It's Always Sunny Somewhere In There

William Penn was born in 1644 in Tower Hill, London.  He's a significant person on both sides of the pond for a number of reasons, one of which came up recently in the news.  Trudi Warner stood outside the Old Bailey recently holding a placard saying:

She was tried for contempt of court.  Her concern was, and I don't want to go into detail regarding the actual subject of the case, that the jury at the case in question was not aware that rather than ruling on the basis of evidence that an offence was or was not committed, they cannot legally be coerced to rule against their conscience.  This was established as a legal principle in 1670.  Now I am neither a lawyer nor used to writing about the law, so I may get this mixed up and confused, but this post is partly about the law and partly about Quakers, so you should probably look all this up or consult a lawyer in the relevant jurisdiction if you need to rely on it.

Anyway, in 1667 William Penn and William Meade were arrested for unlawful assembly in London when they preached to a group of Quakers and were charged under the Conventicle Act 1664, which forbade religious gatherings of more than five people outside the auspices of the Church of England.  This was part of the Clarendon Code, which aimed to punish non-conformism, i.e. religion which was not Anglican.  The Jews were very concerned about this and spoke to Charles II about this, but he told them not to worry.  In other words, although it was technically illegal to have a gathering at a synagogue, that wasn't why the law was on the books.  If this law was broken, those involved would be tried without a jury.  In this case, however, the jury found them "guilty of speaking in Gracechurch Street" but refused to add "to an unlawful assembly".  The judge responded by refusing to dismiss the jury until they had given a verdict the court would accept.  They then changed the verdict to "guilty of speaking to an assembly in Gracechurch Street", whereupon the judge had them locked up overnight without food or water and ordered William Penn to be bound and gagged.  Penn then shouted "You are Englishmen, mind your Privilege, give not away your Right" to which a juror, Edward Bushel, replied "Nor shall we ever do".  After two days of being locked up, the jury returned a verdict of Not Guilty, and were fined for contempt of court.  Penn then asserted that this violated Magna Carta, I'm guessing because of habeas corpus, and the jury was imprisoned until they paid the fine.  Edward Bushel refused to pay the fine and petitioned a common law court for a writ of habeas corpus.  It was argued by one of the justices that a commoner could not issue such a writ except on a claim of privilege by the common court, but the other justices issued the writ.  In November 1670, John Vaughan ruled that a jury could not be punished simply on account of the verdict it returned, but that individual jurors could still be punished if it could be demonstrated that they had acted improperly.  In other words, jurors have the absolute right to acquit a defendant according to their conscience.

I get the impression that before a lot of the English got on the Mayflower and went to the New World, metaphorically speaking, England was a lot more like the US is now, for instance in terms of the stereotypical tendency to be litigious, which I also seem to remember is a myth anyway.  Now as well as not being by any means an expert on the law, I'm also not an expert on William Penn.  However, even I know that Charles II granted him land in North America which, given the persecution Non-conformists were experiencing in England, he decided to run as an experiment in religious tolerance.  The reason for granting this land was to pay off a debt the King owed his father.

Because Quakers refused to tip their hats to anyone, as a sign that everyone was equal before God, William Penn was against slavery, had unusually good relations with Native Americans and established an elected legislative assembly.  Although he died nearly sixty years before the Declaration of Independence, he was ultimately responsible for the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This, I guess, is also why the Amish are in Pennsylvania.  Penn was technically the sole owner of Pennsylvania but gave up that right to the assembly.

So all of this is very interesting, to me anyway, but all of this happened centuries ago, and this made me wonder if anything remained of William Penn's legacy in today's Pennsylvania.  Well, the answer is yes, it does.  Obviously the First Amendment does, but that's not specific to the state.  While he was alive, he almost had to give up the colony to pay his debts, but he died before he could do so.  He and his wife, Hannah, are now officially posthumous citizens of the United States.  He didn't want Pennsylvania to be called that because it seemed arrogant and proud, but the King refused to change his mind so William said it was named after his father, Admiral Penn.

Philadelphia is an example of his legacy, with its grid pattern, planned roads and his requirement that a certain part of its land would always remain natural forest.  Pennsylvania, of course, means "Penn's Forest".  It was convenient for the King to send the Quakers over where they wouldn't, supposedly, cause England any more trouble.  The name Philadelphia, as you doubtless know, means "brotherly love".  Many people would say the city is by no means like that any more.

I know a few people in Pennsylvania.  Among them is a woman, who is extremely helpful, whose first name is the same as that of my oldest friend and whose surname consists of the month I got married (and my spouse's month of birth) followed by the first letter of that month and the vowel before the main vowel in the name of that month.  Since she lives in the state, specifically Pittsburgh, and seems to be into history, she knows a lot about the history and laws of her state, and as I said she may be extremely helpful in the event of anyone in that state being in trouble of some kind.   She knows a lot more about the law there than I do.

One, possibly less useful, thing she told me is that in Pennsylvania, as in England, food is zero-rated.  Most items, both here and in the US, have what we call VAT added to its price, and to us that's invisible because prices are usually quoted including that tax.  In America, as I understand it, the tax is quoted separately, and in Pennsylvania, allegedly due to the Quaker influence, food does not have this tax, whereas elsewhere it does.  I would imagine that varies according to the state.

So that's one thing, obviously important for people who might otherwise not be able to afford to eat, and there's a second particularly interesting aspect to this, although apparently this varies according to the county.  I need to backtrack to say more about this.

We got married in a Friends' Meeting House.  At the time, my spouse was in India and the Register Office misunderstood the nature of our forthcoming marriage, which they suspected was to do with immigration.  I was able to disabuse them of that notion since both my partner and I were born in Southeastern England.  Not that I consider it in any way a bad thing for people to get married for that reason.  It seems, in fact, to be one of the best reasons of all to get married.  My original plan was to get married as a Quaker, but that would've involved Quakers vouching for both of us to be of like mind with the Quakers.  At the time, this would've been possible for me, since I was friends with many of them including the warden of the Friends' Meeting House.  The way a Quaker wedding works is this:  when a couple decides to get married, they make this known to the meeting, either in writing or in person.  The meeting then holds a Clearness Committee with the couple (I have been at a Meeting For Clearness, but not for this reason) to make sure they're properly prepared for marriage.  If they're satisfied that they are, they make it known to the monthly meeting that they should take the wedding "under their care" and ensure that all necessary arrangements are made to marry the couple.  There is a concept of common law marriage in many places, where a couple who have cohabited for a long time are considered married, but in England at least this doesn't really exist in law.  I don't know about America, but Quaker marriages are often compared to common-law marriages.  In places where Quakers are particularly significant parts of the population, Quaker weddings are officially recognised as marriages.

In certain counties in Pennsylvania, and I don't know which, the Quakers, Amish and Baha'i have traditionally been able to marry using a system known as "self-uniting marriage".  This is marriage without the presence of a third officiating participant such as a Registrar or priest.  Instead, the practice of the Quakers has been adopted in law.  The signatures of two witnesses are all that's required to make this marriage legal.  Until fairly recently, and remember that I am not only not a lawyer but not an American or Pennsylvanian lawyer, the couple would have had to demonstrate that they were members of a religion without clergy such as the Quakers.  I don't know, but I wonder if this means that someone's parent being a Quaker would be enough.  If not, it doesn't seem to matter because in 2007, a Federal judge ruled that a couple denied a self-uniting marriage on the basis of their non-religious beliefs were nonetheless allowed to marry in Pennsylvania, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

I want to point out that there's probably a lot more to be said about the Quaker legacy in Pennsylvania but what I've found out so far may prove to be very interesting and useful.  I'd also like to point out that anyone who wants to can post comments on this very obscure and presumably almost readerless blog, and the chances are very few people will see them.