The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction William Penn: His Life, His Times, and His Work
• Notes On Texts and Annotations
• Chronology of Penn’s Life and Times
• {part I}: Foundations the Ancient Constitution and English Liberties
• 1.: The People’s Ancient and Just Liberties Asserted, In the Trial of William Penn and William Mead, At the Sessions Held At the Old-baily In London, the First, Third, Fourth and Fifth of September, 1670, Against the Most Arbitrary Procedur
• 2.: England ’s Present Interest Considered, With Honour to the Prince, and Safety to the People (1675)
• {part Ii}: Penn’s Argument For Religious Liberty
• 3.: The Great Case of Liberty of Conscience Once More Briefly Debated and Defended, By the Authority of Reason, Scripture, and Antiquity: Which May Serve the Place of a General Reply to Such Late Discourses; As Have Oppos’d a Toleration (1670) the a
• 4.: One Project For the Good of England That Is, Our Civil Union Is Our Civil Safety Humbly Dedicated to the Great Council, the Parliament of England (1679)
• 5.: An Address to Protestants of All Perswasions More Especially the Magistracy and Clergy, For the Promotion of Virtue and Charity (1679) In Two Parts. By W. P. a Protestant.
• 6.: A Brief Examination and State of Liberty Spiritual, Both With Respect to Persons In Their Private Capacity, and In Their Church Society and Communion (1681)
• 7.: A Perswasive to Moderation to Church-dissenters, In Prudence and Conscience: Humbly Submitted to the King and His Great Council (1686)
• 8.: Good Advice to the Church of England, Roman-catholick, and Protestant Dissenter: In Which It Is Endeavoured to Be Made Appear, That It Is Their Duty, Principle, and Interest, to Abolish the Penal Laws and Tests (1687)
• {part Iii}: General Principles and Specific Events
• 9.: The Proposed Comprehension Soberly, and Not Unseasonably, Consider’d (1672)
• 10.: England’s Great Interest, In the Choice of This New Parliament Dedicated to All Her Free-holders and Electors (1679)
• 11.: A Letter From a Gentleman In the Country, to His Friends In London, Upon the Subject of the Penal Laws and Tests (1687)
• {part Iv}: an Expanding Vision For the Future
• 12.: An Essay Towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe By the Establishment of an European Dyet, Parliament, Or Estates (1693)

NOTES ON TEXTS AND ANNOTATIONS

William Penn’s political writings can pose challenges to the modern reader. Like many of his contemporaries, Penn refers to Scripture, classical sources, church fathers, Reformation and post-Reformation history, and other sources prodigiously, unsystematically, and often obliquely. Many references presented as direct quotes turn out, upon visiting the primary sources, to be Penn’s paraphrases. Italicization and capitalization follow no discernible pattern. Such procedures were the norm, not the exception, in early modern political writing, especially for a writer like Penn who often wrote in the heat of political debate.

The purpose of my annotations is not to provide an exhaustive clarification of each of Penn’s many citations—such an endeavor would be unhelpful and distracting—but rather to guide the reader in appreciating the many building blocks upon which Penn built his theory of religious liberty. Thus, the antiquated spelling, punctuation, and syntax have not been altered; however, typographical errors have been silently corrected. For general references to individuals and groups, I have not, as a rule, included an annotation: Penn simply makes too many, too scattered references for a volume of this sort to address each one individually. I would refer readers interested in pursuing such references to the Dictionary of National Biography or to the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation.

Where individuals or groups are mentioned in connection with specific texts, I have generally provided a note. I have also annotated Penn’s many scriptural references, and all quotations of my own are taken from the King James version of the Bible. Where Penn provides the reference in his text, I have not provided any additional annotations. Otherwise, I have included some general information on the author or text to guide those readers who wish to explore Penn’s sources more deeply. (For sources that have gone through multiple printings, I have cited by chapter rather than page number.) Similarly, on Latin quotations, I have not translated where Penn himself includes a translation in the text, and I have not annotated single-word Latin phrases or ones whose meaning seems clear in context.

None of the editorial annotations can be considered a substitute for reading Penn’s works alongside good histories of England, of the Reformation, of the Christian Church more generally, and of the rise of religious toleration in early modern Europe; below I suggest a few. Regardless of whether the reader is fully conversant with the wide range of historical, philosophical, scriptural, and political references that fill Penn’s political works, however, I hope that this edition will renew interest in Penn as a political thinker and in Penn’s works as an important element of the Anglo-American heritage. All texts in this volume are reproduced from A Collection of the Works of William Penn, 2 volumes (London, 1726).

early christianity and the reformation

• Chadwick, Owen. The Reformation (Penguin History of the Church, vol. 3). Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964.
• Dickens, A. G. The English Reformation. New York: Schocken, 1964.
• The Encyclopedia of Early Christianity. 2d ed. Edited by Everett Ferguson (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, vol. 1839). New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1997.
• The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation. Edited by Hans J. Hillerbrand. 4 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

english history

• The Dictionary of National Biography. 22 vols. Edited by Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee. London: Oxford University Press, 1921–22.
• Kishlansky, Mark. A Monarchy Transformed: Britain 1603–1714. London: Penguin, 1996.
• The statutes of the realm . . . From original records and authentic manuscripts . . . 10 vols. London: G. Eyre and A. Strahan, 1810–28.

religious toleration

• Jordan, W. K. The Development of Religious Toleration in England and America. 4 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1932–40.
• Lecler, Joseph. Toleration and the Reformation. 2 vols. Translated by T. L. Westow. New York: Association Press, 1960.