C. He wanted to create a place where he could practice his religion freely. William Penn was a devout Quaker. The Quakers (as they were commonly called) were officially The Religious Society of Friends, and they believed the Spirit of God spoke to them directly through their "inner light." The Quakers had suffered a fair amount of persecution in England as a nontraditional sect. William Penn was quoted as saying, in regard to founding a religious commonwealth of Quakers in America, that "there may be room there, though not here [in England], for such a holy experiment.”
