William Penn

William Penn received a classical education at the Chigwell grammar school in Essex, England, and then matriculated at the University of Oxford (1660), from which he was expelled (1662) for religious Nonconformity. After attending the Protestant college in Saumur, France, he entered Lincoln’s Inn, where he spent a year reading law.

Having spent his early years in the Essex countryside, William Penn moved with his family to London and then to Ireland. After he was expelled from the University of Oxford, Penn was sent by his father, Adm. Sir William Penn, on a grand tour of the European continent.

Penn rejected Anglicanism and joined the Quakers (Society of Friends), who were subject to official persecution in England. He was the author of a number of books in which he variously argued for religious toleration, expounded the Quaker-Puritan morality, and expressed a qualified anti-Trinitarianism.

William Penn was an English Quaker leader and advocate of religious freedom who oversaw the founding of Pennsylvania as a refuge for Quakers and other religious minorities of Europe. His trial on a trumped-up charge of inciting a riot in 1670 resulted in a landmark ruling which established jury independence in English law.