William Penn must have wondered more than once where home really was.
In his homeland he certainly didn’t feel happy or fulfilled — despite his father’s legacy, honors, and titles — and more than once, just like his father (though for different reasons), he found himself sleeping behind bars.
Sir Penn Sr. had been a trump card for Cromwell’s Commonwealth.
A seasoned admiral and multi-ranked naval officer, he had secured more than one victory for the English crown, including the conquest of Jamaica, where he established a long-lasting British trading post.
Unfortunately, the crushing defeat and loss of Hispaniola’s most important island would lead to the confiscation of the lands he had been granted by the king, and he himself was imprisoned for quite some time.
The restless temperament of the son did little to help the family cause. Young William’s political and philosophical ideas went against the morals and doctrines of the age — a time in which he felt uncomfortable, certainly not appreciated, because he refused to sing in tune with everyone else.
His is a life of constant rebellions, the first of which was his affiliation with the Quakers — a movement that still today sparks curiosity for the modernity of its thinking and for the atrocities suffered by its members over the years.
More than once the king warned him; more than once his father tried to set him straight, to cool his fiery spirit.
We’re in the mid-1600s.
The Reformation was still sending out aftershocks, and the Quakers — the Society of Friends, as they called themselves — were subject to endless persecutions and condemnations.
Especially their founder, George Fox, a charismatic and highly subversive character, far ahead of his time, with a brilliance that still feels uncommon.
One of his sayings (which stayed on my fridge for years) would go down in history and inspire more than one revolutionary political movement:
“False peace must be disturbed.”
You can imagine that with a motto like that guiding you, the road to enlightenment was anything but smooth. The Quakers of Penn’s era were despised by both the Anglican and Catholic churches.
How could these institutions tolerate people who refused to swear oaths, refused to remove their hats before nobles, refused to drink alcohol, and rejected hierarchies — believing instead that we are all equal, especially in the search for the Light which is already within us, only requiring method, discipline, and devotion to be found?
Ideas like personal freedom, responsibility for one’s actions, fraternity, tolerance, and respect for differences were — and still are — at the heart of the Friends’ philosophy.
A doctrine that was anything but harmless.
When I think of the irregulars of the time — the revolutionaries, the misfits, the disturbers of (false) peace — I can imagine what an extraordinary opportunity it must have been for such people to start over elsewhere.
And I also imagine what King George II must have told young William, something like:
“My boy, if you keep this up, you’ll end badly. Leave those ‘false’ friends behind. Choose better company. Think of your father — he’s dead, but his name must live on. Don’t tarnish it. Think of your family. Think of your country…
“On that piece of paper is your second home. Make good use of it. Make us proud. Keep high the name of your first homeland. England is with you.”