American Minute with Bill Federer
“The Seed of a Nation”: A Real Example of Tolerance & Equality
...In repayment of a debt owed to Admiral Penn, King Charles II, in 1682, surprisingly gave to his son, William Penn, land in America recently acquired from the Dutch and Swedes — 45,000 square miles.
King Charles named this enormous amount of land, 29 million acres, “Pennsylvania.”
As a result of Charles II’s generosity, young William Penn had become the largest non-royalty landowner in the world.
While most countries demanded that citizens believe as the government dictated, Penn’s colony was a “holy experiment” where Christians, Jews, and others who believed in God to could live together in religious toleration.