William Penn: Spanning boundaries
Rhiannon Grant gives her thoughts about a recent lecture on William Penn by Andrew Murphy
An adopted American, a leader, a communicator, a visionary, who was also terrible with money, blind to his own faults, patronising, sometimes lauded and sometimes despised: William Penn emerges from Andrew Murphy’s analysis as a fully rounded and complex human being.
Andrew Murphy began his George Richardson 2018 Lecture, at Woodbrooke, on William Penn after 300 years: Paradoxes and legacies of a boundary-spanner with an outline of four paradoxes in William Penn’s life – clashes between different sets of ideals and facts that shape his reality. His Quaker values of egalitarianism clash with the social hierarchy in which he was raised, and which he cannot fully escape even as he opposes it: he keeps his hat on in front of the king, but expects other people to defer to his opinions and demands.
His desire to champion popular institutions clashes with his desire to work with the monarchy, especially James II, to secure religious freedom. His identity as a coloniser is in conflict with his inability to spend time in Pennsylvania, and – partly because of that – he is unable to benefit from the financial advantages offered by the colony and goes bankrupt. This isn’t helped at all by his lifestyle: another aspect of his privileged upbringing he never drops is the habit of living well, even when that is beyond his means.
In order to understand these situations better, Andrew Murphy introduced the idea of a ‘boundary-spanning’ person – someone who facilitates the flow of information within a group and to key figures in the world outside. William Penn could be seen in this light, and looking at him in this way also highlights an important feature of the ‘boundary-spanning’ position – it is one that is bound up with power and power relations. William Penn’s upbringing and experiences, both before and after his convincement, locate him (often in influential positions) in the political and economic networks of the day. He is already known to the court and accustomed to mixing with powerful people.
Working this idea through, Andrew Murphy spent most of the rest of the lecture talking about William Penn’s life in more detail, with a particular focus on the 1670s. Here, William Penn’s defences of Quakers in general and George Fox in particular provide an illustration of his boundary-spanning role. Within the Quaker community, William Penn defends George Fox and the newly developed Gospel Order from all comers. Andrew Murphy noted that probably only George Fox himself and Margaret Fell were more committed than William Penn to Fox’s leadership!
Outside the Quaker community, William Penn writes extensively at this time, responding to all sorts of attacks – he also engages in debates with people such as Richard Baxter, who apparently debated with him for seven hours. Together with George Whitehead and others, William Penn is part of a kind of ‘rapid response team’ who are engaged in what we would now call ‘public relations’ on behalf of the Quaker movement.
Internal Quaker criticism of William Penn was tempered by an awareness of the need to maintain a ‘good front’, despite the fact that there was plenty to criticise: in particular, his financial situation, refusal to ‘downsize’ to a more modest lifestyle and, sometimes, his relationship with the monarchy.
Looking back, we might want to add to this list things that were normalised at the time: owning slaves, unfair dealings with Native Americans and failure to communicate well with his own settlers, for example. This was a boundary he proved unable to span in the end. His position of influence, which gave him routes across some boundaries of nations and social class, could not connect him to his own people.
Rhiannon is from the Centre for Research in Quaker Studies at Woodbrooke.
Liberty, Conscience, and Toleration: The Political Thought of William Penn by Andrew R Murphy is published by Oxford University Press. A general biography, William Penn: A Life, will be published later this year.
