Ideological Origins of William Penn's 'Holy Experiment'

Abstract

The story of the founding of Pennsylvania is well-known to historians and the public alike. Penn, having inherited the debt owed to his father by Charles II, leveraged this debt to acquire a proprietary charter to over 45,000 square miles of what would become Penn's religiously tolerant Quaker colony. Less well-known are the origins of the ideas that buttressed Penn's colonial government. One historian wrote that William Penn remains a man apart, a figure whom many know a little, but few know well. Regarding the Quakers, another historian concluded that [t]he Society of Friends...have enormous significance for the history of humanitarian and religious reforms, but in a discussion of eighteenth-century arguments about the constitution they can be safely neglected. As a result of this neglect, there is a gap in the scholarly work regarding the philosophical origins of Penn's ideas for governing the Pennsylvania colony. This paper seeks to fill that gap by examining Penn's writings and ideas about governance and searching for their roots in the people and the events that shaped his early life in England. Ultimately, the ideological origins that underpinned Penn's Holy Experiment were primarily derived from the ancient English constitution, as exemplified by the radical English Leveller movement of the mid-17th century, and included religious freedom, trial by jury, and popular consent by expanded suffrage. The radical libertarian ideas of the Levellers, as applied to Pennsylvania's colonial government, were remarkably liberal for their time. The legacy of Penn's ideas flourished into the 18th century and provided a lasting influence through the Founding generation and beyond.