual founder of a colony contributed more fruitfully towards assisting English men and women in the attainment of their goal of a better life in America than William Penn. 

William Penn was a well-educated aristocrat, schooled at Oxford, the son of a British Admiral, Sir William Penn.  He readily won friendships and lasting influence in high places.  William Penn was born into the Church of England, but was converted to the Quakers by Thomas Loe, a Quaker preacher. 

As a Quaker, Penn quickly became a powerful advocate of freedom of conscience, preaching and writing to advance the teachings of the Quakers, and promoting acceptance of the doctrines of political liberty, being an opponent of economic oppression of the many by the few.

By virtue of his legal training at Lincoln’s Inn, he was a successful defender of the security and property of Englishmen. William Penn was a man of no compromise.  While in prison for his religious convictions, he wrote, No Cross, No Crown, setting forth many of the principles that we Americans like to call the American way of life. Between 1665 and 1670 William Penn made several missionary trips to Holland and Germany.

At the age of thirty-three, Penn first became interested in America, having his great convictions formed and developed. He was given the opportunity to put them to practice when he was made one of the trustees to manage the property of West New Jersey, which the Society of Friends had acquired as a refuge for its members.

In 1677 Burlington was founded under a charter of “Laws, Concessions, and Agreements” largely drawn up by William Penn, guaranteeing religious freedom with the statement that ‘no Men, or number of Men upon Earth, hath Power or Authority to rule over Men’s Consciences in religious Matters.”  Other clauses in the same document were, “we lay a foundation for after ages to understand their liberty as men and Christians,….for we put the power in the people.”  At first opportunity Penn had written his liberalism into fundamental law and put it into practice in a new society.  From these roots, freedom and democracy grew. 

(Today liberalism means just the opposite as it did in the beginning of this nation.  Now liberalism means power to the government to do what is best for the people.  The few control the many.)

In 1681 Charles II, King of England, paid a long-standing debt to Admiral Penn by granting the son, William, a huge tract of land north of Maryland.  Penn named it Pennsylvania in honor of his father.  The following year, the Duke of York, transferred the territory known as Delaware to him. 

Now Penn could work out all of his social and political ideas, people of any faith could dwell and worship there in peace, a place where large land owners, as himself, and small farms could dwell with the same rights, under the same frame of government, which he issued in 1682, “that any Government is free to the People under it where the Laws rule and the People are a Party to those Laws”.  History tells us that it worked.  Pennsylvania and Delaware are the results.

William Penn did not spend much time America, less than four years in the colonies, but great things he accomplished for them.  In 1682 he crossed over to the colonies and began to construct a great estate on the Delaware above Bristol, which he named Pennbury.  Although He remained in the colonies for only twenty-two months, he saw to the laying out of Philadelphia, the sound and permanent establishing of the government, the attracting, by skillful advertising, of thousands of colonists from Holland and Ireland as well as from England, and peace with the Indians. 

Penn returned again to the colonies in 1699 to 1701 and gave them a more liberal charter.  This act completed his career as a constructive colonizer and liberal governor of provinces, unlike liberal governors of today, who sway towards Big Government.

William Penn’s influence on America was paramount.  He shared prominently in establishing three colonies, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.  He saw that humble folks got a chance to start their lives anew under favorable conditions; he preached and practiced religious freedom; he was a great humanitarian in an inhumane age and his ideals helped form the democracy we have today in America.