Top of the morning to you, London Walkers. Wherever you are. Yes, London Calling here. And not just calling. Tapping you on the shoulder on Wednesday, October 14th, 2026
Wonder if I could interest you in a London story that begins by the Tower, takes us into a courtroom where the judge loses his temper, crosses the Atlantic, and ends with a man standing 500 feet above the streets of Philadelphia.
And the extraordinary thing is, it all started with a London boy who wouldn’t take his hat off.
William Penn.
Born on this day, October 14th, 1644.
Yes, that Penn. Pennsylvania Penn. Philadelphia Penn.
But first and foremost, our man was a Londoner.
And what a Londoner.
He was born in the liberty of the Tower of London.
And nine days later, on October 23rd, 1644, he was baptised at All Hallows by the Tower. Ah, yes, All Hallows by the Tower.
Primus inter pares. London’s oldest church. It’s still there. You can visit it.
And here’s a wonderful little connection.
Twenty-two years later, during the Great Fire of London, William’s father, Admiral Sir William Penn, stood in the tower of that very church alongside Samuel Pepys, watching London go up in flames.
The admiral helped save the church by having nearby buildings demolished to create a firebreak.
Think of that. The church where his baby boy had been baptised. And twenty-two years later, there he is, fighting to save it from the Great Fire. And save it he did. And there it is today. Crying out to be visited. Especially by Keystoners. Pennsylvanians. You go on one of our walks that begins at Tower Hill Tube, get there a few minutes early and schlep over there. It’s just a stone’s throw away. And it’s a gem, a little treasure house. Bears repeating, it’s the oldest church in London. Founded a mere 800 years before Columbus reached America. Has a Saxon arch built partly with reused Roman tiles. Has its own museum, the Crypt Museum. Has the record of William Penn’s baptism. And for good measure the record of the marriage in 1797 of John Quincy Adams, who in due course became the sixth president of the United States. No question about it, All Hallows by the Tower is well worth a visit.
But back to our man’s father, Admiral Penn.
The good Admiralwas a man of considerable ambition. Very well connected. Very successful. A man who expected his son to follow in his footsteps. Make something of himself. Become somebody.
And young William certainly did.
Just not quite what Dad had in mind.
Because William Penn became a Quaker.
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Now, that might not sound particularly shocking today. Quakers are associated with peace, simplicity, quiet contemplation, admirable charitable works.
But in Restoration England, being a Quaker was about as far from respectable conformity as you could get.
They wouldn’t swear oaths.
They wouldn’t bow and scrape.
They wouldn’t take off their hats to acknowledge the superiority of their social betters.
And they wouldn’t accept that the government had any business telling them how to worship God.
That last point was particularly dangerous.
Remember, this was a society in which religion and politics were hopelessly entangled. Refusing to worship in the approved way could land you in prison.
And it landed William Penn in prison more than once.
He’d been educated at Oxford. Spent time in France. Studied law at Lincoln’s Inn. He had all the advantages. Money, education, connections.
He could have had a wonderfully comfortable life.
Instead, he became a troublemaker.
A very articulate troublemaker.
And that brings us to one of my favourite London episodes.
August 1670.
Gracechurch Street, in the City of London.
There’s a Quaker meeting house there. But the authorities have closed it.
No worshipping here, thank you very much.
Penn isn’t having it.
He stands outside and addresses the assembled Quakers in the street.
A crowd gathers. Hundreds of people.
And of course the authorities swoop.
Penn and another Quaker, William Mead, are arrested.
The charge?
Causing a tumultuous assembly.
A riot, in other words.
Except there hasn’t been a riot.
What there has been is a man talking about his religion in a London street.
And now comes the courtroom drama.
September 1670. The Old Bailey.
Penn and Mead are on trial.
The judges want a conviction. They’re not particularly subtle about it.
Penn, meanwhile, wants to know precisely which law he’s broken.
And the court doesn’t seem especially keen on discussing that.
There’s even an extraordinary row about hats.
Quakers refuse to remove their hats as a gesture of deference.
At one point, the court has their hats put back on their heads. Then Penn and Mead are fined for wearing them.
You couldn’t make it up.
But the really wonderful part of the story concerns the jury.
Twelve Londoners.
Ordinary citizens.
The court expects them to do as they’re told.
Convict Penn and Mead. End of story.
Only the jury won’t play ball.
They refuse to find the defendants guilty.
The judges are furious.
The jurors are sent away to reconsider.
Still no conviction.
They’re locked up overnight.
No food. No drink. No fire.
Still no conviction.
The pressure continues. Another night.
Imagine that.
Twelve Londoners, hungry, exhausted, bullied by the court, being told to deliver the verdict the authorities want.
And they won’t.
Finally, they return their verdict.
Not guilty.
Now the court turns on the jury.
They’re fined. And when they refuse to pay, they’re imprisoned.
One of them, Edward Bushel, challenges what’s happened.
And the subsequent ruling establishes a principle of enormous importance.
A jury cannot be punished simply because its verdict displeases the judge.
Think about that.
A principle we now regard as fundamental to the independence of juries emerged from a quarrel about a Quaker preaching in Gracechurch Street.
And you can still see a memorial to the case at the Old Bailey.
A London street. A London courtroom. Twelve stubborn Londoners.
And a little piece of the machinery of liberty clicks into place.
But the story doesn’t end there.
Far from it.
Because Penn has bigger ideas.
Much bigger ideas.
And they involve a place thousands of miles away.
America.
In 1681, King Charles II grants Penn an enormous tract of land in North America.
The Crown owes money to Penn’s late father. Rather than settle the debt in cash, the king settles it in land.
Quite a lot of land, as it happens.
And the new colony is called Pennsylvania.
Penn’s Woods.
But here’s a lovely little twist.
The name honours his father, the admiral, rather than William himself.
And the son has a grand ambition.
He wants to create a place where people of different religions can live together without persecuting one another.
A place with laws. Rights. Freedom of conscience.
He calls it his “holy experiment”.
And he gives its principal city a beautiful name.
Philadelphia.
Greek.
Brotherly love.
He also plans the city on a grid, with broad streets and public squares.
There’s a fascinating possible London connection here, or rather a European one.
As a young man, Penn had visited Turin and seen the orderly layout of its streets. His biographer suggests that experience may have influenced his planning of Philadelphia.
But whatever inspired the street plan, the larger ambition was unmistakable.
Penn wanted to build something different.
Something better.
And in important respects, he succeeded.
Religious toleration became one of Pennsylvania’s defining characteristics.
Penn also tried to establish peaceful relations with the Indigenous luh-NAH-pay
Lenape people, learning something of their language and negotiating over land rather than simply relying on conquest.
But we mustn’t put a halo around his head.
His colony was still a colonial enterprise. He was a substantial landowner with enormous powers. And there’s a particularly uncomfortable contradiction.
William Penn owned enslaved people.
Yes. The champion of liberty. The advocate of freedom of conscience.
A slaveholder.
At his Pennsylvania estate, Pennsbury, enslaved men and women worked for him.
History has a way of refusing to divide people neatly into heroes and villains.
Penn was a visionary in some respects.
In others, very much a man of his age.
And back in London, things weren’t always going swimmingly.
Penn became closely associated with King James II.
Which was all very well while James was king.
But in 1688, James was driven from the throne.
And suddenly Penn’s royal connections, formerly a tremendous asset, became a serious liability.
He was suspected of plotting to restore James.
Arrested.
Investigated.
At one point, he was actually walking past Scotland Yard in Whitehall when guards seized him.
Scotland Yard!
There’s a nice irony for you.
The great champion of liberty being hauled off by the authorities in a place whose name would eventually become synonymous with the police.
He survived the political storms, but his later years were difficult.
Financial troubles. Political disappointments. Ill health.
He suffered strokes in 1712.
He died in Berkshire in 1718, aged 73.
And he lies buried at Jordans, the Quaker burial ground near Chalfont St Giles.
But I want to finish this story with an image.
An extraordinary image.
If you ever go to Philadelphia, look up at City Hall.
Right up.
Because there, 500 feet above the pavement, stands William Penn.
Not a little statue.
An enormous bronze figure.
Thirty-seven feet tall.
More than twenty-six tons of William Penn.
The London boy who wouldn’t take his hat off is up there wearing a hat.
And from his lofty perch he surveys the city he founded.
But I wonder whether his greatest monument is really in Philadelphia.
I think there’s a case for saying it’s in London.
At the Old Bailey.
That memorial to twelve jurors who stood up to an overbearing court.
Who refused to surrender their judgment.
Who would not be bullied into convicting a man simply because the authorities wanted him convicted.
And it all began with somebody talking in the street.
Gracechurch Street.
A stone’s throw from the Bank of England.
Next time you’re there, amongst the buses, the office workers, the traffic, the hurry and bustle of the City, give a thought to William Penn.
And those twelve stubborn Londoners.
They were standing up for something worth standing up for.
And that’s a pretty good birthday present to give the world.
Happy birthday, William Penn.
Born in London, October 14th, 1644.
Three hundred and eighty-two years ago today.
London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
And hey, the
Word of the Day fell by the wayside a week ago or so. Today’s as good a day as any to bring it back. So here we go. It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s the word Conscience.
From Latin conscientia, meaning knowledge within oneself.
And isn’t that rather wonderful?
Conscience. Knowing within yourself what is right.
Even when the judge tells you otherwise.
Even when twelve hungry men are locked in a room and told to change their minds.
Especially then.
See you tomorrow.