William Penn & the Fruits of Technological Solitude
Last First Day I needed something to read to open Meeting. Feeling reflective, a little book by William Penn, “Some Fruits of Solitude” came to mind.
Some Fruits was first published, anonymously, in 1693, and has been in print most of the 320-plus years since, and a copy of it has sat on my bookshelf for a few decades.
Some Fruits came to be written because Penn was obliged to disappear for a couple of years. He had to beat it because of his longtime friendship with King James II.
This was an odd friendship, for many reasons: For one, Penn was prominent, yet not part of the nobility; but James had known and liked Penn’s father, an admiral in the Royal Navy. It was also odd because, as a Quaker, Penn was poles apart from James religiously, as the king had become Catholic. Nonetheless, James kept calling Penn in to chat and hang out, while leaving his royal councillors, who had lots of actual state business for the monarch to conduct, waiting and fuming.
Penn was not there just to schmooze. He had an agenda: he was nudging James toward issuing a royal declaration of religious toleration, one broad enough to end all persecution of both Quakers and Catholics, both of which were opposed by the Anglican establishment.
Penn felt he was making progress with James; but then in June 1688 his Queen, Mary of Modena, had a son, also named James, who became his heir, the Prince of Wales, destined to become a legitimate Catholic king of England.
This prospect horrified the anglican church and most of the British establishment, which had been increasingly Protestant since Henry VIII’s reign 150 years earlier. They decided that the new Catholic prince could not be allowed to succeed. So they hatched a plot. . . .