William Penn

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William Penn ( – ) was an English writer, religious thinker, and influential Quaker who founded the Province of Pennsylvania during the British colonial era. Penn, an advocate of democracy and religious freedom, was known for his amicable relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Native Americans who had resided in present-day Pennsylvania prior to European settlements in the state.

In 1681, King Charles II granted a large piece of his North American land holdings along the North Atlantic Ocean coast to Penn to offset debts he owed Penn's father, the admiral and politician Sir William Penn. The land included the present-day states of Pennsylvania and Delaware. The following year, in 1682, Penn left England for what was then British America, sailing up Delaware Bay and the Delaware River past earlier Swedish and Dutch riverfront colonies in what is present-day New Castle, Delaware. On this occasion, the colonists pledged allegiance to Penn as their new proprietor, and the first Pennsylvania General Assembly was held.

Penn then journeyed further north up the Delaware River and founded Philadelphia on the river's western bank. Penn's Quaker government was not viewed favorably by the previous Dutch, Swedish and English settlers in what is now Delaware, and in addition to this, the land was claimed for half a century by the neighboring Province of Maryland's proprietor family, the Calverts. In 1704, the three southernmost counties of provincial Pennsylvania were granted permission to form a new, semi-autonomous Delaware Colony.

As one of the earlier supporters of colonial unification, Penn wrote and urged for a union of all the English colonies in what, following the American Revolutionary War, later became the United States. The democratic principles that he included in the West Jersey Concessions and set forth in the Pennsylvania Frame of Government inspired delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to frame the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified by the delegates in 1787.

A man of deep religious conviction, Penn authored numerous works, exhorting believers to adhere to the spirit of Primitive Christianity. Penn was imprisoned several times in the Tower of London due to his faith, and his book ''No Cross, No Crown'', published in 1669, which he authored from jail, has become a classic of Christian theological literature.