WILLIAM PENN

Religious oppression is a term often found in text books describing the causes of emigration from England to the New World in the 17th century. The phrase takes on dramatic meaning as the issues are fully explored in the biography of a man who would not settle for cowering conformity. William Penn's early years in England where the hypocrisy of the Anglican church struck him with particular force during his stay at Oxford and later in the deathly days of bubonic plague, set the stage. How he departs for the New World, for a tract of land named in his honor, how he befriends the Indians and sets up democratic rule in Pennsylvania are described directly and substantiated with many quotations and personal letters.