William Penn: A testimony
Chris Skidmore writes about the testimony to the grace of God in the life of William Penn
It is a valuable tradition that testimonies to the grace of God in the life of departed Friends should present the Friend warts and all. So, it was with William Penn when his local Monthly Meeting wrote the testimony that follows. He lived the latter part of his life with his second wife, Hannah Callowhill, and their family at Ruscombe House, near Twyford: beset with financial difficulties, he suffered two strokes in 1712. Nevertheless, he continued to worship with Reading Friends in a house which is now a part of the Reading International Solidarity Centre (RISC) in London Street and subsequently in the new Meeting house that was built in 1714 on the present site in Church Street. The testimony survives as a copy in the Berkshire Quarterly Meeting Book of Sufferings together with the answers to the queries with which it was sent to Yearly Meeting 1719. Little else remains as a reminder of William Penn’s association with Reading except a nineteenth century brass plaque in RISC: Ruscombe House was demolished in 1830.
Our Friend William Penn departed this life at his house at Ruscombe in the county of Berkshire the 30th of the 5th month [July] 1718 and his body was conveyed thence the 7th of the 6th month following [August] to Friends burying ground at Jordans in the county of Buckinghamshire where he was honourably interred, being accompanied by many friends and others from divers parts. Being a member from our Monthly Meeting at Reading at the time of his decease and some years before we can do no less but, in giving the foregoing account, say something respecting the character of so worthy a man and not only refer to other Meetings where his residence was in former time who are witnesses of the great self-denial he underwent in the prime of his youth and the patience with which he bore many a heavy cross but also think it our duty to cast in our mite to set forth in part his deserved commendation.
He was a man of great abilities; of an excellent sweetness of disposition; quick of thought and ready utterance; full of the qualification of true discipleship, even love without dissimulation; as extensive in charity as comprehensive in knowledge and to whom malice and ingratitude were utter strangers, so ready to forgive enemies that the ungrateful were not excepted.
Had not the management of his temporal affairs been attended with some deficiencies, envy itself would need to seek for matter of accusation and yet in charity even that part of his conduct may be ascribed to a peculiar sublimity of mind.
Notwithstanding which, he may, without straining his character, be ranked among the learned, good and great whose abilities are sufficiently manifested throughout his elaborate writings which are so many lasting monuments of his admired qualifications and are the esteem of learned and judicious men among all persuasions. And though in old age, by reason of some shocks of a violent distemper, his intellects were much Impaired, yet his sweetness and loving disposition surmounted its utmost efforts and remained so, though reason almost failed.
To conclude he was learned without vanity, apt without forwardness, facetious in conversation yet weighty and serious, of an extraordinary greatness of mind yet void of the stain of ambition, as free from rigid gravity as he was clean of unseemly levity.
A Man; A Scholar; A Friend; A Minister;
surpassing in superlative endowments whose memorial will be valued by the wise and blest with the just.
