William Penn

William Penn (24 October [O.S. 14 October] 1644 – 10 August [O.S. 30 July] 1718) was an English writer, theologian, religious thinker, and influential Quaker who founded the Province of Pennsylvania during the British colonial era. An advocate of democracy and religious freedom, Penn 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 there. In 1681, King Charles II granted an area of land corresponding to the present-day U.S. states of Pennsylvania and Delaware to Penn to offset debts he owed Penn's father, the admiral and politician Sir William Penn. The following year, Penn left England and sailed up Delaware Bay and the Delaware River, where he founded Philadelphia on the river's western bank. Penn's Quaker government was not viewed favourably by the Dutch, Swedish and English settlers in what is now Delaware, and the land was also claimed by the Calverts, proprietors of the neighbouring Province of Maryland. 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 into what would 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 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia when they came to write the Constitution of the United States.