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Penning a Constitution: Creativity and Innovation in William Penn’s Draft Constitutions for Colonial Pennsylvania

Anna Hellier-Lloyd

Résumés

Cet article vise à réévaluer l’importance et les implications, dans le domaine des études transatlantiques, des dix-neuf propositions de constitution élaborées par William Penn pour sa colonie de Pennsylvanie (1681-82). Une telle approche a un double avantage. Elle propose de reconsidérer la chronologie de leur composition, offrant de nouvelles perspectives sur le processus d’élaboration de cette constitution coloniale spécifique, et envisage les implications de cette nouvelle chronologie pour notre compréhension de ce que Penn et ses collaborateurs essayaient de construire. Ensuite, en soulignant la créativité mise en œuvre dans cette série de propositions, librement inspirées des divers modèles constitutionnels ayant émergé au cours du XVIIe siècle en Angleterre, cet article espère donner un nouvel exemple du constitutionnalisme dynamique en action à cette époque.

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Notes de la rédaction

Anna Hellier-Lloyd a remporté le Prix de thèse de la Société d’études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles en 2024 pour son travail intitulé « Radicalism, Religion and Republicanism in the Developing Political Thought of William Penn, Circa 1660-1683 » soutenu en 2021 à l’Université Lettres-Sorbonne sous la direction de M. le Professeur Pierre Lurbe.

Texte intégral

  • 1 The author was granted by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania generous access to this bound volu (...)

1As the founder of the colony of Pennsylvania on the North American continent in 1681, the Quaker William Penn is a familiar figure for American political and constitutional historians. Far less known this side of the Atlantic by historians other than those of Quaker history, he deserves better recognition for his significant contribution to the rich political and constitutional debates of seventeenth-century England in the aftermath of the English Civil Wars (1642-49) and the Restoration (1660). This article sets out to highlight the highly creative and collaborative approach of William Penn and his advisers to the process of drafting on English soil a constitution for colonial Pennsylvania, a process which drew on and innovatively reconfigured the diverse political and constitutional debates of this revolutionary period in British history. At the base of this analysis will be a fresh examination of the nineteen manuscript draft proposals drawn up by William Penn and his advisers between 1681 and 1682 that are currently preserved in a single volume (Penn Manuscripts, vol. 8) in the library of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.1

Beginnings: drawing on multiple constitutional models for inspiration

  • 2 The transcription of this royal charter for the Province of Pennsylvania granted to William Penn by (...)

2Before analysing the process of constitution-building as it appears across the collection of draft constitutions for the colony of Pennsylvania, it is necessary to provide some context. William Penn was granted the royal charter enabling him to establish a colony on the North American continent in March 1681 on account of King Charles ii’s outstanding financial and personal debt to Penn’s father, an admiral actively involved in bringing the King back to England at the Restoration. Penn himself was well-known to the King as a regular petitioner for toleration towards Quakers. Granting Penn a royal colonial charter in 1681 was a perfect way for Charles ii to repay the son for his father’s services whilst appeasing the Quakers (Dunn and Dunn 22).2

3This gave William Penn and his advisers an ideal opportunity to put into practice the radical religious, legal, political and constitutional reforms they had been campaigning for since the early years of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers. The Quakers were one of the more radical non-conformist religious groups to emerge out of the post-English-Reformation period of intense religious questioning and seeking, leading up to and continuing into the English Civil War years. They rejected all church hierarchy, accepting no ministers, bishops, or church leaders whom they deemed hirelings of the established churches fattening themselves at the expense of their parishioners. They also rejected the need for a specific place of worship, maintaining that all places on earth were equally holy and fit to receive the presence of God. They held their initial meetings before large crowds in open fields and streets, and smaller silent meetings for worship among the convinced in ordinary homes of followers. Even when they began to build purpose-built meeting-houses from the early 1670s, these more resembled ordinary dwelling houses or church-hall-like structures than traditional churches, having no cross floor-design, spire or altar. Their religious practices were based on equality between all, with God the only recognized higher authority. Meetings were held primarily in silence, with anyone who felt moved to do so by God permitted to speak, negating the need for fixed pastors or ministers.

  • 3 See Corns and Lowenstein, and particularly Lowenstein’s chapter “The War of the Lamb: George Fox an (...)

4Such open questioning of church authority was obviously highly disturbing and threatening for the established Church of England with its sophisticated structures and hierarchies, which needed to reassert itself after the religious and political turmoil of the English Civil War and Interregnum years. Moreover, Quaker religious practices and beliefs also had implications for civil society and the civil authorities, including magistrates, parliament and king. From the early 1650s and through to the 1680s, the Quakers had been campaigning not only for religious toleration, but also for a fairer legal and judicial system with true equality for all before the law, and for political and legislative reforms in parliament to guarantee the equal religious, legal and political rights of all Englishmen. Their campaign had been highly sophisticated and multi-faceted right from the founding of the Religious Society of Friends in the early 1650s, with its robust and representative church structure specifically aimed at organising resistance to oppression and persecution from the established church, local judiciary and state authorities. They developed from the 1650s an early-modern form of peaceful resistance, civil disobedience, and non-violent action aimed at keeping both the general public and the church and state authorities at all levels focussed on their grievances and demands. This included the writing and publishing of religious tracts with underlying political messages to all earthly authorities. It also included the writing and publishing of much more specifically political tracts: petitions to parliament for legislative reform around religious tolerance and equality of all before the law; published accounts of unfair trials in which specific magistrates were named and shamed; electioneering tracts calling on the electorate to choose for their parliamentary representatives wise men likely to bring legislative reforms and religious toleration; and personal networking letters to men in positions of authority right up to the king, begging for audiences to discuss and rectify injustices suffered by Quakers and others under English law and its state-sanctioned authorities.3

  • 4 Following an initial and politic promise of toleration in the Declaration of Breda (1660) at the st (...)
  • 5 Murphy reproduces Penn’s more political tracts in modern printed form in The Political Writings of (...)
  • 6 On the notion of the “good old cause” in the context of the English Civil Wars and their aftermath, (...)

5William Penn, as a university-educated, high-status Quaker, was heavily involved in all these practices from a very early age, becoming convinced of the religious truth of Quaker beliefs and practices in 1667, in his early twenties. He suffered multiple imprisonments in the late 1660s and 1670s for his publications and his insistence on proselytising in the streets, even after Quaker meeting-houses were closed by the authorities, and meeting for religious worship was forbidden under the combined laws targeting non-conformists under the Clarendon Code.4 Examination of his most political tracts gives precious insight into the kind of political and constitutional demands he was making before the royal charter for the colony of Pennsylvania was granted in 1681.5 In 1675, Penn wrote his first overtly political tract, England’s Present Interest Considered with Honor to the Prince and Safety of the People. Though he was careful not to directly challenge the authority of the king, as the title suggests, he was most definitely seeking to argue for legal, constitutional and parliamentary reform in what he saw as a context of on-going strife, civil division, and consequently hampered national prosperity stemming from the non-resolution of Civil War era demands. He summarized these as a call for religious toleration for all, legal guarantees on all Englishmen’s rights concerning their personal safety and that of their families, property and estates, together with a real representative right in parliament and on judiciary bodies to ensure the voting and compliance with laws to guarantee the age-old rights of all Englishmen. As such, he was very much framing his arguments in the language of the “good old cause” and “ancient constitution” of the radical parliamentarians, Levellers, New Model Army men, and republicans of the Civil War and Interregnum eras, as previous Quakers, including Isaac Pennington, Edward Byllinge, and George Bishop had done before him.6

  • 7 The Exclusion Crisis refers to the political crisis surrounding mounting Whig opposition to the for (...)
  • 8 Algernon Sidney was standing on a platform, which included greater toleration for non-conformists, (...)

6In 1679, Penn wrote another overtly political tract, Englands Great Interest in the Choice of this New Parliament, aimed at influencing voters in the forthcoming parliamentary elections to vote for men who would best represent the people’s desire to protect their ancient English civil rights and freedoms in law, and to bring reforms guaranteeing religious liberty of conscience. In the context of the Exclusion Crisis, these men, in Penn’s view, were to be good Protestants, with Whiggish or Country party sympathies,7 and he actively supported his friend Algernon Sidney as a candidate in these elections.8 Penn specifically mentions in his tract “our Ancient Right of Frequent Parliaments,” which he links to the notion that the fundamental laws of England guarantee her people’s right to the preservation of their “Lives, Liberties and Estates” through the “Power of making Laws” via their elected representatives in parliament. Another key point he makes is the need to keep a watchful eye on chosen governors and to monitor their actions and decisions, sanctioning these or not through the right to regular popular elections (Murphy 2002, 384-391). It is thus abundantly clear that an obvious matrix for the drafting of a new colonial constitution would be for him the constitutional demands arising out of the Civil War and Commonwealth eras and defended by Quakers throughout the Interregnum and Restoration years.

7As defenders of the “good old cause” and the “ancient constitution,” we might expect Penn and his advisers to model their proposed colonial constitution on the calls for a unicameral representative parliament as it arose out of the Levellers’ Agreements of the People, especially the third and final most radical version of these, An Agreement of the Free People of England, advocating the eradication of the House of Lords and of the institution of monarchy as hereditary and unelected institutions. However, there was one evident restriction on a full-scale replication of this model of government in the terms of the royal charter granted to Penn, which made him both overall proprietor and life-long governor of the colony with full responsibility for ensuring that it was not governed in a way contrary to England’s laws, a role handed on to his descendants in perpetuity. Penn would thus necessarily stand in a king-like role within his constitution, although he could, of course, write in constitutional constraints on that power.

  • 9 Vane published his tract A Healing Question in 1656, the same year that James Harrington first publ (...)
  • 10 Milton published The readie and easie way to establish a free Commonwealth in 1660, a different con (...)
  • 11 Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government was not published until 1698, well after Sidney’s executi (...)
  • 12 This was a position which it was hard to reconcile with republican aspirations on government, as ca (...)

8There were other constitutional models available to Penn in 1681, which indeed seem to have influenced the drafting of his colonial constitution. The first of these is obviously the age-old English model of monarch in parliament, with a house of commoners and a second house of hereditary notables, albeit with certain adjustments to meet Quaker criteria for greater popular representation and involvement in law-making. The second would be the various republican models published in the Interregnum and Restoration years by Vane, Harrington,9 Milton,10 and especially Sidney,11 given the close relations between Penn and Sidney by 1679. Of these, as we shall see, Penn seems to have particularly favoured the republican model proposed by Harrington in Oceana (1656). However, we must note that in 1681, precisely the year that Penn was beginning to reflect on possible draft versions for his new colonial constitution, Neville published his amended version of Harrington’s model in Plato Redivivus. Interestingly, this version had been adapted to include a role for the monarch, as might be expected in the post-Restoration years, and was thus perhaps particularly appealing to Penn, who had to incorporate a fixed role for himself within his own constitution as general proprietor and governor.12 Finally, we should not overlook the importance of the Quaker church government as another institutional model closer to home for Penn and his fellow Quakers, likely to feed their reflection.

Returning to the draught-board: creative collaboration in the Quaker manner

  • 13 Also note the evocative title of Bronner’s pamphlet, William Penn, Seventeenth Century Founding Fat (...)

9Having examined the historical context and the constitutional models available to Penn and his advisers at the time they were preparing to draft Pennsylvania’s colonial constitution, we are ready to return to the key source materials which give us such a fascinating glimpse into this process: the nineteen proposals drafted by Penn and his team between 1681 and 1682. The first point to note is the historical debate over Penn’s motivations and end-game in drafting this constitution. Up until the mid-twentieth century, Penn was mainly described as the enlightened Quaker Founding Father of Pennsylvania, bequeathing the colony a fair and representative system of government which ensured religious freedom of conscience for all Christians and a range of civil rights for all its citizens, guaranteed by a written constitution with a long list of attached laws protecting those rights (Braithwaite 1923, 411-415, Janney 174-183, Peare 226-232).13 Nonetheless, this interpretation had a tendency to skip over the protracted tensions and tussles with Penn’s colonists to get them to adopt his proposed system of government between 1682 and 1701, when Penn finally agreed to a unicameral solution to replace his original design of a Provincial Assembly and Council in the modified colonial charter of 1701.

  • 14 Gary Nash principally exposed this thesis in his Quakers and Politics, e.g. 42-46. See also his ear (...)

10In the 1980s, Mary and Richard Dunn, an eminent husband and wife partnership working together with other historians in their editorial team, published the five volumes of The Papers of William Penn, including, in Volume ii, printed transcriptions of most of the nineteen draft constitutions still in possession of the library of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Penn Manuscripts, vol. 8). In their introduction and notes to these transcriptions, they postulated a new analysis of the process of Penn’s constitution-drafting. Drawing particularly on the analysis of Gary Nash, a member of the editorial team, they suggested that Penn had deviated from the Fundamentall Constitutions, an early unicameral proposal giving a truly popular representation to the people of the colony, to a much less radical version in the final Frame of Government he proposed to the first colonists of Pennsylvania in 1682. They postulated that Penn’s betrayal of his original idealism stemmed from his desire to please the rich “first purchasers” buying 5000 acres of land or more, large land-owners destined to become the new “aristocracy” of Pennsylvania.14 Penn needed to pamper their political ambitions in order to keep them on board, and he favoured a two-tiered system of government in which richer, more powerful men could expect to be elected to positions of greater responsibility in an upper house that was to formulate laws subsequently put to a mass popular vote in a lower house sitting for a few days annually. The way the Dunns presented the various constitutional proposals for Pennsylvania in their collective volume gives credence to this hypothesis, with the Fundamentall Constitutions printed and introduced first, followed by what they classified as subsequent versions tending towards a less radical solution.

11However, on coming face to face with the original manuscripts at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, new opportunities open up for fresh interpretation and analysis of exactly what was going on across the drafting process. First, the order of presentation in the original manuscripts is not the same, with the Fundamentall Constitutions appearing much later in the sequence. Looking for evidence of how reliable the established order was compared to that proposed by the Dunns, it rapidly becomes apparent that the exact dating and ordering of each draft is not ascertained, and while the Dunns did some admirable and meticulous examination of the manuscripts to establish an order of drafting between certain versions, the Fundamentall Constitutions stands outside this progression. Furthermore, this is connected to the nature of the Fundamentall Constitutions manuscript. Not all constitutional drafts have the same material status. Some are rough drafts on large, full-cap paper, unfinished, with deletions and revisions, and they can be seen to compose some kind of sequence judging by changes and comments. It is here that the Dunns and their editorial team did their admirable work in establishing a possible order for the drafts on the evidence of differences between them, as well as added manuscript notes and comments by Penn and others.

  • 15 There are, in fact, two slightly different versions of this neatly drawn-up draft proposal among th (...)

12Three of the drafts have a very different status, however: drawn up neatly on smaller A4-size paper and bound together in book form as unique finished proposals, they include the Fundamentall Constitutions,15 a draft version of the final Frame of Government, and a third proposal, known as The Bamfield Draft. The Bamfield Draft is possibly the first of these, with a tentative date of autumn 1681, the Fundamentall Constitutions was most probably drawn up as an alternative proposal between autumn 1681 and January 1682, and the Frame of Government was published in May 1682 (Hellier, chapter 8). Taking these three proposals as a basis, and trying to slot in the rougher drafts around them, we have three quite different proposals for colonial government, vying with each other over the period from autumn 1681 to spring 1682.

The Bamfield Draft (autumn 1681?)

  • 16 Included diagrams showing the various structures of government proposed in the draft proposals unde (...)

13The Bamfield Draft proposes a tripartite system of government, divided between the Governor/Proprietor, a two-chamber parliament with a House of Freemen and a House of Proprietors, and a Council acting as the executive with the Governor/Proprietor when parliament is not sitting.16 The first members of the House of Proprietors are the first 100 purchasers of 5 000 or more acres of land, remaining for life and then gradually replaced by new proprietors of 3 000 acres or more nominated by the lower house and approved by the upper house. The Governor presides with a triple vote in this house. Either house can prepare bills for laws and each has a veto over the other in the making of laws. The 24 members of the executive Council are chosen by the Governor from double numbers proposed by both houses of parliament, with the Governor the 25th member. By express stipulation, all elections and questions in parliament are to be by ballot, no laws are to infringe the Magna Carta (1215), the Petition of Right (1628) and Habeas Corpus (1689), and business is never to be resolved on the same day it is proposed. In many ways, the Bamfield draft is the most traditional of the three drafts of government under discussion, with a bicameral parliament made up of an upper house composed of the landed gentry and a lower house composed of commoners, and a king-like Proprietor/Governor with his Council. Interestingly, it presents radical departures from the English system on which it is largely modelled, notably the guarantee of civil rights by fundamental ancient and modern English texts, and the notion of not voting proposals into law too hastily, allowing time for due consideration in true Quaker fashion.

14It also seems to follow on closely from what the Dunns and their editorial team assumed to be the first two early drafts of government, in very draft-like form complete with a graphic representation in a “chart” of the separate institutions of government. This would seem to best represent Penn’s initial ideas on the shape of the colonial government. Significantly, it makes a distinction between “Freemen” electors and larger “Proprietors” who vote and sit in a different house, giving them considerable power in government.

The Fundamentall Constitutions (autumn 1681 - January 1682?)

15The Fundamentall Constitutions details a completely different system of government, marking a radical departure from these early draft proposals. It proposes a unicameral system of government, working with the Governor.

  • 17 Penn and his collaborators seem to have seen the Harringtonian system of government as summarised i (...)

16The large Assembly of 384 members is to have two representatives elected from each “Tribe,” with the 24 counties divided into 4 hundreds and then 2 tribes. This is the first appearance of a markedly Harringtonian language in the drafts to describe the electoral and representative process. Further indications of republican influence come in the assertion that the 384 representatives are to be chosen for their “virtue, wisdom and integrity” by all the freeholders of the province by the “ballot of Venice,” and are moreover to come with “Instructions” from their local electors. The Assembly and Governor nominate between them a Council of 48 as the executive branch, subdivided into 4 committees of 12 dealing with the business of Justice, Trade, Treasury and Education in another Harringtonian-like organisation of the powers of government. The Assembly sits for two months, and consults, debates, resolves and consents to legislation. It is to have the same privileges as the English House of Commons and, again, no business is to be resolved on the day it is proposed. In another nod to republican, Harringtonian, wisdom, the Assembly chooses the 48 Council members, 2 from each county with a 3-year rotation of members.17 The Council is subordinate to the Assembly, receiving from it proposals for laws and proposing advice back to the Assembly. It also governs during the months when the Assembly is not sitting. Finally, there is a yearly meeting of the three instances of government, the Governor, the Assembly and the Council, known as the General Assembly.

17What is clearly significant about this new proposal is its departure from the elitist and hereditary systems specific to England. It is at once more republican and Quaker in nature with its emphasis on equality between all freeholders sitting together in one house, deciding on all the business of government in accordance with the wishes of the electorate, and its systematic division of the powers of government into different domains in the advisory and executive Council. The stipulation that all instances of government should meet together for an annual General Assembly resembles Quaker church government. It also clearly carries over some of the stipulations and clauses of the seemingly earlier initial drafts, notably the Quaker notion that no business is to be decided on the day it is proposed. Furthermore, it seems to include notions inherited from the Levellers, army men and parliamentarians of the Civil War years, namely the notion of instruction coming directly from electors whom the representatives purely serve, and, of course, the notion of one supreme institution of government elected by and serving the people. This proposal seems to be a complete rethink, a return to the drawing-board, distancing itself from the traditional model of English government, and enacting the principles Quakers and other radical and republican thinkers had defended since the Civil War years. It is also an inventive, hybrid proposal combining elements of Quaker, republican and Leveller constitutional thought.

The 1682 Frame of Government (April/May 1682)

18The third proposal under consideration is the draft version of the proposal Penn finally chose to set before his colonists for approval on his arrival in Pennsylvania in autumn 1682. Like the Fundamentall Constitutions, it divides government between the Governor on one side and all “Freemen” on the other. This could appear more radical in some ways than the division proposed in the Fundamentall Constitutions, as all the “Freemen” of the province and not just “Freeholders” with property are now potential electors. As in earlier drafts, however, it divides the freemen into two houses, the General Assembly (200-500 members) and the Provincial Council (72 members, with a 3-yearly rotation of members). Nonetheless, there is now no distinction as to who elects and sits in the two houses: all are freemen on an equal basis. The only stipulation is that the freemen of the province should make sure to elect to the Provincial Council “persons of most note for their wisdom, virtue & ability.” However, in a clear Harringtonian division of powers, the Provincial Council prepares and proposes all bills to the Assembly, which votes to pass them into law or to reject them. Members of the Assembly are elected yearly and only meet for eight days to confer and decide on how to vote on each proposed bill. The Council also acts as the executive, with the Governor presiding with a treble vote, and is subdivided into four Committees managing government business as in the Fundamentall Constitutions.

19Rather than suggesting a linear development away from an earlier, more radical Fundamentall Constitutions towards the final Frame of Government, the seeming sequence and inter-relations between the three neatly drawn-up drafts and the rougher drafts between them, appear to point towards a more creative and collaborative approach to the drafting of a colonial constitution for Pennsylvania. Indeed, we see the hand of many different draughtsmen at work in this series of documents, with Penn’s own hand appearing in marginalia and notes. We can thus deduce that Penn worked with different collaborators, some probably simple secretaries drawing up drafts under instruction, some lawyers, like Darnell for the early initial charts of government, and increasingly with the Quaker lawyer Thomas Rudyard whose hand dominates in later drafts. We can also postulate an unknown republican collaborator on the Fundamentall Constitutions, although there is no remaining evidence of this except Benjamin Furly’s unfavourable comparison of the final Frame with the earlier Fundamentall Constitutions (also among the manuscripts). Certainly, after the drafting of the early proposals and the Bamfield Draft based on the English traditional tripartite division of the powers of government, Penn and his advisers seem to have wished for a new departure, a return to the drawing-board to seek a more creative solution, compatible with the idea of new beginnings and a Quaker “Holy Experiment,” based on the notions of equality, representation and a popular form of government as espoused by Penn and other Quakers in earlier writings.

  • 18 Harrington’s Oceana seems an obvious inspiration for this functional division of powers between deb (...)

20I would suggest that the final result, the proposed Frame of Government, was a truly hybrid, creative solution and no backtracking from a more radical arrangement in the Fundamentall Constitutions. Like the Fundamentall Constitutions, the Frame of Government moved away from a division of the electorate into two separate houses according to their different statuses as smaller or larger landowners. However, it seems that Penn was not happy with the idea of a unicameral solution, and felt a need for the division of powers between a smaller house or council, able to spend time deliberating on the best legislation to put forward, and a larger, truly representative popular assembly to accept or reject these proposals.18 This would require a smaller number of colonists prepared to really apply their “wisdom, virtue & ability” to the important task of law-making, an understandable choice in a young colony where many new colonists might not have felt they had enough time to devote to deep involvement in government business. Penn was thus grafting a Harringtonian principle of good government which seems to have attracted him, onto a system of government which otherwise ignored the agrarian law and division of the population into status groups at the origin of Harrington’s proposed system of government in Oceana. Could it be that, inspired by Neville’s adaptation of Harrington’s system to include a monarchical element, Penn saw an opportunity to lift the elements appealing to him from Harrington’s proposed system, notably the division of the powers of proposal and resolution, and apply them as he saw fit in a hybrid, innovative reworking, drawing on multiple models and sources?

A hybrid, yet perfectible proposal?

21The colonial constitution William Penn proposed to his first colonists in the autumn of 1682 was certainly a hybrid one, combining elements of the traditional English tripartite division of powers with elements of the early drawn up proposals analysed above. The intervening rough drafts suggest an intense period of grappling with divergent models to come up with a perfect solution. It seems that, for Penn, this perfect solution must necessarily be based on a basic division of powers between the Proprietor/Governor of the colony, and a General Assembly elected by all freemen as a truly participative and popular representative structure at the heart of government. However, it is clear that, despite the misgivings of Benjamin Furly and Thomas Rudyard, two of his closest Quaker advisers and commentators on the drafts, Penn quickly ruled out the notion of a single popular unicameral assembly, favouring instead a split between two houses. The question he and his advisers seem to have been grappling with was how to arrive at a solution that respected the Quaker objectives for a representative and fair form of popular government, whilst making sure decisions were made by men of experience, in the wisest, most-considered way possible according to republican tradition.

22After the early charts and drafts, we can increasingly detect the work and hand of Thomas Rudyard across subsequent drafts, in what seems to have been an intense and frenzied collaborative experience as the two men sought to hammer out a solution that William Penn found acceptable, and that Rudyard, as a lawyer and a core Quaker, agreed could work. We get a fascinating glimpse in this partnership of the laborious process of constitution-building in progress, at a time when the options seemed very open and varied. One of the documents among the colonial draft manuscripts is Thomas Rudyard’s commentary on the emerging Frame of Government, which, according to Ned Landsman, a member of Mary and Richard Dunn’s editorial team, was drafted after the first five initial constitutional drafts in January 1682, and may have inspired the drawing up of the entirely new system of unicameral government set out in the Fundamentall Constitutions (Landsman 473-474). While Landsman does not explicitly point this out, this would suggest that the Fundamentall Constitutions was drawn up at a later point in the sequence than suggested by the Dunns, and did not form an initial ideal which was then deviated from.

23Rudyard’s first suggestion in this commentary, ultimately rejected by Penn, was to set up an interim form of government in the first seven years of the young colony, when the initial settlers, and especially smaller landowners and traders would be too busy getting themselves established to concern themselves with matters of government. He suggested this should be left to larger proprietors purchasing upwards of 5 000 acres of land, as these would have the time and inclination to manage government affairs at the start. He then proposed a unicameral solution as the best option to prevent conflict between the houses and ensure that a separate lower house elected by less rich, less well-educated men would not return to parliament men of the same limitations. This advice may appear elitist, but addresses the real concerns of Penn, and evidently of Rudyard, that the colony might end up being governed by men lacking the “wisdom, virtue & ability” they deemed necessary for the task. The single chamber parliament was nonetheless to be elected by all country freeholders and all city freemen, maintaining the principle of political equality and popular and representative government. The Fundamentall Constitutions draft followed this unicameral and popular elective model. This opens up the question of whether it emerged as a result of Rudyard’s commentary, rather than, as the Dunns suggest, earlier in the process.

24Following this commentary on the drafts, which mentions both “original fundamentalls” and the “principal Agreemts of the people,” Thomas Rudyard drew up his own draft for government, interestingly entitled “The fundamentall Constitutions of the Province of Pensilvania in America.”

  • 19 Interestingly, Nash speculated in his 1968 Quakers and Politics that the Fundamentall Constitutions (...)

This raises the question of whether it was drafted at the same point as, or just before the other Fundamentall Constitutions, and whether it possibly inspired the change of direction.19 Be that as it may, Rudyard’s own draft proposal marked a true turning point for Penn and Rudyard, and was worked on and amended across the subsequent drafts until the final Frame of Government was established. In his own draft, Rudyard came up with a compromise, keeping the idea of having “one Grand Assembly or Parliament” elected by all the freemen of the colony or province, but then dividing it in two. A “First House” of 60 men chosen by all freemen for their qualities of “vertue, wisdom & substance” with a yearly rotation of a third of the members and presided over by the Governor would prepare, draw up and propose all laws. A “Second House,” also elected by all the colony’s freemen and composed of those considered “persons most eminent & fit for government,” would number 300 and would merely meet to resolve proposed legislation in the negative or affirmative. There would also be an executive council of 24 men, chosen by the Governor from the 24 put forward by each house, to advise and assist the Governor in the business of government. This is the first time the Harringtonian division of powers, based on different elected houses proposing and deciding upon legislation, appears in the drafts. It seems to have been born of the desire by Penn and Rudyard to find a working compromise which would allow for representative, popular government for and by all freemen considered as political and legal equals, but with safeguards to ensure that only the most competent and qualified men would be in the position of power to devise any new legislation. In the seventeenth century, this usually meant men of wealth, as they had the time, the money and the inclination to sustain the position. There has thus been much debate about Rudyard’s meaning in using the word “substance” to designate one of the qualities of the men best fit for the upper house.

25Nonetheless, in the seventeenth-century English political and constitutional context, this proposed system of government, based as it was on an equal and popular vote, and the possibility of any freeman being elected to either institution of parliament, still represented a major departure from the English tradition, a hybrid solution between the tradition of king and parliament and the radical demands of the Levellers in their Agreements of the People. It was an apparent attempt to combine the unicameral egalitarianism of the first Fundamentall Constitutions with a traditional tripartite division of power, whilst bringing a fresh dynamic to the whole by introducing the new Harringtonian device of a separation of powers based on function. It was this creativity that opened the path forward for Penn and Rudyard and produced the definitive Frame of Government, which keeps this same single electorate and division of powers between houses, albeit further streamlined to merge upper house and council, forming the Provincial Council of 72 members. This is presided over by the Governor with a triple voice, prepares and proposes all legislation to be voted on in the General Assembly of 500 members, and acts as executive, with four expert commissions to deal with the different branches of government business.

26A final safeguard, seen across the drafts from the second (Dunn and Dunn 181), was also incorporated into the Frame of Government to be proposed to the colonists for their approval in 1682. It provided for the alterability of the constitution by a 6/7 majority vote of the members of both houses (Council and Assembly). This significant clause was to prove conclusive in the evolution of the Pennsylvanian colonial constitution during Penn’s lifetime. Unlike many proposed constitutional models of the time including Harrington’s and the aforementioned Fundamentall Constitutions, it allowed for the notion that no constitution is perfect and may need modifying over time if enough members of government agreed: it was perfectible, in accordance with Quaker beliefs that perfection belongs to God alone. Indeed, Penn’s 1682 Frame of Government had to be modified immediately, for the original colonists requested a reduction of the number of seats in both houses, deemed too large for a young colony to fill. This confirmed Thomas Rudyard’s belief that the young colony was not ready for a complex and demanding form of participative government from the start. The Council was duly reduced to 18 and the Assembly to 72 in the 1683 version of the constitution (Dunn and Dunn 362-363). The early years of the colony also proved Rudyard right in his concern that a bicameral system would cause divisions among the colony’s freemen. Possibly an effect of their reduced numbers, the elected members of the Assembly quickly saw the limitations of their role and were almost constantly at strife with both the Council and the Governor, attempting to increase their powers to include the right to debate and propose laws for the colony. Had the Council remained a largish body of 72 men, and the Assembly a body of 500 vetoing undesired legislation, Penn’s intended system might have worked, but in its truncated form, the ambitions and divisions of the colony’s politically-minded citizens clashed from the start. Penn tried to quell what he saw as the obstructions and quarrels of his colonists before finally agreeing in 1701 to a change in the constitution giving the Assembly the legislative powers it claimed (Murphy 2016, 205-207). This signalled the quiet disappearance of the Council and the beginning of unicameral government in colonial Pennsylvania. The proponents of the Fundamentall Constitutions had finally won the day, and the unicameral form of government remained in place until the American Revolution, contributing to the debates around the form the new United States constitution should take.

*

27This article set out to make the case for a reconsideration of the place of William Penn’s innovative approach to constitution-drafting in the context of seventeenth-century English political and constitutional history. The aim was to demonstrate that a fresh study of Penn’s approach to constitution-drafting, as witnessed across the nineteen draft constitutions still in existence, could bring new insights not only to this particular process, but also to our general understanding of seventeenth-century attitudes and approaches to the wealth of constitutional models that emerged from the turmoil of the Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration years. Given the right context – here the chance to develop a new constitution for a “Holy Experiment” in the New World – possibilities for creativity and experimentation were consequential. Examining the dynamic process by which Penn’s colonial constitution evolved across multiple drafts and through collaboration with multiple people gives us a real sense of the potential for real and deep-rooted constitutional change that emerged from the constitutional debates and writings of seventeenth-century England.

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Bibliographie

Primary sources

Manuscripts

Penn Manuscripts. Volume 8. “Charters and Frame of Government.” Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.

The “Pensilvania Charter” (1681). Pennsylvania State Archives, Philadelphia, PA, USA.

Print

An Agreement of the Free People of England, Tendered as a Peace-Offering to this distressed Nation. By Lieutenant Colonel John Lilburne, Master William Walwyn, Master Thomas Prince, and Master Richard Overton, Prisoners in the Tower of London, May the 1. 1649 [The ‘Third Agreement’]. England: Printed for Gyles, 1649.

Fox, George. To all that would know the way to the Kingdom. London, 1654.

Harrington, James. The Common-wealth of Oceana. London: Printed by J. Streater for Livewell Chapman, 1656.

Milton, John. The readie and easie way to establish a free Commonwealth. London: Printed for the author, 1660.

Neville, Henry. Plato Redivivus. London: Printed for S. I. and sold by R. Dew, 1681.

Penn, William. England’s Present Interest Discovered (Considered). London: Andrew Sowle, 1675.

Penn, William. England’s Great Interest in the Choice of this New Parliament. London: Andrew Sowle, 1679.

Sidney, Algernon. Discourses Concerning Government. Ed. John Toland. London, 1698.

Vane, Henry. A Healing Question. London: Printed for T. Brewster, 1656.

Secondary sources

Allen, Richard C., and Rosemary Moore. The Quakers, 1656-1723: The Evolution of an Alternative Community. Pennsylvania, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018.

Angell, Stephen W., and Benjamin Pink Dandelion, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Baker, Philip, and Eliot Vernon, eds. The Agreements of the People: The Levellers and the Constitutional Crisis of the English Revolution. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Braithwaite, W. C. The Beginnings of Quakerism. London: Macmillan, 1912.

Braithwaite, W. C. The Second Period of Quakerism. London: Macmillan, 1923.

Bronner, Edwin Blaine. William Penn’s “Holy Experiment”: The Founding of Pennsylvania, 1681-1701. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962.

Bronner, Edwin Blaine. William Penn, Seventeenth-Century Founding Father: Selections from his Political Writings. Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Pamphlet 204, 1975.

Cole, Alan. “The Quakers and the English Revolution.” Past & Present 10 (Nov. 1956): 39-54.

Collins, Peter. “On Resistance: The Case of Seventeenth-Century Quakers.” Durham Anthropology Journal 16.2 (2009): 8-22.

Corns, Thomas N., and David Lowenstein, eds. The Emergence of Quaker Writing: Dissenting Literature in Seventeenth-Century England. London: F. Cass, 1995.

Dunn, Mary Maples. William Penn: Politics and Conscience. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967.

Dunn, Mary Maples, Richard S. Dunn, Scott M. Wilds, Richard A. Ryerson, Jean R. Soderlund and Ned C. Landsman, eds. The Papers of William Penn: Vol. Two: 1680 - 1684. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.

Feola, Maryann S. George Bishop: Seventeenth-Century Soldier Turned Quaker. York: William Sessions, 1996.

Foxley, Rachel. “John Lilburne and the Citizenship of ‘Free-Born Englishmen’ ”. The Historical Journal 47.4 (Dec. 2004): 849-874.

Foxley, Rachel. The Levellers: Radical Political Thought in the English Revolution. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013.

Hellier, Anna. Radicalism, Religion and Republicanism in the Developing Political Thought of William Penn, Circa 1660-1683. 2021. Lettres Sorbonne Université. Thèse de doctorat. Dir. Pierre Lurbe.

Hill, Christopher. Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution – Revisited. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Hill, Christopher, and Edmund Dell, eds. The good old cause”: The English Revolution of 1640-1660. Its Causes, Course and Consequences. London: F. Cass, 1969.

Hull, William I. William Penn: A Topical Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1937.

Hutton, Sarah, ed. Benjamin Furly 1646-1714: A Quaker Merchant and His Milieu. Firenze: L. S. Olschki, 2007.

Janney, Samuel M. The Life of William Penn 1851. 2nd edition. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1852.

Landsman, Ned C. “ ‘Of the Grand Assembly of Parliament’: Thomas Rudyard’s Critique of an Early Draft of The Frame of Government of Pennsylvania.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 105.4 (Oct. 1981): 469-481.

Mendle, Michael, ed. The Putney Debates of 1647: The Army, the Levellers and the English State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Moore, Rosemary. The Light in Their Consciences: Early Quakers in Britain, 1646-1666. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000.

Murphy, Andrew R. Liberty, Conscience and Toleration: The Political Thought of William Penn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Murphy, Andrew R. William Penn: A Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Murphy, Andrew R., ed. The Political Writings of William Penn. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002.

Nash, Gary B. “The Framing of Government in Pennsylvania: Ideas in Contact with Reality.” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser. 23 (1966): 183-209.

Nash, Gary B. Quakers and Politics: Pennsylvania, 1681-1776. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968.

Nash, Gary B. “Expediency and Early Constitutionalism.” Major Problems in American Constitutional History. Vol. 1: The Colonial Era Through Reconstruction. Ed. Kermit L. Hall and Thomas Paterson. Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1992. 43-54.

Peare, Catharine Owens. William Penn: A Biography. 1957. London: Dobson, 1959.

Peters, Kate. Print Culture and the Early Quakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Reay, Barry. The Quakers and the English Revolution. New York: St. Martin, 1985.

Scott, Jonathan. Algernon Sidney and the English Republic 1623-1677. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Scott, Jonathan. Algernon and the Restoration Crisis 1677-1683. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Simonutti Luisa. “ ‘De Lantaarn’: Sidney, Penn, Locke, Toland and Shaftesbury.” Benjamin Furly 1646-1714: A Quaker Merchant and His Milieu. Ed. Sarah Hutton. Firenze: L. S. Olschki, 2007. 31-65.

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Notes

1 The author was granted by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania generous access to this bound volume of Penn’s draft constitutional proposals for the colony of Pennsylvania during a research trip in early 2018, including the right to keep a complete photographic record of all the manuscripts for later private consultation and examination.

2 The transcription of this royal charter for the Province of Pennsylvania granted to William Penn by Charles ii is viewable online as part of the Avalon project hosted by Yale Law School’s Lillian Goldman Library: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/pa01.asp (last consulted 06/02/2025). The original can be seen on display for a few days a year around Charter Day at the beginning of March at The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, PA, USA.

3 See Corns and Lowenstein, and particularly Lowenstein’s chapter “The War of the Lamb: George Fox and the Apocalyptic Discourse of Revolutionary Quakerism” for an excellent analysis of the covert political activism of the early Quakers in the language and discourse of their religious tracts; also Peters, esp. chapter 7, “Print and Political Participation;” on the development of a multi-pronged political campaign using printed material; Cole, and also Collins, on the development of a strategy of resilience and resistance to church and state authorities among the early Quakers. The first part of my doctoral thesis on the developing political thought of William Penn is devoted to this early Quaker context of church and political organisation that Penn could draw on for his own campaigning on behalf of the beleaguered seventeenth-century Quakers.

4 Following an initial and politic promise of toleration in the Declaration of Breda (1660) at the start of the Restoration, Charles ii seemed to then back the Earl of Clarendon’s harsh crackdown on suspected religious and political dissenters in the early 1660s, an unstable and troubled period when the Restoration of the monarchy still seemed fragile and under threat. Clarendon brought in a series of laws, known collectively as the Clarendon Code, including the Corporation Act (1661) barring non-conformists from taking any public office, the Act of Uniformity (1662), the Conventicle Act (1664) prohibiting non-conformists from meeting together for worship, and the Five-Mile Act (1665). Specific anti-Quaker legislation was also introduced in the form of the Quaker Act of 1662, requiring Quakers to swear an oath of allegiance to the king, which they could not do according to their religious beliefs. Many Quakers were arrested as non-conformists under these combined acts.

5 Murphy reproduces Penn’s more political tracts in modern printed form in The Political Writings of William Penn, with an introduction providing useful context. For an in-depth analysis of the tracts, see Hellier, chapter 3, “The Emerging Political Thought of William Penn.”

6 On the notion of the “good old cause” in the context of the English Civil Wars and their aftermath, see Hill and Dell, also Hill 1997; on the building of a discourse of age-old established rights pertaining equally to all English subjects under the ancient laws of England, see Foxley 2004 and Mendle; on the particular, but representative case of George Bishop (1996), a soldier in Cromwell’s parliamentarian New Model Army who turned Quaker after the Civil War years, see Feola; for the links between Civil War religious and political radicalism and that of early Quakers, see Cole, Moore, Peters, Reay; chapter 1 in Hellier, “Early Quakers and Political Engagement: A Continuing Radical Tradition” examines these links and how they fed into Penn’s developing political thought.

7 The Exclusion Crisis refers to the political crisis surrounding mounting Whig opposition to the forthcoming succession to the throne of the openly Catholic James, Duke of York, which would occur in the event of the death of his brother, Charles ii. In the midst of fears of a “popish plot” to reintroduce the Catholic religion and Papal political influence into England via the next in line to the throne, certain politicians, advocates of parliamentary supremacy and defence of the Protestant Reformation, united in an attempt to block this possibility by demanding the exclusion of James from the succession to the English throne in a series of (ultimately unsuccessful) bills brought before parliament (1679-1681).

8 Algernon Sidney was standing on a platform, which included greater toleration for non-conformists, and was supported by Penn: both had connections to Benjamin Furly, a Quaker merchant in Rotterdam whose house was also a meeting point for various seventeenth-century political thinkers. See Hutton, and esp. Luisa Simonutti’s chapter “English Guests at ‘De Lantaarn’: Sidney, Penn, Locke, Toland and Shaftesbury” (31-65). For an account of Sidney’s political activities during this period, see Scott 1991, who mentions Penn’s political affinities with Sidney (133-134).

9 Vane published his tract A Healing Question in 1656, the same year that James Harrington first published The Commonwealth of Oceana, and it was meant to perform the same function as Harrington’s text: to offer solutions and proposals on government to Cromwell in order to find a way forward to lasting peace and a stable republican government. Unlike Harrington’s complete description of a radical and minutely detailed new model of government, Vane’s document set out to offer practical and easily implemented advice on how to return constitutional arrangements, deviated from by Cromwell, to the original engagements and aspirations of the initial Commonwealth government of which he had been part. This required ensuring that parliament was able to operate truly as a free and independent legislative body, elected to represent the people of England in fair and free elections. Vane thus seems to be advocating a unicameral independent parliament as the supreme legislative body, with an executive Council of State and the army serving under its authority. Vane also sought guarantees on liberty of conscience, another main objective of the parliamentarian cause.

10 Milton published The readie and easie way to establish a free Commonwealth in 1660, a different context in which maintaining a stable republican Commonwealth was primordial following the death of Oliver Cromwell in 1658 and the increasing threat of the restoration of the monarchy. It was written with the purpose of trying to convince army and parliament of the necessity of rapidly reaching a peaceful and durable settlement approved by the people, hence the need for a proposal that was both “readie” and “easie” to implement. Although the context was different, Milton, like Vane before him, seems to be also proposing a return to the single-chamber “Grand Councel” or representative of the people of the early Commonwealth, before the two previous constitutions, The Instrument of Government (1653) and The Humble Petition and Advice (1657), established Cromwell’s Protectorate. However, at an extremely unstable moment of history, Milton clearly saw the dangers of regular elections and changes of government, and so advocated making this “Grand Councel” perpetual and self-renewing once freely elected by the people, ensuring a stable government by the wise and experienced working for the common good.

11 Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government was not published until 1698, well after Sidney’s execution for treason in 1683. However, the draft dates back to 1680/1681 at the exact time Penn was drafting his colonial constitution. Penn was close to Sidney at this time, supporting his campaigns for election to parliament during the Exclusion Crisis. We have direct evidence that Penn met with and consulted Sidney on his constitutional plans in the form of a letter dated 13th October 1681 (Dunn and Dunn, 124-125). Interestingly, this letter attests to a disagreement with Sidney over Penn’s position as “absolute” ruler within the proposals discussed. Sidney’s Discourses was originally written as a reply to Filmer’s Patriarcha (1680), to firmly refute the royalist position and advocate instead a popular, republican from of government as the only way to defend the rights and freedoms of all English men against the tyranny of a monarchical form of government.

12 This was a position which it was hard to reconcile with republican aspirations on government, as can be seen from the dispute with Sidney.

13 Also note the evocative title of Bronner’s pamphlet, William Penn, Seventeenth Century Founding Father.

14 Gary Nash principally exposed this thesis in his Quakers and Politics, e.g. 42-46. See also his earlier article, “The Framing of Government in Pennsylvania.” In her 1967 analysis of the origins of Penn’s political thought, Mary Maples Dunn also painted Penn as a believer in a “recognizable aristocracy,” not a true democrat, comparing his position to that of Harrington (86, 94).

15 There are, in fact, two slightly different versions of this neatly drawn-up draft proposal among the manuscripts, suggesting it was circulated for comment to multiple advisers, corroborated by Furly’s comments and comparisons between this proposal and the final “Frame,” also present among the drafts (Penn Manuscripts, vol. 8).

16 Included diagrams showing the various structures of government proposed in the draft proposals under discussion were created by the author and are reproduced from the appendices of her doctoral thesis (Hellier, Appendix IV, 699-705).

17 Penn and his collaborators seem to have seen the Harringtonian system of government as summarised in the “Preliminarys” to Oceana (51) and detailed in Part III, “The Model of the Commonwealth of Oceana” (75-189), as a fascinating and rich source of ideas and mechanisms to borrow from, rather than an inviolable model to be slavishly followed. Thus, we can note here the adoption of similar administrative divisions of the electorate in a language shared with Harrington, the notion of rotation of elected office, clearly-defined subdivisions and functions for the executive arm of government, and the use of the secret ballot to ensure fair elections. However, we do not yet see Harrington’s division of powers in the legislative branch between debating and resolving. Furthermore, Penn completely ignores across all his drafts the agrarian law at the base of Harrington’s system, as well as Harrington’s proposal to keep an established church as part of his system of civil government – presumably perceived as incompatible with a young Quaker colony dedicated to freedom of conscience, and a more fluid and egalitarian approach to land-ownership and social mobility.

18 Harrington’s Oceana seems an obvious inspiration for this functional division of powers between debating and resolving legislation. However, Penn’s apparent struggle over how to respect the principle of a popularly-elected and participative form of government while ensuring legislation was debated, proposed and enacted by experienced and wise governors can also be traced to similar contortions in the republican proposals of Vane and Milton, as analysed above.

19 Interestingly, Nash speculated in his 1968 Quakers and Politics that the Fundamentall Constitutions may have been written at this point (37-38). But it seems he had rejected this possibility by 1982 when he was part of the Dunn editorial team. Landsman, another member of the team, leaves the possibility open.

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Anna Hellier-Lloyd, « Penning a Constitution: Creativity and Innovation in William Penn’s Draft Constitutions for Colonial Pennsylvania »XVII-XVIII [En ligne], 82 | 2025, mis en ligne le 31 décembre 2025, consulté le 15 mars 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/1718/14861 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15ffe

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Auteur

Anna Hellier-Lloyd

Université de Rennes 2. Laboratoire ACE
anna.hellier@univ-rennes2.fr

Anna Hellier-Lloyd is a British and French national. She received her original university education in England at the Universities of York and Westminster. Since 2002, she has worked as an English teacher at Rennes 2 University. She completed her doctoral thesis, “Radicalism, Religion and Republicanism in the Developing Political Thought of William Penn, Circa 1660-1683” at Lettres-Sorbonne-Université in 2021 under the supervision of Professor Pierre Lurbe, and was the recipient of the Société XVII-XVIII doctoral prize in 2024. She has participated in conferences in France, England and the United States, speaking on the political writings and activism of William Penn and his debt to early Quaker and Huguenot models of political engagement. She has also published articles in both English and French on William Penn, the early Quakers, and their campaign for religious, political and civil rights, both in collective works and specialist journals.

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