Liberty, Conscience & Toleration: The Political Thought of William Penn. By Andrew R. Murphy.

Abstract

Andrew R. Murphy makes the case that many people know of William Penn but that few know him well. In Liberty, Conscience & Toleration he (re)-introduces the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania to the scholarly community with special focus on Penn’s role in shaping the history of political theory and practice centered on religious toleration. A detailed and critical examination of the career of Penn and his political writings are warranted at this time primarily for two reasons: it has been almost half a century since the last book-length biography by Mary Maples Dunn was published (William Penn: Politics and Conscience [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967]) and, second, scholars with interests in tolerationist history have shifted and broadened their exploration of political thought in the seventeenth century to include the Anglo-American world on both sides of the North Atlantic and also the western European empires reaching farther west as well as east.