Leaving Father or Mother for Christ’s Sake: William Penn’s Veiled Autobiography through Scripture References

Abstract

This article examines Penn’s attitudes toward family as displayed in two books (Innocency with Her Open Face Presented and No Cross, No Crown) that he wrote in 1669 while incarcerated in the Tower of London. The examination of Penn’s use of certain biblical references printed in the margins (Mt. 10:37; Mt. 19:29) suggests that Penn used these to create a layered text (similar to twenty-first-century hypertext) that helped to communicate in a veiled, but fervent, fashion his strong estrangement from his own birth family. The use of these Scripture passages renders as credible an early tradition from William Sewel that Penn’s father (Sir William Penn) was complicit in ensuring his son’s imprisonment in the Tower. The pattern of usage also tends to corroborate the generally accepted view that father and son were reconciled in 1670, before the elder Penn’s death. Comparing Penn’s use of these biblical passages on family with those of other Quaker contemporaries, the article demonstrates that at least two other Quakers also demonstrated estrangement from family through use of these Scriptures, but also proposes that the lesser use of such Scripture passages from most travelling Quakers who seem not to have been estranged from their families could be explained by the writers’ desires not to hurt their families with the wounding implication that they were not valued by the author.