“As the Discharge of My Conscience to God”: Narrative, Personhood, and the Construction of Legal Order in 17th-Century Quaker Culture

Abstract

On August 25, 1681, William Penn sat down to write to James Harrison, a fellow Quaker from Lancashire, about the New World. Having received a charter from Charles II for a new North American province — Pennsylvania — five months earlier, Penn was in the midst of intense preparation to ensure the success of his endeavor. Despite the considerable time and effort that Pennsylvania was taking from him, Penn still continued his work on behalf of persecuted Friends in England; during the early years of Quakerism, he frequently used his influence in the royal government to secure the release of imprisoned Quakers. Penn himself had run afoul of the law in January of 1681, having been forced to defend himself against charges that his profession Quakerism was really a cover for “popery.” Perhaps this recent incident, only months before his letter to Harrison, reminded him of what he had long suspected: that the Society of Friends would never be free from persecution in Anglican England. Certainly, he had higher hopes for Pennsylvania.