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In 1571, the Spanish navy stopped the Islamic Ottoman fleet in the Battle of Lepanto.
In 1572, Spain killed 10,000 Dutch Reformed in the "Spanish Fury" in Antwerp, Belgium.
The English and the Dutch worked together to defeat the Invincible Spanish Armada in 1588.
A Second Spanish Armada was destroyed by a storm off Cape Finisterre, with the loss of 140 ships and 5,000 deaths in 1596.
The next year, a Third Spanish Armada was also destroyed in a storm.
Then a Fourth Spanish Armada was prepared.
This was the Nine Years War in Ireland, which was part of the larger Anglo-Spanish War 1585-1604, resulting with over 130,000 casualties.
In 1602, King Philip III landed 6,000 troops in Ireland with the intent of waging war on England, but the English defeated the combined Spanish and Irish armies at the Battle of Kinsale.
These losses brought Spain to bankruptcy and the nation declined in international power.
Filling the void were the English and the Dutch which both grew into global economic and military powers with colonies around the world.
Spain was also plagued by pirates, privateers and buccaneers raiding their ships gold and treasure from the New World.
These included:
English "sea dogs" - Sir Francis Drake "El Draco," Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir John Hawkins, Sir Richard Grenville, Christopher Newport;
Dutch "sea beggars" - William II de la Marck, Piet Hein, Roche Braziliano, and Jan Janszoon "Murat Reis the Younger";
Portuguese - Simão Fernandes, Bartolomeu Português, Moses Cohen Henriques;
French - François Le Clerc "Peg Leg", Jacques de Sores, François l'Olonnais, Jean Fleury;
Ottoman "corsairs" - Hayreddin Barbarossa, Turgut Reis "Drawn Sword of Islam," Murat Reis the Elder, and Rais Hamidou.
The Dutch fought an Eighty Years' War of independence from Spain, 1568-1648, which was in a dynastic union with Portugal.
During the last 30 years of the Eighty Years War, most of Central Europe was drawn into this conflict -- the Thirty Years War against the Habsburg Austrian-Spanish Dynasty.
In 1605, King James I of England survived the Gunpowder Plot, led by Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes, and other conspirators connected with Spain.
After this, James became paranoid of opposition, attacking Presbyterians, Puritans, and Catholics.
In 1607, the Jamestown Colony was founded in Virginia.
1609, James took thousands of Presbyterian Protestants from the unruly borders between Scotland and England and relocated them into the colony of Ulster in Northern Ireland.
In 1620, the Pilgrims settled Massachusetts and in 1624, the Dutch settled New Amsterdam.
The Dutch captured Brazil from the Portuguese in 1630 and held it for 24 years.
The Dutch also captured from the Portuguese the Gold Coast of Africa (Ghana), Jakarta, Indonesia, and attacked the Portuguese city of Goa, India.
Dutch settled South Africa, and for over two centuries controlled the island of Dejima in Nagasaki, giving them a monopoly on trade with Japan.
The Dutch, or the Seven United Netherlands of Holland, Utrecht, Zeeland, Groningen, Friesland, Overijssel, and Gelderland, had colonies in:
- Bengal (bordering India);
- Brazil (South America);
- Cape Colony (South Africa);
- Ceylon (Sri Lanka, Bay of Bengal);
- East Indies;
- Formosa (Taiwan);
- Gold Coast (Ghana, Africa);
- Guianas (South America);
- India;
- Keelung (Taipei);
- Malabar (Southern India);
- Malacca (Malaysia, near Singapore);
- Mauritius (Indian Ocean);
- New Guinea (north of Australia);
- New Netherland (New York);
- Surinam (South America).
Great Britain had colonies around the world, including:
- Virginia;
- New England;
- Maryland;
- Nova Scotia;
- Bermuda;
- Caribbean;
- India; and
- Indonesian Spice Islands.
Tensions between the English and the Dutch increased, especially over nutmeg from the Moluccas Spice Islands.
The Amboina Massacre had occurred in 1623.
A Dutch colonial officer suspected the English were planning an attack so he carried out a preemptive strike, massacring ten English soldiers, ten Japanese, and one Portuguese, with some captives being "water-boarded" to get confessions.
English pirates began capturing and looting more than a hundred Dutch ships.
In 1639, England's King Charles I sent an army to force Scotland to adopt Anglican practices, which began the Bishop's War.
In 1641, a Catholic Irish Rebellion killed an estimated 12,000 Protestants.
This turned into a full-fledged English Civil War in 1642.
In this war, William Penn successfully commanded a ship fighting Charles I.
In 1644, Penn's son, also named William Penn, was born. The same year, the strict Puritans tore down Shakespeare's Globe Theater.
In 1649, King Charles I was beheaded. England was ruled as a Commonwealth led by Oliver Cromwell.
Though the Dutch and English had worked together against the Spanish Armada in 1588, they then became fierce competitors over trade routes to the Far East.
The First Anglo-Dutch War took place from 1652 to 1654, which had repercussions in their colonies around the world.
In this war, Admiral Penn successfully commanded an English squadron, for where he was rewarded with an estate in County Cork, Ireland -- the castle and lands of Macroom.
Afterwards, the English Parliament sent the Army under Oliver Cromwell to invade Ireland, 1649-1653.
Half of the Irish Catholic lands were taken away and given to Protestants.
In a brutal conquest, an estimated 500,000 Irish were killed.
Tens of thousands were displaced and involuntarily sold into slavery in the Caribbean, notably Barbados, The Leeward Islands, Montserrat, Antigua, Nevis, St. Kitts, Jamaica, and Recife, Brazil.
The Dutch captured the colony in America called New Sweden in 1655.
Oliver Cromwell sent Admiral Penn to the Caribbean to capture Hispaniola from the Spanish. On the ship was Pilgrim Edward Winslow.
He was unable, but succeeded in capturing Jamaica in 1655.
Upon return, Penn was arrested for his failure to capture Hispaniola and put in the Tower of London.
After investigation, he was released and given an honorary title.
Oliver Cromwell died in 1658. His son Richard Cromwell struggled to keep the English Commonwealth together.
In 1659, a Quaker missionary named Thomas Loe visited the Penn estate in Ireland and witnessed to 15-year-old William Penn.
Loe shared about the light of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Penn later recalled that it was during this time that:
"... the Lord visited me and gave me divine Impressions of Himself."
In 1660, Admiral Penn helped restore Charles II to his father's throne, ending the English Commonwealth.
Charles II knighted him and gave him the rank of Lord High Admiral, with the honorable title of "Sir."
Admiral Sir William Penn again helped defeat the Dutch navy, for which he was awarded the estate of Shangarry in County Cork, Ireland.
This victory resulted in Britain capturing the Dutch colonies in America, including:
- New Amsterdam, which was renamed New York; and
- the land that had been New Sweden, which was renamed Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Young Penn intended to follow in his father's footsteps.
He joined the military as a soldier and suppressed an uprising in Ireland in 1666.
He returned to London only to witness the Great Plague in London, where a quarter of the city died, writing:
"(It) gave me a deep sense of the vanity of this world, of the irreligiousness of the religions in it."
During that plague, Isaac Newton left Cambridge in London and went to a country estate, where he observed an apple fall and theorized the Law of Gravity.
Police arrested the Quakers and other dissenters for breaking the 1664 Conventicle Act, where no more than five people could meet for a prayer meeting, and the 1665 Five Mile Act, where it was illegal to preach within five miles of a town.
John Bunyan, who wrote Pilgrim's Progress, was arrested at this time and spent 12 years in prison.
Young Penn served as a privileged messenger between the King and his Admiral father, whom he grew to admire:"I never knew what a father was till I had wisdom enough to prize him ... I pray God... that you come home secure."
The Second Anglo-Dutch War ended with the Treaty of Breda, 1667, in which the Dutch gave up Manhattan Island to the British in exchange for the tiny Indonesian spice Island of Run, where nutmeg was grown -- one of the most regretted negotiations in history.
Penn attended the elite Oxford University, where students were either strict Puritans, nonconforming Quakers, or as Penn was, one of the aristocratic Anglicans called "Cavaliers."
Though a Cavalier, Penn nevertheless felt drawn to frequent Quaker meetings.
Young William Penn began to associate more with the Quaker movement, and express criticism of the King's church.
Multiple times the younger Penn was arrested, and his father used his influence to get him freed from jail.
Once, young Penn urged his father: "I intreat thee not to purchase my liberty."
His actions caused considerable embarrassment to his father, who had spent his career carefully avoiding political entanglements, as it could cost one his career or even his head.
When young Penn publicly embraced Quaker beliefs, it so dishonored his father that the elder Penn beat him with a cane, drove him out of the house and threatened to disinherit him.
Young Penn fled England and lived in France for several years.
He met and traveled with George Fox (1624-1691), the founder of the Quakers.
Penn returned to England and wrote The Sandy Foundation Shaken, which was critical of the King's Church.
In 1668, when the government tried to force Penn to deny his conscience and abandon his religious convictions, he refused, resulting him being imprisoned in the Tower of London for eight months.
Guards gave him pen and paper, thinking he wanted to write a recantation of his beliefs, but instead, Penn wrote his famous work "No Cross, No Crown," stating:
"Christ's cross is Christ's way to Christ's crown ... The unmortified Christian and the heathen are of the same religion, and the deity they truly worship is the god of this world.
It is a false notion that they may be children of God while in a state of disobedience to his holy commandments, and disciples of Jesus though they revolt from his cross."
Upon being freed, Penn argued on behalf of the thousands of persecuted Quakers.
In Bushel's Case, 1670, Penn was arrested and tried.
When the jury came back with a not guilty verdict, the judge put the entire jury in jail.
Admiral Penn realized after his death there would be no one to intercede for his son, so he spent his final days securing a promise from King Charles II to be favorable to his son.
Among his last correspondence, Admiral Penn wrote to his son: "Let nothing in this world tempt you to wrong your conscience."
In 1670, the same year Admiral Sir William Penn died, Charles II made the secret Treaty of Dover with his cousin, King Louis XIV of France, promising to convert to Catholicism at some unspecified date in the future if France would give 60 warships and 4,000 troops to help England in the Third Anglo-Dutch War, 1672-1674.
After his father's death, Penn wanted to use his inheritance to buy West Jersey in America -- land that had previously been part of New Sweden, before being taken over by the Dutch, then the English.
His hope was to let persecuted Quakers emigrate there.
Charles II named it "Pennsylvania" in honor of the father, Admiral Sir William Penn.
Charles II died in 1685, being succeeded by his brother, the Duke of York, for whom New York was named, who later was crowned King James II.
James II was chased out of England during the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and replaced with William and Mary.
Penn wanted to make his colony of Pennsylvania a "holy experiment" where Christians of different denominations, who were persecuted in Europe for conscience sake, could flee for refuge and live together.
Emphasizing his Christian tolerance, Penn named the colony's main city "Philadelphia," which is Greek for "Brotherly Love."
"Make and establish such laws as shall best preserve true Christian and civil liberty, in all opposition to all unchristian ... practices."
Not only were Quakers allowed in, but Presbyterians, Lutherans, Baptists, Moravians, Mennonites, and Amish.
Pennsylvania was one of the few colonies to allow in Catholics and Jews.
William Penn wrote in England's Present Interest Considered, 1675:
"Force makes hypocrites, 'tis persuasion only that makes converts."
His views stand in stark contrast to sharia Islamists or modern-day enforcers of the intolerant cancel culture.
Pennsylvania's first legislative act was an unprecedentedly tolerant Great Law of Pennsylvania, December 7, 1682:
"No person ... who shall confess and acknowledge one Almighty God to be the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the World ... shall in any case be molested or prejudiced for his, or her conscientious persuasion or practice but shall freely and fully enjoy his or her Christian Liberty without any interruption."
History records that William Penn insisted on treating the Delaware Indians with honesty, paying them a fair sum for their land, resulting in his city of Philadelphia being spared the Indian attacks and scalpings that other colonies experienced.
Six years after Penn arrived, his colony produced the first anti-slavery document in America, the Germantown Petition of 1688:
"Here is liberty of conscience which is right and reasonable; here ought to be liberty of ye body ... To bring men hither, or to rob and sell them against their will, we stand against ...
We ... are against this traffic of men-body. And we who profess that is is not lawful to steal, must, likewise, avoid to purchase such things as are stolen ...
Then is Pennsylvania to have a good report ... in what manner ye Quakers do rule in their province."
Before arriving in America, William Penn had written to the Delaware Indian chiefs, August 18, 1681:"My Friends,
There is one great God and Power that hath made the world and all things therein, to whom you and I and all people owe their being and well-being, and to whom you and I must one day give an account, for all that we do in the world;
... This great God hath written His law in our hearts by which we are taught and commanded to love and help and do good to one another and not to do harm and mischief one unto another ...
Now this great God hath pleased to make me concerned in my parts of the world, and the king of the country where I live, hath given unto me a great province therein,
... but I desire to enjoy it with your love and consent, that we may always live together as neighbors and friends, else what would the great God say to us, who hath made us not to devour and destroy one another, but to live soberly and kindly together in the world ..."
Penn concluded:
"I have great love and regard towards you, and I desire to gain your love and friendship by a kind, just and peaceable life, and the people I send are of the same mind, and shall in all things behave themselves accordingly ...
I shall shortly come to you myself at which time we may more freely and largely confer and discourse of these matters.
Receive those presents and tokens which I have sent to you as a testimony to my goodwill to you and my resolution to live justly, peaceably and friendly with you.
I am your loving friend, William Penn."
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