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YALE UNIVERSITY
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The True William Penn

Uniform with this Volume
The True George Washington. By
Paul Leicester Ford. Illustrated, ga.oo
The True Benjamin Franklin. By
Sydney George Fisher. Illustrated.
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Benjamin Franklin, and The True
WiUiam Penn. Three volumes in a
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BY SYDNEY GEORGE FISHER
Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial
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The Making of Pennsylvania. lamo.
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The Evolution of the Constitution
OF the United States. i2mo. Red
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ARMOR PORTRAIT OF PENN IN THE POSSESSION OK MAJOR
WILLIAM DUGALD STUART

The True
William Penn
By
Sydney George Fisher
Author of "The True Benjamin Franklin," "Men, Women, and
Manners in Colonial Times," "The Making of Pennsyl
vania," "The Evolution of the Constitution," etc.

Illustrated

" In deeds of daring rectitude" George Eliot

Philadelphia
J. B. Lippincott Company
1900

Copyright, 1899
BV
J. B. Lippincott Company

Electrotvped and Printed bv J. Q. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGB
I.— The Man  ii
II.— The Times  31
III. — Admiral Penn  39
IV. — Early Influences  58
V. — The Quakers  67
¦"' VI. — Cavalier or Quaker; or Both  95
VII. — First Imprisonment and Roughness of English
Life  107
VIII. — Controversy, First Principles, and Imprison
ment .  121
IX. — Trial by Jury and Hat Honor  138
X. — Penn becomes Rich, and also, they said, a
Dangerous Man  151
XI. — Rest and a Sweetheart  162
XII. — Persecution, Oaths, and Controversy .... 173
XIII. — Travels in Holland and Politics at Home . 181
XIV. — The Holy Experiment of Pennsylvania ... 197
XV. — Great Care with the Constitution and Laws 217
XVI. — First Visit to the Province  229
XVII. — Returns to England and becomes a Courtier 252
XVIII. — Supports the Despotism of James II  280
XIX. — Suspicions, Conspiracies, and Hiding  302
XX. — Returns to his Old Way of Life  337
XXI. — Pennsylvania Again . .  343
XXII. — A Courtier Again, and Again in Prison . . . 360
XXIIL— The End  377

List of Illustrations with Notes PAGB
Armor Portrait of Penn in the Possession of
Major William Dugald Stuart . Frontispiece.
From a photograph of the painting by permission of Major
Stuart. The other armor portrait in England in the pos
session of J. Merrick Head, Esq., could not be photo
graphed, because of extensive alterations at Mr. Head's
country seat, Pennsylvania Castle.
Armor Portrait of Penn in the Pennsylvania His
torical Society  13
From a photograph of the painting by permission of the
Historical Society
The Place Portrait of Penn  15
From a photograph of the copy of the painting by Francis
Place, in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. Permission to
photograph the original in England could not be obtained.
The Hall Engraving of the Bevan Carving . . 17
From a photograph of the Hall engraving in the possession
of the Pennsylvania Historical Society.
The Bevan Carving of Penn  18
From a photograph of the carving in the collection of Alfred
Waterhouse, Esq., Yattendon Court, Berkshire, England.
The carving appears to have been cut out of a piece of ivory
too small for it, so that the back of the head has not the
fulness it should have. Or it may be the carving was an
alto-relievo with a background from which it has been
removed.
The Quaker Meeting  20
From a photograph of the engraving in the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania. 7

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS WITH NOTES FAGB
Penn and Fox  22
From an enlarged photograph of the engraving of the
Quaker Meeting in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
The Richardson Portrait of Penn  24
From a photograph of the original painting in the posses
sion of Mr. E. G. Kennedy, of New York.
Admiral Penn  55
From a photograph of the painting by Sir Peter Lely, in
Greenwich Hospital, London.
GuLi Springett, Penn's First Wife  163
From a photograph of an old stipple engraving.
Algernon Sydney  192
From a photograph of an old engraving in the collection of
Mr. Joseph Y. Jeans, of Philadelphia.
Letitia Street House  239
From a photograph of the house now in Fairmount Park,
Philadelphia.
West's Picture of the Great Treaty  243
From a photograph of the original painting in Indepen
dence Hall, Philadelphia. It was painted by West, in 1773,
at the request of the Penn family, and purchased from Gran
ville John Penn in 1851 by Mr. Joseph Harrison, of Phila
delphia.
Supposed Wampum Belt of the Great Treaty . 246
From a photograph of the belt now in the Historical Society
of Pennsylvania. The belt was given to the Society in 1857
by a member of the Penn family, among whom it was tradi
tionally believed to have been given to Penn by the Indians
at the time of the Great Treaty.
James II., Duke of York  ... 254
From a photograph of an engraving in the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania.
William III  304
From a photograph of an engraving in the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS WITH NOTES PAGB
Hannah Callowhill, Penn's Second Wife . . . 339
From a photograph of the copy of the painting by Place,
in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. Permission to photo
graph the original in England could not be obtained.
Penn's Son Thomas  340
From a photograph of the engraving by Martin, in the His
torical Society of Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania Castle  341
From a photograph of the painting in the Historical Society
of Pennsylvania. The castle was built about 1815, by John
Penn, son of Thomas, and grandson of William Penn. In
1887 it passed from the Penn family into the possession of
its present owner, J. Merrick Head, Esq.
James Logan  349
From a photograph of the painting formerly at Stenton, and
now in the possession of Mr. A. C. Logan, of Philadelphia.
The Slate-Roof House  351
From a photograph of the engraving in the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania.
Penn's Bible, with Book-Plate  375
From a photograph of the Bible in the Historical Society
of Pennsylvania. The motto on the book-plate, " Dum
Clavum Teneam," is an abbreviated form of the motto,
"Dum Clavum Rectum Teneam," which means, "If I
hold a steady helm," or, freely, " If I am not negligent."
Penn's Writing-Desk  379
From a photograph of the desk in the Philadelphia Library.
Penn's Burial-Place, Jordan's Meeting-House. . 384
From a photograph taken by Mr. Julius F. Sachse. Jordan's
Meeting-House is in Buckinghamshire, west of London.

The True
William Penn

THE MAN
William Penn is now usually thought of as a
pious, contemplative man, a peace-loving Quaker in
a broad brim hat and plain drab clothes, who
founded Pennsylvania in the most successful manner,
on beautiful, benevolent principles, and kindness to
the Indians.
But the real Penn, though of a very religious turn
of mind, was essentially a man of action, restless
and enterprising, at times a courtier and a politician,
who loved handsome dress, lived well and lavishly,
and, although he undoubtedly kept his faith with
the red-men, Pennsylvania was the torment of his
life. He came, moreover, of fighting ancestry, and
was himself a soldier for a short time. His life was
full of contests, imprisonments, disasters, and suffer
ing, if not of actual fighting, and he lived during
the most critical periods of English history. Few,
if any, Quakers have shown so much energy as he.
Indeed, there have been few men who have at-

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
tempted to accomplish so much. With what success
we shall see.
The portraits which we have of him are unfor
tunately very unsatisfactory sources from which to
learn his personal appearance. Some of them are
entirely imaginary, and the others are either of
doubtful authenticity or made from recollection.
There is, in fact, no portrait of Penn which is posi
tively known to have been painted from life.
The picture of him most familiar to Americans is
an engraving by Schoff made from a painting in the
Pennsylvania Historical Society, which represents
him as a young cavalier in armor at the age, as is sup
posed, of twenty-two. There is also a smaller en
graving by Armstrong less well known, but taken
from the same painting with the assistance of a pho
tograph * of a similar painting in England. The
engravings are substantially alike, but by no means
faithful copies of the painting from which they are
taken, or of the photograph of the painting in Eng
land. They are, however, very beautiful pictures,
idealizing the qualities of the painting and represent
ing Penn as most heroic and attractive.
He is already a good deal idealized in the painting
from which they are taken, and appears as a fresh-
faced, rosy-lipped, but very serious-minded, English
youth, clad in armor, his hair parted in the middle,
and the long cavalier locks reaching to his shoulders.
A handsome piece of lace is wound several times

* This photograph is now in the collection of Hon. James T.
Mitchell, of Philadelphia. 12

the armor portrait of penn in the pennsylvania
historical society

THE MAN
round his neck, and the ends, gathered in a bunch
at the throat, rest on the polished breast-plate.
The face and eyes look straight at you with intense
and almost startling earnestness. There is no sense
of humor in the features, or even youthful gayety.
At first sight you might say that the face was melan
choly ; but close inspection leads you to describe it
as over-serious, too earnest for the time of life.
There is great determination expressed in it, — that
sort of wild determination which, when combined
with a lack of education, makes what is called the
fanatic. But, at the same time, every line in the
portrait shows that the young man is of cultured and
good associations, and belongs to the best class of
his time. The eyes are very large, and it is in them
that this wild determination principally resides ; and,
at the same time, they have an appealing, soft, lus
trous look. Gentle, sympathetic, and ideal qualities
are evidently combined in a tumultuous way with
some sort of an heroic soul. It is precisely the sort
of picture one would paint after a careful study of
Penn's life. There is no trace of shrewdness, subtle
tact, or deep sagacity, which in the previous volume
of this series we found to be so characteristic of
Franklin's face.
We can easily imagine that Penn might have
looked like this. We know that he was very reli
gious ; and the face of this portrait is not the hard,
cunning face of the ecclesiastic, nor the sour face
of the Puritan. It belongs to another type of that
strangely religious age, the type of the smaller sects,
who were more radical than either Puritan or Church-
13

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
man, who were not plotting for political control, who
took their mystical religion to heart with simple,
unworldly, reckless earnestness, and went with it to
the prison or to the stake.
Whatever decision may be reached as to the
authenticity of these armor portraits, they will al
ways be valued by Penn's admirers as idealizations
of his qualities. It is, indeed, hard to resist the
fascination of pictures which take all the heroic and
intellectual qualities of the mature man and depict
them in his boyish face, as foreshadowing what he
was to be.
The armor portrait in the possession of the Penn
sylvania Historical Society, was given by Granville
Penn in 1833, and is described in the Society's
Catalogue of Paintings as "entirely authentic." It
was for a long time believed by the uninitiated to
be an original, and the statement usually made was
that the family had had two of these portraits, both
painted from life and by the same artist, and had
retained one of them after giving the other to the
Historical Society. But recently, in cleaning the
one belonging to the Historical Society, it was
found to be of very modern date, and seems to have
been painted within the first half of the nineteenth
century. It might be supposed that the one remaining in
England in the possession of Maj'or William Dugald
Stuart might have been taken from life ; but now it
appears that there is another of these armor por
traits in the possession of J. Merrick Head, Esq., of
Pennsylvania Castle, Dorset. Both are claimed by

THE PLACE portrait OF PENN

THE MAN
their owners to be originals. But connoisseurs have
grave doubts of their authenticity because little or
nothing is known of their history, and it is not even
known by whom they were painted. They are not
in the least like the Bevan carving of Penn, the only
likeness of him which is at all well authenticated.
A portrait purporting to be a likeness of Penn at
the age of fifty-two, painted by Francis Place, was,
about the year 1874, found to be in the possession
of Mr. Allan, of Blackwell Hall, County Durham,
England. Place was an amateur artist, contempo
rary with Penn, and might have had opportunity to
paint a portrait of him from life. It should be said,
however, that Quakers were very averse to sitting
for their portraits, because it savored of vanity and
injured their standing among those whose good
opinion was of value. But still Place might have
seen Penn at various times and painted him from
recollection.* Those who accept this Place portrait as anything
of a likeness can the more easily believe in the
armor portraits. The face is very much the same in
each ; in each we find the same rather staring, anx
ious eyes ; and it is possible to imagine that the
Place portrait is the man grown much older, stouter,
and with the look of uncertain energy changed into
one of more settled and steady determination.
The Place portrait has also some of that same
over-seriousness which is so noticeable in the armor

*Scribner's Magazine, vol. xii. p. 6; Pennsylvania Historical
Society, Catalogue of Paintings, p. 27.

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
portrait, and also in the portrait of Penn's father,
the admiral. In fact, the resemblance is so close
that those who have carefully studied the subj'ect are
disposed to think, and with good reason, that the
Place portrait is a likeness of the admiral and not
of his son.* The decisive point, however, is that
this Place portrait is totally unlike the Bevan carv
ing, which I shall now describe.
When Lord Cobham was adorning his gardens at
Stowe with statuary towards the middle of the
eighteenth century, some years after the death of
Penn, he sought for a portrait of Penn to be copied,
but could not fine one. A certain Sylvan us Bevan,
a Quaker apothecary in London, skilful in amateur
carving, hearing of this, made a little ivory bust of
Penn as he recollected him and sent it to Lord
Cobham without explanation. His lordship, it is
said, on receiving it, exclaimed, " Whence came
this? It is William Penn himself;" and he had a
statue made from it for his gardens.
This tale, if true, is somewhat against the validity
of the armor and Place portraits, for Lord Cobham,
after inquiry only a few years after Penn's death,
was, it is said, unable to hear of any portrait of him.
It should also be noted that Clarkson, who pub
lished his memoirs of Penn in 1814 and was very
diligent in collecting traditions of him, says that
there was no portrait of him painted from life. He
relies entirely on the Bevan carving, f

* Jenkins's Family of William Pean, p. 28.
I Clarkson's Memoirs of Penn, vol. ii. p. 260.
16

THE HALI, ENGRAVING OF TI-IE BEVAN CARVING

THE MAN
The Bevan bust, or carving, though small, is said
to have been a good likeness. Robert Proud, the
Quaker historian of Pennsylvania, who was in Eng
land in 1750 and stayed with Bevan, reports of it :
" The likeness is a real and true one, as I have been informed, not
only by himself (S. B.), but also by other old men in England of
the first character in the Society of Friends, who knew him in their
youth." (Watson's Annals, edition of 1844, p. m.)*
Bevan is said to have made three of these ivory
carvings of Penn. He sent one of them to Penn
sylvania, to James Logan, and it found its way with
the Loganian Library to the Philadelphia Library,
where it was, unfortunately, burnt in a slight fire
which occurred there in 183 1. I have been unable
to find any one who recollects its appearance or
who has ever heard it described. Until the armor
portrait was brought to this country, the Bevan
carving and engravings of it were all that people
had to rely upon who wished to know what Penn
looked like.
An excellent engraving of the Philadelphia Bevan
carving was made by John Hall in 1773. But
fortunately we do not have to rely exclusively on
this engraving. One of the two other carvings that
Bevan made is still in existence in England, and I

* Mr. Charles Henry Hart has called my attention to another proof
that the Bevan carving is probably a correct likeness. In the Ameri
can Uhiversa/ Magazine {01 Jannary 2, 1797, there is an engraving by
Smithers of the Bevan carving taken from a drawing by Du SimitiSre,
and under it is printed, " esteemed by Richard Penn a good like
ness." a 17

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
have been so fortunate as to obtain a photograph of
it* There is no essential difference between the
photograph and the engraving ; and after an exam
ination of them it is impossible to resist the con
clusion that they represent a man totally different
from the one we see in the armor portraits or in the
Place portrait. The Bevan portrait has a very
pointed nose, which is not found in the others, and
the whole expression of the face is different
The armor portraits and the Place portrait show
a very anxious, serious face. In a sense this might
be natural, because we know that Penn had many
troubles and anxieties. But, on the other hand, the
serene, cheerful face of the Bevan portrait conforms
to the tradition and the assertions of his biographers
that he took all his difficulties, his imprisonments,
and his loss of fortune very lightly, and was fully
sustained in his worst trials by his sanguine and
courageous temperament. If the Bevan portrait
is anything of a correct likeness, and I believe it is,
it is impossible to believe in the other pictures.
There is a picture described by Mr. Julius F.
Sachse in his "German Pietists in America," painted
by a Dutch artist, Egbert Hemskirck, representing
a Quaker meeting, in which one of the figures is sup
posed to be Penn. Hemskirck was a contemporary
of Penn, and his picture represents a meeting of
Quakers in Benjamin Furly's house in Rotterdam.
* It is in the possession of Alfred Waterhouse, Esq., R.A., Yatten
don Court, Berkshire. I may add that the Pennsylvania Historical
Society has a copy in marble of the Bevan carving that was in Phila
delphia. i8

THE BEVAN CARVING OF PENN

THE MAN
The figure on the extreme right is supposed to be
George Fox ; the one next to him, with his right foot
resting on the bench, is Penn. Both Fox and Penn,
it will be observed, are in English dress, and the rest
of the people appear to be Dutch.
It would seem at first sight as if the picture was
intended to be somewhat in ridicule of the Quakers,
for most of the people are given rather ill-looking
faces except Furly, who is on the left leaning on the
gallery with his hat off But it probably represents
an ordinary Quaker meeting of the time, as the artist
had seen them. Furly was a rich man and the
patron and protector of the Quakers in Holland.
He was a close friend of Penn, and Penn and Fox
are known to have held meetings with him in the
year 1677. It will be observed that the Dutch
artist's representation of Penn gives him the pointed
nose which we find in the Bevan carving. He looks
like the active, busy, energetic man of affairs he
was ; but there is nothing religious about the face.
It is, however, very life-like and interesting, and I
am inclined to have some confidence in it
There is a German engraving of Penn by Kuhner,
often reproduced, and purporting to be taken from
a portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller, who was a well-
known court painter in Penn's time. But nothing is
known of the original picture which this engraving
professes to reproduce, and it is generally believed
to be a copy of the Bevan carving, which it closely
resembles. Still another portrait of Penn has recently come to
light and is now owned in America. It is believed
19

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
to be by Jonathan Richardson, who was a well-
known artist and a contemporary of Penn. It has
the pointed nose and double chin of the Bevan
carving, and cannot, therefore, be rejected by the
critics. It is well painted, animated, and the green
coat and careful details make it an exceedingly in
teresting picture.
There are rumors that there was at one time a
portrait of Penn by Sir Peter Lely, who painted the
likeness of Penn's father, but the picture itself has
not yet been discovered.
Benjamin West's picture of the famous treaty
with the Indians gives us a representation of Penn,
but it is purely imaginary. The large, full-length
portrait painted by Inman for the Penn Society, and
now in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, merely fol
lows West's representation, and as it is also purely
imaginary and adds nothing to our knowledge of
Penn's real appearance, it has not been reproduced
for this book. For the same reason the old lead
statue in front of the Pennsylvania Hospital has been
omitted. The large bronze statue which was cast some years
ago for the tower of the City Hall, in Philadelphia,
represents Penn as tall, vigorous, and handsome, as
he is supposed to have been when he was about forty
years old and first took possession of Pennsylvania.
This statue, though by no means what was desired
and expected, was modelled after careful consulta
tion with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and
particular attention was given to the dress. It is the
cavalier costume of the period, with the sword, the

awG>7i

THE MAN
feather in the hat, and the silver trimmings on the
coat omitted. This is beheved to have been Penn's
dress for a long time after he became a Quaker.
He even for a time, it is said, wore his sword. He
was rather fond of good clothes. He altered the
dress which marked his class and station in life only
by making it somewhat plainer than that of the gay
cavalier. This seems to have been the practice of all the
early Quakers. They did not adopt a distinctive
dress, but made the one they were accustomed
to plainer. The broad-brim hat and straight-cut
coat were not the original Quaker costume. It was
the shifting and changing of fashions, and exces
sive ornamentation, that they particularly disliked.
Many of them, especially in Pennsylvania in colonial
times, while adhering to one fashion, wore clothes
of the most handsome and expensive materials. The
sculptor, however, took liberties with the instruc
tions of the Historical Society, and has probably
represented Penn less plain than he really was, and
in a way that does not add to the dignity of the
statue. The more we investigate Penn's personal appear
ance the more confusing we find the accounts of it.
Not only do we find his portraits contradictory, but
we find some writers describing him as a tall man,
others as above the medium height, and others as a
short man. In Watson's "Annals of Pennsylvania"
the recollections are given of an old woman who
professed to have seen him when he visited his
province.

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
" She described him as of rather short stature, but the handsomest,
best-looking, lively gentleman she had ever seen. There was nothing
like pride about him ; but affable and friendly with the humblest in
life." (Vol. i. p. 55.)
Clarkson, relying, I presume, on traditions gath
ered among the English Quakers, describes him as
a tall man ; and I am inclined to think this is cor
rect Hemskirck's painting of the Quaker meeting
represents him as rather tall, and Hemskirck would
be apt to give his figure correctly. He might be
inaccurate in his recollections of Penn's face, but
he could easily remember whether he was tall or
short Penn was a man of education, and, indeed, quite
learned. He knew something of Latin, and corre
sponded in that tongue with Sewell the Quaker his
torian. He also studied Greek, as a matter of course,
like any Oxford man, and he seems to have known
French, German, and Dutch well enough to read
and speak in them. He read widely on theology,
government, and all the topics of his time, as is
abundantly shown in his writings. But the most
striking proof of his wide reading is to be found in
some of his essays or pamphlets, to which he has
added quotations and citations of all the ancient
and modern authors that he could find in support
of his theses. In his "Treatise of Oaths," there are
over fifty instances in which he either quotes the
words or states the opinion of some Greek or Roman
philosopher or statesman, or of some saint or father
of the church. In the second part of " No Cross,
No Crown," there are over one hundred and thirty

PENN AND Fll.x;

THE MAN
of these instances, and they range from the most
remote antiquity through the days of Greece and
Rome, and the distinguished men of the Middle
Ages, down to the men of his own day in England.
The labor of hunting for these in the libraries of the
time must have been very great, and he could not
have collected such masses for the particular occa
sions on which he used them, unless he was already
somewhat acquainted with them in a general way.
It is easy to see in his life and character that he
was inspired by this labor. He loved great and
noble thoughts, grand ideas of world-wide improve
ment and reform. This passion led him to read the
lives of all who had been remarkable, and their soul-
stirring words, the enthusiasm of their success, or the
heroism of failure or defeat, stimulated to still loftier
heights the passion that had led him to this study.
He was evidently one of those who study history
largely through biographies ; and if one wishes to
be aroused and inspired, that is certainly the best
method to pursue. From his natural bent, and these
studies, he had filled his mind with all the most pro
gressive and philanthropic ideas that had been sug
gested in the whole course of written human history.
He knew all the distinguished men in England of
his day ; and many of them he knew very intimately.
He travelled, both in England and in foreign countries,
more than most people of that time. He was bom
and educated among the aristocracy, and always as
sociated with them freely ; and, as a Quaker, he
became very intimate with the middle and lower
classes. 23

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
He was certainly in a way to be a man of enlarged
mind ; and, in truth, he was too much so. His
liberality was developed at the expense, as we shall
see, of many practical qualities. Although he had
read so many biographies, he was not a shrewd
judge of the characters by whom he was sur
rounded in actual life. He could arouse people into
enthusiasm for his great ideas, but he had not a
corresponding power for carrying those ideas into
practical effect When living in his colony he man
aged it well, and when away from it he managed it
very badly ; and he was a careless man of business.
He planned everything on a vast scale, with an
attempt to look far into the future. He was so far
in advance of his time in everything that he con
stantly suffered defeats, which a shrewder man, like
Franklin, for example, would have avoided by being
more moderate. He knew that he was much ahead
of his age, but he would not be otherwise ; and,
indeed, there is much to be said in favor of setting
a high and absolute standard and holding to it
heroically. It was a great misfortune to him that in his re
ligious and political writings he lacked the power of
lucid and concise expression. He was a rather vo
luminous writer ; but in politics and theology a very
dull one. When he had a good thought, he usually
suffocated it in an inextricable tangle of words and
parentheses. His writings could be made excellent
object-lessons to show how not to use the parenthesis.
When he sat down to write one of his essays, he
seems to have tried to make it as long as possible,
24

THE RICHARDSON PORTRAIT OF PENN

THE MAN
to use as many words as possible, and to interpo
late all manner of irrelevant things so as to pre
vent his phrases from having any point or snap. It
is a dreary business to dig out his opinions after
having written a life of the vivid, sparkling, pointed
Franklin. He never trained himself in conciseness as Frank
lin did. In fact, he did not train himself at all in
writing. He would probably have despised anything
of that kind as over-nice and too particular. "To
be nice," he says, in his maxims, "is not only a
troublesome, but a slavish thing." The bent of his
mind was altogether away from the minute details
which produce excellence of this sort He was all
for great ideas and generalities.
Sometimes when circumstances compelled him to
be concise, his style greatly improved, and he said
things which are of permanent value for the way in
which they are put In drafting the documents for
the government of Pennsylvania, he had to be brief,
and several of his statements of principles are still
often quoted and admired for their aptness.
"There is hardly one frame of government in the world so ill de
signed by its founders, that in good hands would not do well enough. "
" Any government is free to the people under it (whatever be the
frame) where the laws rule and the people are a party to those laws."
His famous letter to his wife and children on his
departure for Pennsylvania, and his description of
that province sent to the Free Society of Traders,
are also remarkably free from his usual faults, and
written in very mellow, pretty language. Some of
his more important correspondence is also written in
25

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
this same happy manner. His biographer, Stough-
ton, thinks that, if Penn had cared to, he could
always have written in this vein, but that in most
of his writings he thought it necessary to adopt the
canting language which had become habitual and
sacred among the Quakers.
When he was nearly fifty years old, and obliged
to conceal himself after the Revolution of 1688, he
wrote an essay called "Some Fruits of Solitude,"
containing five hundred and fifty-six " maxims and
reflections," the result of his experience of life, and
contemplation of it in retirement Afterwards, he
wrote another essay called " More Fruits of Soli
tude," and this contains two hundred and ninety-
nine maxims. It is curious to observe that when
he confines a maxim to ten or a dozen words, it
often has some point But he could not always
restrain himself Many of the maxims are enlarged
into good-sized paragraphs, and have to be read
twice to see their meaning.
I can assure the reader that it is a real penance to
read through these eight hundred and fifty maxims.
I have performed that task and gathered the dozen
or so grains of wheat out of the ton of — I was
about to say chaff; but I can hardly apply that
word to so much sound morality and spiritual senti
ment merely because it has the misfortune to be
cumbersomely expressed. We can, at least, say
that those who complain of Franklin's maxims as
too shrewd and worldly, too thrifty and money-
getting, will not be able to make that complaint of
Penn's. The tone of all that Penn says is excellent
26

THE MAN
and elevating. We shall grow rich under his advice
only in generosity, magnanimity, liberty, and human
kindness. " They have a right to censure that have a heart to help."
"Never marry but for love; but see that thou lov'st what is
lovely. ' '
" There can be no friendship where there is no freedom."
' ' Some men do as much begrudge others a good name as they
want one themselves ; and perhaps that is the reason of it."
" Nor can we fall below the arms of God, how low soever it be
we fall."
Some of his maxims on education are interesting
because so far in advance of his time, and because
they embody the same ideas which Franklin after
wards amplified and sought to establish in the Col
lege of Philadelphia.
" We are in pain to make them scholars, but not men ! To talk,
rather than to know ; which is true canting. ' '
" The first thing obvious to children is what is sensible ; and that
we make no part of their rudiments."
"We press their memory too soon, and puzzle, strain, and load
them with words and rules ; to know grammar and rhetoric, and a
strange tongue or two, that it is ten to one may never be useful to
them ; leaving their natural genius to mechanical and physical or
natural knowledge uncultivated and neglected ; which would be of
exceeding use and pleasure to them through the whole course of
their life."
" To be sure, languages are not to be despised or neglected. But
things are still to be preferred."
"Children had rather be making of tools and instruments of
play, shaping, drawing, framing, and building, &c., than getting
some rules of propriety of speech by heart. And those also would
follow with more judgment, and less trouble and time."
For one of his maxims he certainly deserves
credit, and the maxim deserves a wide circulation.
27

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
" To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics
as well as morals. ' '
His description of the wise man is also rather
good. "The wise man is cautious, but not cunning; judicious but not
crafty ; making virtue the measure of using his excellent under
standing in the conduct of his life. "
"The wise man is equal, ready, but not officious."
His maxim, " The less form in religion the better,
since God is a spirit," is a very complete though
brief summary of his religion and the religion of the
Quakers. In his letter to William Popple, he, with
out perhaps intending it, made an excellent maxim.
" We can never be the better for our religion if our neighbor be
the worse for it."
There is only one of his maxims that savors at all
of the keen shrewdness of Franklin's. It, perhaps,
can be applied to our own times.
" Let the people think they govern and they will be governed."
According to Bishop Burnet, Penn's conversation
was even more wordy and cumbersome than his
political writings.
" He was a vain talking man. He had such an opinion of his own
faculty of persuading, that he thought none could stand before it,
though he was singular in that opinion ; for he had a tedious, luscious
way of talking not apt to overcome a man's reason, though it might
tire his patience."
There may be some truth in this statement Penn
was an enthusiast, and when talking on his favorite
themes he very likely heaped up the words and bore
28

THE MAN
down opposition by energy and long-windedness.
He was "luscious," or nauseatingly eloquent, as the
word may be translated, from excessive zeal in his
subject Burnet himself was also afflicted in that
way. But other and less prejudiced persons than Burnet
found great pleasure in Penn's conversation, and there
is every reason to believe that it was by no means so
dull as his writing. Swift, who was surely a judge
of such things, said he " talked very agreeably and
with much spirit" Tillotson found great pleasure
in his acquaintance ; Clarkson calls attention to the
Gentleman' s Magazine of April, 1737, where some
one who had travelled with Penn in a stage-coach,
says, "And a pleasant companion he was." The
tradition among the Quakers in England seems to
have been that he was rather animated in conversa
tion and disposed to be facetious ; and some of the
traditions and anecdotes preserved in Pennsylvania
are also to that effect. He certainly had seen a
great deal of the world, and this, with his wide
reading and genial temperament, must have made
his conversation very agreeable when he was not
carried away by zeal for his unusual opinions. His
usual manner, I am inclined to think from various
incidents I have read, was one of bluff heartiness.
It would seem that, until he became a rather old
man, Penn was very free from disease. But the de
tails we have of his life are not complete, and he
might have had illnesses which have not been re
corded. He had a vigorous constitution, and, with
out it, could hardly have endured, without serious
29

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
injury, the frequent imprisonments in pestilential
dungeons which he suffered in his youth.
For the rest of his life we find him very actively
engaged in the varied business of a leader and or
ganizer of the Quakers, a defender of them from
persecution, a politician, a courtier, a founder of a
colony, and suffering great losses of fortune and
severe anxiety. He was of a sanguine tempera
ment, and this disposition may have contributed to
his health. As he grew older he had the gout ; but
it seems he was careful to take systematic exercise,
and the disease never seized him with any great
severity.

30

II
the times
Penn was born October 14, 1644, and, as we read
English history, that seems a troublous time ror a
child to come into the world, especially a child that
was to be a man of peace. England was full of
religious and political confusion. The great ideas
of government and religion by which we have been
living for two hundred years were then struggling
for existence in their primitive form, and for the
next fifty years were tossed about in the wild tumult
of wars, revolution, and religious persecution.
There were two great political parties, the Roy
alists and the Roundheads, and several great re
ligious parties, the Church of England, the various
divisions of the Puritans, and the Roman Catholics,
besides numerous fanatical small sects which were
fiercely in earnest to establish their principles of
politics or religion. At that time the discussion of
such principles was not confined to argument Each
party and each religion was prepared for force, to
inflict or to suffer martyrdom, to fight or to die in
their cause.
For nearly half a century the king had been
struggling hard to build up the power and privi
leges of the crown against Parliament and the people.
31

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
James I. had been very diligent in this, and tyranny
was gaining in spite of the frantic and spasmodic
struggles of the people against it Tyranny was
growing because England was growing. As the
island became more and more civilized and began
to take a place among the nations, organization be
came more and more necessary. Regular methodi
cal government must succeed the easy, noble, and
manly freedom which was instinctive with the de
scendants of the Vikings, Angles, and Saxons. The
followers of the king and all who admired absolute
monarchy or loved place and power took advantage
of this necessity to develop royalty and a church es
tablished by law, and for a long time they were very
successful. Other things, however, were growing besides the
royal power and the Church of England. The great
movement of the Reformation, starting in the inven
tion of printing and the revival of learning, was still
stimulating independent thought, arousing and en
couraging more and more the Puritan sects, and
leading them to see their interest in developing the
ancient Anglo-Saxon liberties, as the Royalists saw
their interest in developing the kingly power.
Strange creatures were those Puritans and other
sects who had only recently broken through the re
straints of the Middle Ages and begun to think for
themselves. From the system of the Middle Ages,
which ignored the Bible altogether, they had rushed
to the opposite extreme of accepting it so literally
that they gave their children the strange un-English
names they found in the Old Testament From the
32

THE TIMES
Church of Rome, which governed as an absolute
monarchy and governed too much, the Presbyte
rians had reacted to a system of representative or
republican church government made up of elective
assemblies and synods, while others, the Inde
pendents and Congregationalists, had reacted to the
principle that there should be .no general church
government at all, and each congregation should be
a law unto itself in doctrine and discipline. From
the excesses of image worship and ritual they had
gone to the extreme of abolishing all ritual, vest
ments, and images, adopting extemporaneous prayer
instead of prayers read from a book, and preaching
to a congregation that sat within four bare walls.
They were austere in their manners ; they dis
ciplined themselves into a hatred of all amusements
and pleasures. They saw the terrible side of re
ligion ; they convinced themselves of original sin,
with which every man was born, and for which the
vast majority of mankind would be burnt forever in
hell by a wrathful God who, to gratify his rage and
pleasure, had foreordained them to their fate, in
spite of the good deeds and works they might do
on earth.
They encouraged all feelings that were gloomy
and sombre, which were, they thought, alone com
patible with religion. They relied on inward expe
riences and feelings of conversion to supply the place
of the dogmas and forms they had rejected. They
trained their faces to conform to their feelings, as
sumed sour, malignant expressions, whined, groaned,
and drawled in their speech.
3 33

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
They were accompanied by smaller sects, with
minds still more distorted by the new-found hberty
of the age, — fifth monarchy men, who believed that
Christ was about to come to establish an earthly
kingdom for a thousand years. Desperate, danger
ous fellows they were ; for when the rage of their
belief was on them and they thought the kingdom
about to come, they would fight like devils, attacking
the militia and soldiery with the utmost fury and
refusing quarter.
Pepys describes how thirty-one of them, shouting,
" The King Jesus and the heads upon the gates !"
put all London in terror, routed the trainbands, put
the king's lifeguard to the run, broke through the
city gates, killed twenty men, and led every one to
believe that they numbered five hundred, while
every householder armed himself, and forty thousand
stood ready to oppose these fierce fanatics.*
Then there were strange antinomian and familistic
sects, who found their liberty in dropping the original
sin and gloom of the Puritans and believing that there
was scarcely any sin at all, and that love and con
templation were religion. Of these we shall have
more to say hereafter, for they, together with the
Puritans, created a phase of religious thought which
had great influence on William Penn, and, indeed,
accounts for half his character. The Quakers also
were coming into prominence at that time, and they
were a very peculiar and important sect, of whom we
shall have a great deal to say.

* Pepys's Diary, ed. 1893, vol. i. pp. 319-322.
34

THE TIMES
In striking contrast to these strange sects were the
Royalists, who stood by the king and the Church of
England, with its moderate ceremonies and ritual
and its moderate adoption of the ideas of the Refor
mation. Pleasure-loving and gay, devoted to sports
and amusements, dressing fantastically, as it would
now seem, in bright colors, with long hair and
pointed beards, and all the more devoted to pleas
ures, theatres, oaths, ribaldry, and licentiousness,
because these things were under the ban of Puri
tanism. A long and terrible conflict was inevitable be
tween these elements. How to combine the ancient
freedom with the necessities of highly-organized gov
ernment and have both liberty and government at
the same time was the problem by whose solution
England was to be torn and distracted for the rest
of the century. During that time, which in effect
covers the life of William Penn, "freedom," as Ten
nyson has expressed it, "broadened slowly down from
precedent to precedent" Slowly hardly describes
this movement. It was very slow ; often stagnation
and sometimes retrogression ; and Penn's relation
to this movement, which is still a movement, is the
most important part of his life's history.
Charles I., who succeeded James I. in 1625, car
ried the royal power to still greater heights. He
levied taxes and imposts as he pleased without au
thority of law, and governed for many years without
any Parliament at all. In fact, he completely eclipsed
and for the time being destroyed the ancient liberties
and brought royalty to its climax and acme of power.
35

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
In the same way, reacting against the whole spirit
of the Reformation, he built up the Established
Church. He appointed Laud Archbishop of Can
terbury, and it is needless to tell again how Laud
became the terror and detestation of Puritans, filling
the churches with images, elaborating ceremonies,
and inflicting degrading punishment on the clergy
who inclined to Puritan ways. They were impris
oned, whipped, had their ears cut off, their noses
slit, and their cheeks branded with hot irons. We
have all heard the story of the Puritan Pryne, who
was stood in the pillory, lost both his ears, and was
imprisoned for life, because he wrote condemning
the balls, theatres, and other amusements of the
court It was in those days that John Hampden sturdily
refused to pay the ship-money, which was an old
form of tax by which the seaports had supplied the
king with war-vessels. Charles attempted to com
pel the inland towns to contribute, and Hampden
resisted, although the suit against him was for only
twenty shillings. Penn, as we shall see, in later
years made a similar stand for trial by jury.
We have all read how the reaction by Charles I.
against the Reformation brought on a counter-reac
tion from the Reformation itself ; for while despotism
grew among the Royalists at court, wild republican
ism spread among the people. Charles I. tried to
force the Church of England's ritual and ceremonies,
upon the Presbyterian Scotch, and when they rose
in rebeUion and mobbed the bishops he called a
Parliament together to grant him an army with
36

THE TIMES
which to suppress them. There had been no Par
liament for eleven years ; and this new one was filled
with men of the Cromwell and Hampden order.
They impeached and executed Laud and Stafford.
They abolished the ecclesiastical courts which had
been punishing the Puritans. They seized violently
on all the rights they had so long declared they pos
sessed. They completely reversed the condition of
affairs, and instead of the king ruling without a Par
liament, Parliament ruled without the king. He was
driven from London, established himself at York,
and declared war against his Parliament
In this way began the great civil war in 1642, and
when Penn was born, in October, 1644, four famous
battles had been fought, — Edge Hill, Newbury,
Nantwich, and Marston Moor. The Puritan cannon
had battered down many an ancient castle of the no
bility. The king's cause was lost, and the success
ful Puritan and parliamentary soldiers, with their
extraordinary biblical names, — Praise God Bare-
bones and Sergeant Hew Agag in Pieces before the
Lord, — were roaming through the country, smashing
the images in the churches, tearing out the pipes in
the organs, breaking the stained-glass windows, and
stabling their horses in cathedrals.
But although civil war rages in a country the or
dinary affairs of life go on. The children play hide-
and-seek and lovers kiss their sweethearts as in the
piping times of peace. We must not let the general
statements and perspective of history deceive us, and
we are assured that there was still some quiet life left
in England when we read of that country gentleman
37

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
who, on the morning of the battle of Edge Hill, was
unconcernedly gtrolling with his dogs between the
two armies. What concern had the war with him
whose life as lord of his lands was self-contained and
complete ?
So Penn, we may infer, was born as peacefully as
children usually are in a house where his father and
mother had lodgings, and which stood in London in
a little court close to the Tower and adjoining what
was called London Wall. His father had gone to
sea, and soon the mother and her son left London
and went to live in the pretty village of Wanstead,
near Essex, and there Penn passed his boyhood and
went to school.

38

Ill
ADMIRAL PENN
Of Penn's mother very little is known, except
that she was a Dutch woman, the daughter of John
Jasper, a merchant of Rotterdam. Her son has left
us no description of her. There is no portrait, no
anecdotes or sayings, nothing that would reveal her
character ; and very likely she was a plain, mediocre
person ; for if she had been otherwise, something
more definite about her would have come down
to us.
Penn showed few if any Dutch traits. We might
expect that his mother would have given him some
of the thrifty, economical qualities of her nation.
But he was just the reverse, a lavish spender of
money rather than a saver, and a very poor business
man, so far as regards details and management
His ideas of such subjects were grand, general, and
sweeping like an Englishman's, in advance of his
time and greater than his ability could accomplish.
It might be said that his very earnest and advanced
opinions on the subject of religious liberty were
Dutch ; but he might have gained such opinions
from the Quakers, who supported them more ar
dently than any other sect
Pepys describes in his diary, in his amusing way,
39

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
his first meeting Lady Penn in August, 1664, and
her appearance.
" At noon dined at home and after dinner my wife and I to Sir W
Pen's to see his lady, the first time, who is a well looked, fat short
old Dutch woman, but one that hath been heretofore pretty handsome,
and is now very discreet and I believe hath more wit than her hus
band. Here we stayed talking a good while and very well pleased
I was with the old woman at first visit." (Vol. iv. p. 207.)
In another passage he describes Lady Penn and
some of the manners of the times when people
visited one another in their bedrooms.
" So home vexed and going to my Lady Batten's there found a
great many women with her in her chamber merry, my Lady Pen
and her daughter, among others ; where my Lady Pen flung me
down upon the bed, and herself and others, one after another, upon
me, and very merry we were." (Vol. iv. pp. 391, 392.)
Later on Pepys describes her as " mighty homely
and looks old." She was sufficiently good-looking,
however, for him to make love to her.
She and her husband were, no doubt, plain people,
and when they married were in moderate circum
stances. The biographers describe Penn's birth
place near the Tower, as if his parents occupied the
whole house ; but it seems they only lodged there.
Pepys, who for many years associated with them
very intimately, gives us an account of their begin
nings ; but he obtained it from a certain Mrs. Turnei',
who was evidently an atrocious gossip.
" She [Mrs. Turner] says that he was a pityfull [fellow] when she
first knew them ; that his lady was one of the sourest, dirty women,
that ever she saw ; that they took two chambers, one over another,
for themselves and child in Tower Hill ; that for many years together
40

ADMIRAL PENN
they eat more meals at her house than at their own . . . that she
brought my lady who then was a dirty slattern with her stockings
hanging about her heels so that afterwards the people of the whole
Hill did say that Mrs Turner had made Mrs Pen a gentlewoman."
(Vol. vi. p. 329.)

But after making full allowances for Mrs. Turner,
we can readily understand that there was a founda
tion of truth for what she said. Admiral Penn also,
though of a respectable family, was a rough man.
He was brought up as a sailor, and at the time he
married and took lodgings near the Tower he had
only lately come out of the merchant service, a very
rough and brutal school. Lord Clarendon, as we
shall see, described him as a man who was always
trying to put on the appearance of good breeding,
and not always with success. His whole career
shows that, starting with almost nothing, he had a
consuming ambition to make a fortune and get into
good society without being over-scrupulous as to
the means he used.
He is described on his tomb as descended from the
Penns of Penns-Lodge, in the County of Wilts, and
also from the Penns of Penn, in the County of Bucks.
The family had apparently lived in those places from
time immemorial, and that is all we know about
them with any certainty. One of the ancestors is
said to have been a monk in the Abbey of Glaston
bury, in Somersetshire. When the monasteries were
dissolved in the beginning of the reformation by
Henry VIIL, this monk was granted some of the
Abbey lands, where he established Penns-Lodge,
married, and had several children. It is possible
41

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
that from this man William Penn may have inherited
his strong religious inclinations.
Several traditions attempt to trace back still far
ther the family history. Penn himself believed that
he was of Welsh origin ; and according to Watson's
"Annals of Pennsylvania," * the Rev. Hugh David,
who went to Philadelphia in 1700, relates that he
and Penn were on the ship together, when Penn,
seeing a goat gnawing a broom, said, —
" Hugh, dost thou observe that goat ? See what hardy fellows the
Welsh are, how they can feed on a broom. However, Hugh, I am
a Welshman myself, and will relate by how strange a circumstance
our family lost their name. My grandfather (or great-grandfather)
was named John Tudor, and lived upon the top of a hill or mountain
in Wales ; he was generally called John Penmunrith which in Eng
lish is ' John on the top of a hill.' He removed from Wales into
Ireland, where he acquired considerable property. Upon his return
into his own country, he was addressed by his old friends and neigh
bors, not in the former way, but by the name of Mr. Penn. He
afterwards removed to London, where he continued to reside under
the name of John Penn, which has since been the family name."
Some of the details of this statement are not con
sistent with the rest of the family history ; and in a
letter written by Penn's son, John Penn, to the Rev.
Dr. Smith, of Philadelphia, still another origin is
suggested. It seems some woman in France named
De Penn, or possibly De la Penne, had written to
the Penns in England, claiming relationship with
them. Some of her family, she said, had gone to
England with William the Conqueror. This origin,
seeming to be more flattering to the family pride,
has been adopted by some writers ; but there is no

* Vol. i. p. 119.
4a

ADMIRAL PENN
proof of its correctness. Of the two, the Welsh
origin is the more likely to be the true one.
But for our purpose we need go no farther back
than Giles Penn, the grandfather of William Penn.
The family appear to have lived in Bucks and Wilts
as respectable people of some means, belonging to
the country gentry. But we must not think of the
country gentleman of that time as anything like
what he has been during the last century in England.
He was a very rough farmer, leading a life of rude
plenty, not on a country-seat with trim lawns and
gardens, but on rugged acres, with his cattle and
chickens of first importance, and allowed to wander
under his bedroom windows. Instead of the excel
lent education, foreign travel, and familiarity with
London for a few months every year, which charac
terize the squire of modern times, he seldom saw
London more than once in his hfetime, he had
never travelled, and his education was usually of
the poorest. He was an aristocrat only because he
held the political power in his county, presiding as
a magistrate, and commanding the trainbands. In
other respects his manners as well as his life were
rude and boorish.
Whatever position the Penn family had they seem
to have been unable to support towards the close of
the sixteenth century, for the ancestral farm, Penns-
Lodge, passed out of their hands, and we find that
Giles Penn took to a seafaring life.
Commerce and shipping gave good opportunities
in those days for making a fortune ; and Giles Penn
no doubt was anxious to restore his family position,
43

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
and even to make it better than it had been. But
the greatest opportunities for fortune-making came
to the men who were courtiers, office-holders, or
officers in the army or navy. The salaries of the
courtiers who held office seem very large for the
times ; but the perquisites and opportunities under
the system of corruption which prevailed were
enormous. The population of England was then
considerably less than five million, and the popula
tion of London not half a million ; but the office of
the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, for example, was
supposed to be worth forty thousand pounds a year ;
and from this high official down to the lowest clerk,
tide-waiter, or ganger, the same methods of gross
corruption gave opportunities which varied only in
degree. Next in importance after the court officials for
their opportunities for making money were the naval
officers. Corruption and peculation were, if any
thing, more rife in the navy than at court ; and war-
vessels were constantly employed to carry from port
to port bullion and other valuable cargoes which
merchants dared not trust to ordinary vessels. In
this service naval captains, being in a position to
demand large rewards, often made several thousand
pounds by a short voyage.
The merchant marine was closely connected with
the navy, for merchant ships were usually armed,
carrying sometimes thirty or forty guns, and were
often taken into the navy in large numbers to assist
the public war-vessels. A training in the merchant
service gave opportunities for entering the navy.
44

ADMIRAL PENN
Giles Penn secured the release of some captives held
by the Selee rovers, as the pirates of Algiers were
then called, and for this service he was to have been
made vice-admiral of a fleet to be fitted out to
punish the Algerines. He never received his com
mission, however ; but instead of it was made consul
to the Mediterranean ports.
He failed to enjoy the lucrative opportunities of
the navy, but he was determined that his son, the
father of William Penn, should enjoy all that the
navy had to bestow. He trained the boy most
carefully on his own ship in the practice and theory
of navigation, and the youth entered the navy of
King Charles I. before he was twenty, and was at
once given the rank of lieutenant When he was
twenty-one years old, in 1642, he was made a cap
tain. He almost immediately married, and within a
little over a year his famous son William was born.
So William Penn was the son of a very young
man, almost a boy, but in command of the " Fel
lowship" of twenty-eight guns, with orders to join
the fleet of Admiral Swanley in the Irish seas. Two
years afterwards the father was made Rear-Admiral
of Ireland ; in 1646 he was given command of a
squadron as Vice-Admiral of Ireland, and by the
time he was thirty-one he was Vice-Admiral of
England. This seems nowadays most ridiculously rapid ad
vancement, and in lives of the admiral and also in
lives of William Penn it is described in a way to
give the impression that this youth must have been
a naval prodigy. But in the condition of affairs at
45

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
that time a man rose in the navy very rapidly, in
deed almost instantly, under certain circumstances,
so that such a thing as a boy admiral was not al
together impossible.
Clowes, in his "History of the British Navy," has
described what a man-of-war was in those days. It
was a beautiful creation of art, carved from stem to
stern with a richness of curves and tracery which is
the wonder and despair of modern eyes. It was
more beautiful, indeed, than serviceable, and it is no
exaggeration to say that within it was very often, so
far as the crew were concerned, a floating hell and
pest-house. The sailors were wretched criminal creatures, col
lected largely by the press-gang, so ill paid and so
seldom paid that they were continually in mutiny,
and so ill fed that they were continually robbing and
marauding for food. A mob of them once threat
ened to besiege the court at White Hall, and actu
ally seized the Guild Hall at Plymouth. The sick
were turned ashore starving, and the rapid mortality
on many of the ships from disease and dirt was
frightful. They were punished for bad conduct by
ducking, keel-hauling, tongue-scraping, flogging,
dragging through the water at the stern of a row-
boat, tying up with weights about the neck, and a
sailor that slept four times on watch was lashed to
the bowsprit and left there to starve to death or
drown. The officers who commanded them were more
fortunate, and led a sumptuous, jovial life. Pepys,
when with the fleet that brought back Charles II.
46

ADMIRAL PENN
from Holland, describes how they spent the after
noon in playing nine-pins on the quarter deck, with
a grand dinner in the evening, followed by music
and heavy drinking, which sent every one to bed
quite mellow. The captains and officers had their
mistresses on board, or, as some accounts put it,
their harems, and there were also abandoned women
allowed among the crew.
Many of the officers in highest command, the cap
tains and admirals, were landsmen without special
training, and they bought and sold their commands
and indulged in unlimited corruption and peculation.
" The dock-yard officials robbed wholesale ; the captains turned
their ships into cargo-boats for their own profit, and conspired with
the pursers to forge and sell seamen's tickets ; carpenters, gunners,
boatswains, and pursers cheated and swindled ; imaginary men were
borne in nearly all ships, and their wages were shared among the
officers; and government store-houses were converted into surrep
titious residences for government servants and their families."
(Clowes's "Royal Navy," vol. ii. p. 19.)
Military men entered the navy as freely as lands
men. At that time, and, indeed, in all the pre
vious history of the world, there was no complete
separation between the naval and military depart
ments of a nation. In ancient times Pompey and
Agrippa commanded forces both on sea and land.
Lord Howard, who commanded the British fleet
that defeated the Spanish Armada, was a lands
man. Sir Walter Raleigh was both an admiral and
a general. In Penn's time the best admirals, except himself,
were landsmen, and naval captains were often spoken
47

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
of as colonels. Blake, who was the greatest of them,
and who, indeed, is usually considered one of the
two or three greatest admirals that Britain has pro
duced, was a soldier, and never went to sea until he
was fifty years old. Prince Rupert, who commanded
the cavalry of Charles I., also commanded a fleet
Dean and Montagu, of that time, were also military
men. General Monk, who restored Charles II. to
the throne, also took his turn on the sea. It was he
who, when he wanted his ship turned to the port
side, aroused the amusement of his crew by giving
the order, " Left wheel !"
The reason why military men succeeded so well
in command of fleets would seem to be that the
navy had few, if any, regularly trained officers who
could be raised to positions of large responsibility.
Those who had a knowledge of seamanship were
mostly mere tarpauhns, with neither education, man
ners, nor honesty. They had risen from the forecastle,
and many of them had been captains of privateers,
an occupation which did not improve their morals.
There were some exceptions to this rule. Sir Chris
topher Mings, Sir John Narborough, and Sir Clouds-
ley Shovel had begun life as cabin-boys. But for
the most part men of this sort were valuable only
for certain purposes within a limited sphere. They
were incapable of forming comprehensive plans or
dealing with complicated situations, and the)' were
compelled to yield the important commands to mili
tary men of wider attainments and more general
education and experience.
Penn rose to be an admiral at twenty-three for the
48

ADMIRAL PENN
reason apparently that he was a rare instance of a
man with practical sea experience, who also had
enough education and breadth of mind to take the
responsibility of a large command. At heart he was
a Royalist and preferred the king's cause ; but his
rapid promotions were received from Parliament and
Cromwell. The army had gone over to the king
and the navy had taken the side of Parliament.
The crews, which had been starved and tortured
under the king, thought they saw brighter prospects
in the popular cause. They went over in large num
bers, and Penn went with them. He was deter
mined to rise in his profession, whatever flag he
fought under, and he rightly judged that the popu
lar and parliamentary cause would, for a time at
least, be successful. He commanded the squadron
that met with such ill success in its operations on
the Irish coast ; but the failure was through no fault
of his. He distinguished himself, and the Parlia
ment voted him their thanks for his "courage and
fidelity." Soon afterwards he was put under arrest, appar
ently because he was suspected of having, as, indeed,
he had, a secret interest in the king's cause. He was
released, however, soon promoted, and it was not
long before he commanded the squadron which went
in pursuit of the ships of that gallant landsman.
Prince Rupert. But, although Penn followed him
through the English Channel and even into the
Mediterranean, the cavalryman eluded the trained
sailor on his own element
Penn's greatest service now followed in the naval
4 49

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
war which Cromwell waged for two years with Hol
land. The Dutch, thinking they could wrest from
the English the empire of the sea, refused to follow
the ancient custom by which all ships had for ages
saluted the British flag. This honor of the flag was
originally a mere courtesy in recognition of the pro
tection English ships had always given to the traders
of all nations. But British men-of-war had now for a
long time demanded it as a right and an insignia of
their country's supremacy on the ocean. It was under
this same principle of supremacy that they claimed
the right of search which brought on the war of the
United States with England in 1 8 1 2.
In the three terrible battles of the Dutch war, in
which more than a hundred ships were engaged on
each side, Penn greatly distinguished himself In the
second battle the Dutch Admiral Tromp grappled
Penn's ship, and boarded him. Penn's sailors re
pulsed the attack, followed the enemy on to their
own ship, and drove them below the hatches, where,
with reckless courage, they exploded part of their
powder, blowing their decks, with the English on
them, into the air. The survivors of Penn's crew
rushed back into the Dutch ship, and Tromp would
have been taken if two other admirals — De Ruyter
and De Witte had not come to his rescue. For his
services in this battle Penn was given the rank of
general-at-sea. The next year, 1654, he was sent by Cromwell in
command of a fleet, accompanied by an ai-my under
General Venables, to capture as many as possible of
the Spanish West Indian islands. And now a strange
50

ADMIRAL PENN
thing happened, which disclosed Admiral Penn's
character and had a most important bearing on the
career of his son. Both the admiral and General
Venables secretly sent word to Charles IL, then
living in exile on the continent, that if he wished it,
they would turn over the fleet and army to him.
Charles thanked them, but declined their assistance,
because he had no place to keep either a fleet or an
army. But he would, he said, remember their offer ;
and neither he nor his brother and successor, James
IL, ever forgot it The fortune of Admiral Penn
and of his son William was made by this act
Through the royal favor which flowed from it for
the next fifty years William Penn delivered Quakers
from prison, led the life of a successful courtier, and
received the grant of the vast territory of Pennsyl
vania. Yet it was an act which cannot be regarded
now in any other light than that of dishonorable
treachery. Cromwell and the parliamentary party had made
Admiral Penn all that he was, had given him his rapid
promotion, his estates in Ireland, and raised him to
the important command which made his offer of the
fleet seem a thing of great value in the eyes of
Charles II. and his brother. It was common enough
all through the civil war for men in the employ of
Parliament to correspond secretly with the exiled
king. Some of these were sincerely devoted to the
king's cause ; but most of them were merely put
ting out an anchor to windward in case the king
should return. Penn went farther than any of them,
and overstepped all bounds. He, no doubt, saw
SI

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
that the parliamentary cause was gradually waning,
and he was determined that his anchor to windward
should be the largest and most powerful of all.
At that time, however, professional honor was un
known in the British navy, and, brought up in the
midst of all kinds of official corruption and the moral
looseness of the civil war, it is not likely that Ad
miral Penn's conscience was seriously troubled.
Anxious he must have been for the outcome of
such a daring and dangerous move ; but the end
showed that he had calculated with the most perfect
shrewdness and cunning.*
It has been supposed that Cromwell knew at
once of this offer of the fleet and army to Charles ;
but, cool and sagacious as he always was, he said
nothing, made no move, and doubtless laughed with
grim Puritan humor when he heard that the offer
had been rejected. This is highly probable ; for he
spent, it is said, sixty thousand pounds annually in
maintaining spies at the court of Charles, and if he
did not know of the offer at once, it seems quite
certain that he soon heard of it He knew, no
doubt, that the offer must necessarily be refused,
and that Penn was merely placing his great anchor
to windward for future contingencies. So he allowed
* His son William, with amusing vagueness, has attempted to ex
plain his father's double service to both Cromwell and the king:
" 'Tis true, he was actually engaged both under the Parliament and
king, but not as an actor in our late domestic troubles ; his compass
always steering him to eye a national concern and not intestine wars,
and therefore not so aptly theirs [the Parliament's] in a way of
opposition as the nation's." — Granville Penn's Memorials of Sir Wil
liam Penn, vol. ii. p. 569. 52

ADMIRAL PENN
the expedition to go on as it had been planned,
well knowing that Penn's professional pride would
compel him to do his best
The expedition failed utterly against San Domingo,
but not from any fault of Penn, for the army, which
was hopelessly inefficient, alone took part in the
attack. In the attack on Jamaica both army and
fleet acted together ; the island fell into their hands
without a struggle, and is still a British colony.
As soon as Admiral Penn returned to England he
was committed to the Tower on the charge of com
ing home without leave. But that was evidently not
the real reason. Cromwell shrewdly judged that he
had obtained from him all the service that was pos
sible or safe. He was ordered to confess his fault,
surrender his commission as general-at-sea, and
make his submission to the Lord Protector. When
he had done all this, he was set free both from prison
and from the navy. He was rendered as harmless
as possible short of putting him to death or im
prisoning him for life, which would not have been
politic. He retired to Ireland to the estates that
had been given him for his services by Cromwell,
and there waited and in a mild way plotted for the
restoration of the king.
On the eve of the restoration he was summoned
from his retirement to represent in Parliament the
town of Weymouth, and he hurried to Holland to
be the bearer of the glad tidings to Charles. He
was immediately knighted, made commissioner of
admiralty, and governor of Kinsale. His Irish es
tates were given back to their royalist owner from
53

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
whom Cromwell had taken them, and in place of
them other estates in Ireland were given to Penn.
He had achieved a large part of his ambition,
which was to make a fortune, become a courtier,
associate with noblemen, and perhaps become one.
Henceforth his life was passed in the court circles,
for that alone could satisfy him. He was at heart
an intensely ardent Royalist and aristocrat, and al
though he had aided the Cromwellian and parlia
mentary cause, he had in the end used it most
cleverly to advance his own royalist interests.
The king and his brother James, Duke of York,
bound Penn closely to themselves. The duke be
came Lord High Admiral, and took Penn into his
personal service. In the campaign against the
Dutch, in 1665, Penn, with the title great captain
commander, was on the duke's ship as his confiden
tial adviser, for the duke was a landsman ; and in
this relation, in which he practically commanded the
fleet, Penn took part in the famous and decisive
battle against the Dutch admiral, Opdam.
This was the last of Penn's sea service. He was
only about forty-five years old ; but his health was
already broken by severe attacks of the gout, and
he died in 1670, before he was fifty. He was rather
young to have the gout so badly ; but he was, it
seems, a heavy drinker, and probably also a heavy
eater after the manner of those times.
" In the evening at Sir W. Pen's with my wife at supper : he in a
mad ridiculous, drunken humour ; and it seems there have been some
late distances between his lady and him as my [wife] tells me."
(" Pepys Diary," vol. v. p. 434.) 54

ADMIRAL PENN

ADMIRAL PENN
" Sir W Pen half drunk did talk like a fool and vex his wife."
(Vol. vi. pp. 330,331.)
The portrait of Admiral Penn at the age of forty-
five, painted by Sir Peter Lely, is a most inter
esting picture, and shows a handsome, but not a
dissipated face. The Historical Society of Pennsyl
vania, however, possesses a portrait of him, of un
certain authenticity, with a large, bloated nose, fully
justifying Pepys's description.
The best that Pepys has to say of him is that he
was "a very sociable man and an able man and
very cunning." But his rise, Pepys assures us, was
due to large bribes and all sorts of irregular prac
tices. By this means he became general-at-sea
under Cromwell, and by the same means got himself
out of the Tower in Cromwell's time. In the civil
war, Pepys says, he was a devilish plunderer, and
by that means got his estates in Ireland. In fact,
Pepys is never tired of calling him a false fellow
and a rogue, and describing the " sluttishness of his
family." *
It should be remembered, however, that Pepys
was also enriching himself while in the service of the
Admiralty by every opportunity ; and no doubt
Penn interfered with many of his schemes. Pepys's
hatred of him, and yet continual association with
him, is amusing at times, especially when Pepys is
disgusted at the bad dinners he gets at Penn's house
and complains that when he gives Penn a dinner the
stupid sailor is unable to appreciate it. Pepys's
* Vol. vi. pp. 330, 331 ; vol. vii. p. 1 00.
55

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
morals were bad, and he was intriguing with the
wives of many of his acquaintances. In weighing
what he says, we must remember that by his own
statement he attempted familiarities with Admiral
Penn's wife, and also had designs on his daughter.
Lord Clarendon, who knew Penn well, has also
left us a description of him :
" Penn, who had much the worse understanding, had a great mind
to appear better bred and to speak like a gentleman ; he had got
many good words which he used at adventure ; he was a formal
man and spake very leisurely, but much, and left the matter more
intricate and perplexed than he found it." (Vol. ii. p. 3S4.)
But I cannot give the whole life of the admiral.
I have dwelt on many of the details of it principally
to show what a strong hold he secured on the affec
tions of Charles II. and the Duke of York, for this
was the foundation of his son's career. After his
service against Opdam the duke wanted him to
take another command at sea ; and when Penn de
clined, insisted on his acceptance. But military
men were now in control of the navy, and they were
very jealous of regular sailors like Penn. They had
him impeached for helping himself too hberally to
the silk, spices, and jewels on board some rich prizes
that had been taken from the Dutch. He does not
appear to have been guilty ; but the impeachment
proceedings effectually blocked his appointment until
it was too late for him to go to sea, and then the
prosecution was dropped.
The king, anxious to reward him, was about to
raise him to the peerage under the title of Viscount
Weymouth; but his son William had by this time
56

ADMIRAL PENN
become a Quaker and was protesting loudly against
all titles as vanities of the flesh. It seemed ridicu
lous to give a title that would descend to such a
strange fanatic, and the king's good intentions were
checked. So the admiral, through his nuisance of a
son, failed to attain what was, no doubt, one of the
chief objects of his ambition. But he had picked up
in one way or another a considerable fortune, which
he left to the deluded boy ; and, most important of
all, he left him the extreme good-will and affection
of Charles II. and the Duke of York, who became
James II.
He had lent to the crown various sums of money,
and these at the time of his death, with the arrears of
his pay, amounted to over twelve thousand pounds.
Eleven years afterwards the debt, with interest, had
grown to sixteen thousand pounds, and was liquidated
by the grant to the son of the province of Pennsyl
vania.

57

IV
EARLY INFLUENCES
During all of Admiral Penn's service for Crom
well and the Parliament his son William remained
with his Dutch mother at Wanstead, living quietly
while the battle of Naseby was fought and Bridge-
water and Bristol stormed, and the unfortunate King
Charles beheaded in 1649. Penn was only five
years old in 1649, and up to that time public events
could not have made much impression on him. The
foundation of his opinions inherited from his father
was royalist, and his close relations with King
Charles and King James afterwards made him still
more of a Royalist But the principles of the oppo
site party — the principles of liberty and free govern
ment — also made a deep impression on him, and he
was, as we shall see, a curious mixture of the two
political parties. His liberal ideas seem to have
been imbibed in his early youth at Wanstead, when
his father was away for years and never saw him.
He heard a great deal there about civil hberty and
the rights of Parliament, and during the subsequent
six or seven years, as he became more impression
able, he continued to hear the same principles.
A new era began with the death of King Charles.
In fact, a new England was created. Parliamentary
58

EARLY INFLUENCES
government and national consent, as against mon
archy and despotism, got a surer foothold than they
had ever had before, a foothold which they strug
gled to keep until the boy William Penn lived to see
them, much to his surprise, securely and perma
nently established by William III. in 1688.
He lived at Wanstead until he was twelve years
old, and during that time saw httle or nothing of his
father the admiral, who sailed to join the fleet on the
Irish coast two days before his son was born, and
after that was in continuous sea employment until
he returned from the taking of Jamaica.
The boy went to school at Wanstead, and seems
to have received the regular training in Latin,
Greek, and mathematics which was given at that
time. Wanstead and the village of Chigwell near by
were pretty places, with all the advantages of coun
try life and amusements. Penn was afterwards at
college fond of athletic sports, and he doubtless
laid the foundation for this taste in the fields and
woods of his country home.
This same country neighborhood was intensely
Puritan, and this seems to have had an important
influence on the future Quaker leader. It no doubt
modified his inherited royalist opinions, and it is not
unlikely that during those twelve years he uncon
sciously received from his surroundings that tinge
of thought which led to Quakerism. Puritans were
in the habit of discussing religious subjects day and
night; and the burden of all that the boy heard
would be rejection of forms and ceremonies and
more or less reliance on the individual judgment
59

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
The Quakers carried individual judgment farther
than the Puritans, but the Puritan state of mind was
a natural foundation for Quakerism. There was no
sect that the Puritans despised so much as they de
spised the Quakers; but, unconsciously, they had
made easier the path to Quakerism.
We are confirmed in this view by learning that,
when he was only eleven years old, Penn, when alone
one day in his room, had a religious experience, as
it is called.
" He was suddenly surprised with an inward comfort ; and, as he
thought, an external glory in the room, which gave rise to religious
emotions, during which he had the strongest conviction of the being
of God, and that the soul of man was capable of enjoying communi
cation with Him. He believed also that the seal of divinity had
been put upon him at this moment, or that he had been awakened or
called upon to a holy life."
The teaching of the Church of England at that
time would not have led a boy to such an experi
ence ; but emotionalism of that sort was an almost
every-day experience among the Puritans, and he
had, no doubt, heard many edifying accounts of it
Indeed, it is impossible to find in Penn during his
youth any trace of Church of England teaching.
His bent was radically the other way ; and it is
highly probable that it was started by the influences
at Wanstead.
This was unfortunate for his father, the admiral,
whose aristocratic tastes and ambition for a peerage
led him to see nothing but folly in any deviation
from the religion of the crown and the court The
great object of his life had been to restore the for-
60

EARLY INFLUENCES
tunes of his family and advance their position ; and
he could not see a way to this end for his son
through Puritan cant and emotionalism. If he had
been at home during those first twelve years of his
son's life, he might have seen and counteracted the
dangerous influence. But he was away, and was
now to reap bitter fruit from that absence.
When the admiral, on his return from Jamaica,
was put in the Tower by Cromwell, his wife and
son left Wanstead and came to live where the son
had been born, in the little court close to the Tower.
But the admiral, on his release, went to his estates
in Ireland, and was again separated from his son.
After the Restoration they saw more of each other ;
but then it was too late, and at no time had the
father any sufficient opportunity to exert such an
influence as would shape the boy as he wished him
to be.
In October, 1660, when he was sixteen years old,
Penn was sent to Christ Church College, at Oxford.
Christ Church had always been largely the college
of the aristocracy, and the foster mother of some
very famous men. Besides Penn, we find among the
alumni, Locke, the philosopher ; South, the famous
preacher ; Liddell, Liddon, Pusey, Gladstone, Gold-
win Smith, the present Prince of Wales, Lord Duf-
ferin. Lord Salisbury, a host of minor diplomats and
statesmen, and the historians Gardiner and Stubbs.
Penn was entered as a gentleman commoner, and
matriculated as a knight's son. The selection of the
college was evidently part of the admiral's design
of pushing on his son towards preferment and a high
61

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
career, fitting him for the position of a nobleman
and a courtier. At college he would acquire the
manners and tastes of a gentleman, and make the
acquaintance of the aristocracy ; and afterwards the
admiral's influence at court would secure for him
office, advancement, and those irregular opportunities
for making a great fortune.
But Oxford at that time was not altogether well
suited to accomplish an object of that kind. For
many years it had been under the influence of the
Puritans. Before the civil war they had railed at
both the universities as "nurseries of wickedness,
nests of mutton tuggers, dens of formal droanes,
and cages of unclean birds." When the success of
the parliamentary forces let the Puritans into power,
they proceeded to make the universities what they
thought they should be. Honest old Anthony
Wood tells us in his diary how unpleasantly they
impressed him. They were factious, saucy, con
ceited, morose, and delighted in plots, he says.
They affected temperance, but tippled privately in
their own rooms and crept into taverns at the back
door. They protested against cavalier cursing and
swaggering, but were themselves sneaking, tale-bear
ing, and jealous.
Penn arrived in Oxford in the year of the restora
tion, when the influence of the Church of England
had been restored, or rather had been ordered to be
restored. The organ of Magdalen College, which
Cromwell had taken for his own private use at
Hampton Court, was brought back ; the other organs
which had been removed from college chapels were
62

EARLY INFLUENCES
returned ; the surplice was once more worn at the
services, and the prayer-book took the place of the
extemporaneous efforts of Puritan ministers. At all
this. Wood tells us, the Puritans " whined and made
ugly faces ;" they ridiculed the surplice and the
prayer-book, and compared the organs to the
squealing of pigs.
Such a strong influence as Puritanism had been
could not be wiped out of Oxford in a few months.
The Puritan clergy and dons could not be all dis
missed at once. Many of them merely conformed
outwardly to the changed times, and we should
naturally expect that Puritanism would lurk for a
long time in the corridors and secret corners of the
ancient architecture which Puritanism affected to
despise. The churchmen did all they could to suppress it
and build up the royal party. They encouraged
the Sunday amusements which the Puritans had
abolished ; they stopped the old Puritan custom of
taking notes of sermons and repeating sermons at
home, and the singing of psalms after supper. They
allowed people to loiter in the streets, sit on benches,
walk in the fields, or drink in the taverns on Sunday,
all of which had only a short time before been ac
counted most damnable practices. They encouraged
May games, morrises, revels, and plays, and they did
all these things in excess because the Puritans hated
them. A great deal of the extravagance of the cava
lier character, the excessive swearing and swagger
ing, the reckless devotion to amusements, and the
delivery of mock sermons, was a reaction from the
63

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
opposite extreme of the Puritans, and assumed out
of mere hatred for the malignants who had murdered
the king.
Young WiUiam Penn, thrown suddenly among
such strange conflicts in college life, seems to have
revolted from the vicious part of these cavalier habits.
But, unfortunately, we have scarcely any details of
him at this time, and are left to inferences. He after
wards spoke of having while in college been sus
tained by God "in the midst of that hellish darkness
and debauchery."
The efforts of the churchmen. Wood tells us, had
their effect on many of the Puritans, and he gives
most amusing descriptions of how they would cringe
for preferment, and say that they were sorry that
they had formerly allowed themselves to go with
the times ; they had all along been at heart with the
royal party, but were afraid to avow it. They began
to frequent the taverns openly ; they stripped off"
their puritanical clothes, and would "put on cas
socks reaching to their heels, tied close with a sanc
tified circingle." They had hated a square cap;
now they could not dispense with one. Those who
had for years been wearing the demure face of a
saint now assumed a " wanton countenance," and
would utter "a pretty little oath." They would
make "long legs and scrapes" to Royalists, and turn
informer against their own people.*
The king's brother, Henry, Duke of Gloucester,
had died of the small-pox only about a month before

* Wood's Diary (ed. of 1891), pp. 293, 359, 360, 366, etc.
64

EARLY INFLUENCES
Penn arrived in Oxford, and the nation, now enthu
siastically royalist, went into mourning for him. The
university also assumed the royalist tone, and pub
lished a volume of verses, entitled "Threnodia," on
the young duke's death, and Penn contributed to
this volume some Latin Hnes. From this we may
infer that the young man was royalist in his sym
pathies, or trying to be. He often afterwards showed
royalist feelings, so far as politics were concerned;
but in religion he was on the Puritan side at Oxford.
He sympathized, it seems, with the Puritan pro
tests against the changes at Oxford, — the surplices,
the revels, and recklessness. There seem to have
been several open rebellions against the surplice.
One night Puritan students collected all of these
abhorrent vestments they could find and dumped
them into a vile cesspool, punching them down
with sticks. From this defilement they were res
cued by the authorities, and that and the subse
quent cleaning of them was thought to be a grand
joke. Wood gives the details of the escapade and
also some verses of the time, which could not now
by any possibility be printed. There is no evidence
that Penn was connected with this particular affair ;
but, as we shall see hereafter, he was concerned with
some religious protests, probably against the sur
plices, for which he was expelled from college.
It would seem as if his father had not chosen
wisely in sending him to Christ Church. But Puri
tanism lurked in all the English colleges, and the
lad, in spite of his siding with the Puritan feeling,
took kindly to many of those arts which would make
5 6s

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
him the sort of man his father wanted him to be. He
was fond of athletic sports, and became proficient in
them ; but, unfortunately, in this, as in other parts of
his youthful career, we have no details of his efforts
or success. From what we know of his writings and
subsequent career, he must have studied fairly well,
Hke a gentleman, and not Hke a bookworm or re
cluse. He seemed safe enough, and he was in real
ity safe from Puritanism ; but he was suddenly caught
by another ism that was abroad in those days, and
in his father's eyes more abhorrent, degrading, and
unfortunate than even Puritanism could be.

66

V
THE QUAKERS
The Quakers, or Friends, as they preferred to be
called, were a very peculiar people both in their ori
gin and in their belief, and when Penn was a young
man at college they had been in existence as a dis
tinct sect only about ten years. They were making
terrible trouble and commotion in England. Large
numbers of them were refusing to pay the tithes or
taxes which every one was bound by law to pay for
the support of the Established Church. They wrote
books and pamphlets ridiculing the tax, and steadily
refused to pay it, until the sheriff was obliged to
seize their property and sell it for treble the amount
of the tax, or imprison them. Their resistance to
this tax seemed to those in authority but little short
of open rebellion and an encouragement to riot and
disorder. They disturbed the administration of justice by
refusing to take an oath in court or to be 'sworn on
an affidavit The Scriptures, they said, had com
manded, " Swear not at all," and oaths were a blas
phemous as well as a useless means of compelling
truthful statements. They persisted also in wearing
their hats in court-rooms and in the presence of
important persons. Hats were then worn in church,
the clergy preached in them, they were worn at
67

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
dinner, and, as a rule, more generally than in modern
times. Thus the few occasions when they were
taken off were more distinctly occasions of respect
A son must always uncover before his father, every
one uncovered before the king, and ordinary per
sons seem to have uncovered before the nobility.
But the Quaker hat remained unmoved on these oc
casions. They uncovered, they said, only in prayer
as an act of worship, and it would be a dishonor to
their Maker to treat men in the same manner.
They refused to address any one by his title or
rank ; they would not even use the title mister ; and
bluntly called every one by his first name. They
also addressed every one indiscriminately as thee
and thou because the use of the plural you had
originated, they said, in the vanity of compliment
Thee and thou were used at that time only to ser
vants and inferiors ; and no other Quaker peculiarity
seems to have given so much offence as this one.
Penn describes the indignation with which people
would turn on a Quaker and exclaim, " Thou me,
thou my dog ! If thou thou'st me, I'll thou thy
teeth down thy throat" To which the Quaker
would reply by asking, " Why, then, dost thou al
ways address God in thy prayers by thee and
thou?" Penn seems to have used the thee and thou lan
guage rather sparingly. In his private letters to ac
quaintances who were Quakers he of course used it
freely ; and he sometimes used it to those who were
not Quakers, when he was indignant or angry ; but
in his important public letters he often managed
68

THE QUAKERS
to avoid it altogether, and for the reason, no doubt,
that, being an educated man, he would not give un
necessary offence.
The rest of the early Quakers, however, were
mostly people of the lower orders, already rough
enough in their ways, and they seemed to the upper
classes of that time determined to make their religion
as offensive and vulgar as possible. They preached in
taverns and in the streets and fields, gathering crowds
which those who disliked them said were a menace
to peace and good order. They walked along the
streets giving prophecies and warnings of doom in
a strange monotonous voice which was a variation
on the drawl of the Puritans. They trembled as
they spoke, and from this, or because George Fox
had bade the magistrates tremble at the word of the
Lord, they were called Quakers. They went into
church during service and interrupted the preacher
with sharp critical comment, and were often so wild
and fantastic that they broke up the congregation.
The women among them preached and took the
part of men. They would keep the fasts and holy
days of neither Churchman nor Puritan. They trav
elled on Sunday, and some of them even opened
their shops on Sunday. Occasionally some of them
would become almost insane, break bottles in a
church as a sign, or go half naked, like Solomon
Eccles, who, having stripped himself to the waist,
walked through a town with a pan of fire and brim
stone on his head.
In a word, judged by the standard of that time,
their manners to both Churchmen and Puritans were

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
detestable ; and when the substance of their beHef
was known it seemed worse than their manners.
They denied the validity of all the sacraments ;
not merely the numerous sacraments of the Roman
church, but they denied baptism and the Lord's
Supper, which were retained by the Protestants.
They denied eveiy dogma and doctrine not only of
the Roman church, but of all the Protestant churches
as well. They refused to accept the complicated
doctrine of the Trinity as stated in the Athanasian
creed. They declared that a man was not bound to
believe more than his reason could comprehend.
They even regarded the Scriptures differently from
most Protestants ; for while they admitted the va
lidity of the Bible as a guide and comfort, they
insisted that they were capable of receiving reve
lations in addition to and independent of it.
They protested against original sin and the whole
system of doctrine by which it was believed to be
impossible for man to be anything but a sinner; and
in place of it they announced their belief in the pos
sibility of human perfection on earth. This was a
bold doctrine, lifting at once that vast burden which
had weighed down so many human hearts, but it
brought them the most intense hatred and contempt
of both Catholics and Protestants.
They protested against all clergymen and preachers
who received a reward for their services, calling them
a hireling ministry. Their own preachers were un
paid, and they protested against higher education
and learning, which, they said, was a hinderance to
any one who wished to preach the religion of Christ
70

THE QUAKERS
They called churches "priest-houses" or "steeple-
houses ;" and they objected to the use of the word
church as applied to a building or a corporate body.
The church of Christ was in their minds a purely
spiritual conception or spiritual body, if such a term
can be used.
They appeared to have only one important doc
trine that was not negative, and that was their belief
in what they called the inward light, which had
been given by Christ to every one who came into
the world, and was sufficient to guide him to all
truth and save his soul without the aid of cere
monies, dogmas, priests, or churches. This light
was not to be confounded with conscience, which
was a natural quality of human nature, and existed
in Adam before the fall. The inward light was in
addition to conscience and intended to enHghten and
assist it
Their worship was formless, or rather formal in its
formlessness. They sat silent in their meetings until
some one was moved by the Spirit to pray or preach,
and it was possible for a meeting to be conducted in
entire silence from beginning to end. By this silent
contemplation they cultivated the inward light and
developed its growth and power in the soul. Two
friends might hold in this way a silent meeting to
gether. Serenity, contemplation, and quietude were,
therefore, essentials of their belief, for without them
there could be no spiritual growth.
They accordingly became opposed to everything
that disturbed this habit of quietude. They pro
hibited among their members aH games and amuse-
71

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
ments, theatres, cards, balls, sports, and hazardous
or exciting enterprises ; and as one of the most
exciting occupations followed by men is politics and
political discussion the Quakers as a class kept out
of political life. An exception had to be made to
this rule in Pennsylvania, where they were in control
of the government, and there have been striking ex
ceptions in the case of distinguished individuals, like
John Bright, who in our own time has been so emi
nent in modern British politics. WiUiam Penn can
not be said to have abstained from this form of
mental disturbance, and, indeed, George Fox him
self and many of those Quakers who were im
prisoned for preaching their faith, seem to have led
rather exciting lives. But as a sect they were very
much inclined to retire within themselves and live to
themselves, a habit which did not increase their
popularity. Nor were they raised in the popular esteem of
that age by their strenuous opposition to war as un
christian and their refusal to serve as soldiers. They
were also very ardent believers in religious liberty ;
indeed, it may be said that they were almost the
only sincere advocates of it at that time ; but it was
a doctrine by which no very great favor could be
gained from either Churchman or Puritan.
Nor was their leader and organizer, George Fox,
the sort of man who would be at all pleasing to
conservative people. He had scarcely any education,
being barely able to read and write. His father was
a weaver, and he himself, when a boy, was employed
to herd sheep. But he was a strong character, with
72

THE QUAKERS
boundless courage and an elemental vigor and
energy which carried him over every obstacle.
When only nineteen years old the religious unrest
of the time seized upon his untamable spirit He
walked up and down his bedroom or wandered in
the woods and fields full of the religious melancholy
of the age, and wrestling with the strange wonderful
thoughts which the Reformation had set afloat in the
world. He consulted the clergy of the Established
Church and the Puritan ministers, but they failed to
satisfy him. They no doubt thought he was crazy,
for one told him to smoke tobacco and sing psalms,
and another advised him to go and have some blood
let. Like many others, he became convinced that all
forms of religion were corrupted and worthless. He
wandered over the countiy and went to London, but
found "all was dark and under the chain of dark
ness." He was in great trouble and distress of mind,
with occasional reactions towards extreme happiness.
"I fasted much,'' he says, "walked abroad in solitary places
many days, and often took my Bible, and sat in hollow trees and
lonesome places till night came on ; and frequently in the night
walked mournfully about by myself ; for I was a man of sorrows in
the time of the first workings of the Lord in me. . . . Though my
exercises and troubles were very great, yet were they not so continued
but that I had some intermissions, and was sometimes brought into
such a heavenly joy, that I thought I had been in Abraham's bosom."
(Journal, p. 6.)
These inward torturings of the spirit, with violent
reactions from joy to gloom, were every-day occur
rences then, and were manufacturing Cromwells,
Puritans, Fifth Monarchy men, Quakers, or the en
thusiasts of Massachusetts, according to the material
73

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
on which they worked. People screamed with ex
citement at the religious meetings in the fields,
shouted, trembled* denounced themselves, and went
into ecstasies over new ideas which now seem com
monplace enough. " I was struck with more terror
by the preaching of James Nayler," said an old
CromweUian soldier, "than I was at the battle of
Dunbar." But although we find many instances of
this sort in the diaries and literature of the time, it
would be difficult to find another which presents
such a strange picture or one so typical of the age
as this great powerful-souled boy sitting in a hollow
tree with his Bible on his lap, and out of the wild
mystic thoughts that were floating through his un
educated brain founding a new religion.
He was only twenty-two when, among other
strange thoughts, it suddenly occurred to him in his
wanderings that human learning, the education of
Oxford and Cambridge, was not a proper qualifica
tion for a minister of Christ It was a natural
thought, for he himself had none of that sort of
education. He clung to the idea, and it shows the
strange condition of the times that his vigorous per
sonality was able to force this ignorant boyish notion
upon a whole sect But the large majority of the
Quakers, being of the uneducated classes, readily
accepted Fox's dreams.
He was inclined to impute to himself miraculous
power, as can be readily seen in his journal, where
he professes to have cast out an evil spirit, healed
the sick, and seen visions. He describes his visit to
Litchfield in most extraordinary language.
74

THE QUAKERS
" As I went thus crying through the streets there
seemed to me a channel of blood running down the
streets, and the market-place appeared a pool of
blood." Macaulay's clever phrase, that his intellect was
"in the most unhappy of all states, that is to say, too
much disordered for liberty and not sufficiently dis
ordered for Bedlam," is hardly fair. In spite of his
extraordinary interpretations of Scripture, he had in
all practical matters great shrewdness and common
sense, and so much courage and force of character
that the Puritans tried to coax him to become an
officer in the parliamentary army. Nor is it fair to
judge him by his ungrammatical English, which had
to be corrected for publication by better-educated
Quakers. Not long before his time the world had
been ruled for the most part by men who could
barely write their names ; and even to this day one
cannot read Fox's Journal without feeling the won
derful power and spirit of the man, and at times the
homely beauty of his words.
The movement of the time, which was revolting
from dogma, got complete possession of him and
swept him along. He rejected aU the forms of re
ligion he found round him. He attended those
strange meetings in the fields of that excited time
where Churchmen, Baptists, Presbyterians, Indepen
dents, and aU manner of sects met for pubHc discus
sion and the asking of puzzHng, mystical questions.
He spoke at these gatherings and also among the
people, who discussed the same questions at fairs,
markets, and public resorts. 75

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
He wandered all over England, stoned by mobs,
imprisoned by magistrates, hooted at by boys, ridi
culed, wondered at, respected, hated, loved. He
saw the strange sects that believed that women had
no souls and those who relied on dreams, many of
whom became Quakers. As we read his journal we
seem to live in the England of that strange age. He
argued with the Ranters, who sang, whistled, and
danced before him. He was in jails where he found
people almost eaten to death with lice. He faced
raging women who threatened to tear out his hair,
lusty butchers who said they would kill him ; and
one of these, who always stuck out his tongue at
Quakers, had, he assures us, the tongue so swollen
that he could not draw it in, and so died. The con
ceit with which he describes his success and every
thing bowing down before him would be continually
amusing if we did not so often come to passages of
terrible cruelty or suffering, tender pathos, strong,
honest sense, and noble sentiment
Gradually he found people of his way of thinking
among those curious sects known as FamUists and
Seekers, until in a few years he had organized fol
lowers who were caUed Children of the Light, or
Quakers. So he went on arguing with clergymen in their
steeple-houses, writing letters to the magistrates who
imprisoned him and to mayors and officials, rebuking
them in such frank language that it is no wonder he
had to make himself a suit of leather clothes, the
better to endure his frequent and long imprison
ments. 76

THE QUAKERS
What an unpleasant fellow he was who would go
into a church and cry to the clergyman, —
" Come down, thou deceiver ; dost thou bid people
come freely and take of the waters of Hfe, and yet
thou takest three hundred pound a year of them. " *
In another church he argued with the clergyman
until the congregation drove him out, beating him
with staves and throwing clods and stones at him.
Nor was this the only time that he was kicked out
of a church with blows or beaten and stoned as he
passed through the streets. " Let us have him out
of church," cried a congregation at TickhiU as they
rushed upon him, and the clerk struck him over the
face so violently with the Bible that the floor was
covered with his blood, f
But stiU he turned again to face them and preach.
His leather clothes and stout frame could take these
things lightly, and his indomitable spirit was aroused
to fresh exertions. The descriptions we have of his
contests are his own, and of course he always rep
resents himself as coming out at least morally vic
torious. This strange people and their strange leader were,
however, a perfectly natural product of the times,
when men were revolting from the system of the
Middle Ages, and were driven almost crazy by the
new-found liberty of the Reformation. It is difficult
now to realize what a wonderful system priestcraft
had wrought, and how it had altered, or rather
almost annihilated, the mental faculties, until men

* Marsh's Life of Fox, p. 86. f Ibid., p. 92.
77

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
through long disuse of their brains had become
mere children.
In the Middle Ages everything had been absorbed
into theology and dogma. Artists could paint only
ecclesiastical pictures, and the skill of architects
was devoted mainly to cathedrals. The politicians
were usually priests, and every man's last will and
testament had to be proved before and his estate
distributed by a bishop. The domestic relations of
life were entirely in the hands of the priesthood.
There was scarcely any physical science, and the
little there was, was referred to the theologians. If
it would square with the dogmas, it was right ; if it
would not square with them, it was wrong. If a
fact of nature was contrary to a dogma, so much
the worse for nature. All reasoning was by the
scholastic method, in which the dogmas of the
church were taken as a starting-point from which
you might reason, but to which you must return on
pain of death. Independent investigation, original
research, free inquiry were crimes. The dogmatic,
the miraculous, and the impossible were alone im
portant The dogmas had been wrought by the most cun
ning human ingenuity into a magnificent system.
Beginning in the fourth century, when the Bishop of
Rome began to claim authority as chief bishop or
pope, the development went steadily on. The wor
ship of the Virgin began. Image worship, which
had been a heresy, was permitted in the seventh
century. Transubstantiation, which became in the
end one of the most important doctrines, had not
78

THE QUAKERS
even a name until the eleventh century, and was not
definitely decreed until 12 15. So also of auricular
confession, which was decreed the same year. Up
to the twelfth century there were only two sacra
ments. After that there were seven. The celibacy
of the clergy, which was unsuccessfully attempted
in the fourth century, was finally made binding in
the eleventh.
In addition to all this, miracles were being per
formed almost every day, all over Europe, at thou
sands of shrines and by thousands of persons, and
they all had to be believed ; and thousands of saints
were being created which must be worshipped ; and
holy rags and bones and pieces of sacred wood,
capable of curing disease and protecting from dan
ger, were being multiplied without number.
Of the accompaniments of this system we can
only briefly speak. The most typical, perhaps, was
witchcraft, for which during the Middle Ages over
nine million men and women were put to death.
Other religions have been afflicted with this delu
sion, but no rehgion ever developed it to such
excess as the Christianity of the Middle Ages. Over
four thousand books were written on the subject, and
the methods for detecting and punishing this sup
posed crime were as regular and as weU recognized
as our modern systems of police.
Of the cruelty of that religion most of us have
heard. We are amazed at the organized system of
the Inquisition, with its regularly appointed officials
like a modern corporation or a department of gov
ernment We wonder at the men who studied the
79

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
human body and the mechanical arts for the purpose
of producing the greatest amount of suffering ; who
invented ingenious methods of stretching and crush
ing the joints and tearing out the finger-nails ; who
wrote manuals to guide their successors in detecting
the smallest theological error and inflicting the
greatest amount of torture ; and who followed the
surest routes to agony with the same zeal with which
men now build easy paths for commerce and de
velop steam, electricity, and surgery.
So Christianity became the most cruel as well as
the most superstitious religion that has ever pre
vailed among men. But the cruel part of it was all
perfectly logical ; for those people had accepted
literally and believed absolutely not only the great
mass of the dogmas, but the dogma which crowned
the whole and made the system complete, the doc
trine of exclusive salvation. By that doctrine, unless
a man believed all the other dogmas he could not be
saved. If he refused to give to them the consent
of his mind, he must burn forever in hell. This was
the keystone of the arch, and, if it was true, every
Protestant, dissenter, and heretic deserved instant
death, and death would be too mild a punishment
The men who by their example and encouragement
would wreck the eternal salvation of others deserved
not only death, but every kind of torture : to have
their entrails cyt out and burnt before their eyes,
to be torn asunder while alive by four horses, or
anything which would make heresy terrible. In
the face of an eternity of woe for millions the
anguish of a few hundred counts for nothing ; and
80

THE QUAKERS
thus the Middle Ages and the Inquisition logically
reasoned. We have instances in our own time of what ter
rible things men and women will do when they
really believe their supreme interest is threatened.
As the irreconcilable conflict between the white
race and the black in our country becomes more
and more intense, and with rapidly increasing num
bers assails more closely the white man's honor and
safety, we burn negroes to death at the stake and an
approving crowd stands by to watch the sizzling
flesh and the agony, or applaud as strips of skin are
cut from the victim, just as five hundred years ago
they stood round the heretic. We resent being told
that we are back in the Middle Ages. But the
wicked and mistaken doctrine of putting two irrec
oncilable races to live together may become as
frightful in its results as the mistaken doctrine of an
infallible church and exclusive salvation.
We all know the story of the Reformation :
how the revival of the ancient learning of Greece
and Rome and the invention of the printing press
pricked this vast bubble of delusion that had been
inflated by the efforts of a thousand years ; and
then Europe seethed and boiled and rocked to and
fro with the struggles of reform and fanaticism.
But it was, after all, a slow process extending over
several hundred years. Even th& most ardent re
formers could at first get rid of only one dogma at
a time. Wycliff] the first great leader of the Refor
mation, rejected only transubstantiation and kept
pretty much all the rest Huss, his successor, at-
« 8i

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
tacked only the fraudulent miracles of the ecclesias
tics and professed to accept all the dogmas, although
he struck at the root of the whole system by de
claring his belief in religious liberty. Luther, who
appeared a hundred years after Huss, was equally
conservative. His famous ninety-five propositions
were aimed only at the sale of indulgences, which at
that time was carried to great excess. He after
wards denied the authority of the Pope, which was
certainly going a great way. But he clung to many
dogmas which were rejected by nearly all other
Protestants. The same hesitation to break entirely and sud
denly with the past was shown by all the large
churches or divisions of the Reformation. The
Church of England, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians,
and the Independents gave up some of the dogmas,
but clung to the remainder with great determination.
But the numerous smaU and badly organized sects
were always more progressive. Composed largely
of lower-class people, with nothing to lose by a
change and unprejudiced by education, many of
them disposed at once of the whole dogmatic sys
tem, and reUed entirely on their own thought and
judgment, and reliance on individual conscience
and judgment was the test of advancement in the
Reformation. There were a great many of these small sects in
those days, with curious names long since forgotten.
Familists, Seekers, Ranters, Pietists, Antinomians,
Antescripturists, Enthusiasts, Soul Sleepers, Levellers,
Adamites, Traskites, and Anabaptists were the more
82

THE QUAKERS
important ones which shocked sober people by their
frantic radicalism.
From the Familists, Seekers, Ranters, Baptists,
and Antinomians the Quakers seem to have been
largely recruited, and these sects had not a little in
fluence in the settlement of the colonies in America.
Familism, as a doctrine, was more or less prevalent
among several sects. They held that no forms or
doctrines were necessary, that as Moses had taught
the law and Christ faith, so the third and new order
of things was love. By love and contemplation they
believed that they could get into direct communica
tion with God, and therefore for them all ceremonies
were useless. Love covered everything, and they
called themselves The Family of Love.
The Seekers, like the Familists, had suddenly been
allowed to read the Scriptures on which all religion
was supposed to rest, and finding in them no au
thority for the doings of the church of the Middle
Ages, they cut loose from everything. All sacra
ments and ordinances, and aU church government,
they said, had been utterly corrupted, and they were
waiting and seeking for a new revelation. Roger
Williams, who was banished from Massachusetts
for heresy, and afterwards founded Rhode Island,
was more or less affiliated with these people. They
have sometimes been confused with the Familists.
Penn, in his essay on "The Rise and Progress
of the People caUed Quakers," speaks of the two
sects as in reality one. Both they and the Familists
are said to have worshipped in silence like the
Quakers. 83

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
The Antinomians were very much Hke the Fami
lists, and Antinomianism was a general name applied
to people who relied on inward feeling and convic
tion ; had gone back, in fact, to a sort of natural re
ligion, and were independent of all dogmas and all
regularly organized churches. Mrs. Ann Hutchinson,
who was so severely treated and finally banished from
Massachusetts, was an Antinomian. Some of her
foUowers who fled to Rhode Island became Quakers,
and among them was Mary Dyer, who was afterwards
hung for her new faith on Boston Common. Anti
nomianism led veiy directly to Quakerism.
But these queer sects did not last long, nor were
they able to attract to themselves for any length of
time such strong, intelligent, and devoted characters
as were drawn to the Quakers. The Quakers sup
plied all that these sects had and a great deal more
besides ; and they supplied it in a better way, and
were better organized.
The reason the Quakers absorbed the others and
survived seems to have been because they set forth
the definite and inteUigent plan of returning to primi
tive Christianity in its most ancient and simple form.
To the seekers and others who thought that all re
ligion had become hopelessly corrupt, they showed
that original Christianity was still as pure as ever.
Let us return, they said, to old Christianity as it
existed during the first three centuries after the
time of the apostles, before the Bishop of Rome
became Pope, and before the great mass of dogma,
superstition, fraud, and cruelty were developed by
priestcraft 84

THE QUAKERS
The Church of England and the Puritans were
halting half-way in the Reformation. They could
satisfy the rich and powerful, but they could not
satisfy the poor, the ordinary, or even the rich who
had simple spiritual minds. Do not halt, then, said
the Quakers. Go back all the way, back to the
simple Christians of the Catacombs, the best and
greatest of all Christians, who endured such terrible
martyrdom, who lived such stainless lives, who were
so affectionate in their families, and who put such
touching, simple inscriptions on the tombs of their
dead ; back to these Christians who were nearest to
the Saviour, who had no system of dogma or the
ology, no doctrine of the Trinity, no transubstantia
tion or infallibility, and no formal creeds ; whose
religion spread itself not by theology, cruelty, or
force, but by its own moral superiority, its simple
spirituality, the Sermon on the Mount, and the
inward light from Christ
So the Quakers became earnest students of the
fathers of the church, as they are called, those very
ancient writers, TertuUian, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr,
Cyprian, Eusebius, Origen, and others, who are the
authorities for our knowledge of the primitive Chris
tians, whose opinions are so numerous and so varied
that they are store-houses of quotations for all sorts
of religious belief, and who have always been the
delight of those who explore the original sources
of Christianity. There the Quakers found full justi
fication for their peculiar doctrines. They found
a spiritual worship free from elaborate ceremony.
They found that the ministers and preachers received
85

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
no pay. They found complete freedom of opinion,
the religious liberty which they longed to see estab
lished in England. They found also that some of
these early Christians were opposed to oaths and
also to war ; and that they protested against vain
fashions, corrupting amusements, and flattering titles.
The Quakers were by no means the first people
who had uttered this cry for a return to primitive
Christianity. It had been heard several times dur
ing the long night of the Middle Ages, but it was
quickly smothered by an iron hand. The Albi-
genses in the south of France in the thirteenth cen
tury had been a numerous people and held a very
pure and simple doctrine somewhat like that of the
Quakers ; but the armies of Pope Innocent III.
within a few months slaughtered over two hundred
thousand of them ; and it is supposed that within a
period of twenty years more than a million of them
were put to death. The Waldenses of the Pied
mont Valleys, who were a similar people, were also
hunted down, and men, women, and children suffo
cated in their caves or cut to pieces by the soldiers
of holy church.
If George Fox and the Quakers had appeared a
century sooner, they would have been exterminated
to a man ; for their doctrine was more far-reaching,
aggressive, and dangerous than the simple faith of
such people as the Albigenses. But at the time
the Quakers appeared the principles of the Refor
mation had advanced too far to allow of wholesale
slaughtering. Nevertheless the government and
sober-minded, religious people were willing to go a
86

THE QUAKERS
long way in suppressing a belief which threatened
to destroy everything that was conservative in both
religion and manners. Ordinances were passed
authorizing the justices of the peace to imprison
any who should deny the validity of the two sacra
ments, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, or maintain
other principles of the Quaker belief When they
held their meetings in the street or market-place
they were arrested for a breach of the peace. They
were arrested as Sabbath-breakers when travelling
to their meetings ; and when wandering about in
their missionary work they were arrested as vagrants
and whipped.
After the restoration their punishments were in
creased. Old laws of Henry VIII. 's and Elizabeth's
reign were applied to them. By these laws, which
were aimed primarily at Roman Catholics, they
could be imprisoned as well as lose their property
for not paying tithes ; and if they refused to attend
the parish church, they could be fined, imprisoned,
and finally banished. An act was also passed
specially naming the Quakers, describing them as
worse than rebels, and "a terror of the people ;" and
by this act, if they refused to take an oath, or argued
or wrote against the practice, or if they held meetings
among themselves, they could be fined, imprisoned,
and finally banished. Another act provided that
for unlawfully assembling they could be convicted
and sentenced to three or five months' imprisonment
by a magistrate without trial by jury. The officers
of the militia and army were authorized to break
up and disperse such assemblies and capture the
87

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
leaders ; and the magistrates were authorized in
executing the act to break into aU dwelling-houses
except the houses of peers of the realm.
Other acts which were originally intended to be
used against the meetings of the Presbyterians and
Independents were executed against the Quakers
with great severity. These acts gave part of the
fines to informers, who made it their business to live
on the spoil and ruin of the Quakers, who lost the
stock in their shops, and even their household goods
and bedding, and some, reduced to abject poverty,
were compelled to sleep on bare boards.
In the British colonies, the Bermudas, Jamaica,
and other places similar punishments were inflicted.
In Massachusetts the punishments were worse than
in England. The Quakers, men and women, were
stripped to the waist, tied to a cart's tail, and whipped
from town to town ; they were whipped with pitched
ropes, branded in the hand, their ears cut off, and
four of them, including a woman, were hung.
All these sufferings in England and other countries
are described in great detail by the Quaker historians
Sewell, Gough, Janney, and especially Besse. The
Quakers were very careful to preserve in writing full
accounts of all persecutions and sufferings at the
time of their occurrence. Although they opposed
learning and the higher education, there seems to
have been none of the smaller sects that described
and argued their religion so much in print In the
year 1708, as Janney tells us, when they had been
in existence only about half a century, a catalogue
of their books, published by John Whiting, contains

THE QUAKERS
the names of five hundred and twenty-eight writers,
and the titles of two thousand eight hundred books
and tracts.
In this way they made a deep and powerful im
pression on their time, and their Hberal views, their
simple way of stating the Trinity and the divinity of
Christ, their insistence on the spirituality of Chris
tianity as opposed to ecclesiastical forms and dogmas,
has now long since spread to other religious bodies,
and is the general bdief of modern times.
They not only took care that all their sufferings
should be fully recorded and known, but their con
duct in never avoiding punishment was unusual.
The Presbyterians, Independents, Roman Catholics,
and other dissenting bodies thought it no disgrace,
when the laws were unusually severe against them,
to go into hiding, to cease to practise their religion
for a time, or to hold secret meetings. But the
Quakers would never hold secret meetings, and it
was a point of honor with them never to abstain
from the open performance of their faith, no mat
ter how much the magistrates stirred up the laws
against them. For the cautious conduct of the
other dissenters they had a supreme contempt, and
referred to it sarcastically as " Christian prudence."
A Quaker meeting might be raided by the soldiers
and constables, and the house demolished, but the
following Sunday those that remained uncaptured
would be found holding a meeting on its ruins,
where they were again an easy prey to the officials.
This extraordinary stubbornness exasperated the
authorities agahist them more than ever, for it was a

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
burden to arrest and imprison so many of them.
They filled up the jails, and it seemed impossible to
check them as the other dissenters were checked
and driven out of sight by punishing a few as
examples. The Quakers were determined that if
they were to be suppressed by imprisonment, it
would be not by examples, but by imprisoning
every individual Quaker in the country ; and even
then they would hold meetings in the jails until
they had all died of dirt and disease.
The world at first laughed at this impolitic obsti
nacy, then wondered at it, and in the end was filled
with profound respect and admiration for the people
who lived up to it for nearly forty years. The
Quakers seem to have been built up into their un
usually strong position largely by this heroic prin
ciple of conduct It was, indeed, a thoroughly
Anglo-Saxon trait, and could have been exhibited
by no other race.
The punishments in England, beginning with the
Commonwealth times, were persisted in until 1672,
when Charles IL, by proclamation, suspended the
execution of all penal laws against dissenters, and
released from prison about four hundred Quakers.
But this relief lasted only for about a year. In
1673 the informers returned to their business, and
the prisons were again filled untU James II. came to
the throne in 1685. He released some thirteen
hundred Quakers who were then in prison, and
stopped the suits which were then in progress to fine
or imprison several hundred more. In 1687 he
issued his famous "Declaration of Indulgence," by
90

THE QUAKERS
which, hke Charles II. , he suspended aU the penal
laws against dissenters. But this raised a great
constitutional question of his right to suspend any
laws, a question in which WUliam Penn took, as we
shall see, an important part
There was, however, no more persecution of
Quakers. It had practically ceased during the reign
of King James. But the Quakers were not legally
secured in their rights untU 1688, the first year of
the reign of William III., when the act was passed
abolishing all penalties against Protestants and estab
lishing the religious liberty which has since prevailed
in England.
For a period of almost forty years from the time
of the civil war until the reign of James II. , the
Quakers had been harried and punished, thousands
of them despoUed of their property, thousands of
them confined in the loathsome prisons of that age ;
and about five thousand, as Penn estimated, died
of disease from confinement in those prisons. This
severity accomplished in part, no doubt, its pur
pose : somewhat lessened their numbers, and kept
their belief from spreading as far as it might have
gone. But it utterly failed to suppress them. They
endured those forty years of suffering, increased in
numbers, won the respect of the world by their
heroism, developed their doctrine, disciphne, and
organization, and their faith spread from the lower
to the middle classes.
Their eccentricities of conduct, their bottle-break
ing, brimstone-burning, and street-preaching passed
away. They became a sedate, sober, thrifty people,
91

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
of most exemplary lives, and most earnest in all
good works. They were leaders in the most ad
vanced philanthropic movements of the age. Be
sides their persistent and sincere advocacy of religious
Hberty, they were the first advocates of the abolition
of negro slavery, and they never faltered in their
purpose untU slavery had ceased to exist in the
British possessions and in the United States.
They were the first prison reformers, a work sug
gested to them by the experience and sufferings of
their own people amid the horrors of the English
prisons of the seventeenth century. Men, women,
and chUdren were crowded together in these prisons
mingled with the vilest and most degraded criminals,
twenty or more of them sleeping together in one
room, damp, cold, and indescribably filthy. The
Quakers aroused public sentiment first to alleviate,
and then to change this condition. They started
the idea that a prison should be a workhouse, and
many of the early Quakers when imprisoned fol
lowed their trades of shoemaking or tailoring as far
as circumstances would allow. They established,
also, the principle that a prison should be a reforma
tory, a place of moral improvement instead of a
punishment by dirt and disease, and deeper moral
degradation than could be found outside of its
walls. In connection with their work of prison reform,
they opposed the indiscriminate manner in which
the death penalty was inflicted for minor offences.
In England at that time death was the punishment
for over two hundred and fifty crimes. The Quakers
92

THE QUAKERS
argued in favor of reducing the number to two, —
murder and treason, — and wished even to abolish
capital punishment altogether.
Although in their origin, and for a long time
afterwards, they were opposed to higher education,
colleges, and learning, they have in modern times
greatly changed in this respect, especially in Penn
sylvania, where the Philadelphia Quakers have made
most successful efforts in the best sort of education,
as their colleges at Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and
Swarthmore clearly prove. They have interested
themselves in the education of women, and also in
women's rights, which is the natural out-growth of
the liberty always allowed by them to women in
preaching and in the conduct of church affairs.
It is no doubt true that, although they have
engaged in all these liberal movements, they have
been narrow in their views, and have gone about
their work in a narrow way. Their long oppo
sition to higher education would easily account for
this. Nevertheless, it is also true that they have
produced some very remarkable and very broad-
minded men. WiUiam Penn and John Bright are
the most noticeable instances in England ; and in
America the list is a long one : Benjamin West, one
of the best artists of his time ; John Bartram, the
first American botanist ; two of our best poets,
Whittier and Bayard Taylor; John Dickinson, the
author of the " Farmer's Letters in the Revolution ;"
two of the ablest generals of the Revolution, Greene
and Mifflin ; and Edward Cope, a modern Philadel
phian of much eminence in science. There should
93

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
also be added to the list Ezra Cornell, who founded
the great university in New York which bears his
name ; and Lindley Murray, the grammarian.
The Quaker belief, although opposed to the higher
learning and open to the charge of narrowness, and
in its early stages to the charge of eccentricity, was
nevertlieless a rationalistic movement. Lecky has
described it as a distorted rationalism. It was an
heroic attempt to reform, advance, and liberalize the
age. It was the last great wave or impulse of the
Reformation, a violent and one might say an hys
terical effort to return to the primitive Christianity
of the first two centuries. In its day it possessed
great attractions for honest minds like William Penn
or Robert Barclay, who, as college-bred men, were
weary of seeing education prostituted to the service
of tyranny, superstition, and fraud ; who wished to
see religion totally divorced from politics as well as
from priestcraft, and established on a permanent
basis of civil and religious liberty.

94

VI
CAVALIER OR QUAKER ; OR BOTH
But whatever we may think of the Quakers after
an impartial survey of their whole career, there is
no doubt that in the year 1661 they were generally
regarded as a despised, eccentric, street- and field-
preaching, wandering sect, continually punished by
fine and imprisonment under the law. What could
there be in such people that would attract to them
William Penn, a youth of the upper class enjoying
his athletic sports and studies at an upper-class
Church of England college ? The only answer
would seem to be that the boy was born with a
certain sincere earnestness, a serious-mindedness,
and a natural inclination for religion. There was
also evidently in his nature a strong basis of hero
ism, which he had gained, no doubt, by inheritance.
It cost him but little effort to dare to follow the
leading of his powerful and, indeed, passionate re
ligious feeling.
He had never, so far as can be discovered, been
under the dominion of much dogma. His associ
ations in his boyhood's home at Wanstead had, as
we have already said, been Puritan. He was already
inclined to rely on his own inward convictions ; and
sincere and earnest as he was, and disposed to take
95

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
religion literally, he found something congenial
among the people who relied more than any others
on inward feeling and conviction as against dogmas
and ceremonies. Before long he also discovered
that for an educated mind the suggestion of return
ing to primitive Christianity was a grand and fruitful
thought Among the primitive Christians of the
first three centuries could be found liberty and a
multitude of inspiring philosophic and religious ideas.
On these the intellect and moral nature could freely
exercise themselves without the degradation of feel
ing that they were being prostituted in the service
of priestly humbug and superstition.
He wandered unconsciously into this influence
which was destined to seize him sooner or later.
The Quakers had already been up and down in
Oxford, and not a few students had succumbed.
But it was the preaching of Thomas Loe, to whom
he one day accidentally listened, that touched Penn.
He and some other undergraduates abandoned the
chapel services of the colleges and went to hear the
Quakers ; and it has even been said that they held
private prayer-meetings among themselves. For this
neglect of the college chapel services they had to
pay fines ; but, nothing deterred, they went stiU fur
ther, and there is a tradition that Penn and Robert
Spencer, afterwards Lord Sunderland, in their hatred
of outward forms, "feU upon those students who
appeared in surplices, and he and they together tore
them everywhere over their heads."
From a letter written by Penn in 1683 to Lord
Sunderland, it appears that they first made each
95

CAVALIER OR QUAKER; OR BOTH
other's acquaintance in France in 1663, after Penn
had left Oxford, so that the tradition associating them
as companions in the attack on the surplices may be
wrong. But it is extremely probable that Penn
took some pronounced part in that general opposi
tion to the surplices which prevailed among the
students ; for we hear that he was expelled from the
college for some conduct relating to his religious
opinions. This expulsion has been doubted by his
biographer, Stoughton ; but Penn himself, in speak
ing of his early religious life, said, "Of my persecu
tion at Oxford, and how the Lord sustained me in
the midst of that hellish darkness and debauchery ;
of my being banished the college." *
It is difficult to tell whether this word banished
means that he wa§ suspended, as it would now be
called, for a time or expeUed ; but it probably
means expelled. He seems to have been at Christ
Church about two years, and this banishment brought
his course there to an end. Apparently he did not
altogether neglect the studies that were proper for
a cavalier, and although he seems to have been a
serious-minded undergraduate protesting against col
legiate debauchery, and more and more imbued
with Quaker influence, he did not reach the point
of actually joining the sect From entries in Pepys's
diary, the admiral seems to have had thoughts of
removing his son to Cambridge, but whether for the
purpose of breaking up his Quaker notions is not
clear. * Journey into Holland and Germany (Life prefixed to Works),
p. 92. 7 97

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
When, however, Penn finally left Oxford and re
turned to his father in London, the admiral was
greatly vexed at the state of the young man's feel
ings. He went wandering about the city, looking
up Quakers and consorting with them ; and he ap
peared to have no taste for the court and a cavalier's
life. From that time the struggle between father
and son reads like a comedy. The father, we are
told, tried persuasions and threats, and when these
proved of no avail, resorted to blows, which also
failing of their purpose, he fell into a transport of
rage and drove the boy from his house, to which,
however, he was afterwards enabled to return by the
intercession of his mother.*
This account has been described by Stoughton
and also by GranviUe Penn as traditional and very
much exaggerated. But Penn himself, in his " Jour
ney into Holland and Germany," after speaking of
his banishment from college, adds, " The bitter
usage I underwent when I returned to my father,
whipping, beating, and turning out of doors in
1662." The violence and turning out of doors proving as
unsuccessful as the banishment from college, a rather
lucky thought occurred to the admiral. He would
divert the boy's mind by things which were unlike
religion. So he sent him with some gay people of
the court to travel in France in the hope that he
would pick up something besides fanaticism.
This hope seems to have been partly realized.

* Gough, History of the Quakers, vol. ii. p. 214.
98

CAVALIER OR QUAKER; OR BOTH
He visited Italy as well as France, and Pepys de
scribes him in August, 1664, soon after his return.
" This day my wife tells me Mr Pen, Sir William's son, is come
back from France and came to visit her. A most modish person
grown, she says, a fine gentleman." (Vol iv. pp. 228, 229.)
•• After dinner comes Mr. Pen to visit me, and staid an houre talk
ing with me. I perceive something of learning he hath got, but a
great deal if not too much of the vanity of the French garbe and
aifected manner of speech and gait. I fear all real profit he hath
made of his travel will signify little." (Vol. iv. p. 231.)
Penn at this time was no doubt a fresh-faced
young Englishman of considerable attractiveness ;
with much manner and conversation, and capable
as the French would say of "success with women."
He found Mrs. Pepys's society so agreeable that
Pepys became very jealous.
" Against my will left them together, but God knows without any
reason of fear in my conscience of any evil between them, but such
is my natural folly." (Vol. iv. p. 243. See also p. 236.)
A hardened old rascal like Pepys, who was con
tinually making love to other men's wives, was
naturally very suspicious. But nothing came of it,
and he afterwards speaks of young Penn as very
merry talking of his travels and French humors.
From a letter of P. Gibson we learn what was
part of Penn's new French garb. " I remember your
honor very well," Gibson writes, "when you newly
came out of France and wore pantaloon breeches."
Penn had, in fact, become what we would now
call a Franco-maniac. He spoke French fluently,
and the admiral was very much pleased with his
polite and courtly behavior. We read also that he
99

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
fought with a desperado in the streets of Paris, and
was skUful enough in fencing to knock his opponent's
sword from his hand. But he declined to stab to
death his disarmed enemy, as he had a right to do
under the code. He had without doubt become a
good deal of a cavalier ; and this quality he retained
all his life. But, strange to say, while travelling in
France he went to the Protestant college at Sau-
mur, where for a few months he studied theology
under Moses Amyrault, a famous divine of that time.
Whatever qualities the father might add to his char
acter, the boy was evidently determined to follow his
own religious bent
The doctrine taught by Amyrault was a sort of
modified and liberal Calvinism, deemed rank heresy
by many Calvinists. But Penn seems to have been
unaffected by it He studied general theological
history, and apparently for the purpose of giving
himself a more enlightened understanding of the
whole subject of religion. He studied particularly
the writings of the early fathers of the church, that
he might the better understand that primitive Chris
tianity which the Quakers professed, and which was
always uppermost in his thoughts. He was trying
to see in the Quakerism by which his ardent young
heart was touched something deeper and broader
than the eccentricities which aroused so much hatred
and punishment He was looking for a religion
which an honest educated gentleman could follow
without being a sycophantic Churchman, a shuffling,
traitorous Roman Cathohc, or a whining, malignant
Puritan.

CAVALIER OR QUAKER; OR BOTH
He seems to have always looked at the new faith
in a very different light from that which inspired the
rugged unlettered Fox, and it is impossible to find
in Penn any of Fox's visions, miracles, or fanaticism.
Penn wrote largely against oaths ; but very Httle on
hat honor or on what now seems the lighter and
least important part of Quaker doctrine. He was
trying to build on larger foundations and with more
substantial and lasting material.
But he had not yet joined the Quakers. It seems
probable that he was not yet altogether satisfied
with them. Judging from what he afterwards re
lated of himself, he was unable at this time to find
any form of religion that fully satisfied him. He
had become a Seeker. But he went on investi
gating, and for one so young he investigated with
considerable thoroughness.
Soon after his return from France his father went
with the Duke of York to fight the Dutch, and
Penn meantime had been entered a student at Lin
coln's Inn to study law. This was in continuation
of the father's careful plan of education. His son,
who was to become a courtier and public man, and
possibly hold an important office under the crown,
must have some general idea of law. So young
Penn, who had been to college at Oxford, studied
theology in France, and travelled through a large
part of Europe, was now to be further broadened by
another study. It will be interesting to see how
a man trained in this way will view the struggling
Quaker faith.
The plague which broke out in London inter-

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
rupted the law studies, and Penn, like many others
who could escape from the city, retired to the
country. The cavalier side of his character seems
to have found little employment in the silence of the
fields, and, as he afterwards related, the scenes of the
plague had made a serious impression on him. His
contemplative and religious mood began to get the
upper hand again ; and when his father returned he
saw evident signs of a bad relapse.
He thought he would try again the remedy that
had already been successful with this disease. He
sent the youth to join the Duke of Ormond, who,
as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, kept at Dublin a
court of no little gayety and splendor. A remedy
often used, however, is apt to lose its power ; and
it seems this second dose of gayety was not ac
complishing all that was expected. A variation of
it was tried, which came very near being entirely
successful. The youth was given some serious worldly work
to do. The admiral was governor of Kinsale, in the
county of Cork, far to the south from Dublin, and
close to that famous headland still a guide to sailors,
and still known as the "Old Head of Kinsale."
There was a fort within it and a company of sol
diers, of which the admiral was nominal captain, in
much the same way that he was governor of Kinsale,
this being one of those posts of profit, honor, and
very little trouble which he held by favor of the
crown, and constituted part of his Irish estates. He
gave his son some sort of oversight of this feudal
holding and the district round it, and the young

CAVALIER OR QUAKER; OR BOTH
man seems also to have held an office called " clerk
of the cheque, Kinsale." But in these positions he
was still under the command of the Duke of Or
mond as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
The responsibihty and interest of his new occupa
tions, the pleasure of doing real work in the world,
drew his mind so far from his religious studies that
when a mutiny broke out among the troops at Car-
rickfergus he took a vigorous part in quelling it
The Duke of Ormond was so pleased with his con
duct that he suggested that he be made captain of
his father's company of soldiers.
Judging from the letter written by the duke, it
seems that the father himself had at one time
thought of this. Young Penn seems to have been
eager for it. But the father's answer implies that
he thought his son's vanity had become inflated
with success, and that he was too young for such a
command. "As to the tender made by his grace
the lord lieutenant," he says, " concerning the fort
at Kinsale, I wish your youthful desires mayn't out
run your discretion."
It was at this time that the armor portrait of Penn
already described in the first chapter is supposed to
have been painted. Public business and the acci
dental arousing of the fighting qualities he had in
herited from his father were drawing him very de
cidedly away from religion. "The glory of the
world," he afterwards said, " overtook me, and I was
even ready to give myself unto it" If his father
had yielded on that one point, and let him be captain
of the company, the result might have been perma-
103

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
nent, and there would be no necessity for writing this
biography. But one day Penn went to Cork on business, and
hearing that his old friend, Thomas Loe, whom he
had known at Oxford, was to preach, he went to
hear him. The burden of the sermon was, " There
is a faith which overcomes the world, and there is a
faith which is overcome by the world," and Penn
was deeply moved. His faith was evidently being
overcome by the world. We can readily imagine
how the fighting spirit, which had been so recently
aroused within him, would now combine with his
natural religious fervor and carry him completely
away. Should he overcome or be overcome. The
fire in his blood would admit of only one answer.
The doctrine struck home, and Penn never again
vaciUated. From that day he was a Quaker.
The methods used by his father had, however,
gone so far that the young man's character had been
partially formed by them. He was double. He was
both a cavalier and a Quaker. He became a recog
nized leader and preacher, the author of numerous
theological works, and at the same time he passed
a large part of his days at court, would dress hand
somely on occasions, could be gay and jovial, and
took part in politics and other things somewhat in
consistent with what is supposed to be Quaker doc
trine. So much was this side of his character de
veloped that in spite of his great abilities his sect
were at the time of the revolution of 1688 a little
inclined to dispense with his services.
This double nature was at the same time his
104

CAVALIER OR QUAKER; OR BOTH
strength and his weakness. His father had been
double in politics, belonging first to the Roundheads
and then to the Royalists. The son belonged both
to the world and to religion, not to one after the
other, but to both at the same time, and seems to
have been perfectly sincere in both. He became
that apparently impossible combination, a Quaker
courtier, and that is the key to his character.
It will be well at this point to quote the whole of
the passage from his "Journey into Holland and
Germany," already several times referred to, in which
he sums up the religious history of his youth.
" I let them know how and when the Lord first appeared unto me,
which was about the twelfth year of my age, anno. 1656; and
how, at times, betwixt that and the fifteenth, the Lord visited me,
and the divine impressions he gave me of himself ; of my perse
cution at Oxford, and how the Lord sustained me in the midst of
that hellish darkness and debauchery ; of my being banished the
college ; the bitter usage I underwent when I returned to my father,
whipping, beating, and turning out of doors in 1662. Of the
Lord's dealings with me in France, and in the time of the great
plague in London ; in fine, the deep sense he gave me of the vanity
of this world, of the irreligiousness of the religious of it; then, of
my mournful and bitter cries to him that he would show me his own
way of life and salvation, and my resolution to follow him, whatever
reproaches of suffering should attend me, and that with great rev
erence and brokeness of spirit. How, after all this, the glory of the
world overtook me, and I was even ready to give up myself unto it,
seeing as yet no such thing as the primitive spirit and church on the
earth ; and being ready to faint concerning my hope of the resti
tution of all things." (Life prefixed to Works (1726), p. 92.)
The last part of this passage shows that in Penn's
studies and thoughts in his youth the struggle was
principally to find the original spirit and essential of
Christianity, or as he puts it " the primitive spirit
105

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
and church." For this purpose the young man had
sat in Quaker meetings and studied at Saumur, in
France, without being influenced by French Gal
vanism. It is also evident that in his early ex
periences he belonged to that class of persons who
were then called Seekers, who believed that all forms
of Christianity were so corrupted as to be invalid,
and that a new revelation must be awaited ; for
he speaks of his deep sense of the " irreligiousness
of the religious," and of his inability to find any
" such thing as the primitive spirit and church on
the earth."

106

VII
FIRST IMPRISONMENT AND ROUGHNESS OF ENGLISH
LIFE
But after all his studies and experiences, his stu
dent life at Oxford, his travels in France and Italy,
his investigations of the early fathers under the great
professor at Saumur, his intercourse with gay people
in Europe, in London, and with the Duke of Ormond
in Ireland, his public employment on his father's
feudal holding at Kinsale, — after all this, and after
doubting whether there was any true or valid church
on earth, and after considerable knowledge of Quaker
meetings, Penn made the final decision that those
Quakers were sufficiently near to primitive Chris
tianity to justify his sacrificing himself in the cause
which they had at heart
He remained in Ireland attending to his father's
affairs, making no change in his life or even in his
cavalier dress ; but he attended the Quaker meetings
in Cork. Very soon, as might be expected, he was
caught in one of those raids which were constantly
made on the Quakers. Several constables, backed
by a party of soldiers, entered the meeting where he
was, September 3, 1667, and arrested everybody on
the old charge of holding a riotous assembly. There
is an apocryphal story that a soldier first entered the
meeting to disturb it, on which Penn took him by
107

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
the collar and would have thrown him down-stairs
if some prominent members had not interfered on
the plea that such conduct would be inconsistent
with the principles of their religion.
But we can safely reject this along with the other
tales in the Harvey manuscript Penn had too much
sense to be guilty of such foolishness. He went
with the others before the mayor, who, observing his
dress, offered to release him on bond for his good
behavior. This he refused, and argued with the
mayor on the unlawfulness of arresting peaceable
people under a statute which was intended only to
suppress the Fifth Monarchy murderers. He was
sent to prison, and there addressed an admirable
letter to the Earl of Orrery, Lord-President of Mun
ster, asking to be released. He argued with great
dignity and spirit on the unlawfulness of his arrest,
and the bad policy of such interference with people's
religious convictions.
" But I presume, my Lord, the acquaintance you have had with
other countries, must needs have furnished you with this infallible
observation : that diversities of faith and worship contribute not to
the disturbance of any place, where moral uniformity is barely requi
site to preserve the peace. It is not long since you were a good
solicitor for the liberty I now crave, and concluded no way so effectual
to improve or advantage this country, as to dispense with freedom in
things relating to conscience ; and I suppose were it riotous or
tumultuary, as by some vainly imagined, your lordship's inclination,
as well as duty, would entertain a very remote opinion. My humble
supplication, therefore, to you is, that so malicious and injurious a
practice to innocent Englishmen, may not receive any countenance
or encouragement from your lordship, for as it is contrary to the prac
tice elsewhere, and a bad argument to invite English hither, so, with
submission, will it not resemble that clemency and English spirit,
that hath hitherto made you honorable." lo8

FIRST IMPRISONMENT
It was an exceUent letter for a youth of twenty-
three. But what a scrape he was in ! What a talk
and scandal there must have been among the grand
people of the Duke of Ormond's court at Dublin
when it was known that their late companion, young
Penn, the son of the admiral, with all his fine clothes
on, was caught by the soldiers in a Quaker meeting !
It would have been better to have been caught in a
brothel or the lowest den of vice.
To save him, if possible, from such associations
as he had fallen into, the Earl of Orrery at once re
leased him, and often afterwards Penn was gently
handled by the government because he was a cava
lier, and cavahers could not bear to see him de
graded. The admiral began to hear of these things, and
ordered his son home. He promptly appeared, and
as there was no change in his dress or outward ap
pearance for some time nothing was said. Pepys
heard of his return from that voluble gossip Mrs.
Turner. " At night comes Mrs. Turner to see us ; and then among other
talk she tells me that Mr William Pen who is lately come over from
Ireland is a Quaker again, or some very melancholy thing; that he
cares for no company, nor comes into any ; which is a pleasant thing
after his being abroad so long and his father such a hypocritical
rogue and at this time an atheist." (Vol. vii. p. 253.)
Before long, however, the admiral noticed that
his son always kept his hat on, at that time a serious
disrespect to a parent An explanation was de
manded, and Penn openly declared his principles,
and announced that nothing would now restrain him
109

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
from remaining a Quaker. Entreaties again proving
of no avail, the admiral asked if he would not at
least take off" his hat in the presence of his father,
the king, and the Duke of York.
Such an offer of compromise on the part of the
admiral was unusual, and must have been the result
of many days' controversy with his son. Beaten at
every point, the distressed father at last pathetically
pleaded for the respect due to himself and to the
two persons, the king and the Duke of York, on
whom the family fortunes depended. He thought
he could at least secure this ; and, indeed, his unruly
young Quaker yielded so far as to say that he would
take time to consider.
This infuriated the father, because he thought his
son was going off" to consult the Quakers. But
Penn replied that he would consult with none of
them, and before long, after much inward conflict,
respectfully told his father that he could not comply
with his request
The admiral was again in a rage, and turned his
son out of doors. Penn wandered about, living at
the houses of friends and supplied secretly by his
mother with money. The admiral, of course, had to
relent He allowed his son to come home to live ;
but treated him almost as a stranger.
Penn was now to begin his life's work in earnest ;
and it may be well to consider what England was
at this time, its ideals and its manners. It was
very different from the England which we see to
day on our summer holiday trips across the Atlantic.
Instead of the present population of thirty miUion,

FIRST IMPRISONMENT
it had scarcely five million, hardly as much as the
present population of Pennsylvania. London, in
stead of containing over four million people, had
only about five hundred thousand, and was only a
trifle larger than the modern Boston or Baltimore.
The five million people were gathered in the south
ern part of the island, south of a line drawn across
the country from Liverpool to the Humber River.
North of this line to the Scottish border was a
wilderness where the Scotch pillaged and marauded
and the mosstroopers stole cattle, where the scat
tered inhabitants lived in a state of barbarism with
their blood-hounds to track robbers, and, like the
early settlers of the American wilderness, adminis
tered swift and sure justice on horse-thieves.
Even south of this wilderness, where most of the
people were to be found, the face of the country
was wild. There were vast forests and moors cov
ered with furze. A great deal of the country was
overflowed, and this fen land, which has now been
neary all drained, was the home of immense quanti
ties of wild-fowl. The country people lived on
widely scattered rude farms, with occasional baronial
castles. One entered this rough, wild country as
soon as he left the outskirts of a viUage or town ;
and you would have looked in vain at that time for
the highly cultivated land, the trim farms, and country
places, with their green hedge-rows and fat cattle,
which the modern railway tourist now passes in such
endless succession.
In fact, the English people of that day lived al
most as much in the wilderness and as close to wUd

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
nature as those who had emigrated to America. On
any of the great highways of travel every one, as
night came on, hastened to reach an inn, for there
was no road that was free from highwaymen.
Evelyn, in going from Tunbridge Wells to London,
was waylaid and left bound in a solitary place tor
mented by the blazing sun and the swarms of flies
and ants. His account of his capture and escape
reads like the tales of similar adventures at the same
period among the Indians in America.
Within a couple of hours' drive of London, great
herds of fallow-deer ranged through the forests ;
and within a couple of days' journey could be found
the magnificent red deer, almost as large as an
American elk, and wandering in herds that some
times numbered five hundred. The wild bull with
a white mane wandered in the woods of the more
remote districts. On the open downs bustards, a
bird as large as the American wild turkey, roamed
in large flocks and were hunted with greyhounds.
Fox-hunting had not then become the national
sport ; and the fox, instead of being carefully pre
served, was slaughtered by hundreds as a pest The
wild boars, which had been very numerous and were
preserved for the sport of the king and nobility,
were exterminated by the farmers during the civil
war. Nor had England then become famous for her
breeds of horses and cattle. The native horses were
small and cheap. The best for the saddle were im
ported from Spain, and those used for draught were
brought from Flanders. As these heavy Flemish

FIRST IMPRISONMENT
mares drew the great lumbering coaches through the
narrow streets of London, splashing the offal and filth
of the kennel on every side, pedestrians rushed to
the wall and turned their backs. At night those
same streets were unlighted, and one might very
well have been safer on the country roads. Thieves
and footpads might be met at any turn, or roistering
young fellows who had started out to beat the watch,
upset sedan chairs, and insult women. If these
dangers were escaped, one might still at any moment
receive the contents of a bucket emptied from a
garret window.
We should naturally expect that the dress of the
people would conform to their surroundings, or be
of color that would least show the accidents through
which they might have passed. But, on the contrary,
they travelled their rough roads, during half the year
almost impassable with mud, ran the gauntlet of
highwaymen or the showers of filth in London's
streets in most fantastic clothes of scarlet, blue, and
yellow, with feathers in their hats. "I saw," says
Pepys, "the King, the Dukes and all their attend
ants go forth in the rain to the City and it bedraggled
many a fine suit of clothes." * Pepys's description
of his clothes, with the long list of their now mean
ingless names, and the way in which he developed
his costume with his incresising prosperity, seems
ludicrous enough now, but was an important matter
with him.
All sorts of fashions broke out among them.

* Pepys's Diary, ed. of 1893, vol. i. p. 193.
"3

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
French clothes became an extravagant tyranny
which Charles II. determined to break ; and as
clothes were then as important as politics, he an
nounced his resolution to his council. He would
start a new and modest fashion which should never
be altered : " a long cassock, close to the body, of
black cloth, and pinked with white silk under it, and
a coat over it, and the legs ruffled with black riband
like a pigeon's leg." But Louis XIV. and the
French nobility, to check this revolt against the su
premacy of their nation, put their footmen in the
new costume. It became a livery, and no English
gentleman dare wear it
These gay people, with their embroidered and
velvet coats, fringed gloves, camlet cloaks, gold and
silver buttons, and huge wigs, which were bedraggled
in the rain and mud of London, were not so partic
ular when they went to bed. Night-clothes were
not usually worn, and people went to bed stark
naked. Possibly some of the upper classes may
have worn night-clothes, for we read in Pepys's
diary and other books of the time that it was a
recognized custom for ladies while in bed to receive
visitors of both sexes, as well as to receive visits while
they were dressing ; and the same custom prevailed
in France.
It is needless to say that the language habitually
used to ladies by the cavaliers was of a plain-spoken
coarseness and licentiousness that has long since
passed away ; and the ladies in their turn sang songs
and made jests which would now in the lowest va
riety theatre be instantly suppressed by the police.
114

FIRST IMPRISONMENT
There were, of course, exceptions. There were
ladies and cavaliers who protested against habitual
swearing and obscenity, and lived up to their pro
tests. If we can believe his word, William Penn
was one of these. Once, when he was imprisoned
in the Tower, Sir John Robinson taunted him with
having been as free in speech and morals before he
turned Quaker as any other cavalier.
" When and where ?" said Penn. " I charge thee to tell the com
pany to my face."
" Abroad and at home, too," said Sir John.
" No, no. Sir John," broke in some one who was present, " that
is too much."
" I make this bold challenge," said Penn, " to all men, women,
and children upon earth, justly to accuse me of ever having seen me
drunk, heard me swear, utter a curse, or speak one obscene word
(much less that I ever made it my practice). I speak this to God's
glory, that has ever preserved me from the power of those pollutions,
and that from a child begat an hatred in me towards them. But
there is nothing more common than when men are of a more severe
life than ordinary, for loose persons to comfort themselves with the
conceit that ' they were once as they are.' "
The theatre of those days, of course, reflected in
public the license that was so freely allowed in pri
vate life. The play-writers could produce nothing
much but obscenity ; and no plays of any literary
merit were written. It was a sad change since
Shakespeare's days, when English minds, youthful
and ardent and full of beautiful fancies, enjoyed
"The Tempest" and '' Midsummer Night's Dream,"
the noble melancholy of Hamlet, the jolly " Taming
of the Shrew," or the grand tragedies of Macbeth
and Csesar. They were chivalrous, generous, like
Raleigh, dreaming of tender love or briUiant enter-
"5

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
prise ; they sailed the seas for the glory of adven
ture and to see undiscovered lands. But now every
thing was turned to dirt, sordidness, and corrup
tion. Charles II. admitted to his presence as an amusing
character Blood, the assassin, who had attempted the
lives of the Duke of Ormond and the keeper of the
Tower. Most of us are familiar with the old story,
"how at a ball at court, a child was dropped by one
of the ladies in dancing." They carried it off in a
handkerchief, "and the king had it in his closet a
week after, and did dissect it, making great sport of
it" His lords and ladies danced together naked, or
smeared one another's faces with candle-grease and
soot tUl they looked like devils. The Duke of York
gets Lord Clarendon's daughter with child, and Clar
endon willingly declares his daughter a strumpet, so
that the duke need not think of marrying her, and
Sir Charles Berkeley, to help the matter out, swore he
had been with her, and for this he was given a pension
and made Earl of Falmouth. And Pepys bluntly
tells us how the duke " hath come out of his wife's
bed and gone to others laid in bed for him." These,
we must remember, were Penn's friends at court, the
men on whom he reUed to help him protect the
Quakers and retain his vast province of Pennsyl
vania. It would be easy to fill many pages with instances
of the rough manners of all classes. A man was
thought none the less of if in a public place he seized
some buxom woman and kissed her. Pepys relates
several instances of kissing ladies in sport when
1x6

FIRST IMPRISONMENT
dining at a tavern ; and people of quality of that
time were constantly going out to dine together at
the taverns. The cavaliers were outrageous in these
matters. The king, Pepys says, would get Mrs.
Stewart in a corner and hug and kiss her for half an
hour " to the observation of all the world."
But the most shocking ruggedness was the way in
which everybody went to see executions ; a custom
which is apparently beginning to be restored with us
at our negro burnings. And such executions !
Hanging and beheading were not enough, and failed
to satisfy the crowd. When Strafford was executed,
the people complained that he had not been cut
open and compelled to see his entrails burning be
fore his eyes. In the descriptions of these scenes,
written by men of the time, it is difficult to find
a single word revealing the slightest abhorrence or
pity. " I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major General Harrison
hanged drawn and quartered ; which was done there, he looking as
cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently
cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there
were great shouts of joy." (Pepys's Diary, ed. of 1893, vol. i. p. 260.)
But we must not suppose that because these
people were rough and cruel, that some of them had
not elevated sentiments and amusements, and many
of the best amenities of life, like the men of the
previous century, when Elizabeth was queen. In
spite of the devilish doings of the cavaliers, there
were many who enjoyed art, literature, and music.
Men like Evelyn and Locke were striving to im
prove every means of life and thought. Others
117

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
were struggHng with the beginnings of modern
science. They had for their contemporary the noble
author of " Paradise Lost ;" and Dryden, WaUer,
Cowley, and Butler were writing the verse which
after the lapse of over two hundred years has still
the power to charm us. It would be as great a
mistake to suppose them completely lacking in no
bility of life as to suppose that we ourselves are
altogether lacking because we burn negroes to death
at the stake and have more unpunished murders and
assassinations than have ever before been known in
history. The people of Penn's time seem to have had a
strong taste for music, and there was a great deal of
playing on flutes, viols, and harps, and singing of
songs. Pepys often speaks of his song-book as one
of his most treasured volumes. He solaced himself
with music almost every evening. He sometimes
carried his flute in his pocket, and when travelling in
Holland played in the stage-coach ; and we find
him one day stopping business at the Navy Depart
ment to play on the organ with some friends before
dinner. In the commonwealth times music had
been suppressed by the Puritans. Parliament passed
an ordinance for systematically destroying all the
church organs throughout the country. But when
the king came to his own again the cavaliers became
more musical than ever for the sake of annoying the
Puritans. There was a great deal of ease and amusement,
and much luxury. Some of the courtiers, it is said,
lived in rooms in which the furniture was of soHd
ii8

FIRST IMPRISONMENT
silver, and there were decorated ceilings which cost
half as much as the house. All kinds of games were
popular, tennis, billiards, bowls, all the games we
have now and many long since gone out of use. At
Whitehall the officials and ministers debated their
state affairs walking up and down the corridors. In
tercourse with the licentious king was easy and not
very formal. Pepys, when he saw the king or the
Duke of York out walking, seems to have gone up
and spoken to them as though they had been boon
companions. If we examine the portraits of those times, such,
for example, as those which have been engraved in
Lodge's famous volumes, we get from the costumes
and faces a strong impression of a people who were
far from destitute of culture. In fact, the age was
full of the most extraordinary contradictions existing
side by side. Such men as Milton or Dryden,
Locke or Penn, daily heard language and saw sights
in the streets that would amaze and horrify the
modern world. The standing source of caricature
and wit for a long time was the Rump Parliament, a
name which originated in an indecent jest, and it
was harped on for years by butcher boys exhibiting
parts of dead animals in the streets or throwing them
into windows, or by pictures of a vileness that cannot
now even be described.
There was one constant sight from which no
traveller could keep his eyes. The heads of the
many notorious political malefactors were stuck
about as barbaric ornaments in various parts of
London, on Temple Bar or on the bridge, and in
119

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
the smaller towns where insurrections had been
suppressed. After the Restoration, when the regi
cides were drawn and quartered, their quarters were
hung up in the streets like butchers' meat. The
bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were
taken from their graves, their heads cut off and
mounted in the city. There, along with the other
grim trophies of popular vengeance, they rotted in
the wind and rain, the dishevelled hair slowly falling
out, and the grinning skull becoming more and more
ghastly as the flesh dried up and fell away, while
beneath them in the foggy, muddy streets, surged
that strange life of brilliant, gay cavaliers, sombre,
stern Puritans, wild-eyed Fifth Monarchy men,
Familists, Antinomians, Seekers, and other strange
sects, all warring, jarring, persecuting, and tearing
one another over those wonderful principles of free
government and free religion which in a hundred
years created the great American republic, and, may
we hope, spread to the utmost ends of the earth.

VIII
CONTROVERSY, FIRST PRINCIPLES, AND IMPRISONMENT
A FEW months after he was turned out of his
father's house, Penn became a recognized preacher
among the Quakers. Events had moved rapidly
with him. In September, 1667, he had been finally
converted at Cork, by listening to Thomas Loe.
That same autumn he returned to his father in Eng
land, and in 1668, we are informed, he was accepted
as a preacher.
He was twenty-four years old ; and he had prob
ably quickly shown a facility for public speaking in
the meetings he had attended. His mind had been
long absorbed in religious subjects, and his education
was an advantage. The Quakers were no doubt
glad to have secured a convert from the cavalier
class, and he was almost the first of this class that
had come to them. Robert Barclay joined them
about the same time ; and, indeed, this seems to
have been the period when educated men were com
ing forward to rationalize and soften the fanaticism
of Fox and the crudities of the old Familists and
Seekers. Besides Penn and Barclay, there were
Whitehead, Ellwood, and Pennington, who were soon
engaged in this work.
Twenty-five or thirty years afterwards Leslie, a
121

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
very sharp critic of the Quakers, described the effect
upon them of Penn's writings.
' ' Especially of late some of them have made nearer advances
towards Christianity than ever before ; and among them the ingenious
Mr. Penn has of late refined some of their gross notions, and brought
them into some form, and has made them speak sense and English,
of both which George Fox, their first and great apostle, was totally
ignorant. . . . They endeavor all they can to make it appear that
their doctrine was uniform from the beginning, and that there has
been no alteration; and therefor they take upon them to defend all
the writings of George Fox, and others of the first Quakers, and turn
and wind them to make them (but it is impossible) agree with what
they teach now at this day." (" The Snake in the Grass," introduc
tion to 3d ed. of 1698.)
The exact nature of this work done by Penn,
Barclay, and others seems to have been to ignore
the visions and half inclination to miracles of Fox,
and in place of them argue in an orderly and learned
manner for the simple faith they found among the
Quakers, show that it was in close conformity to the
primitive Christianity of the first three centuries, and
disclose the political importance of its unusually ad
vanced ideas of religious liberty. To the part re
lating to religious liberty Penn especially devoted
himself. -Fox was incapable of work of this sort, but he
could lay the foundation for it His famous letter
to the Governor of Barbadoes is regarded by many
Quakers as their creed, as the original and simple
statement of their faith, from which there is to be no
deviation. In spite of bad grammar and the obscure,
even unintelligible phrases of which Fox was guilty,
there was a germinal power in his thought which

FIRST PRINCIPLES AND IMPRISONMENT
cannot be ignored. Penn late in life said of him,
" As abruptly and brokenly as sometimes his sen
tences would fall from him about divine things, it
is well known they were often as texts to many
fairer declarations." Macaulay, who never spares
either Fox or Penn, sharply adds, " that is to say,
George Fox talked nonsense, and some of his friends
paraphrased it into sense."
But to return to Penn, who has just become a
Quaker preacher. He retained, as we have already
said in the first chapter, most of his cavalier dress.
There is a tradition that he even continued to wear
his sword, which was then a customary part of the
costume of a man of rank or fashion. He consulted
George Fox about it, saying that the weapon was
hardly consistent with their principles, but it had
saved his life in Paris without injuring his antagonist
Fox answered, " I advise thee to wear it as long as
thou canst"
Afterwards, meeting Penn without the sword, he
said, —
"William, where is thy sword?"
"Oh," said Penn, "I have taken thy advice. I
wore it as long as I could."
It is probable that he wore the cavalier hat, or the
fashionable hat of the time, stripped of its excessive
ornamentation, nearly all his life. When James II.
was king, which was when Penn was past forty, he
and Penn were talking one day, and the king, who
was a Roman Catholic, asked him to explain the
difference between that religion and the Quaker
faith. Penn pointed to their hats, which were ex-

< THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
actly alike except that the king's was covered with
feathers and ribbons, " The only difference," said
Penn, "lies in the ornaments that have been added
to thine."
This very clever and politic answer disposed of a
dangerous question. George Fox would have an
swered differently, and there would have been trou
ble. But Penn was always careful not to give per
sonal offence by his religion. " I know no religion,"
he once said, " which destroys courtesy, civility, and
kindness," and we have already noted that he some
times avoided using the offensive thee and thou lan
guage in his letters.
But at the time of which we are now writing, the
year 1668, the first of his preaching life, this cavalier
Quaker, whether with or without a sword, cut and
slashed about him with considerable vigor. He
began immediately to write controversial pamphlets.
The moderation of our time in these matters was
then unknown, and the advocate of a sect would not
have been respected or even understood unless he
hit hard.
His first tract was called "Truth Exalted," and
consisted of sweeping abuse, in the rough language
of the times, of all religions except his own. Pepys
described it as "a ridiculous, nonsensical book." The
papists were told that their church was the whore of
Babylon, the corrupter of the nations, drunk with
the blood of saints and martyrs, their whole religion
founded and maintained by inhuman bloodshed and
cruelty, and he goes on to rail at their holy water,
"baby baptism," bowings, crosses, images, and
124

FIRST PRINCIPLES AND IMPRISONMENT
Peter's chair. The Church of England was another
persecutor, lustful, proud, and wicked, that had
made no progress in the Reformation, but clung to
organs, fonts, " baby baptism," holy days, " with
much more such like dirty trash and foul supersti
tion." As for the Puritans and other dissenters,
they were hypocrites, revilers of God, whom they
represented as worse than the worst man, and their
doctrine of mere human origin.
It is to be noticed in this tract that Penn, though a
college-bred youth, protests against learning and
higher education as an injury to religion. He also
declares his belief in the possibility of human perfec
tion on earth as against original sin and total de
pravity. During the spring and summer of this year, 1668,
he went twice to court in company with other
Quakers to urge the release of those members of
their faith who were in prison. The first time their
application was made to the Duke of Buckingham,
who favored liberty, but could do nothing for them.
Their second application was to the secretary of
state. Sir Henry Berwick ; and again they failed.
Penn's companions on these occasions were George
Whitehead, Josiah Coale, and Thomas Loe. They
doubtless took Penn with them, because, as a cavalier
and a son of the admiral, he might arouse some
interest in their favor. This was his first attempt to
use his cavalier character in this way, and, though
unsuccessful in this instance, he followed it up more
effectually in later years, and, as a Quaker courtier,
accomplished some very substantial results.
125

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
He soon wrote another hard-hitting controversial
pamphlet called "The Guide Mistaken;" and about
the same time, or soon after, two Presbyterians of
the congregation of Thomas Vincent, at Spittlefields,
London, became Quakers. The enraged Vincent
stormed against the " damnable doctrines" that had
seduced them, and called Penn a Jesuit Penn and
George Whitehead immediately challenged him to
an open debate before his own congregation. These
debates were common at that time, and usually very
uproarious affairs.
When Penn and Whitehead arrived, they had to
push their way through the crowded congregation,
while Vincent, who was waiting for them all prepared,
kept up a running fire of denunciation. Penn and
Whitehead, however, plunged into the wordy war,
and amid hisses and calls of Jesuit, blasphemer,
damnable villain, maintained for a long time an
argument on the doctrine of the Trinity, while Vin
cent kept interrupting them with savage questions.
He affected to be shocked at their arguments, and
fell suddenly to prayer, charging them with blas
phemy. The congregation blew out the candles
and tried to puU down the Quakers. Nobody was
satisfied with the result, and they tried to no purpose
to arrange for another debate.
This induced Penn to write a pamphlet, and a
very famous one, called "The Sandy Foundation
Shaken," which set forth his rejection of the doc
trine of the Trinity as commonly stated. At the
same time it attacked the doctrine of the atonement
for the sins of the world by the death of Christ, and
126

FIRST PRINCIPLES AND IMPRISONMENT
the doctrine of imputative righteousness. That was
certainly enough to get a young man, or any one,
into trouble in that age.
He assailed the doctrine of the Trinity as a
scholastic invention of the Middle Ages, and, after
dealing with the old-fashioned metaphysical subtle
ties, described it as "conceived in ignorance, brought
forth and maintained by cruelty." It was a mere
human invention, unknown to the primitive church,
"neither was it believed by the primitive saints or
thus stated by any I have read of in the first, second,
or third centuries. " God, he said, was " not to be
divided, but [was] one pure, entire, and eternal
being, who in the fulness of time sent forth his Son
as the true Hght" Afterwards, at the close of the
pamphlet, he added, " Mistake me not ; we never
have disowned a Father, Word, and Spirit, which
are one, but [we disown] men's inventions."
This was in a general way what the Quakers be
lieved on this subject They held that although
the three persons were mentioned in the Scriptures
and declared to be one, yet the complicated doc
trine of the Trinity, as stated in the Athanasian
creed, was never heard of until three hundred years
after Christ They preferred, they said, the state
ment of the Scriptures to the statement of the
school-men. They accepted the simple account in
the New Testament that the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost were one ; but they rejected the scholastic
doctrine that the three were each separate and
distinct persons and substances, and yet also one.
Such idle metaphysics, they said, tended not to
127

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
righteousness, and were unknown to the primitive
Christians. In the second part of the " Sandy Foundation"
Penn attacked the commonly received doctrine of
the atonement, which held that mankind had been
saved from the infinite and unforgiving wrath of
God only by the infliction of all that wrath and ven
geance on Christ, who in his death wholly paid for
the unforgivable sins of man, past, present, and to
come. Penn ridiculed this doctrine as inconsistent
with numerous passages of Scripture which describe
God as merciful, loving, and righteous, and as in
itself absurd and contrary to reason ; for remission
of sins and salvation came by faith, obedience, and
good works.
This was another fundamental doctrine of the
early Quakers. They carried their belief in the
inner Hght so far as to hold that the appearance of
Christ on the earth was solely to confer his spirit —
that is, the inner light — on all men. The only Christ
they worshipped was the spiritual Christ in each
heart His sufferings and death as man were simply
incidents of his earthly life, and not fit subjects for
worship. They held that it was his spirit that would
save mankind, and not the shedding of his blood or
any mere act or event of his life ; that he came to
save men by giving them a spiritual principle that
would change their hearts ; that the idea of it being
necessary, in order to save mankind, that Christ
should be sacrificed and tortured was a mere mate
rial and vulgar notion, unworthy of belief and incon
sistent with any sense of justice on the part of God.
128

FIRST PRINCIPLES AND IMPRISONMENT
This opinion seems to have been held by the
majority of Quakers for over a hundred and fifty
years without any serious dissent from it But a
party was slowly growing up among them which in
clined to return to the old form of the doctrine of
the atonement, and by the year 1827, this party had
become a majority of all the Quakers in England
and America. There was a great controversy over
the question, and a separation followed. The
majority became known £is the Orthodox Quakers,
while those who held to the doctrine of Penn and
the early leaders of the sect were called Hicksites.*
The last part of Penn's "Sandy Foundation"
assailed that familiar doctrine of the time that men
could be justified in the sight of God, not by their
good works, but only by the righteousness of Christ
being imputed to them. This was a much worn
subject of controversy, and the numerous small and
radical sects which were being absorbed by the
Quakers were very strenuous in maintaining that
imputed righteousness was an absurdity, and that a
man could be justified or sanctified only by his own
acts of righteousness or innocency.
Penn had now attained what must have been a
considerable part of his youthful ambition. He had
succeeded in stating, with fully detailed arguments,
some of the most fundamental principles of the new
faith which had aroused his enthusiasm. As an
educated man he must have felt the need of such a

* Janney's History of the Friends, vol. iv. chaps, vi., viii., xiv. ;
The Making of Pennsylvania, p. 50.
9 '29

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
printed statement, — something that would be more
durable and more of a record than street- or field-
preaching, or a furious verbal controversy with
Presbyterians amid hisses, mockery, and violence.
He had become, in fact, the first Quaker theologian.
As we read the "Sandy Foundation," it is easy
to see that it was written with thoroughness and care.
Pepys says, ' ' I find it so well writ as I think it is too
good for him ever to have writ it ; and it is a serious
sort of book and not fit for everybody to read." f Its
youthful author must have been a dihgent student
of theology, and familiar with all the abstruseness
of the religious controversies of the time. But he
was very young to be doing such a thing, for he was
only twenty-four years old.
We must remember, however, that in the fluid
state of religious opinion, and in the strange religious
excitement which had set everybody rushing to and
fro, it was easy for youthful ardor, if backed by any
ability at all, to produce an impression.
The arguments of his pamphlet are now the ac
cepted belief of millions. The substance of the
faith of the early Quakers was that they liked to be
lieve that Christ was divine without being obliged to
state his divinity in the form of a metaphysical
subtlety. They liked to believe that he came to
save the world, but in a spiritual sense, and not
merely by means of death and suffering. This gen
eral spiritual idea of his divinity has now spread to
every division of Christendom, and is the most sin-

t Vol. viii. p. 227.
130

FIRST PRINCIPLES AND IMPRISONMENT
cere form of belief on the subject held in modern
times. Millions of men and women who announce
themselves as Trinitarians mean only that they be
lieve in a general way in the divinity of Christ
Few of them care for the doctrine of the Trinity as
taught in the Middle Ages, and few of them could
even state it.
But it was a daring thing to announce such belief
in the year 1 668. Such doctrine might possibly
pass unnoticed in a field-preacher, but printed and
circulated with an educated man's name attached it
was an atrocious crime. The Bishop of London
saw in Penn's pamphlet what to him was a flat de
nial of the divinity of Christ, and that was a crime
by act of Parliament Penn was forthwith arrested
and sent to the Tower, where for nine months the
powerful influence that could be exerted in favor of
a cavalier was unable to release him.
He had in truth committed a very serious offence,
and for some time he was imprisoned with such
rigor that his friends could not see him. He was
informed that "the bishop was resolved that he
should publicly recant or die a prisoner." To this
he replied, —
¦• All is well : I wish they had told me so before, since the ex
pecting of a release put a stop to some business ; thou mayst tell
my father, who I know will ask thee, these words : that my prison
shall be my grave, before I will budge a jot ; for I owe my con
science to no mortal man ; I have no need to fear; God will make
amends for all ; they are mistaken in me ; I value not their threats
and resolutions, for they shall know I can weary out their malice
and peevishness, and in me shall they all behold a resolution above
fear ; conscience above cruelty, and a baffle put to all their designs
131

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
by the spirit of patience, the companion of all the tribulated flock
of the blessed Jesus, who is the author and finisher of the faith that
overcomes the world, yea, death and hell too. Neither great nor
good things are ever attained without loss and hardships. He that
would reap and not labor, must faint wilh the wind and perish in
disappointments ; but an hair of my head shall not fall without the
Providence of my Father that is over all."
So, like Sir Walter Raleigh and John Bunyan, he
settled down to writing a book while in prison, and
prepared his most famous work, " No Cross, No
Crown." The title was an excellent one and has
prolonged the life of the book, which is the only one
of Penn's writings that is still sometimes republished.
It shows the strange religiousness of that age when
liberty was new. Its thoughts have been thrashed
over by millions of Christian preachers again and
again in our time, and seem commonplace enough,
for Christianity has accepted the spiritual movement
which Penn and the Quakers were starting and
carried it far beyond anything they dreamed of But
it was a new thing then to insist so absolutely on
good works as against blind faith, and on spirituality
as against dogmas and ceremonies. It was a new
thing to speak of the cross, not as an outward
symbol, but as an inward light. It was startling to
be told that all religion could take place within the
soul, and not in a church or confessional box.
George Fox relates that when he first declared
that a church was not a building, not lime and
stone, but a spiritual body, his hearers were so
amazed that they broke up the meeting. They
were beside themselves with the astonishment of
men who have heard something which secretly com-
132

FIRST PRINCIPLES AND IMPRISONMENT
forts and delights them, but which they dare not ac
cept In " No Cross, No Crown" Penn, of course, argued
strongly for primitive Christianity, and protested in
Puritan fashion against the corruptions of the times,
the balls, masks, and feasting, pride, avarice, and
luxtiry. All these things could be mitigated only
by Quaker spirituality, the cultivation of the inward
light and the refusal to encourage human pride by
pulling off" the hat, bowing, and giving fulsome titles.
But the advocacy of the special principles of the
Quakers forms a very small portion of the book. It
was in reality a strong appeal to the general religious
sentiment of mankind without regard to creed, an
appeal to the growing spirituality which has become
the modern religion in place of dogma ; and it is
this quality which causes it still to be occasionally
republished. If it had been well written it would have been a
wonderful book. But, unfortunately, Penn wrote in
a diffuse, wordy, dull way, which obscured and crip
pled the really great ideas he had in his soul.
In the second part of " No Cross, No Crown,"
which seems to have been written some years after
wards, Penn cites the sayings of about eighty famous
men of the ancient and classical world, and of about
sixty of later times, to show how all the great and
wise, heathen and Christians, without regard to sect,
testified in favor of pure spiritual righteousness and
good works as the only true religion.
These citations show that in his youth Penn must
have been an omniverous reader and spent much
133

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
time in libraries. His handling of the innumerable
texts he cites shows great familiarity with the Bible.
Indeed, it is impossible to read his works without
concluding that although he had no great gift of
literary expression, yet he was a mart fully informed
in the knowledge of his day and most painstaking
and thorough in his researches and preparation.
Meanwhile, however, he remained in prison and
was assaUed in pamphlets and from pulpits as a se
ducer, heretic, and blasphemer, for whom the ven
geance of the Great Day was reserved. He wrote a
letter to the secretary of state. Lord Arlington, asking
to be released, because his imprisonment was illegal.
He had had no trial ; he had not been heard in his
own defence ; and then he went on to argue on the
injustice and impohcy of punishing people for their
religious opinions. " Force," he says, " may make
hypocrites, but it can never make converts." The
close of his letter was spirited enough for any cav
alier. ' ' I make no apology for my letter, as a trouble — the usual style
of suppliants ; because I think the honor that will accrue to thee by
being just and releasing the opprest, exceeds the advantage that can
succeed to me."
This is one of the instances in which Penn used
the offensive thee and thou language in a public
letter to an official. But he was on his metal and
very much excited at this time. He expected
to be called up for examination on his heresy, or
given some sort of trial in which he would have a
chance to explain his position more fully and at the
same time assist the cause of his sect But the
134

FIRST PRINCIPLES AND IMPRISONMENT
Bishop of London and the government, thoroughly
accustomed as they were to religious controversies,
had no intention of giving the ambitious young man
such a grand opportunity to display himself They
hoped to wean him from his delusion by severity
and personal influence. The influence was supplied
by his father and Bishop Stillingfleet, who visited
him, and Penn afterwards described how they worked
upon him.
"As I saw very few, so I saw them but seldom, except my own
father and Dr. Stillingfleet, the present Bishop of Worcester. The
one came as my relation, the other at the king's command, to en
deavor my change of judgment. But as I told him, and he told the
king, that the Tower was the worst argument in the world to con
vince me, for whoever was in the wrong those who used force for
religion, never could be in the right — so neither the Doctor's argu
ments, nor his moving and interesting motives of the king's favor
and preferment, at all prevailed ; and I am glad I have the oppor
tunity to own so publicly the great pains he took, and humanity he
showed, and that to his moderation, learning, and kindness, I will ever
hold myself obliged." (Memoirs, Penna. Hist. Soc, vol. iii. part
ii. p. 239.)
Finding that he was not to be publicly examined
or allowed to defend himself, Penn finally decided to
write a pamphlet showing that he had not denied
the divinity of Christ. He called this new produc
tion " Innocency with her Open Face," and in it he
announced most unequivocally his belief in the di
vinity, and maintained by citations of Scripture and
argument the Quaker position, which, whUe ex
pressly admitting the divinity, rejected the compli
cated scholastic doctrine of the Trinity and imputed
righteousness. This pamphlet secured his release, or rather gave
135

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
a ground-work on which his friends could help him.
His father, as we have shown, had strong claims on
the gratitude of the Duke of York, and the duke in
terceded with the king.
Penn, who never forgot a favor or a kindness, and
with whom gratitude was a lifelong sentiment, ever
afterwards considered himself bound to the duke by
the strongest feeling of friendliness. It was by no
means the last of the duke's favors, and Penn's in
creasing attachment to him was not altogether for
tunate in later years.
Penn, now a free man once more, could look back
with some satisfaction on his nine months' imprison
ment In the religious conflicts of that time im
prisonment was a test of sincerity and fitness. It
had to be endured with a serene and high spirit
Religious belief had for many years been measured
by its advocates' willingness to die at the stake or on
the gallows ; and the people had nothing but con
tempt for religion of any other kind. A small sect
that flinched at the stake or the jail became a laugh
ing stock and went out of existence.
Penn had done what George Fox could also so
effectually do. He had not merely endured his im
prisonment with a spirit that won the respect both
of his followers and his enemies, but he had made
the imprisonment a means of advancing the cause
he had at heart, of making it known to the world in
a way that would arouse enthusiasm. He had stated
more fully and completely than had yet been done
the fundamental doctrines of his faith in his two
pamphlets, "The Sandy Foundation" and "Inno-
136

FIRST PRINCIPLES AND IMPRISONMENT
cency with her Open Face ;" and these two pam
phlets, the one that imprisoned him and the one
that released him, are to this day the authorities
used to prove the original doctrines of the Quakers.
When we add to these two pamphlets his book,
" No Cross, No Crown," which has also a permanent
value, we have Penn's three most important works ;
and it was a good deal to be accomplished within a
twelvemonth by a young man of only twenty-four,
who had spent most of that time locked up in the
Tower.

»37

IX
TRIAL BY JURY AND HAT HONOR
Among the persons whose respect Penn won by
his imprisonment was his father, the admiral. But
the father's relenting was slight The little inter
course he had with his son was still formal and severe.
WhUe the son had been going through his year of
controversy and imprisonment, the admiral had had
troubles of his own ; for it was in that year that he
was impeached as already described, and prevented
from going to sea in command of the fleet In
addition to that annoyance and disappointment, he
was now laid up with a bad attack of the gout.
But he relented so far as to request that Penn
should go back to Ireland and again take charge of
the family estate. He would not, however, conde
scend to make this request directly ; it was made to
the wayward son through his mother. " If you are
ordained to be another cross to me," said the ad
miral, when he at last consented to write to his son^
"God's will be done, and I shall arm myself the best
I can against it"
Penn was in Ireland on this occasion for about a
year, and in the intervals of business seems to have
found ample time for very substantial service to the
people of his faith. On his arrival he found nearly
aU the Quakers of the town of Cork in prison. "The
138

TRIAL BY JURY AND HAT HONOR
jail," he says, had become " a meeting-house and a
workhouse, for they would not be idle anywhere."
Jealousy in trade, he found, had combined with
religious hatred to accomplish this persecution. He
prepared a general statement of their case, and with
the assistance of his friends laid the matter before
the lord lieutenant at Dublin, and soon he had the
satisfaction of obtaining an order of councU for the
release of his people. This was the first time he
had succeeded in effecting a release of this kind,
and it was a sort of business of which he did a good
deal in after years.
It is curious to find him, in a public letter he
prepared, "To the young convinced," arguing for
that quietude and silent contemplation which was
one of the foundation principles of his sect Let
us not, he says, " enter into many reasonings with
opposers." He certainly had not been living up to
this standard himself, and he was soon to be thrown
into still fiercer controversy.
The leaders of the Quakers do not, as we read
about their doings, have the appearance of quietists.
They hit as hard and used as violent language as
their opponents ; and it would have been difficult
for them to have maintained themselves in any other
way. Doubtless, however, they enjoyed many in
tervals when they could cultivate the inner light by
serene contemplation. A few months in prison
would give abundant opportunities ; and the rank
and file who were not called upon to write or preach
could live closer to the ideal standard.
In 1670 Penn returned to London, where, either
139

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
because he had conducted the Irish business well
or because his father saw no use in holding out
longer, a complete reconciliation took place between
them. In this same year, because the infection of Quaker
doctrine seemed to be growing worse, it was decided
to use against them more strenuously the famous
Conventicle Act which had been passed in 1664.
This act made unlawful any meetings for worship
other than those of the Church of England ; the
magistrates were allowed to fine and imprison with
out trial by jury, and informers were given one-third
of the fines. It was an arbitrary, despotic law, in
clear violation of the principles of English liberty.
The punishment of the Quakers was always in
progress at this period. Every month proceedings
were begun in the various counties as the magis
trates and officials obtained evidence, or thought
that they had a jury that would convict, and fines
and imprisonments were inflicted. But in this year,
1670, the work of suppression was particularly ac
tive, and it was inevitable that Penn, in spite of
the importance of his family, must sooner or later
be brought within its sweep.
He had gone, it seems, one day in August, to the
meeting-house in Gracechurch Street or Gracious
Street, as it was sometimes caUed, in London, and,
findiilg the doors guarded by soldiers, he and some
other Quakers held a silent meeting standing before
the door. He was soon moved to speak, and imme
diately the constables who were on the watch seized
him. 140

TRIAL BY JURY AND HAT HONOR
Brought before the mayor, he was roughly handled
by that official, who told him he "should have his
hat pulled off, for all he was Admiral Penn's son."
He would send him to Bridewell, he said, and see
him whipped ; and he went on abusing the admiral,
repeating some of the current charges of the day
against him, and accusing him of starving the saUors.
The authorities made a good haul that day, and be
sides the Quakers they captured a number of Inde
pendents and Baptists.
Penn was confined at the sign of the Black Dog,
in Newgate Market, whence he wrote an affectionate
letter to his father. " I am very well," he says, " and
have no trouble upon my spirits, besides my absence
from thee, especially at this juncture, but otherwise
I can say, I was never better ; and what they have
to charge me with is harmless."
Soon afterwards he and William Mead, who was
arrested with him, were brought to trial on an indict
ment charging them with preaching to an unlawful
assembly, and causing a great concourse and tumult
to the disturbance of the king's peace and the great
terror of many of his liege subjects. A full account
of the trial, which was held in the Old Baily during
the first five days of September, 1670, may now be
found in the first volume of Penn's works, and a few
quotations from it will show the rough method of
that time in administering criminal justice. Accused
persons were not then, or, indeed, for a long time
afterwards, allowed counsel to defend them.
The trial was conducted principally by the re
corder of London, and there were on the bench with
141

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
him to compose the court, the mayor, five aldermen,
and three sheriffs. When Penn and Mead entered
the room wearing their hats, the officers, it seems,
pulled them off But the court, according to the
report of the trial, did not choose to be deprived of
its sport
" Mayor.—Sirra.h, who bid you put off their hats? Put on their
hats again.
" Observer. — Whereupon one of the officers, putting the prisoners'
hats upon their heads (pursuant to the order of the Court), brought
them to the bar.
" Recorder. — Do you know where you are ?
" Penn. — Yes.
" Recorder. — Do you know it is the King's court?
" Penn. — I know it to be a court, and I suppose it to be the King's
court. " Recorder. — ^Do you know there is respect due to the court ?
" Penn. — Yes.
" Recorder. — Why do you not pay it, then ?
" Penn. — I do so.
" Recorder. — Why do you not put off your hat, then ?
" Penn. — Because I do not believe that to be respect.
" Recorder. — Well, the court sets forty marks apiece upon your
heads, as a fine, for your contempt of the court.
" Penn. — I desire it may be observed, that we came into the court
with our hats off (that is, taken off), and if they have been put on
since, it was by order from the bench; and therefore, not we, but the
bench should be fined."
Prisoners not being allowed counsel, the court was
supposed to be their counsel and see that they were
fairly tried ; but the judges handled them very much
as French judges still do. They questioned and
teased them, and the prisoners' attempts to defend
themselves were apt to become unseemly alterca
tions with the judges.
Penn declared that he had only been worshipping
142

TRIAL BY JURY AND HAT HONOR
God according to his conscience, and had broken no
law, and asked to be shown what law they thought
he had broken. The recorder would give only a
surly general answer that he had broken the common
law, and ordered him to plead to the indictment
" Penn. — Shall I plead to an indictment that hath no foundation
in law ? If it contain that law you say I have broken, why should
you decline to produce that law, since it will be impossible for the
jury to determine or agree to bring in their verdict, who hath not the
law produced, by which they should measure the truth of this indict
ment, and the guilt or contrary, of my act.
" Recorder. — You are a saucy fellow ; speak to the indictment.
" Penn. — I say it is my place to speak to matter of law ; I am ar
raigned a prisoner ; my liberty, which is next to life itself, is now
concerned ; you are many mouths and ears against me, and if I must
not be allowed to make the best of my case, it is hard, I say again,
unless you shew me, and the people, the law you ground your indict
ment upon, I shall take it for granted, your proceedings are merely
arbitrary. " Observer. — (At this time several upon the bench urged, hard
upon the prisoner, to bear him down.)
" Recorder. — The question is, whether you are guilty of this in
dictment ?
" Penn. — The question is not whether I am guilty of this indict
ment but whether this indictment be legal. It is too general and
imperfect an answer, to say it is the common law, unless we know
both where and what it is ; for where there is no law, there is no
transgression, and that law which is not in being, is so far from being
common, that it is no law at all.
" Recorder. — You are an impertinent fellow ; will you teach the
Court what law is ? It's lex non scripta, that which many have
studied thirty or forty years to know, and would you have me tell
you in a moment ?
" Penn. — Certainly, if the common law be so hard to be under
stood, it's far from being very common ; but if the Lord Coke in his
Institutes be of any consideration, he tells us that common law is
common right ; and that common right is the great charter of privi
leges, confirmed 9 Hen. III. 29; 25 Edw. I. I ; 2 Edw. III. 8;
Coke's Insts. 2 p. 56. 143

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
" Recorder. — Sir, you are a troublesome fellow, and it is not for
the honor of the court to suffer you to go on.
" Penn. — I have asked but one question, and you have not an
swered me ; though the rights and privileges of every Englishman
be concerned in it.
********" Recorder. — Take him away ; my Lord, if you take not some
course with this pestilent fellow, to stop his mouth, we shall not be
able to do anything to-night.
" Mayor. — Take him away, take him away ! turn him into the
Bale-dock." Penn stood up sturdily for what he believed to be
his rights and the rights of all Englishmen ; but we
have not space to quote all his arguments, some of
which he shouted across the room to the court and
jury when removed to the distance of the bale-dock.
When the jury were called upon for their verdict
they announced that they found Penn " guilty of
speaking in Gracious street." This was, of course,
no crime, and the court stormed at them to make
their verdict read " guUty of speaking in Gracious
Street to an unlawful assembly." But they would
go no further than to say " guilty of speaking to an
assembly in Gracious street ;" and neither the threats
of the court nor two days' starvation would induce
them to put in the word unlawful. It was, of course,
their covert way of mocking at the court and at
tacking the law and policy that attempted to sup
press the worship of dissenters.
They were sent out again and again, but every
time they returned with the same mock verdict At
each of their returns there would be discussion,
savage threats from the bench, and protests from
Penn. 144

TRIAL BY JURY AND HAT HONOR
" Penn. — It is intolerable that my jury should be thus menaced ; is
this according to the fundamental law ? Are not they my proper j udges
by the Great Charter of England ? What hope is there of ever having
justice done when juries are threatened and their verdict rejected ?
»» * * .X- * * *
" Mayor. — Stop his mouth ; jailor, bring fetters and stake him to
the ground.
" Penn. — Do your pleasure, I matter not your fetters.
" Recorder. — Till now I never understood the reason of the policy
and prudence of the Spaniards, in suffering the Inquisition among
them ; and certainly it will never be well with us till something like
the Spanish Inquisition be in England."
After having been kept out two days and two
nights without beds or food the jury brought in a
verdict of not guilty, which being in regular form,
the court was reluctantly obliged to accept it. But
the judges were determined to get even with the jury
and Penn in another way.
" Recorder. — I am sorry, gentlemen, you have followed your own
judgment and opinions rather than the good and wholesome advice
which was given you. God keep my life out of your hands ; but for
this the court fines you forty marks a man, and imprisonment till
paid ; at which Penn stept forward towards the bench, and said :
" Penn. — I demand my liberty, being freed by the jury.
" Mayor. — No, you are in for your fides.
" Penn. — Fines for what ?
" Mayor. — For contempt of the court.
" Penn. — I ask if it be according to the fundamental laws of Eng
land, that any Englishman should be fined or amerced but by the
judgment of his peers or jury ? since it expressly contradicts the
fourteenth and twenty-ninth chapter of the Great Charter of Eng
land which says. No freeman ought to be amerced, but by the oath
of good and lawful men of the vicinage.
" Recorder. — Take him away, take him away, take him out the
court. " Penn. — I can never urge the fundaraental laws of England but
you cry, Take him away, take him away ; but 'tis no wonder, since
the Spanish Inquisition hath so great a place in the Recorder's heart.
God Almighty, who is just, will judge you for all these things."
145

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
Both Penn and the jury were thrust into the bale-
dock and thence sent to Newgate until they should
pay their fines. The jury demanded their freedom
every six hours, and, regarding themselves as mar
tyrs, refused to pay the fines.
"I intreatthee," wrote Penn to his father, "not to
purchase my liberty. They will repent them of
their proceedings. I am now a prisoner notoriously
against law." And in another letter, he wrote,
" Considering I cannot be free, but upon such terms
as strengthening their arbitrary and base proceed
ings, I shall rather choose to suffer any hardship. . . .
My present restraint is so far from being humor, that
I would rather perish than release myself by so in
direct a course as to satiate their revengeful, avari
cious appetites."
It was an interesting picture of the times and of
Anglo-Saxon sturdiness, — Penn and the jury vigor
ously standing by what they believed to be their
rights and remaining in the vileness of Newgate
when they could have purchased their liberty for a
trifle. It must be confessed, however, that the jury had
been not a little contumacious in continually bring
ing in a mock verdict It was, of course, their way
of showing their contempt for the whole proceeding,
and their sympathy for the Quakers and all other
dissenters whose worship was interfered with. But
they could have shown their contempt just as effica
ciously by at once bringing in a verdict of not
guilty. It was perhaps right that they should be
fined for such irregular conduct But it was a ques-
146

TRIAL BY JURY AND HAT HONOR
tion whether the court could impose the fine without
trying them in the usual way before another jury.
The court claimed the right to fine without trial, and
the obstinacy of Penn's jury in remaining in prison
seems to have brought the question to a decision.
It was argued at length before the Court of Com
mon Pleas, which decided that the jury's view of
the law was sound. The order inflicting their fines
was rescinded and they were set at liberty.
Penn's case was somewhat different If he had
insisted on wearing his hat in court after it had been
taken off by the officers, the judges would have been
right in fining him. Removal of the hat was an act
of respect paid in every court of justice, and still
paid, for even the Quakers do not now insist on
wearing their hats in court People could not be
allowed to appear naked in court or commit any
other offensive act and claim exemption from pun
ishment on the ground of religion. But according
to the report of the trial Penn's hat was removed by
an officer when he came into court, and the court
ordered the hat put on again so as to have a chance
to badger and fine him for wearing it This was cer
tainly inexcusable, and Penn was right in protesting
against such a fine.
The account we have of the trial was published
soon after the trial was held, with a preface and a
long appendix, which discussed very fully all the
questions of civil liberty involved, and had a great
deal to say of Magna Charta and other sources of
British freedom. As this account was apparently
prepared by the Quakers, it is possible that it may
147

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
be too highly colored and too favorable to Penn and
Mead. Some one, signing himself "S. S.," wrote
an answer to it, attacking Penn's father for stealing
prize-money and amassing Ul-gotten riches for a con
scientious fool of a son, who made such a noise in
court that the judge could not charge the jury. As
for the Quakers, they were a libeUing, lying, discon
tented people, who would set the country in a flame.
When the king seized their meeting-house, they
broke in the doors, overpowered the constables, and
kicked and spurned the officers who attempted to
break up their unlawful assembly. Against this
attack Penn wrote a long reply called " Truth Res
cued from Imposture ;" and, reading all these three
documents together, it does not seem that the origi
nal Quaker report of the trial is at all seriously
impugned. The publication of the report and the sturdy con
duct of Penn and William Mead, as described in
it, were unquestionably useful. It was another effort
in the long struggle of Anglo-Saxon liberty ; and
although it is not possible to point to any specific
change in criminal trials as the result of it, yet,
together with the other protests, it gradually, in the
course of years, educated public opinion and wrought
the improvement which has now long been enjoyed
in all English-speaking countries.
How long Penn and Mead might have remained
in prison as a protest against their arbitrary judges
we cannot say ; for Penn's father brought the im
prisonment to a speedy termination. The admiral's
health was rapidly declining. In his irritated and
14S

TRIAL BY JURY AND HAT HONOR
anxious state he could no longer bear the annoyance
of his son's imprisonment, and he could not bear the
thought of dying without seeing him. The question
of principle which seemed of so much importance
to the son was in the father's eyes a silly sentiment
So, in spite of the son's protest, the father paid his
fine and also that of WiUiam Mead, and they were
at once set free.
When Penn reached home he found that his father
had only a few days to live. Their meeting must
have been an affecting one. The admiral had been
thinking what terrible things might happen in the
future to his stubborn offspring, who had such a pas
sion for making a martyr of himself in loathsome
prisons. He had accordingly sent a friend to the
Duke of York to make his dying request that the
duke would watch over his son and intercede with
the king when necessary for his protection. Both
the duke and the king sent back the kindest answers
and promises, which must have greatly relieved the
dying admiral ; and these promises were afterwards
fulfilled to the letter.
The admiral could no longer quarrel with his son ;
natural affection had got the better of all other feel
ings. But the low spirits and irritation which ac
company the gout turned his mind to despondency
and melancholy. He seemed to be no longer the
cavalier admiral and courtier. He declaimed against
the wickedness and impurity of the age like a Puri
tan and prophesied judgments upon England for the
dissolute and jjrofane lives of her gentry and no
bility. His son describes him as very repentant
149

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
" Son William, I am weary of the world. I would not live over
my days again if I could command them with a wish ; for the snares
of life are greater than the fears of death. This troubles me that I
have offended a gracious God.
" The thought of that has followed me to this day. Oh ! have a
care of sin ! It is that which is the sting both of life and death.
Three things I commend to you :
" First. — Let nothing in this world tempt you to wrong your con
science ; so you will keep peace at home, which will be a feast to
you in the day of trouble.
" Secondly. — Whatever you design to do, lay it justly and time it
seasonably, for that gives security and despatch.
" Lastly. — Be not troubled at disappointments, for if they may be
recovered, do it ; if they cannot, trouble is vain. If you could not
have helped it, be content ; there is often peace and profit in sub
mitting to Providence : for afflictions make wise. If you could have
helped it, let not your trouble exceed instruction for another time.
" These rules will carry you with firmness, and comfort through
this inconstant world."
The admiral died on the i6th of September, 1670,
and with almost his last breath said to his son, —
"If you and your friends keep to your plain way of preaching and
to your plain way of living, you will make an end of the priests to
the end of the world. Bury me by my mother. Live in love.
Shun all manner of evil, and I pray God to bless you all, and he
will bless you."

ISO

X

PENN BECOMES RICH, AND ALSO, THEY SAID, A DAN
GEROUS MAN
At his father's death Penn came into possession
of a handsome estate. At least, so we are informed
by that old biography by Besse, much relied upon
by all subsequent biographers, and prefixed to the
edition of Penn's writings published in 1726, not
long after his death. His subsequent biographer,
Clarkson, goes a step farther, and fixes the value of
this estate as yielding an income of at least fifteen
hundred pounds a year. ¦ Clarkson gives no author
ity, and his statement is probably only a guess or
some tradition he had heard among the Quakers. If
it is correct, Penn was one of the rich young men of
his day, for fifteen hundred pounds a year was easily
the equivalent of thirty thousand dollars a year in
our time.
Penn had a younger brother and a sister, and his
mother was also still living. As the eldest son he
may have had the largest share of the family estate ;
but if the mother and the other two children were
in any way suitably provided for, the admiral had
attained one of the great ambitions of his life, — the
accumulation of a family fortune.
But, independently of the exact amount of his in
come, we know from several contemporary sources
151

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
that Penn's fortune was regarded at that time as a
rather large one. He, indeed, once described him
self as a man " of great acquaintance and plentiful
estate." He was reviled and ridiculed by cavaliers
as a youth of ability, opportunities, and wealth, who
was fooling them all away with the silly Quakers.
" I vow Mr. Penn I am sorry for you," said Sir John Robinson,
the lieutenant of the Tower; "you are an ingenious gentleman, all
the world must allow you and do allow you that, and you have a
plentiful estate. Why should you render yourself unhappy by asso
ciating with such a simple people ?"
" I confess," replied Penn, " I have made it my choice to relinquish
the company of those that are ingeniously wicked, to converse with
those that are more honestly simple."
And, indeed, neither the death of his father nor
the sudden possession of a large, independent fortune
checked him for a moment in his efforts for the
honestly simple folk, as he called them, whose faith
he had made his own. Almost immediately after
his father's death he challenged to public controversy
a Baptist preacher named Ives. This Ives had in
one of his sermons attacked both Penn and the
Quakers ; and to call him to account and answer
him would, according to the standard of those times,
advance the Quaker cause.
A meeting was arranged at Wycombe ; but Ives
himself did not appear. His brother came to de
fend the Baptists, and, according to the rules of these
religious duels, he, as representing the assailant, was
obliged to speak first He brought with him a
speech ready prepared, which when he had delivered
he immediately left the house accompanied by some

PENN BECOMES RICH
of his followers. This was an old trick, and often
a very effective one. The design was to state
his own side, and then by his sudden departure in
the heat of his speech carry away enough of the
audience to leave his opponent speaking to empty
benches. It is easy to see how a fervid clap-trap
orator might be very successful in this, and turn the
other side into a laughing-stock for the whole
county. But Ives, it seems, was not sufficiently fervid ; for,
according to the account the Quakers have given
of this controversy, most of the people remained to
hear Penn, and were so well pleased with him that
they were disgusted with Ives when he returned to
upbraid them for remaining.
Penn at this time seems to have been travelling
through the counties of Bucks and Oxford preach
ing and assisting the Quakers ; and he soon found a
more important person to attack than the tricky
Ives. He was near the great university from which
he had been expelled for his religion, and he found
that the students who inclined towards Quakerism
were treated worse than ever. The vice-chancellor,
as the Quaker historians inform us, employed spies
to go among the Quakers and Baptists and lead
them to express themselves incautiously or in a way
that might be construed as traitorous language.
No doubt this vice-chancellor, like many other
Royalists at that time, may have had an honest sus
picion that the Quakers would in the end become a
dangerous political party and attempt the overthrow
of the government They were so radical and so
153

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
strange in their opinions and conduct, so fearless and
desperate, that they might become Fifth Monarchy
men or worse. No doubt, also, the Quakers, when
smarting under the punishments of the law, used
severe language about government and authority, so
that the detectives of those times might easily collect
what would seem to be very strong evidence of dan
gerous political intentions.
Penn, however, saw in the vice-chancellor only a
ferocious beast that was persecuting his people, and
he wrote a letter telling him so, in language which
is not now usually used by graduates in addressing
the chancellor of their alma mater. He used thee
and thou ; for this was one of the occasions when he
intended to be offensive.
" Shall the multiplied oppressions which thou conlinuest to heap
upon innocent English people for their peaceable religious meetings
pass unregarded by the Eternal God ? Dost thou think to escape his
fierce wrath and dreadful vengeance for thy ungodly and illegal per
secution of his poor children ? I tell thee, no. Better were it for
thee hadst thou never been born. Poor mushroom, wilt thou war
against the Lord, and lift up thyself in battle against the Almighty ?
Canst thou frustrate his holy purposes, and bring his determination
to nought ? He has decreed to exalt himself by us, and to propagate
his gospel to the ends of the earth."
In this same year he wrote a pamplet against
the Roman church caUed "A Seasonable Caveat
against Popery." It was an answer to a pamphlet
called "An Explanation of the Roman Catholic
Belief;" and yet his motive for this attack on the
Romanists is not clear, unless he was trying to offset
the charge that he was a Jesuit The Quakers
were continually being called Jesuits, and Penn was
154

PENN BECOMES RICH
called a Jesuit in disguise for the next twenty or
thirty years.
This seems strange at first, but it is easily under
stood when we consider the condition of things at
that time. The secret methods of the Roman
church to get possession of the British government
were greatly dreaded in England, and the fear of
them could at times create a panic. The Quakers
were so pecuhar, and it was so strange for a rich
young cavalier like Penn to join them, that people
found difficulty in believing that their oddities were
not a cloak for some dark and horrid Jesuit design,
some wholesale gunpowder plot
In his "Caveat" Penn belabored the Romanists
and the Jesuits in a way that in the minds of some
no doubt freed him from the suspicion of Jesuitism,
and in the minds of others confirmed their suspicions.
He warned the English people against their ancient
enemy, who, from having been partially subdued, was
now become more cunning and complaisant than ever.
Her doctrine is the doctrine of devils ; her priests,
though forbidden to marry, " keep as many strum
pets as their purse or lust shall please," while the
revenue of the Pope is enhanced by licensing under
his own seal the resorts of these debased women.
He quotes book and page of the casuists to show
how they openly justify fornication, perjury, and
theft Against transubstantiation he argues, in the rug
ged manner of the time, that if the bread and wine
become the actual flesh and blood of Christ by the
mere word of the priest, " the creature (and some-
155

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
times a sad one, too) makes his creator, which is
nothing short of wretched blasphemy, and the Lord
they adore and reverence they eat"
Such violent religious controversy as Penn in
dulged in with vice-chanceUors, Romanists, and Bap
tists has long since gone out of fashion, and is sup
posed to be unbecoming a Christian. Dr. Stoughton,
one of Penn's biographers, apologizes for the savage
way in which his Quaker hero assails his opponents.
But such apologies are entirely unnecessary. To
fight and struggle for a faith was at that time the
price of having it Toleration and religious liberty
in the modern sense were scarcely known. No re
ligion was then respectable except that which came
of fighting and suffering ; for, as Penn said to Sir
John Robinson, " I scorn that religion which is not
worth suffering for and able to sustain those that are
afflicted for it"
The religion of that time was the religion militant,
as the religion of our time is the religion acquies
cent But it would hardly be possible for us now to
be so acquiescent and easy if militant men like Penn
had not secured for us the religious liberty we enjoy.
Towards the close of this very active year of his
life, 1670, Penn was back again in London and went
one day to a meeting in Wheeler Street A ser
geant in command of a party of soldiers waited at
the door, and as soon as Penn began to preach they
rushed in, dragged him down, and he was carried to
the Tower. This arrest seems to have been by the
special order of Sir John Robinson, the lieutenant
of the Tower, who as alderman had been one of the
156

PENN BECOMES RICH
court that had tried Penn and WiUiam Mead when
the jury refused to convict them.
In the evening Penn was taken from the Tower
by an officer with a file of musqueteers to Sir John
Robinson, whom he found in company with some
of the others who had composed the court, and they
inflicted on their victim an examination from which
we have already several times quoted passages. As
we read it now it seems like a most wanton, unlaw
ful, and cruel inquisition of an unoffending man.
The arrest, too, by soldiers without a sworn warrant,
and the imprisonment without trial are very shock
ing to all modern ideas of civil liberty.
Robinson and the other judges having failed to
convict Penn with the jury, were evidently deter
mined to catch him in another trap. But as we are
writing history we must not be too quick to accept
the statement of the Quakers that the conduct of
these judges was mere vindictive wickedness and
cruelty. It is more probable that as officials whose
careers and livelihood were dependent on the Royalist
and Church party then in power, they believed, or, if
you will, had deceived themselves into believing,
that the Quakers were politically dangerous and that
this young cavalier Penn was aspiring to be a sort
of Cromwell who would in the end gather about him
Puritans, Fifth Monarchy men, and other democratic
and radical sects to accomplish unknown purposes
of his own. For his own sake £is well as for the
peace of the government the reckless young fellow
should be suppressed.
I do not suggest this as a legal excuse for such a
157

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
breach of civil rights as they committed, but I sug
gest it as a reasonable explanation of their conduct,
fully borne out by the questions they asked in the
examination. Their main object seems to have been
to offer Penn the oath of aUegiance, which they
knew as a Quaker he might refuse to take, because
he professed, or, as they probably thought, pre
tended, to be opposed to all oaths. So they
called on him to swear that he would not on any
pretence take arms against the king, and that he did
abhor that traitorous position, which the Puritans had
so often assumed, of thinking it lawful to take arms
against a king who was in error or whose ministers
were leading him into error ; and they also asked
him to swear that he would never attempt any altera
tion of government either in church or state.
All this he refused to do, so they had full scope to
taunt him. He explained that his religion protected
him from the necessity of taking such an oath, " for,"
said he, "if I cannot fight against any man (much
less against the king), what need I take an oath not
to do it ? Should I sware not to do what is already
against my conscience to do ?"
We can easily understand that from the point of
view of the judges this explanation seemed like a
mere subtlety. So, while professing to have a kindly
feeling for him for his father's sake, they treated him
with haughty contempt, sneered at his morality, and
reminded him of his wealth and position and the
degradation he was bringing on himself; and Penn
replied to all this with a manliness which has made
this examination veiy famous in his sect
158

PENN BECOMES RICH
But the more ability he showed the more dan
gerous he seemed, and when he began to talk about
Hberty of conscience, Robinson said, —
" But you do nothing but stir up the people to sedition ; and there
was one of your friends that told me you preached sedition and med
dled with the government."
To this Penn replied, —
" We have the unhappiness to be misrepresented, and I am not the
least concerned therein. Bring me the man that will dare to justify
this accusation to my face, and if I am not able to make it appear
that it is both my practice and all my friends to instill principles of
peace and moderation (and only war against spiritual wickedness,
that all men may be brought to fear God and work righteousness), I
shall contentedly undergo the severest punishment all your laws can
expose me to.
" As for the king, I make this offer, that if any living can make it
appear, directly or indirectly, from the time I have been called a
Quaker (since from thence you date me seditious), I have contrived
or acted anything injurious to his person, or the English government,
I shall submit my person to your utmost cruelties, and esteem them
all but a due recompense. It is hard that I, being innocent, should
be reputed guilty ; but the will of God be done. I accept of bad
reports as well as good."
But his judges were un<;onvinced. " You will be
the heading of parties and drawing people after you,"
said Robinson, and he ordered him to be confined
in Newgate, at that time the vilest of prisons, where
hundreds of Quakers had already been thrust in
among felons and pickpockets.
It was a severe imprisonment, and lasted six
months. People of means who were confined in
Newgate could get away from some of the stench,
dirt, and disease by hiring rooms from the keepers.
Penn at first tried this ; but the jailers were so extor-
159

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
tionate and abusive that he left their lodgings and
allowed himself to be cast into what he calls ' ' the
common stinking jail."
It was a strange situation for a man of his educa
tion and accomplishments, and one which we can
now hardly realize ; and it seems still stranger when
we find that while in this horrid confinement he
managed to write several religious essays and a very
learned pamphlet called " The Great Case of Liberty
of Conscience once more briefly Debated and De
fended by the Authority of Reason, Scripture, and
Antiquity." The chief object of this pamphlet seems to have
been to argue against the steadily increasing belief
that the Quakers were disseminators of sedition and
nourished secret designs against the government
This belief Penn said was a mere supposition founded
on nothing stronger than conjecture. The Quaker
meetings were open to every one ; they were usually
very numerously attended ; and how could plots and
sedition be hatched in such great meetings ? He
defied any one to bring forward the slightest proof of
any preaching at these meetings hostile to authority ;
and he declared for himself and his people that they
held no principle destructive of government, and
were ready to engage by God's assistance to lead
peaceable, just, and industrious lives. But if this
statement was discredited, and the cruel punishments
were continued, they would nevertheless hold their
meetings to the bitter end in spite of punishment
For general liberty of conscience to every one he
argued in a way which seems very tedious and un-
i6o

PENN BECOMES RICH
necessary now that we have so long enjoyed entire
freedom in religion. He argued for it on minute
grounds of reason, of natural right, of pohcy, and of
morals. Persecution was inconsistent with the Ref
ormation and inconsistent with the protests against the
cruelty of the Roman church. It was also a serious
injury to trade and commerce and the growth of
population. So many families were being broken
up and ruined, and so much property destroyed by
persecution, that the development of the country was
seriously checked ; and, as he usually did in these
discussions, he gave Holland as a remarkable instance
of a country that had greatly increased its trade and
power by granting liberty. He quoted, also, the say
ings of innumerable sages and saints of all periods of
history in favor of liberty ; and he discussed, also, the
passages of scripture that favored it He must have
had books brought to him in prison, or else he had
had these quotations by him for some time, for like
the quotations in " No Cross, No Crown," they imply
a great deal of reading and access to a good library.

lei

XI
REST AND A SWEETHEART
When Penn was discharged from Newgate after
his six months' imprisonment he travelled for a time
in Holland and Germany ; and no doubt Sir John
Robinson and the other judges congratulated them
selves on having broken up the dangerous plans of
the foolish young cavalier and weaned him from his
delusion. The reasons for his journey are unknown. Pos
sibly, as he found he was so seriously suspected of
political intentions, he may have thought it would be
well to go away for a time and let the suspicions die
out Perhaps, too, his health had suffered, and he
needed a change. For three years he had led a
very strenuous life of controversy, preaching and
writing, and half of those three years had been
passed in loathsome prisons.
He has left us no account of this journey, as he
did of a subsequent one to the same countries ; but
from the few scraps of information we have about it,
he seems to have been still following his great mis
sion. There were people in those countries who
were in the Seeker state of mind, disgusted with the
corruption of rehgion which they saw around them,
and already tinged with the first principles of Qua
kerism. Possibly, they were not at this time so
162

GUI.I Sl'RINGETT, I'K.NN'S KIRSl WIFK

REST AND A SWEETHEART
numerous as they afterwards became, or Penn would
have had more to say about them.
At Emden, however, he found a physician named
Hasbert in a receptive state of mind, and through
him ten other people of the town held a silent meeting
in the doctor's house. But this strange worship
roused terrible suspicions, and these unfortunate
converts were afterwards banished over and over
again, and stripped of their property.
It is not likely that Penn made many such con
verts on his journey, and his time was probably
largely passed in investigating the religious con
ditions of the people in his Hberal way, a study
which had always strongly attracted him ; but ap
parently he did not find much that was pleasing to
him. On his return to England, in the autumn of 177 1,
there seems to have been a pause in the aggressive
activity which had been his characteristic before his
journey to Holland ; and from a letter which his
most recent biographer. Dr. Stoughton, has un
earthed in the Report of the Historical Manuscripts
Commission, it is probable that he was looking about
for a permanent residence, with a view of marrying
GuH Springett, a very pretty Quaker maiden who
had captured his fancy. In spite of the ferocious
religious controversy, the preaching, the jury trials,
and the imprisonments, there had been a romance,
a touch of human tenderness amidst the hardness of
conflict and the dry spirituality of religion. It was
time ; for he was twenty-seven years old.
GuH, or Gulielma Maria Springett, as she would
163

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
perhaps prefer to be called by a writer of the world's
people, was the daughter of a very gallant young
Puritan officer, who at the age of only twenty-three
found himself on his death-bed at the siege of
Bamber. His young wife was hastening to him
through difficulties and perils ; and the story of her
devotion and his tender fareweU, as described in
"The Penns and the Penningtons," is doubly beauti
ful because it is a relief to find that there was at that
time anything in England besides hard intolerance,
devilish cruelty, and ribald conversation.
GuH was born a few weeks after her father thus
died. Her mother soon, like many others, became
very unsettled in religion, and could endure neither
the formal prayers of the Church of England nor
the whining cant of the Puritans. While in this state
of mind she met with Isaac Pennington, whom she
found to be also a Seeker who could find nothing in
all the religions of the time but deceit They were
married, and shortly discovered that the Quaker
faith was what they sought ; and GuH also became a
Quaker. They were people of means. Pennington's father
had been a Puritan alderman in the civil wars, and
one of the court for the trial of Charles I. They
lived contentedly at Chalfont in Buckinghamshire
untU they suddenly became one of those famihes
whose ruin Penn said was impoverishing and de
populating England. Pennington was thrown into
prison for his opinions, and his wife and GuH had
to wander about as best they could untU he was re
leased. 164

REST AND A SWEETHEART
It was after their sufferings had begun that Penn
first knew them. John Ellwood, Milton's friend,
lived with tliem, and he has left us a quaint and
serious description of GuH as " in all respects a very
desirable woman, whether regard was had to her out
ward person, which wanted nothing to render her
completely comely, or to the endowments of her
mind, which were every way extraordinary." A fair
fortune would go with her, an accompaniment which
lovers do not usually refuse. She had, indeed, many
suitors of all ranks and conditions ; but, as the ex
cellent Ellwood tells us, she bore herself "with so
much evenness of temper, such courteous freedom,
guarded with the strictest modesty, that none were
unduly encouraged, nor could any complain of
offence." A very tantalizing young woman she cer
tainly was, and it seems that Ellwood himself was a
little touched.
Being the child of parents who could love with
devotion, GuH herself was no doubt a strenuous
heroic little soul. Penn could attract her, for she
could see in him a Quaker hero who feared not the
face of man.
Unfortunately the children she bore were not
what we should expect from either Penn or her.
Heredity often plays queer tricks just at the time
when you look for a sure result Penn's heirs who
became the owners of the great commonwealth of
Pennsylvania were the children of his second wife, a
less lovely woman than GuH ; and to this day there
are Pennsylvanians who regret that they could not
be ruled in colonial times by GuH's sons.
1 65

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
But all that came afterwards. Let us be content
that now in the spring of 1672 Penn and Guli were
married and settled down at Rickmansworth in
Hertfordshire, far from the dirt and turmoil of Lon
don, with its terrible Tower and foul Newgate. They
were rich and could live at ease, and they seem to
have been very happy lovers as long as Guli lived.
The terrors of persecution had for a time passed
away. Charles II. had issued a sort of document
always detested by the sturdy Anglo-Saxons even
when it relieved them from suffering. He called it
a Declaration of Indulgence, and in it he arrogantly
announced that by virtue of his supreme authority
he dispensed with, or, in plain English, abrogated and
annulled, for the time being, all the penal laws against
Quakers, Presbyterians, Romanists, and other dis
senters from the Church of England.
Although he outwardly conformed to the Church
of England, Charles was at heart and in secret a Ro
manist, and his brother, the Duke of York, was now
openly one. Charles had, two years before, signed
a secret treaty with Louis XIV. of France, by which
he agreed to make public his profession of the Roman
faith, to assist Louis in destroying the power of Hol
land, and to support the claims of the House of
Bourbon to the Spanish throne. In return for this
Louis had agreed to supply Charles with money and
to help him with an army to suppress any insurrec
tion that might arise among his subjects. In other
words, Charles, like his predecessors, wished to make
himself independent of Parliament He wished, if
possible, to govern without Parliament, and this base
166

REST AND A SWEETHEART
treaty with France was to help him to attain that
end. The Declaration of Indulgence was also calcu
lated for the same end. It, of course, relieved the
Roman Catholics as well as the Quakers and Puri
tans from the penal laws, and thus assisted the king's
secret Catholic friends and gratified the Catholic
king of France. But it performed also the more im
portant function of creating a precedent for ruling
without Parliament It reheved the people from
very oppressive laws ; and they could hardly refuse
to take the benefit of it ; and that put them at once
in the position of assenting to the king's power to
abrogate and annul laws as he pleased. In a few
years this became a very momentous question and
one with which Penn was closely concerned.
But at present, while he was enjoying his first year
of married happiness, he had nothing to say about
the Declaration of Indulgence. He was probably
glad enough to see the hapless Quakers come troop
ing out of the dismal prisons. Over four hundred
of them came out into the light of day and were
restored to their families.
Most of the spring of the year 1672 Penn seems
to have spent in the enjoyment of his honeymoon.
In the summer he again resumed his preacher's life,
— that is to say, the life of a Quaker preacher, who
serves without pay, is under no orders or compul
sion, and may have some other occupation that re
quires most of his time. During his preaching of
this summer he travelled through the counties of
Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, working hard ; for within
167

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
three weeks he and his companion are said to have
attended twenty-one meetings, and were much grati
fied at the increasing numbers and earnestness of
their people.
The traditions of Penn which Clarkson collected
among the Quakers in England describe him as a
very hard-working minister. He worked hard, in
fact, at all his undertakings. Though a learned man,
he preached, it is said, in very simple language, easy
to be understood. He was not eloquent, because
under the peculiar restrictions against vanity and
excitement which the Quakers place on preaching,
as on aU their actions, eloquence in the usual mean
ing of the word is unknown among them.
" He was of such humility that he used generally to sit at the
lowest end of the space allotted to ministers, always taking care to
place above himself poor ministers, and those who appeared to him
to be peculiarly gifted. He was also no less remarkable for en
couraging those who were young in the ministry. Thomas Story,
among many others, witnessed this. ' I had no courage,' says he,
• of my own to appear in public among them (the ministers). I
thought, however (on seeing Atkinson's ministry acceptable), that I
might also probably go through the meetings without offence, which
was the full amount of my expectation or desire there ; and that
which added much to my encouragement was the fatherly care and
behaviour of the ministers in general, but especially of that great
minister of the Gospel, and faithful servant of Christ, William Penn,
who abounded in wisdom, discretion, prudence, love, and tender
ness of affection, with all sincerity, above most in this generation;
and, indeed, I never knew his equal.' " (Clarkson's Penn, vol. ii.
p. 271.) These same traditions describe him as very neat
though plain in his dress. He usually walked with
a cane, and in later life, when dictating to an amanu
ensis, as was frequently his practice, he would take
168

REST AND A SWEETHEART
the cane in his hand, and, walking up and down the
room, would mark by striking it against the floor
the emphasis on points which he wished particularly
to be noticed.
Everything, now that he was happily married, was
peaceful. His days of imprisonment seemed to be
ended. He had served through them as an appren
ticeship to his calling ; he had borne himself in them
in a way which gave him a standing and influence ;
and he was now in a position to accomplish some
really valuable results. In the following year, 1673,
he and his wife travelled in the western part of Eng
land, and at Bristol welcomed George Fox on his
return from America. It must have been a delight
ful meeting for the accomplished, learned Penn and
his pretty wife. Fox was so unlike them in his edu
cation and associations, and yet so full of force, intel
ligence, and fire, that he must have been perpetually
interesting. In his rugged, eloquent way he was full
of the enthusiasm of his travels, the adventures and
perils of the wilderness, the strange things he had
seen, the zeal and steadfastness of the American
Quakers, and the great increase and strengthening
he now found among those in England. He and
the Penns attended the meetings at Bristol and its
neighborhood, and Fox describes these meetings as
"glorious and powerful."
The Quakers were, indeed, at this time reaping
large rewards for their courageous and steady endur
ance through many years. In our time the religion
that draws numbers to itself most effectually is apt
to be the one that promises a little social eminence,
169

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
that seems to be in the line of fashion and good
society. But the Quaker faith was becoming popular
because it seemed to arm its followers with fortitude.
If it could give such contentment and satisfaction in
the midst of suffering, it must, men thought, be true.
For this reason religious people in those days often
courted and sought suffering, imprisonment, and even
death in a way now difficult to understand. They
were often accused, especially the Quakers, of show
ing too much readiness and eagerness to suffer ; cold,
philosophical minds would say that, being unduly
heated and aroused, they found a morbid satisfac
tion in suffering which won for them the applause
of the world and advanced the cause of their sect
So many, we are told, from the Presbyterians and
other Puritans began to turn towards the Quaker
belief that the ministers of those sects bestirred them
selves to call back their wandering sheep and to
keep others from straying. They wrote pamphlets ;
and the cleverest of them was called "A Dialogue
between a Christian and a Quaker," in which it was
assumed that the Quaker was not a Christian at all,
and he was made to maintain very ridiculous prin
ciples, which were easily confuted.
The life of Penn prefixed to the old edition of his
works calls this pamphlet a forgery, because it was
put forth as a real discourse which actually happened,
and many people believed it to be real. Its author
was a Baptist minister, Thomas Hicks, and Penn,
to counteract his influence, wrote "The Christian
Quaker," a very dull performance as it seems now,
but possibly of value in its time. Hicks, at any rate,
170

REST AND A SWEETHEART
continued his attacks, and brought out a second part
of his Dialogue, and then a third part, Penn trying
to keep pace with him by issuing "Reason against
RaiHng" and "The Counterfeit Christian Detected."
Hicks must have been getting rather the better of
Penn, for the Quakers called on Hicks's congregation
for a public debate and a chance to clear themselves.
The congregation got the advantage by jockeyship,
for they forced on the meeting at a time when Penn
and Whitehead could not be present, and the vote
was overwhelmingly in favor of Hicks.
Penn and Whitehead protested and demanded an
other meeting, which was finally obtained, and is said
to have been attended by six thousand people. This
number seems very large, and may be an exaggera
tion ; but we can readily believe that the attendance
was large, for in the tumultuous state of religious
opinion at that time there was an intense desire to
hear these scholastic and metaphysical debates.
The principal Quaker leaders and the principal
Baptist leaders were present, and there was one
of those extraordinary religious scrimmages which
could happen only among the bluff bull-dog English
of that period. They debated and shouted at one
another aU day, running off into strange meta
physical distinctions of the nature of Christ, whether
his manhood should be called a part of him or a
member of' him, of no interest whatever to modern
minds, but apparently as fascinating to those people
as a theatre or a bull-baiting. No decision was
reached, but they enjoyed a good fight ; both sides
felt better, and had no more to say to one another.
171

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
Penn, however, had plenty of other controversies
on his hands, for, as that old biography prefixed to
his works says of him, he " never turned his back
in the day of battle." The Quakers of those days
loved a wordy war as much as anybody ; and though
opposed to fighting with the fleshy arm, never hesi
tated to describe their argumentative struggles in the
metaphores of warfare.
Penn had to answer some author who wrote "The
Spirit of the Quakers Tried ;" he had to attend tto
the case of a pair of pretenders. Reeve and Muggle-
ton, who with their "fond imaginations" drew away
much people after them ; he had to down John
Faldo, who wrote a " Curb to W. Penn's Confi
dence ;" and Harry Hallywell had to be looked after
because he wrote "An Account of Familism as it
is Revised and Propagated by the Quakers." But
Faldo was soon on his feet again, and procured
the signatures and approval of " one-and-twenty
learned divines" to his book "Quakerism no
Christianity," and Samuel Grevil assailed the in
ward light, and John Perrot, who had attained some
distinction among the Quakers, turned renegade and
attacked his own people in " The Spirit of the Hat"
and in "Tyranny and Hypocrisy Detected." These
things and long letters of rebuke to magistrates and
of encouragement to the faithful in the Netherlands
and in Maryland kept Penn busy enough for two
years while he lived in his pleasant country home
at Rickmansworth, and learned what a charming
woman his young wife was.

172

XII
PERSECUTION, OATHS, AND CONTROVERSY
The Declaration of Indulgence, put forth by
Charles II., proved to be a very short-lived measure.,
There was so much opposition to it in Parliament
that the king revoked it within a year after it was
granted. The mill of persecution began to grind
again. The machinery of the courts, the informers,
the magistrates, the constables, and the writ-servers
started once more on their dismal routine, and
Penn was called from his pamphlet-writing and
peaceful preaching journeys to take again an active
part in trying to protect his people.
The constables broke up a meeting at which he
was preaching, and we find him writing a letter of
remonstrance to the magistrates, and repeating his
old arguments for religious liberty. " Either give us
a better faith," he says, "or leave us with the one
we have."
George Fox had been one of the first to suffer
almost immediately after his return from America.
They had caught him in the trap in which they
caught so many. They offered him the oath of
allegiance, and when he refused it because he could
take no oaths of any kind, they imprisoned him with
out trial as a seditious and dangerous person, an
enemy to the government He was in jail for over
173

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
a year on this occasion, suffering severely at times
from Ulness, with his wife rushing about the country
to procure influence for his release and returning to
the prison to nurse him. The king offered him a
pardon ; but the Quakers were always obliged to
refuse pardons, because their acceptance would imply
that they admitted that they had done wrong ; and,
indeed, the pardons were usually intended to force
such an admission.
Penn and the leading Quakers exerted themselves
to obtain Fox's release, and Penn went to court, where
he had not been for five years. He appealed to his
old friend and his father's friend, the Duke of York,
and the interview is significant because of the duke's
rather fulsome language in favor of liberty of con
science and Penn's relations with him on this subject
in after years.
" The time being fixt, we found that gentleman as was agreed,
and went with him to the Duke's palace, where he endeavored our
admission by the means of the Duchess' Secretary ; but the house
being very full of people and the Duke of business, the said Secre
tary could neither procure our nor his own admission ; but Colonel
Aston, of the bed-chamber, then in waiting, and my old acquaint
ance and friend (yet I had not seen him in some years before)
looking hard at me, thinking he should know me, asked me in the
drawing-room, first my name and then my business, and upon under
standing both, he presently gave us the favor we waited for, of speak
ing with the Duke, who came immediately out of his closet to us.
" After something I said as an introduction to the business, I de
livered him our request. He perused it, and then told us That he
was against all persecution for the sake of religion. That it was true
he had in his younger time been warm, especially when he thought
people made it a pretence to disturb governm«nt, but that he had
seen and considered things better, and he was for doing to others as
he would have others do unto him ; and he thought it would be
happy for the world if all were of that mind ; for he was sure, he
174

PERSECUTION, OATHS, AND CONTROYERSY
said, ' that no man was willing to be persecuted himself for his own
conscience.' He added that he looked upon us as a quiet indus
trious people, and though he was not of our judgment, yet he liked
our good lives, with much more to the same purpose, promising he
would speak to his brother, and doubted not but that the king's
counsel would have orders in our friend's favor.
" I and my companion spoke as occasion offered, to recommend
both our business and our character, but the less because he pre
vented us in the manner I have expressed.
" When he had done upon this affair, he was pleased to take a very
particular notice of me, both for the relation my father had had to
his service in the navy, and the care he had promised him to show
in my regard upon all occasions.
" That he wondered I had not been with him, and that whenever
I had any business thither, he would order that I should have access ;
after which he withdrew and we returned.
" This was my first visit to the court after five years' retirement ;
and this the success of it, and the first time I had spoken with him
since '65."
Penn believed that this Roman Catholic duke was
entirely sincere in his professions about liberty.
Afterwards, when the duke became king, as James II. ,
Penn retained the same confidence. He could never
forget the many kindnesses the duke had shown him,
and gratitude it seems could easily lead Penn astray.
In continuing his account of the interview, he says,
"That it should be grateful to me was no wonder ;
and perhaps, that with some was the beginning of
my faults at court"
The duke, however, in spite of his wonderful pro
fessions, seems to have done nothing for Fox, who
by the exertions of Penn and others was finally dis
charged on a writ of habeas corpus.
It was about this time that Penn wrote his " Trea
tise of Oaths." It was an important little book for
his sect, because their objection to oaths was bring-
175

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
ing them into much difficulty and imprisonment
The book was carefully prepared in Penn's most
learned manner, and was in effect issued by the
Quakers as a body ; for twelve of their principal
men signed the preface, which was addressed " To
the King and Great Council of England assembled
in Parliament"
The argument would not now carry much weight ;
but as minds were then constituted it was not with
out influence. His strongest point was perhaps the
passage in the New Testament in which the Saviour
says, " But I say unto you. Swear not at all." He goes
on to argue that it is presumptuous and irreverent to
summon God as a witness on every occasion ; that
it is inconsistent with Christianity, which extirpates
in man the perfidiousness which first led to oaths ;
that it is no safeguard against perjury, since oaths
have become so common that they have lost any
awe-inspiring influence they may have had ; that the
form of oath is a superstitious ceremony of kissing a
book. "The use of So help me God, we find from the law of the
Almains, of King Clotharius; the laying on of the three fingers
above the Book is to signify the Trinity; the thumb and the little
finger under the Book are to signify the damnation of body and
soul, if they forswear."
The most interesting part of the treatise is the
learning it displays. Beginning with the Persians
and Scythians, he goes on quoting scores of writers,
Greek and Roman, fathers of the church, in every
age of history, and succeeds most effectually in
showing that a large number of the great and good
176

PERSECUTION, OATHS, AND CONTROVERSY
men of the past, especially among the early Christians,
had the same objections to oath-taking as the Qua
kers. A few quotations taken at random will show
his method.
" Xenocrates was so renowned at Athens for his virtuous life and
great integrity that, being called to give his evidence by oath, all the
judges stood up and forbade the tender, because they would not
have it thought that truth depended more upon an oath than the
word of an honest man."
" Menander, the Greek poet, saith, ' Flee an oath though thou
shouldst swear justly.' "
" Cherillus saith, oaths bring not credit to the man, but the man
must bring credit to the oaths. What serve they for them ? To de
ceive ? It seems by this that credit is better than an oath ; for it is
credit that is security, not the oath."
" Epictetus, a famous and grave Stoic, counselled to refuse an oath
altogether." " Quintilian saith that in time past it was a kind of infamy for
grave and approved men to swear.' '
Ponderous oaths, these ancient sages reasoned,
were unnecessary, because in the end you judged
of the truth by comparison of circumstances and
likelihood. The Quakers were unable to abolish
oaths ; but they succeeded in greatly modifying their
usuage. As time went on statutes were passed
allowing Quakers, or any one who wished it, to give
his simple affirmation instead of an oath. These
statutes prevail now in most English-speaking coun
tries, and thousands who are not Quakers avail them
selves of the privilege either because, like the
ancient sages and fathers, they think an oath absurd,
or because they wish to avoid kissing a dirty, court
room copy of the Bible.
As a coUection of aU the ancient wisdom on this
177

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
question, and as contributing, no doubt, in shaping
human conduct, this treatise by Penn is one of the
most interesting of his writings.
Soon after he attempted another great stroke for
the Quakers and for the British public in "England's
Present Interest considered." The present state of
England was, he said, one of confusion. It would
be hard to find another kingdom of the world so
divided within itself on questions of religion. The
government had tried to force a uniform belief, and
with what result?
" The consequence, whether you intended it or no, through the bar
barous practices of those that have had their execution, hath been
the spoiling of several thousands of the free born people of this king
dom, of their unforfeited rights. Persons have been flung into gaols,
gates and trunks broken open, goods distrained till a stool hath not
been left to sit down on ; flocks of cattle driven, whole barns full of
corn seized, threshed, and carried away ; parents left without their
children, children without their parents, both without subsistence. . . .
" The widow's mite hath not escaped their hands ; they have made
her can the forfeiture of her conscience ; not leaving her a bed to lie
on nor a blanket to cover her. . . . The poor helpless orphan's milk
boiling over the fire has been flung to the dogs, and the skillet made
part of their prize."
The only remedy for this state of things is, he says,
a return to the original Anglo-Saxon liberty by which
no man could be disturbed in the possession of his
property, every man had a voice and vote in the
making of laws, and every man accused of an offence
had a right to a fair trial by jury. He goes into the
details of this liberty. Magna Charta, the old statutes,
and the Anglo-Saxon Wittangemote or free assembly,
in the same way as since his day we have had it re
peated again and again in histories and school-books.
178

PERSECUTION, OATHS, AND CONTROVERSY
Then he raises his old subject of liberty of conscience,
which he argues out anew as a question of good
policy, to give ease to the government from expense,
and relieve it of its deadly religious enemies, stop
the swarm of paupers and beggars that were every
day increasing as the result of persecution, and en
courage trade to flourish as Holland's trade had
flourished, by granting freedom to religion.
He followed up his argument by a sort of peti
tion to the king and Parliament called "The Con
tinued Cry of the Oppressed," describing the fines
and imprisonments, the infamous informers, the
rough handling by constables, men and women
beaten, carts, ploughs, and crops of the farmers
seized, and other sufferings which were still inflicted
on the Quakers. These efforts he was making are
dull enough to read about nowadays ; but they
must be mentioned to show his busy life and his
consuming passion to advance the cause of liberty
and deliver his people from oppression.
That he might be still more busy, Richard Baxter
challenged him to a controversy. Baxter had been
in the country round Rickmansworth and found it
" abounding with Quakers because Mr W Pen, their
captain, dwelleth there." He was anxious, he said,
to save these poor people from their delusion ; so in
knight-errant fashion he called on their captain, Penn,
to draw and defend. From ten in the morning till
five in the afternoon they fought it out before a
great crowd of hearers, who went without their din
ners, so intent were they to hear the hair-sphtting
that would now be scarcely understood, and the
179

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
rough retorts which would not please a modern re
ligious audience. Nothing was settled ; each one
claimed the victory, and Penn and Baxter continued
the controversy by correspondence, and it was stUl
unsettled. Penn seemed willing to go on with it forever ;
for after telling Baxter " the scurvy of the mind is
thy distemper, and I fear it is incurable," he says
he has great kindness for him, and would like to
give him a room in his house, "that I could visit
and get discourse with thee in much tender love."
Penn was very active at this time, and seems to
have written many pamphlets, some of which do not
appear in his works. Several of them had the
queer titles of the time, such as " Naked Truth
Needs no Shift," which was an answer to " The
Quaker's Last Shift Found Out"

i8o

XIII
TRAVELS IN HOLLAND AND POLITICS AT HOME
His wife having inherited a house and lands at
Worminghurst, in Sussex, Penn left his home at
Rickmansworth, and moved to this new estate. Soon
afterwards, in company with George Fox, Robert
Barclay, and some other leading Quakers, he started
on a missionary journey to Holland and Ger
many. This was in the summer of the year 1677,
and since his previous journey, six years before, the
Quaker feeling in those countries had been increasing.
The Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Frederick V.,
and the Countess of Homes had become conspicu
ously inclined towards the faith of the inward light,
and many people were in that seeking state of mind,
disgusted with all forms of religion, which had been
so fruitful of Quakers in England.
So Penn and his companions set out well supplied
with Quaker books in the Dutch and German lan
guages, and Penn kept a journal of their travels and
success. It is probable that this journal is the dryest
and dullest that ever was written. Penn's generali
ties became more colorless than ever, and when he
gives details they are uninteresting ones. His de
scription of meetings and conversions are always in
the same general language of great travail of spirit,
precious testimonies, and great awakening. The
i8i

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
mystical expressions used by Quakers are at any
time rather meaningless to the uninitiated, and the
lapse of two hundred years does not help to make
them more intelligible.
But still, by great labor in reading, we gather how
they went from town to town encouraging the few
congenial souls they found, helping them to organize
meetings like those in England, corresponding with
atjd visiting .countesses, princesses, and governors of
provinces, and Penn had not forgotten his old habit
of writing a letter of rebuke to any ruler who had
not treated the Quakers well.
In a letter to the King of Poland he pleads for
religious liberty and reminds him of a saying of one
of his ancestors, Stephen, King of Poland, who had
said, " I am king of men, not of consciences ; a
commander of bodies, not of souls." This striking
sentence had long been a favorite quotation with
those who sought liberty, and Roger Williams, of
Rhode Island, was fond of using it in his controver
sies with the rulers of Maissachusetts.
They passed out of Holland and, entering Ger
many, travelled through many of the places whence
afterwards so many German Mennonites and similar
sects allied to the Quakers migrated to Pennsylvania,
forming that large body of people still known in our
State as the "Pennsylvania Dutch." Evidently a
great change had taken place in the religious condi
tion of the country since Penn's visit of six years
before. The Germanic mind was growing more and
more into a state of religious ferment, and was break
ing away from the old forms, and breaking up into
lS2

TRAVELS IN HOLLAND
the innumerable sects whose history in Pennsylvania
was so curious.* The people were becoming Seekers,
like the English, and Penn and his companions were
eager to find those who were in this state of mind.
" We had a good time with him ; for the man is an ancient Seeker,
opprest with the cares of this world. . . We set out towards the
city of Duysburg of the Calvinist way, belonging to the Elector of
Brandenburg, in and near to which we had been informed there were
a retired and seeking people." (Works of Penn, vol. i. p. 78.)
In another passage he speaks of some people who,
aroused by the preaching of De Labadie " against
the dead and formal churches of the world," had
separated themselves and lived " in a way of refined
independency." These were, in effect, also Seekers,
though not called by that name. Labadie was a
Frenchman and a famous preacher. He had been
a Jesuit, and after becoming a Protestant was dis
satisfied with the Calvinism he found at Geneva. So
he went to Holland and became a radical in religion.
Penn had seen him on his previous visit ; but by no
means approved of him. He calls him airy and
unstable and a mere sect-maker. Sect-making for
the mere glory of the sect-maker soon became com
mon enough, especially in Germany.
Two of Labadie's foUowers, Dankers and Sluyter,
travelled among the colonies in America in the year
1679, visiting the land that Penn was afterwards to
call Pennsylvania, and they kept a most interesting
journal which is now largely relied upon by those
who wish to know at first hand the manners and
condition of the early colonists.
* The Making of Pennsylvania, p. 94.
183

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
Before returning to England Penn wrote four
tracts, — "A CaU to Christendom," "A Tender Hesi
tation," "To aU Professors of Christianity," and
" Tender Counsel." They were translated into Dutch
and German by Benjamin Furly, an English merchant
in Rotterdam, of whom more hereafter, and by
him they were published and circulated among
the people of those countries who were of a sepa
rating and seeking turn of mind.*
On Penn's return to England after this summer
missionary tour of three months, he found that, in
spite of all the appeals for liberty which had been
made by himself and others, the condition of the
Quakers was, if anything, worse than ever. The
people had become so thoroughly alarmed by the
king's leaning towards the Roman Catholics that the
magistrates and officials echoed this feeling by en
forcing more strictly than ever the laws against dis
senters of ail kinds. The Puritans avoided the se
verity of these laws by keeping their religion to
themselves, exercising what the Quakers sneeringly
caUed "Christian prudence." But the Quakers,
being a very obstinate folk, made few attempts to
conceal their meetings or their absence from the
regular worship of the Church of England. Evi
dence was accordingly easily obtained against them,
and fines and imprisonments were again sweeping
away property and families.
A pretence of giving them a little ease was made
by introducing in Parhament a biU which would
* Penna. Mag. Hist., vol. xix. pp. 283, 284.
184

TRAVELS IN HOLLAND
render the laws applicable only to those who should
refuse to take the oath of allegiance and supremacy,
which was, in effect, an oath abjuring popery and
denying the power of the Pope to absolve British
subjects from their aUegiance to the crown. By this
means, it was said, the laws would act only against
the Roman CathoHcs, and other dissenters would be
free. But as the Quakers could not take an oath at
all, this bill would put them in a worse plight than
ever. They would be classed with the Roman
Catholics and Jesuits, and would be in a position to
have it said that they refused to acknowledge their
allegiance as British subjects.
Penn, as the representative of the Quakers, ap
pealed to Parliament, presented petitions, and made
arguments before a committee in favor of a slight
amendment by which Quakers should give their
word instead of an oath, and be subject to the same
penalties for perjury as if they had been under oath.
The old charge that he was a Jesuit in disguise
was evidently rife at this time, for a large part of
the two speeches he made before the committee is
taken up in protesting against this accusation, and
in declaring that he and all the Quakers were in the
truest sense of the word Protestants, not by any
means enemies of the crown and government, but,
on the contrary, anxious to support government
if they were only allowed to do so in a way approved
by their conscience.
He was successful before the House of Commons.
They accepted his suggestion and passed the bill
with a clause allowing the Quakers to affirm in place
1S5

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
of taking an oath ; but before the bill could be
passed by the House of Lords, Parliament was
dissolved. It seemed impossible for the Quakers to
have any good luck, and in the summer of that
year, 1678, that extraordinary creature, Titus Oates,
professed to have discovered the popish plot.
The British are a courageous people ; but even in
recent times they have been put into what seems to
other nations a ridiculous panic by the suggestion of
a French invasion, and in earlier periods the sugges
tion of a Jesuit plot would create among them still
greater excitement Oates, having an insane craving
for notoriety, took advantage of both these sources
of panic, and told a wonderful tale of what he had
learned while he was among the Jesuits. The Pope,
he said, had turned over the government of England
to the Jesuits, who had already issued commissions
appointing Catholics to all the offices of state. The
present British statesmen were to be murdered.
The king was to be stabbed, or poisoned, or shot
with silver bullets. The shipping of the Thames
was to be set on fire, and at a given signal the Eng
lish Catholics were to murder their Protestant neigh
bors. And, to make sure of the success of all this
devilish work, a French army was to land in Ireland.
Oates was a disorderly and disgraced clergyman
of the Church of England. He had turned Roman
Catholic, or, at least, had made professions of that
faith, and had lived at some of the English Jesuit
coUeges on the continent He had, of course, heard
there all sorts of loose talk about the best means of
converting England ; and as force was then a recog-
186

TRAVELS IN HOLLAND
nized means of conversion, he had, no doubt, actually
heard individuals suggest some of the things he re
ported. These scraps of conversation he wove into
a connected tale of an actual organized plot which
was to be carried out He reminded his hearers
that London had once been burnt, and insinuated
that this work of the Jesuits would be repeated.
Circumstances favored his story. When the papers
of Edward Coleman, one of the Catholics he accused,
were looked for, it was found that he had just de
stroyed most of them, and that those which remained
spoke of the great expectations in which Romanists
might indulge from the present situation in England.
Soon after, the magistrate before whom Oates had
testified against Coleman was found murdered in a
field. When we remember, in addition to this, that
the English people, although they did not know of
Charles II. 's secret agreement with the King of
France, strongly suspected it, that they felt sure of
his leaning towards Romanism, and knew that his
brother the Duke of York, heir to the throne, had
actually turned Romanist and married a Roman
Catholic woman ; when we remember, also, that they
had in their minds the Gunpowder Plot, which was
the work of Catholics, the Catholic conspiracies
against Queen Elizabeth, and the cruelties of the
reign of their Catholic queen, Bloody Mary, it is not
hard to understand how they readily believed the
tale of Oates and were roused by it to the utmost
pitch of fury.
The jails soon contained more papists than Qua
kers. London was put under the protection of the
187

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
militia, cannon were collected, barricades for the
streets prepared, every good Protestant citizen car
ried weapons under his clothes, and guards sat day
and night in the vaults under Parliament to save
that august body from being blown into the air.
This strange commotion had occurred whUe the
amendment suggested by Penn allowing Quakers to
affirm instead of swear was pending in Parliament
But Parliament was now busy excluding Roman
Catholic lords from their seats in the upper house,
driving the Duke of York from his seat in the Privy
Council, and impeaching the lord treasurer for trea
son. In the hope of stopping this impeachment of
his lord treasurer, which might disclose his secret
treaty with the King of France, Charles dissolved
Parliament in January, 1779, before Penn's amend
ment could be passed.
The slaughter of the Catholics suspected of the
plot now began. Oates was becoming the richest
and most powerful man in England. The informers
who had been earning small livings by bringing
Quakers and Puritans to justice recognized in him a
master of their art They were soon discovering all
manner of popish wickedness : armies of invasion
preparing abroad and secret assassination plotted at
home ; and Oates, to remain their leader, was com
pelled to add new wonders to his original tale.
In this confusion Penn wrote a letter of advice to
the Quakers exhorting them to abstain from a worldly
spirit " Fly as for your Hves," he says, " from the
snares therein, and get you into your watch-tower,
the name of the Lord." He wrote a book on the
188

TRAVELS IN HOLLAND
public situation which passed through two editions,
and was called "An Address to Protestants of aU
Persuasions." The cause of the troublous times
was, he says, the attempt to propagate religion by
force. The papists had such a terrible history of
cruelty in forcing religion that now the country was
in a turmoil of fear of them. There never would
be peace, however, until the Protestants gave up the
cruelty of persecution which they were imitating
from Rome.
" Revive," he says, " the noble principle of liberty of conscience
on which the Reformation rose ; for in vain do we hope to be de
livered from papists until we deliver ourselves from popery. This
coercion upon conscience and persecution for religion are that part
of popery which is most justly hated and feared. And if we either
fear or hate popery for its cruelty, shall we practise the cruelty we
fear or hate it for?"
He had now an opportunity to argue again on his
favorite subject of religious liberty, a subject which
he was always eager to press on public attention.
He reasoned on this occasion not very brilliantly, it
must be confessed ; in fact, with much dulness ex
cept here and there a striking sentence. In one
passage he comes near writing a good aphorism, but
spoils it with too many words and interjected ideas.
Freed from his verbiage it would be, " Zeal without
knowledge is superstition ; zeal against knowledge
is interest or faction ; but zeal with knowledge is re
ligion." The first part of his book is taken up with a tirade
against the wickedness of the times ; drunkenness,
whoredom, luxury, gambling, cursing, and irrever-
189

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
ence, which are also, he thinks, causes of England's
troubles. The very plain speaking he indulges him
self in here is interesting as a comment on the
times. After reading through all he says we are
left with an impression that two hundred years have
not added much in the way of excessive luxuries.
Penn himself lived well even when he was in his
wilderness colony of Pennsylvania. He liked hand
some furniture, good wines, a well-supplied table,
horses, fruit-trees, flower-gardens, and pleasure-boats.
The luxury which he condemns must therefore
have been a luxury far in excess of his own. He
believed in good cooking, but French cookery, he
says, was ruining England.
" Natural relish," he says, " is lost in the crowd of the cook's in
gredients ;" and in furnishing houses " it is a most inexcusable super
fluity to bestow an estate to line walls, dress cabinets, embroider
beds, with a hundred other unprofitable pieces of state, such as massy
plate, rich china, costly pictures, sculpture, fret work, inlayings, and
painted windows.''
Such complaints, however, have been made in all
times. The golden as well as the virtuous age is
always in the past or hoped for in the future. The
real truth about such matters is that good and bad
fashions in morals are perpetually changing. Dif
ferent periods are virtuous in some things and
vicious in others. The peculiar vicious fashion of
Penn's time seems to have been wholesale corrup
tion and treachery to one another among the upper
classes, and reckless obscene coarseness in speech
and manners, indulged in by women as well as by
men. 190

TRAVELS IN HOLLAND
It is, perhaps tedious to mention so many details
of Penn's efforts on behalf of liberty ; but only by
these details can his character be known. He fol
lowed up his address to Protestants by a petition to
William, Prince of Orange, the famous Hollander,
who within a decade was to become King of Eng
land and accomplish the reforms in which Penn was
wearing out his life. The object of the petition was
to ask relief from persecution for some of the people
Penn had recently visited at Crevelt on the Rhine ;
and he renews his old argument of the ridiculous
inconsistency of Protestants protesting against papist
persecutions, when Protestants were persecuting Prot
estants. Penn was by nature a public man. His deep in
terest in religious liberty and broad questions of
public policy, his liberal education, his ability as a
writer, his long experience in public speaking and
in directing the interests of his sect in stormy po
litical times, besides the associations of his father,
the admiral, naturally turned him towards politics.
He would surely have taken a very large part in
state-craft if Quaker principles had not restrained
him. The Quakers abstained almost entirely from
political life, and in many instances even from voting,
because politics were disturbing to religious contem
plation and involved taking and administering oaths
and countenancing war. But this was, it seems,
only a general rule, which admitted of exceptions
when necessary.
The king's dissolution of Parliament compelled a
new election, and, with the fears of the popish plot
191

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
and the hostility to the king for his popish leaning,
the contest was hot and exciting. Questions of re
ligious Hberty and questions deeply affecting the
Quakers were involved, and Penn threw himself into
the contest with enthusiasm. He was a Whig, of
course, and he had become a friend of Algernon
Sydney, a man of very liberal opinions, who was the
Whig candidate for Guildford. Sydney's opinions,
indeed, were so extreme that he was considered dan
gerous to monarchy, and he had been in exile on the
continent for many years ; but he had been allowed
to return for a time to settle his father's estate. Penn
made speeches for him, and in the midst of one of
these an attempt was made to arrest him as a Jesuit
But his most important effort was a short pamphlet
called " England's Great Interest in the Choice of
a New Parliament"
From this pamphlet we learn that Penn believed
that there was a popish plot as described by Oates ;
for he says that the first object to be gained by this
election is " to pursue the discovery and punishment
of the plot" In another passage he advises the
voters to choose only sincere Protestants ; and they
can know false Protestants, he says, "by their laugh
ing at the plot, disgracing the evidence."
That there was an intention at that time and long
afterwards on the part of Roman Catholics, both in
England and on the continent, to capture the British
government and force Catholicism on England ad
mits of no doubt Protestants were fully justified in
guarding against this and in offsetting the Catholic
tendency of their king. But Oates's evidence went
192

ALGERNON SYDNEY

TRAVELS IN HOLLAND
farther than this mere intention, and professed to dis
close a regularly organized plot, to be accompanied
by wholesale assassination, and this is now believed
to have been a mere delusion. But there were thou
sands like Penn who believed in it
There is nothing else in his pamphlet which calls
for particular comment He repeats many of his
old arguments for a restoration of Anglo-Saxon
liberty, and calls for impeachment of the evil coun
seUors who were misguiding the king. We must be
secured, he says, from popery and slavery, and Prot
estant dissenters must be eased. If this be accom
plished the king should be rewarded with increased
revenues. It is to be observed that he is hot
against popery, and stanch for the defence of Eng
lish Protestant government
Algernon Sydney was not elected. He received
a majority of the votes, but was not returned be
cause he was not a freeman of Guildford. Penn had
not at this time much luck in attaining what he
wanted in politics. His political party, the Whigs,
secured, however, a large majority in Parliament
This did not suit the king, so he immediately dis
solved Parliament again, and there was another elec
tion. Algernon Sydney became a candidate for
Bamber, in Sussex, was again earnestly supported
by Penn, and again defeated.
By his efforts to assist the Whig party against
popery Penn was hoping to show that he was not a
Jesuit and that the Quakers were not Jesuits. But
in the extremely suspicious state of people's minds
there were no doubt many who became all the
'3 193

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
more suspicious and believed his zeal for the Whigs
was only a cunning cover to his secret Jesuitism.
After Sydney's second failure to be elected to
Parliament Penn wrote another pamphlet called
"One Project for the Good of England," which was
intended to assist the Whigs and at the same time
put the Quakers in a better position. He argued
that Protestants must be united against their old
enemy, and that the dissenters and the Church of
England must drop their quarrels and present a
united front to Rome. In the church of Rome, he
said, religion meant not love of God and your neigh
bor, but civil empire ; and to seize the government
of England was the prime object of Roman CathoHcs.
Should not the Church of England then, he asks,
stop persecuting us dissenters ? Is mere conformity
to her worship dearer to her than the general cause
of Protestantism and the safety of the British gov
ernment? Is she not doing what Rome desires her
to do, — scattering, impoverishing, and disuniting the
dissenters, and weakening the cause of Protestantism ?
Would a Churchman refuse the help of a Quaker or
Baptist to pull him out of a ditch ? And why should
he deprive himself of that help in the great cause of
Protestantism ?
He argues again on his old subject of religious
liberty as not only right in itself, but as a wise policy
which will unite the nation, give it power against
Jesuit plots, and also commercial supremacy.
" I ask if more custom comes not to the king, and more trade to
the kingdom by encouraging the labor and traffic of an Episcopalian,
Presbyterian, Independent, Quaker, and Anabaptist than by an Epis-
194

TRAVELS IN HOLLAND
copalian only. . . . For till it be the interest of the farmer to destroy
his flock, to starve the horse he rides and the cow that gives him
milk, it cannot be the interest of England to let a great part of her
sober and useful inhabitants be destroyed about things that concern
another world."

In conclusion, he says the most important safe
guard is to prevent papists passing themselves off as
Protestants. The test oath was insufficient because
Quakers could not take an oath, and thus were un
fairly put in a position of being suspected of popery,
and the papists, as the last six months had shown,
could get dispensation to take any kind of oath,
whether it was against their religion or not So he
offers a new kind of test, which is not a test oath,
but a test affirmation which can be taken by Quakers
and everybody who is an honest protestant.
He gives a form of this test affirmation, which is
certainly a stiff one. The affiant declares, "in good
conscience and in the sight of God and man," that
Charles II. is the lawful king, that the Pope has no
authority to depose him or absolve his subjects from
their allegiance, or give them the right to conspire
against him or assassinate him ; and then the affiant
goes on denying all the important doctrines of Ro
manism, and closes by declaring that he does this
without any equivocation or mental reservation, and
that the words he uses are to be taken in their plain
and usual sense.
This test, Penn proposed, should be administered
through magistrates and parish officers to every one
in England ; and every one should be compelled to
take it annually on Ash Wednesday, the day " when
195

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
the Pope curses aU Protestants." It would, he argued,
unite the whole Protestant interest
It would certainly, if it had been adopted, have
put the Quakers in a much-improved position, and
relieved them from the violent accusations of the
rabble. Penn's serious proposal of it no doubt
helped to relieve to some extent both him and his
sect from the suspicion of Jesuitism.

196

XIV
THE HOLY EXPERIMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA
Almost immediately after Penn's first experience
in practical politics in his attempt to secure the elec
tion to Parliament of Algernon Sydney, he came
into still closer contact with political life and govern
ment His efforts for Sydney and his pamphlet
against popery were in the year 1679, and in 1680
we find him moving to obtain from the crown a grant
of the land in America which he was to call Penn
sylvania. At first sight this might seem to be a rather sud
den move on his part ; but there is reason to believe
that the project had been more or less in his mind
for twenty years. His biographers have usually as
signed to him the credit of originating this idea of
establishing a Quaker colony. But the idea was not
at all original with him ; and if it originated with any
one person, it was with George Fox. Even the tract
of land selected for the colony was not of Penn's
choosing, for both Fox and the Quakers had had
their attention directed towards it for a long time.
Almost as soon as they were conscious of being a
sect the Quakers had thought of establishing a
refuge for themselves in the American wilderness.
Suffering so severely from the laws made against
them, it was natural that they should have this
197

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
thought The Puritans had gone out to Massachu
setts, where they were having their own way in re
ligious matters, and the Roman Catholics, under the
leadership of Lord Baltimore, had gone to Maryland.
But where should the Quakers go ? They must
have a territory and colony of their own, for those
of them who had gone to Massachusetts were being
whipped at the cart's taU, and four of them were
hung. They were worse off in Massachusetts than
in England. They could not get land anywhere in
New England. They did not care to go among the
Churchmen in Virginia, nor among the Roman Catho
lics in Maryland ; and the Dutch held New York.
As early almost as the year 1650, certainly as
early as 1656 or 1657, George Fox had fixed his
thoughts on that great region which lay unoccupied
just north of Maryland and behind New Jersey. It
had not been taken by anybody in particular, be
cause it was some distance back from the sea-shore.
But a great river, which the Dutch had called the
Zuydt, the Swedes New Swedeland Stream, and the
English the Delaware, led up to it, and it was said
to be easy enough of access.
There was a Quaker in those days named Josiah
Cole, who had already travelled in America and had
been among the Indian tribes. Fox consulted with
him, and when Cole made a second journey to
America, in 1660, he was commissioned to treat with
the Susquehanna Indians, who were supposed to be
the red lords of that great space north of Maryland.
Cole went among these Indians, and told them his
errand. But they were at war with other tribes, and
198

THE HOLY EXPERIMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA
WiUiam Fuller, a Maryland Quaker of much influ
ence, who must be rehed upon to make the pur
chase, was absent Nothing could be done at that
time, and in November, 1660, Cole reported this
result to Fox in a letter, which may stUl be read in
Bowden's " History of the Friends in America." *
Although nothing could be done, the subject was
no doubt debated among the followers of Fox in
England, and in the year after Cole's letter was
written the discussion must have reached the ears
of Penn, who was then a student at Christ Church
College ; for twenty years afterwards he writes, " I
had an opening of joy as to these parts in the year
1 66 1 at Oxford."
It was about this same time that Penn received
his first impulse towards the Quaker faith, from the
preaching of Thomas Loe, and at the meetings
where he heard Loe he must have heard also of the
plan for a Quaker colony in America, so the two
great things of his life, his religion and his colony,
were suggested to his mind at almost the same time,
or at least within a year of each other, while he was
a youth at college.
The thought of starting life and religion afresh in
the virgin forests of America would appeal strongly
to Penn and carry him away into boundless enthu
siasm. It must have touched him deeply when it
first entered his young mind. He says it was an
"opening of joy," and we can easily fancy how a

* Vol. i. p. 389. See also Pennsylvania : Colony and Common
wealth, p. 2. 199

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
college boy's imagination would run riot with such
a suggestion. Even if he had not been religious,
the thought of subduing nature and the adventures
of the wUderness would arouse the strongest energies
of a soul that was naturally vigorous and manly.
But when, in addition, his rather over-serious moral
nature saw the vision of leading out a persecuted
people to liberty and happiness, delivering them
from imprisonment, tithes, and corruption, and estab
lishing for them, far from contamination, the primi
tive religion of Christ, we can understand why he
describes it as "an opening of joy."
In the year 1680, when he began to negotiate
with the crown for the great tract of land he had
dreamed of when a boy and which the Quakers had
so long hoped to secure, he had already had some
experience in colonial business. New Jersey had
been divided into two colonies, — East Jersey, be
longing to Sir George Carteret, and West Jersey,
belonging to Lord Berkeley. West Jersey was sold,
in 1775, by Lord Berkeley to John Fenwick, in trust
for Edward Byllinge. Both Fenwick and Byllinge
were Quakers, and getting into a dispute about the
property, called upon Penn to act as arbitrator. The
Quakers were very much opposed to law-suits among
their own people, and wherever it was possible
peace-makers, as they were called, settled all dis
putes. Fenwick was dissatisfied with Penn's decision, and
Penn seems to have been very uneasy lest there
might still be a law-suit, which would bring discredit
on their faith. The efforts he used to bring about

THE HOLY EXPERIMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA
a settlement seem to show that the avoidance of law
suits was at that time of prime importance. He
pleaded hard with Fenwick to " prevent the mischief
that will certainly follow divulging it in Westminster
Hall," and at last he was successful.
Byllinge, however, soon went bankrupt, and trans
ferred his interest in West Jersey to Penn and some
others to hold as trustees for the benefit of his
creditors. Penn wets active in managing the prop
erty, secured a definite boundary line between it
and East Jersey, and appears to have assisted in
drawing up, in 1676, a constitution for its govern
ment In this constitution religious liberty is established,
as we should naturally expect in any constitution
Penn or the Quakers were concerned with, and fair
trial by jury is also secured, for Penn had suffered
much from the violation of fair trial in England.
Many Quakers went out to West Jersey, and their
descendants still form a respectable element in the
population. So Penn was instrumental in establish
ing somewhat of a refuge for his people in West
Jersey five or six years before he received the grant
of Pennsylvania.
Sir George Carteret, who owned East Jersey, died
in 1679, and by his will left directions that his prov
ince should be sold ; and Penn and eleven others be
came the purchasers. They soon admitted twelve
more to share the property with them, so that there
were twenty-four proprietors. They appointed as
governor Robert Barclay, who had become a Quaker
about the same time as Penn, and he was now a
201

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
theologian and the author of the book known as
" Barclay's Apology," which has usually been re
garded as the ablest of all statements of Quaker
doctrine. But he never went to the province. He
remained in England and sent out deputies to gov
ern in his name. Under this Quaker governor and
the Quaker proprietors a few of the sect were added
to the population.
But neither East nor West Jersey became Quaker
strongholds. It seemed to be impossible to make
them such. They never realized the original ex
pectations of Fox and others when they had looked
upon the land north of Maryland as the future home
of their faith in America. There were few elements
of prosperity in the Jerseys. The soil was not so
fertile and the general characteristics not so attrac
tive as the vast forests and mountain ranges of Penn
sylvania. Penn's interest in New Jersey was slight,
and soon disappeared altogether from his life ; for in
1702 the proprietors of both the Jerseys surrendered
their rights to Queen Ann, and henceforth the two
provinces were one under the direct rule of the
crown. The original plan which Fox had entertained of
securing the land north of Maryland having re
mained in abeyance for twenty years, there must
have been some special reason why Penn deter
mined to act upon it and carry it out in the year
1680. But of this reason we are not informed, and
can only conjecture.
Possibly in the four or five years since 1676,
during which he had been concerned with the man-
202

THE HOLY EXPERIMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA
agement of the Jerseys, he not only learned of
the vast superiority of the land which lay the other
side of the Delaware, but he saw that the Jerseys
could never be made into a real Quaker colony, the
sort of colony which Fox and the early Quakers
had originally designed. No doubt he also saw
that if this original design was ever to be carried
into effect some one man must take hold of it and
push it through with enthusiasm. He was rich,
burdened with no cares except those he chose to
create, and he had inherited a valuable friendship
and influence with the king and with the Duke of
York, who was heir to the throne.
Why wait longer ? After thirty years of struggle,
ardent advocacy of liberty of conscience, and heroic
endurance of imprisonment, the Quakers, though
greatly increased in numbers, were as much perse
cuted as ever. They had failed to convince the
governing powers that they ought to be let alone ;
they had failed to establish as the universal practice
of England the old Anglo-Saxon freedom. Why
should not some of them go where they could cre
ate such freedom as they chose ?
There was also a little circumstance which might
be a great help. Admiral Penn had never received
all his salary as a naval officer from the crown, and
he had lent the crown money for naval purposes.
This debt now amounted to ;^ 16,000, not a large
sum in our times for a government to pay ; but
Charles II. was always in want of money. He had
an expensive court, and expensive favorites and
mistresses to keep amused, and was, indeed, so
203

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
straightened that he had sacrificed his own honor
and the honor of his countiy for the sake of receiv
ing secret assistance from the King of France. He
would never pay Penn ;^i6,ooo in money. He
would keep putting it off, no matter how urgently
pressed. But he might be willing to pay it in wUd
uninhabited land. A suggestion to that effect would
strike him at once as a good bargain. He would get
rid of a troublesome debt without paying a penny,
he wOuld strengthen the colonial possessions of the
empire, and get rid of many thousands of Quakers
who were always complaining and making an ex
pensive trouble at home.
It would be interesting if we knew exactly when
and how it occurred to Penn to make this use of the
debt he had inherited from his father. But we have
no details at this time. We only know that in 1680
he sent a petition to the king asking that in payment
of the debt of ;£'i6,ooo he be given a tract of land
in America lying north of Maryland, "bounded on
the east by the Delaware River, on the west limited
as Maryland, and northward to extend as far as
plan table."
Penn must have previously discussed this grant
with the leading Quakers, and discussed also his future
plans for settling and governing his province. It is
impossible to think of his not doing so ; and he
must also have sounded some of the people at court
and gauged the probability of success for his pe
tition. We know from his subsequent letters that
he secured the assistance and influence of Lord
North and Lord Sunderland. 204

THE HOLY EXPERIMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA
When the petition came before a committee of
the king's privy council there was considerable dis
cussion about the boundaries, whether they would
not conflict with the lines of some of the New Eng
land colonies whose charters extended them west
ward to the Pacific Ocean, and there was also some
difficulty about the boundaries on Maryland. The
committee settled all these questions to their own
satisfaction ; but the settlement was by no means
permanent No colony was ever given boundaries
which occasioned so much dispute. Terrible con
troversies and disastrous petty warfare followed be
cause Pennsylvania was believed to cut off the
western extension of Connecticut The boundary
on Maryland was litigated for over seventy years.
But it is needless to discuss these questions here, as
I have treated them very fully in another book.*
Suffice it to say now that through an unfortunate
mistake the apparent boundaries of Maryland had
thirty years before been made to include a large
part of what is now Pennsylvania ; and through an
equally unfortunate mistake the apparent boundaries
of Pennsylvania were made to include nearly the
whole of Maryland. If the Maryland boundaries
were right, Philadelphia was a Maryland town, and
if the Pennsylvania boundaries were right, Baltimore
was a Pennsylvania town.
But independently of all these questions, the tract
of land which Penn and his heirs finally received,
and which it was the intention of the king that they
* The Making of Pennsylvania, chaps, x. and xi.
205

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
should receive, was an enormous one, containing over
forty thousand square miles of territory, the largest
tract that had ever been given in America to a single
individual, and, as we now know, the richest in natural
resources of coal, iron, petroleum, and a fertile soil.
It was the only royal grant in America that was
bought with money. In all other instances when a
province was given to a single individual, as to Lord
Baltimore, or to a corporation, as in the case of
Massachusetts, no price was paid. The agreement
of the people to risk their lives and fortune in set
tling the province was supposed to be a sufficient
consideration for the grant But Penn paid what
was in effect a very large sum by agreeing to accept
his grant in extinguishment of the debt due him
from the crown. This partially explains the vast
size of his province. As he was offering a larger
consideration than any one before him had offered,
he was certainly entitled to receive more land than
any of his predecessors had received. Then, too,
we must remember that both the king and the Duke
of York felt particularly bound to Penn for his
father's sake, and had promised the father that
they would aid and protect the son. There was
surely no other Quaker whose circumstances and
hereditary influence would have enabled him to ob
tain for his people such a huge and valuable territory.
On the 4th of March, 1681, the charter received
the king's signature, and Penn was lord of a domain
considerably larger than Ireland, and lacking only
about six thousand square miles of being as large as
England. 206

THE HOLY EXPERIMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA
" This day my country was confirmed to me under the great seal
of England, with large powers and privileges, by the name of Penn
sylvania; a name the king would give it in honor of my father. I
chose New Wales, being as this a pretty hilly country, but Penn be
ing Welsh for a head, as Pennanmoire in Wales, and Penrith in
Cumberland, and Penn in Buckinghamshire, the highest land in
England, called this Pennsylvania, which is the high or head wood
lands ; for I proposed when the secretary, a Welshman, refused to
have it called New Wales, Sylvania, and they added Penn to it; and
though I much opposed it and went to the king to have it struck out
and altered, he said it was past and would take it upon him ; nor
could twenty guineas move the under secretary to vary the name ;
for I feared lest it should be looked on as a vanity in me, and not as
a respect in the king, as it truly was, to my father, whom he often
mentions with praise." (Hazard's Annals, 500.)
The charter was modelled largely on the one
granted to Lord Baltimore for Maryland fifty years
before, and was thoroughly feudal in its nature. Penn
was in somewhat the same position as the lord of an
old English manor. The land was all his, and the
colonists were to be his tenants, paying him rent In
exchange for this great privilege he was to pay to
the king two beaver-skins annually, to be delivered
at the king's castle at Windsor, and the king was
also to receive a fifth of all the gold and silver that
should be found in the province.
Penn was, however, compelled by the charter, as
Lord Baltimore had been compelled by his charter,
to give his colonists free government. The laws were
to be made by him with the assent of the people or
their delegates, which, translated into actual practice,
gave the people the right to elect a legislative body,
and gave Penn a veto on such acts as this legislative
body should pass. He had also the power to ap
point magistrates, judges, and other officers, and to
207

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
grant pardons for crimes. By the charter he was
the perpetual governor of the colony ; but he usu
ally remained in England, and appointed a deputy
governor to exercise his authority. In brief, the
people controlled the legislative part of the govern
ment, while Penn, through his power to appoint all
officials, controlled the executive.
About a month after he received his charter, he
commissioned his cousin, WiUiam Markham, a son
of Admiral Penn's sister, to go out to Pennsylvania,
take possession of it in his name, and, untU a regular
government could be established, rule over the scat
tered families of Swedes, English, and Dutch who
were living along the banks of the Delaware. Mark-
ham reached the Delaware about the first of July,
1 68 1, and made his head-quarters at a place called
Upland, about fifteen miles below the present site of
Philadelphia. He remained there in charge of affairs
more than a year, for Penn did not arrive in his
province until October, 1682.
In the mean time Penn secured an addition to
his territory. Learning from Markham that Lord
Baltimore disputed his boundaries, he obtained, by a
grant from the Duke of York, the land now included
in the State of Delaware. Penn's object in getting
this additional land was to secure control of the
whole western shore of the Delaware River and Bay
from his province down to the ocean, and at the
same time to strengthen himself against Lord Balti
more, whose claims, according to Markham's account,
cut far into the southern half of Pennsylvania.
Penn also, before he started for his province, ad-
208

THE HOLY EXPERIMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA
vertised for settlers, and explained fully the condi
tions and prospects. At the same time he warned
the public, in his careful, conscientious way, that they
must not rush inconsiderately into this new enter
prise. They would have to endure a winter in
Pennsylvania before they could enjoy a summer, and
be willing to go two or three years without the com
forts and conveniences of England. But, on the
other hand, the planting of colonies, he said, was
great and glorious work, and he went on to show
how it would strengthen England, instead of weak
ening her, as some supposed.
Those who wished to come to him could have
land by paying ;£"ioo for five thousand acres, and
annually thereafter a shilling rent for every hundred
acres. Those who had not ready money to pay in
this way could have two hundred acres or less at
the rent of a shilling per acre. They should have
their own legislature ; no laws should be passed or
money raised without the people's consent ; and
they should have all the British rights and liberties.
Penn was, indeed, very busy with preparations
during the year Markham waited for him. He
would have started immediately, but could not He
wished to take out with him a large number of
settlers. Many had agreed to go, but they wanted
time to settle their home affairs. He was expecting
people from France, HoUand, and Scotland, as well
as from England. In a letter written at this time
he speaks of his enterprise as " an holy experiment,"
a phrase which has now for a long time been applied
to it by the Quakers.
14 209

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
He must have enjoyed the preparations, and
looked forward with delight and impatience to the
day when he could plunge with his people into the
wilderness. And here it should be said that he in
tended that his province should be profitable. He
intended to increase his own and his family's fortune,
to widen his influence through wealth and become a
man of power in the world, the feudal ruler of a
great and prosperous province, which was large
enough to be an empire.
This was not inconsistent with calling his enter
prise " an holy experiment," nor with his intention
to establish a refuge for the people of his faith. He
intended to accomplish both ; to accomplish, indeed,
everything ; to prove that complete religious liberty
was not only right and Christian, but profitable and
advantageous in every way. He would show how
people would flourish under it in agriculture, com
merce, and all the arts and refinements of life. He
would show that government could be carried on
without war and without oaths, that the pure, origi
nal, primitive Christianity of the times of the apos
tles could be maintained without an established
church, without a hireling ministry, without cruelty
or persecution, without ridiculous dogmas or un
manly ritual, simply by its own innate power, the
spirit of Christ, the inward Hght He would do this
through the aid of his followers, the Quakers, who
would never desert him, through his own sincerity
of purpose and energy of mind, through his feudal
ownership of a vast domain, and through the power
which wealth would give.

THE HOLY EXPERIMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA
It was a stupendous plan, an heroic grasp for a
whole world of light and truth by one who had been
Hving for centuries in darkness ; for Penn was typical
of his time ; he was the voice of his time crying
passionately, recklessly, for light after the long night
of the Middle Ages.
Men came to him at this time, and said that they
would organize a company and give him ;^6ooo, if
he would give to them the monopoly of aU the trade
with the Indians in his province, but he refused it
" As the Lord gave it [his province] me over all and great opposi
tion, ... I would not abuse his love, nor act unworthy of his provi
dence, and so defile what came to me clean. No; let the Lord
guide me by his wisdom, and preserve me to honor His name and
serve His truth and people, that an example and standard may be set
up to the nations; there may be room there, though none here."
He had peculiar opinions about the Indians,
opinions which were very pecuhar in his time, but
shared with him by the Quakers. He accepted the
law of that age, that Christians could take the land
of heathen savages ; but he added to it that the
Christians must pay for every rod of the land, and
in their trade and dealings with the Indians treat
them with perfect fairness and honor. This idea of
scrupulously paying the Indians for their land was
not original with him, but suggested, as he tells us,
by the Bishop of London.* It was easy enough to
write or repeat a philanthropic proposition like this.
Many have done so. But Penn lived up to it
He prepared a paper called "conditions or con-
* Buck's Penn in America, p. 127.
211

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
cessions," by which his province should be gov
erned until a regular government could be estab
lished. These conditions provided for the survey
of a city, laying out of roads, and the last part
attempted to regulate intercourse with the Indians
in such a way that they should not be defrauded.
Trade with them was to be openly and honestly con
ducted. A colonist who wronged an Indian was to
be punished as if he had wronged a white man.
Disputes between colonists and Indians were to be
settled by a jury of twelve, six of whom should be
Indians. He objected to giving any one a monopoly of
trade with the Indians, not only because the Indians
might be defrauded, but because the monopoly
would be unfair. For the same reason he refused
large prices for particular points of advantage in the
province, because he wished to treat all alike. Some
of the people of his own faith tried to drive special
bargains with him for land ; but he refused, and de
clared that all must buy at the same rates. One
who had been thus disappointed reports in a letter,
" I believe he truly does aim more at justice and
righteousness, and spreading of truth than at his
own particular gain."
He succeeded in getting some ships started with
emigrants, although he was unable to accompany
them ; and in the autumn after Markham started he
sent out three commissioners to fix upon a site for a
town, and treat with the Indians. From his instruc
tions to these commissioners we learn how he was
planning his great experiment, and what a pleasure

THE HOLY EXPERIMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA
it must have been to imagine to himself an ideal
Quaker town, and send men to lay it out in the fresh
wilderness. He tells them to sound all the creeks on the Penn
sylvania side of the Delaware " in order to settle a
great town, and be sure to make your choice where
it is most navigable, high, dry, and healthy ; that is,
where most ships may best ride, of deepest draught
of water, if possible to load or unload at the bank or
key side, without boating or lighterage." It would
be well, he tells them, if the creek coming into the
river where they build the town be navigable for
boats up into the country.
This was his first conception of Philadelphia ; and
his commissioners had no trouble in locating it ; for
we learn from other sources that the scattered fami
lies that lived along the river had long known where
was the best site for a great town. The advantages
Penn mentions were, on the whole, best combined at
a spot a few miles north of the mouth of the Schuyl
kill, which was the sort of creek he wanted, naviga
ble for boats up into the country.
He has told us in a passage already quoted why
the province was given its name, but we have no
explanation of why Philadelphia was so called. The
word means brotherly love, but I do not think that
was the reason. It was the name of an ancient city
in Asia Minor where one of the seven churches
of the primitive Christians was established ; and as
the Quakers were attempting to return to primitive
Christianity, this would be a strong reason for giving
the name. 213

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
He goes on to tell the commissioners how to lay
out the land, to "be impartially just and courteous"
to any old settlers they found on it, to " be tender
of offending the Indians, and hearken by honest
spies, if you can hear that anybody inveigles them
not to sell, or to stand off and raise the value upon
you." He arranges the figure of the town with uni
form streets, places the store-houses and markets
where he thinks they should be, and directs that
they should select a place in the middle of the line
of houses facing the river " for the situation of my
house." He must have been as happy as a boy
building a toy city, in the middle of which he was
to live like a patriarch surrounded by his people.
" Let every house be placed, if the person pleases, in the middle
of its plat, as to the breadth way of it, that so there may be ground on
each side for gardens or orchards, or fields, that it may be a green
country town, which will never be burnt and always wholesome."
Then the commissioners were to see that " no vice
or evil conversation go uncomplained of or unpun
ished in any ; that God be not provoked to wrath
against the country." He sent an excellent letter
to the Indians, whom he told of the Great Spirit
who had made both the white man and the red.

" Now the great God hath been pleased to make me concerned in
your part of the world ; and the king of the country where I live
hath given me a great province therein ; but I desire to enjoy it with
your love and consent, that we may always live together as neigh
bors and friends ; else what would the great God do to us who hath
made us (not to devour and destroy one another, but) to live soberly
and kindly together in the world ?"
214

THE HOLY EXPERIMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA
While he was making all these preparations he
did not forget George Fox, and set aside for him a
gift of twelve hundred and fifty acres of land. He
had also other things to think of besides Pennsyl
vania. His writings were during this year all pub
lished together in folio, several of his essays, notably
"No Cross, No Crown," having reached a second edi
tion. He was obliged, at the same time, to resist a
defection caused by John WUkinson and John Story,
who objected to the increasing strictness of disci
phne. They protested against the increasing control
over the conduct and conversation of individuals
who, they said, should be left more to themselves,
each one being guided by the divine light within
him. The Quaker discipline had, indeed, become
very strict There was a complete system of watch
ing and reporting on the conduct of members, and
those of unsuitable behavior were disowned. Wil
kinson and Story seem to have maintained that there
should be no disowning. The church should merely
advise or remonstrate. To attempt more than this
was to drift into ecclesiasticism.
It was, indeed, a delicate question to decide how
far the liberty which the Quakers had been so earnest
in advocating should be limited and controlled. Penn
wrote on the question a pamphlet called " The State
of Liberty Spiritual." Like Fox, he was always in
favor of the discipline, without which, he said, there
would be nothing but confusion.
It would never do, he said, to accept Wilkinson's
and Stores plea, " What hast thou to do with me ?
Leave me to my freedom and to the grace of God
215

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
in myself" One might say I see no evU in "paying
tithes to a hireling priest ;" another, I see no evil in
"hiding in times of persecution," or in "marrying
by the priest," or in "keeping my shop shut upon
the world's holidays and mass days," or in " declining
public testimony in suffering times ;" and so the
society would be broken up and scattered.
" The power that Christ gave to his church was this, that offenders
after the first and second admonition (not repenting) should be re
jected : not imprisoned, plundered, banished, or put to death."
At that very time there was plenty of temptation
to hide from persecution ; for the magistrates, espe
cially in Bristol, were bestirring themselves, meet
ings were broken up, heavy fines inflicted, and men,
women, and even children, led away to prison. There
was more need than ever for a refuge in Pennsyl
vania. But Penn must pause in the delightful work
of planning the details of that ideal province and
follow his more usual avocation of comforting and
assisting those who were suffering under the law.
He had become such an important man that he had
been for many years free from arrest and annoyance.
But now, although he was enough in favor with the
king to receive the gift of an empire of land, he
was ordered by a constable to stop preaching when
he rose in the meeting on Gracechurch Street He
paid no attention to the order ; and it is said that
the constable, although supported by soldiers, was
so affected by the solemnity of the meeting and by
what he heard that he made no attempt to interfere.

216

XV
GREAT CARE WITH THE CONSTITUTION AND LAWS
Before Penn sailed for Pennsylvania he had still
another task to perform. He must prepare a form
of government to be adopted by himself and the
people of his province, and this he did in the spring
of 1682.
He consulted about it with his friend Algernon
Sydney, and there has been some discussion as to
the share Sydney had in framing it Penn's biog
rapher, Dixon, gives him a large share, saying that
it was at his instance that Penn adopted an essen
tially democratic basis, and that so continuous was
Sydney's aid that it is impossible to separate his
work from Penn's. But there is no evidence that
justifies such an assertion. The charter which Penn
had received from the crown compelled him to
adopt a democratic basis, for it required that he
should share with the people the power of making
laws. All we know positively of the aid given by Sydney
is contained in a letter to him by Penn upbraiding
him for abusing the Constitution. Sydney had been
reported, Penn says, of " saying I had a good
country, but the worst laws in the world, not to be
endured or lived under, and that the Turk was not
more absolute than I." This had almost broken
217

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
Penn's regard for him, and the letter was written to
restore friendship and remind Sydney that at least
one of his suggestions had been accepted.
This suggestion had been to the effect that the
Constitution as prepared was too positive, and ap
peared as an act of Penn's which his people were
bound to accept rather than a proposal which he
was offering for their acceptance. Penn did not
think that his constitution was worded in this positive
way ; but as he fully intended that it should be only
a proposal for his people's acceptance, he altered it
in accordance with Sydney's objection, so that there
should be no doubt on that point
It appears, also, from this letter that Sydney had
prepared a draft of a constitution, submitted it to
Penn, and then taken it back to finish and polish;
but whether Penn ever made any use of it does not
appear. It would seem as if too much had been made of
Penn's relations with Sydney. They have been
spoken of in Penn's biographies as devoted friends,
and in Pennsylvania their association with each other
has been idealized, and Sydney has been regarded
as the champion of liberty and as a much greater
man than he really was. It became the fashion at
one time to name children after him, and there are
StiU Algernon Sydneys to be found among some of
the prominent famUies in PhUadelphia.
Penn supported him for Parhament and consulted
him sHghtly about the constitution, but beyond
that he does not seem to have been intimate with
him, and there is no evidence at aU of an ideal
218

CARE WITH THE CONSTITUTION AND LAWS
friendship. Sydney was what in those days was
caUed a republican ; that is to say, he wished to
abolish the British monarchy and establish in its
place some sort of republic or commonwealth. He
was a courageous, but a very violent and reckless
man. He had no constructive or statesman-like
qualities ; but he had the merit of not being much
of a trimmer, and he would not fawn and flatter
when the tide turned against him, as most people
did at that time.
He was executed for taking part in the Rye House
Plot shortly after Penn went out to Pennsylvania,
and it was his death that made him famous. There
was only one witness against him, and the law re
quired two. But Judge Jeffieys was equal to the
occasion. He said that one witness and a circum
stance were equivalent to two witnesses ; and the
circumstance against Sydney was that he had written
an unpublished manuscript against monarchy. The
outcry that was raised against this shocking injus
tice, and the manner in which Sydney bore his fate
kept echoing among the lovers of liberty for more
than a hundred years, and fully account for what
now seems to have been an over-estimate of his
importance. Penn, it may be said in passing, was not a repub
lican. So far as we can judge, he seems to have
been usually in favor of a limited constitutional
monarchy as the best government for England ; but
in his relations with James II. he seemed very
much inclined to dispense with the limitations and
all constitutional restraint 219

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
In preparing his constitution for Pennsylvania he
consulted with many besides Sydney. We know
now what was not known to his previous biog
raphers, that he consulted with Benjamin Furly,
who was an Englishman from Colchester, who had
gone to live in Holland. He became a prosperous
merchant at Rotterdam, was a patron of letters, a
collector of rare books, a writer of some little
celebrity, and very much interested in all separatist
sects, especially the Quakers, whose faith he seems
to have for a time adopted. His house was the re
sort of learned and distinguished men, and, among
others, of Algernon Sydney, and also Locke, the
philosopher, who had been at college with Penn at
Christ Church. Furly had welcomed and travelled
with Penn and his companions when they made their
missionary journey to Holland and Germany. He
interested himself to procure German emigrants for
Pennsylvania, and was, in effect, Penn's agent on the
continent* Penn sent him the final draft of the constitution,
and must also have submitted to him a previous
draft, for Furly compares the final draft with a pre
vious draft, which he appears to have had in his
possession. He wrote a long criticism on the final
draft, making some forty or fifty suggestions, which
we need not here describe in detail, because Penn
rejected them all. In one point at least, however,
Furly proved to be right Penn had given to the
upper house of the legislature, or provincial council,
* Penna. Mag. of Hist., vol. xix, p. 277.
220

CARE WITH THE CONSTITUTION AND LAWS
as he called it, the sole power of originating laws.
Furly said that the lower house should also have this
right ; and when the constitution had been in force
for some years, this change was made after repeated
demands for it by the people.
Judging from all this, from the internal evidence
of the Constitution itself, and from some other evi
dence which we are about to mention, we can say
that Penn consulted very widely and earnestly, and
took the greatest pains in preparing his constitution,
or frame, as he called it He was evidently deter
mined to have for his holy experiment the best
government possible, and to obtain the assistance of
the most advanced and enlightened thought on the
subject Exactly what suggestions he obtained from
different people cannot now be determined. Ap
parently he did not take many, preferring to work
out the problem in his own way, using the sugges
tions he received merely as hints to perfect his own
plans, without radically altering them.
Among the Penn papers in the Historical Society
of Pennsylvania are a collection of about twenty
different drafts of the constitution which he prepared
or had prepared before he got one which entirely
satisfied him. These drafts have been arranged in
an order which shows the gradual development of
his ideas, and also, we may perhaps say, of the ideas
of those who assisted him, from the first crude sug
gestions down to the finished document which was
finally adopted.
None of them are entirely in his handwriting.
They are usually very neatly written, some appar-

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
ently by clerks and others, possibly by persons who
were offering them as suggestions ; and some of
them are arranged in diagram form, evidently for the
sake of greater clearness in studying and reflecting
on the subject Many of them are interlined and
marked in various ways in Penn's handwriting.
The first one is exceedingly crude, and creates a
government by a landed aristocracy. The legisla
ture is to be called the senate, and consists of two
houses. The lower house is to be elected by the
renters ; but the upper house is to be hereditary,
and composed of the " first fifty proprietors or
lords" and their heirs. The baronage of any one
of them is to cease when his land is reduced below
two thousand acres, and the rest are to choose
another in his place. This House of Lords is to be
always in being, to sit and adjourn at its pleasure,
and " to appoint all officers by baUot, in church and
state." This would mean that the Quaker faith or
some religion would be established by law, so we
can hardly believe that Penn was the author of this
draft. It must have been the suggestion of one of
his friends.
The next draft in order is in the same handwriting
as the first, and is marked on the back " Darnal's
Draught ;" so, presumably, the first one was also by
him. But this second one is much more advanced.
The hereditary quality in the upper house has dis
appeared, and this house is to be elected four out
of every county by the proprietors of the county.
The governor is to have a treble vote in this body,
and various detailed provisions follow. The two

CARE WITH THE CONSTITUTION AND LAWS
houses are to be called the Parliament, and the
governor is to have a council of twenty-four, which
he is to select out of forty-eight nominated by the
two houses. A system of law courts is also provided
for, and there are other details showing that more
thought had been given to the subject
The next draft is in an entirely different hand
writing, apparently the formal handwriting of a clerk.
It reads as if some one had taken the provisions of
the previous draft and written them in other lan
guage, making changes and additions. Many of
the additions would belong in laws rather than in a
constitution, and, in fact, several of them, such as
making all prisons work-houses, registering deeds,
and so on, were afterwards put in the laws. There
are many interlineations on this draft, apparently in
the handwriting of Penn. At the end of it there is
a provision, afterwards adopted, that the constitution
should not be altered except by the consent of the
governor and six parts in seven of the Parliament
Then comes a draft in a new hand, evidently the
writing of a well-accomplished man, not a clerk,
which suggests that during the infancy or the first
seven years of the colony there should be a govern
ment by a landed aristocracy, which after the seven
years had expired might become more Hberal.
Of the sixteen other drafts which follow we need
not give the details, because they are for the most
part variations and enlargements of those already
given. The idea that the upper house, though
elected by the people, must be composed of large
landholders, clings to nearly aU of them. Penn con-
223

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
tinues to annotate and interline. Some of the drafts
are written in formal clerkly hands, and others in
hands like what we might suppose would be the
scholarly handwriting of some of Penn's friends.
They become longer and more complicated as they
progress, until at last we come to several which are
almost the same as the one finally adopted.
The one adopted had prefixed to it a preamble
on the divine origin of government and on govern
ment in general, rather wordy and diffuse, except
for one or two apt sentences, which we have already
quoted in the first chapter. When he came to the
actual details of his government we find him cling
ing quite closely to the forms that were already in
practical working in the other colonies in America.
He has a governor, a governor's council, and an as
sembly of the people, just as in the constitutions
developed in New England. The people are to
elect the council, as in the New England charters,
and it is called the provincial council.
The variations on the New England type were
first of all that the council was to be very large and
contain seventy-two members. In the other colonies
the council was seldom composed of more than ten
or twenty. This enlargement of the council had
appeared all through the drafts, where it was some
times enlarged into an upper house of landed pro
prietors, or even into an hereditary house of lords.
Even as finally arranged, it was more of an upper
house of legislature than a governor's council, and
it was given the sole right of originating legislation.
The assembly of the people could merely accept or
224

CARE WITH THE CONSTITUTION AND LAWS
reject its proposals. In this notion of developing
the governor's councU into an upper house of such
importance that the lower house would be com
pletely dwarfed and insignificant, Penn may have
been influenced by the constitution which his college-
mate Locke prepared for the government of the
Carolinas. It was not a successful device, this excessive en
largement of the council or upper house. It worked
badly in practice, and was so completely abolished
that during most of the colonial period Pennsyl
vania's form of government provided for no gov
ernor's council at all, and no upper house of the
legislature. It cannot be said that this constitution of Penn's,
after all the pains he had taken with it, was an un
usually good one. Most of its essential qualities
were not different from those of other colonial gov
ernments in America, and where they were different,
as in the case of the governor's council or upper
house, it was not for the better. His governor's
council, which had the extraordinary privilege of
originating legislation, and was the most important
legislative body, had also attached to it the execu
tive functions of guarding the peace and safety, lay
ing out towns, modelling public buUdings, inspecting
the treasury, and establishing schools. Such a con
fusion of legislative and executive powers was even
in that time a monstrosity in politics.
His constitution had in it, however, some interest
ing provisions. It was the first constitution which
provided a method for its own alteration and amend-
15 225

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
ment This was quite an advanced thought. Locke
had provided that his Carolina constitution should
never be altered, and other constitutions and char
ters were silent on the subject But aU American
frames of government are now like Penn's, and con
tain a provision for their orderly amendment without
violence or revolution.
His method of impeachment, by which the lower
house was to bring the impeachment, and the upper
house to try it, was also new in American govern
ments, and is now universal among them. He was
also the first person to lay down the principle that
any law which violated the constitution should be
void. Constitution-makers had been much troubled
to provide a method to protect their constitutions
from violation, and had suggested various compli
cated devices. But Penn was the first one to hit
upon the foundation or first step in the true principle,
now the universal law in the United States, that the
unconstitutional law is void. If he had taken the
next step, and provided that the courts had power
to declare such a law void whenever it came before
them in a case, he would have been the inventor of
the complete system as we now have it. But this
step of declaring such power in the courts was not
made until one hundred years after his time.*
Taken altogether, this constitution was very charac
teristic of Penn. It was an earnest, zealous attempt
to attain the best sort of government ; but, as often

* For a full discussion of these provisions in Penn's constitution,
see " The Evolution of the Constitution," pp. 60, 184.
226

CARE WITH THE CONSTITUTION AND LAWS
happened with him, some of its idealism was not suc
cessful ; and yet in the end, when all was said and
done, his untiring energy had furnished some ideas
and principles of permanent value.
The final draft of the constitution was dated April
25, 1682, and was agreed to by Penn and some of
those who were to go out to the province. They
also, a few weeks later, agreed upon certain laws
which, with the constitution, they intended to take
out to Pennsylvania and propose to the people there
for their acceptance. These laws contained many of
the advanced ideas which had for many years been
animating the Quakers.
All prisons were to be work-houses and places for
reformation and cleanliness, instead of the pestUen-
tial dungeons of idleness, dirt, and increasing vice
in which the Quakers had suffered so much wretched
ness and death in England. An attempt was made
to abolish lawyers and lessen litigation by providing
that every one might plead his own cause, and, as the
ancient adage has it, have a fool for a client. Trial
by jury was carefully estabhshed, but no oaths were
required. All children were to be taught some use
ful trade, a practice which the Quakers had long
advocated, but had not been able to enforce among
all their members, and they were equally unsuccess
ful in enforcing it by law in Pennsylvania.
Religious liberty was, of course, established in
these laws ; but only in the sense in which it was
then sometimes understood, and was confined to
those who believed in God. Atheists were not
within the sphere of its protection. Similarly, no
227

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
one could hold office in the government unless he
professed faith in Jesus Christ This was not the
first establishment of liberty of conscience in the
colonies. It had been established by the charter
of Rhode Island in 1663, in East Jersey in 1655,
by Locke's Carolina constitution of 1669, and in
West Jersey in 1677, and rather more liberally and
broadly than Penn established it, for it was not con
fined to those who believed in God.
The Quakers were very much opposed to capital
punishment, especially the wholesale capital punish
ment for minor offences prevailing at that time in
England. Accordingly, we find in Penn's code only
treason and murder deemed worthy of death ; and
the property of murderers, instead of being forfeited
to the state, was divided among the next of kin of
the sufferer and of the criminal.
Penn's biographers have usually given him the
credit of all these very advanced ideas ; but it is
hardly just, for they were the ideas of the Quakers,
and he was merely trying to put them in practice.
There were also laws which reflected the puritan
feeling among the Quakers. Cursing, swearing,
drunkenness, health-drinking, cards, dice, gambling,
stage-plays, scolding, and lying in conversation, were
strictly prohibited.

228

XVI
FIRST VISIT TO THE PROVINCE
At last, in the summer of 1682, a little more than
a year after he had received his charter, he was
ready to start for Pennsylvania. For his wife and
children he left a letter of farewell, which is the
most beautiful, perhaps the only really beautiful,
thing he ever wrote. The diffiiseness and dulness
of his usual style disappear entirely in this letter.
He does not labor to prove dry propositions, but
speaks with a reality and directness which seem to
show that his nature was strongest and at its best
when aroused by tenderness and affection. From
several passages in the letter one may infer that he
had learned from experience that this tender side
was also his weak side, and that he saw the danger
of wasting one's energy in friendships.
" Guard against encroaching friendships. Keep them at arm's end :
for it is giving away our power — age and self too, into the possession
of another; and that which might seem engaging in the beginning
may prove a yoke and burden too hard and heavy in the end.
Wherefore keep dominion over thyself, and let thy children, good
meetings, and Friends be the pleasure of thy life."
Another passage is of interest, not only for the
natural way in which it is expressed, but because it
gives us a glimpse of his wife, the pretty Guli whom
he had married with so much love ten years before.
229

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
" Therefore honor and obey her, my dear children, as your mother
and your father's love and delight ; nay love her too, for she loved
your father with a deep and upright love, choosing him above all her
many suitors ; and though she be of a delicate constitution and noble
spirit, yet she descended to the utmost tenderness and care for you,
performing the plainest acts of service to you in your infancy, as a
mother and a nurse too. I charge you before the Lord, honor and
obey, love and cherish, your dear mother.''
From this letter we learn also that Penn was at
that time already in debt He lived well, and his
family and the public projects in which he was ab
sorbed consumed more than his rather large income.
So he begs his wife to be saving. "Remember," he
says, "thy mother's example, when thy father's
pubhc spiritedness had wasted his estate (which is
my case)."
On the 30th of August he embarked at Deal, on
board the "Welcome," with about one hundred pas
sengers. About eight weeks afterwards, on the 24Lh
of October, he was within the capes of the Delaware.
It had been a long voyage, and, as not infrequently
happened in those days, small-pox broke out among
the passengers, and thirty died at sea.
Three day^ more were required for the "Wel
come" to beat up the river to New Castle, then the
capital, so to speak, or most important village on the
Delaware. It was within the territory the Duke of
York had given him, and he took possession of it
by the delivery of " turf and twig and water," as the
ancient feudal form prescribed.
On the 29th of the month he sailed stiU farther
up the river to Upland, where Markham was await
ing him, and this village was within the province of
230

FIRST VISIT TO THE PROVINCE
Pennsylvania. Soon after landing at Upland he
turned to his friend Pearson, saying that this was a
memorable event, and asking him to name the town ;
and Pearson gave it the name of his native city,
Chester, which it still retains.
We have very few details, and those mostly by
tradition, of Penn's doings at this time, and he was
not the sort of man to write detailed descriptions of
his pleasures. But it is difficult to conceive how
these first few weeks, and, indeed, the whole of this
first visit to his province, could have been anything
but unalloyed delight
The Delaware was not a river of grand panoramic
scenery, like the Hudson, but it had a soft beauty of
its own very attractive to some minds ; and the
complete wildness on every side, with the immense
quantities of game, could hardly fail to interest a
man like Penn. Its low shores on both sides were
mostly open meadows covered with rich grass or
reeds, and many of them were overflowed at every
high tide. Strips or points of moderately high land
covered with forest trees came down through these
meadows here and there to the water's edge. Nu
merous large creeks stretched backward into the
wild interior, tempting the explorer at every turn.
At Jow water the river was within its bed, but at
high tide it shot outward on every side over the
meadows, making vast lakes and bays bordered by
the nodding reeds and the points of forest
The charm of the landscape was the deep, rich
green of the grass, the dark, soft soil, where every
thing seemed fat and fertile, and where animal life
231

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
swarmed abundantly. When Penn arrived, at the
end of October, the wild ducks must have begun to
arrive on those waters. Philadelphia sportsmen
would now say that he was too late for the close of
the rail-bird season, and had also missed the reed-
birds, which a month or so before could have been
seen on the marshes in countless millions, rising in
great flocks which crossed the sun like a cloud.
There were, indeed, at that time prodigious quan
tities of game in the air, on the shore, and on the
surface of the water. The fish swam innumerable
not only in the river, but up every creek. The reach
of the river for many miles above and below Chester,
where he had stopped, was a famous feeding-ground
for the plover and snipe, as well as ducks and all
other sorts of birds. In those days there were great
flocks of white cranes on the meadows, which are
described as rising in clouds when a boat approached
the shore ; and in winter there were the wild swans,
which have long since been driven far to the south.
The woods back from the shore were full of deer,
which the Indians brought in every day and sold for
a few pipefuls of tobacco. Markham had written
to him, " Partridges I am cloyed with ; we catch
them by hundreds at a time." Wild turkeys, Mark
ham said, were also in great abundance, and very
easy to shoot The elk, which in our time have
never been heard of east of the Mississippi, were
then numerous in Eastern Pennsylvania.
The dikes which now protect many of these
meadows from daily overflow had not then been
constructed, although it is possible that the Swedish

FIRST VISIT TO THE PROVINCE
and Dutch settlers that were scattered along the
shores had constructed a few, or dug a few ditches.
These Swedes and Dutch, with a few English, had
for half a century been enjoying a very prosperous
existence, with their houses on the points of upland
and their cattle feeding on the meadows or roaming
back into the woods, which were then, it is said, very
free from undergrowth. They had made no attempt
to penetrate the interior forests. Their whole life
was centred on the river with what seemed to them
its inexhaustible supply of game and fish, and the
rich grass of its open meadows, where there were no
trees to be felled.
From a letter he afterwards wrote to the Free So
ciety of Traders, we know that Penn was interested
in all these things. He must have been very busy
asking questions and listening to glowing descrip
tions, as he looked out over the river with the mel
low tints of early autumn on its shores and its green
meadows changing into lakes at every tide. It is
impossible to suppose that his imagination was not
fired at the thought that the river was his and also
the dark unpenetrated green forest for three hun
dred miles to the westward.
He had said in his letter to his children, " Be sure
to see with your own eyes and hear with your own
ears," and he was prepared to follow this precept
He would see Pennsylvania with his own eyes.
His first excursion from Chester we know of only
by tradition. But there is no reason to doubt it,
and the excursion must necessarily have been made.
He was rowed, it is said, in a barge up the river past
233

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
old Tinicum, where the Swedish governor had lived,
and where the yacht clubs now anchor their white
fleets, past that point which we caU League Island,
where the war-vessels lie, and round the great bend
across the Horseshoe shoals, until the river grew
narrow and deeper, and against the western bank
it became very deep close to the shore, which was
the only really large and good piece of high land
with a deep-water frontage. The shore was covered
with pines and large hard-wood trees, chestnut, oak,
and walnut, with large quantities of laurel, on the
leaves of which the deer were fond of feeding, and
from the wood of which the Indians made spoons.
The bank was steep and high, but at one point a
stream flowed through it, deep at its mouth, with a
sandy beach, where a settler had already built his
cabin. This, said his commissioners, is the spot we
have selected for your city.
He landed at the mouth of the little stream ; Dock
Creek it was called, and it now flows in the sewer
beneath Dock Street He was delighted with the
situation, and readily consented that his city should
be there. Some settlers and Indians were at the
landing, it is said, to meet him. He sat down with
the Indians, so the story goes, and ate their roasted
acorns and hominy. Afterwards, when to amuse
him they showed him some of their sports, he re
newed his college days by joining them in a jumping
match, and, much to their surprise, outdid them all.
His commissioners had already planned the town,
and had probably marked out some of the streets on
the ground ; but he did not like the names they had
234

FIRST VISIT TO THE PROVINCE
given ; so he changed Pool to Walnut Street for the
sake of the trees that grew near it, and in the same
way Winn was changed to Chestnut Street ; changes
which we cannot say were good ones. The name
High Street, which he gave to the present Market
Street, was, however, a pleasant name, and should
have been retained.
He planned the square at Broad and Market
Streets, now occupied by the City Hall, but in
stead of its present size, he intended that it should
contain ten acres. He planned also the other four
squares known as Washington, Franklin, Logan, and
Rittenhouse. In the main, the city is to-day as he
intended it should be. He intended that there
should be a wide boulevard along the Delaware,
and we have now returned to that plan. But he
made the streets entirely too narrow for the modern
citizens, who suffer much from that part of his
design ; and, for the sake of what he thought was
modern and convenient, he laid out the whole town
on the monotonous chequer-board system, of most
dismal efiect, very depressing to the people, and a
barrier to all attempts at architectural beauty.
We have not the full details of Penn's activity at
this time, and even if we had them, it would be
tedious to give them all. We know, however, that
after seeing that the work on his city was well under
way, he went to New York " to pay," it is said, " his
duty to the duke by visiting his province ;" but also,
no doubt, to see the country. He passed through
the Jerseys, visited Long Island, and everywhere
preached to any Quakers he found. On his return
235

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
it has been supposed that he made his famous treaty
with the Indians under the Elm at Kensington ; but
this is now believed to be a mistake. The treaty, if
there was one, was made in the following year.
We know, however, that on his return he worked
hard getting his laws and constitution approved.
They had been agreed to, provisionally, in England,
and under them writs were issued for the election of
an assembly, which met December 4, at Chester.
The code of laws already described was passed, and
was ever after known as the Great Law. An act
was also passed, caUed an Act of Union, annexing to
Pennsylvania the land given him by the Duke of
York, now known as the State of Delaware, and
then caUed "The Territories" or "the three lower
counties." The constitution was also passed, but the
Provincial CouncU and the General Assembly, being
ridiculously large, were quickly amended by the Act
of Settlement, as it was called, which made the
Council consist of eighteen members instead of
seventy-two, and the Assembly of thirty-six instead
of two hundred.
Then Penn started for Maryland to discuss with
Lord Baltimore about the disputed boundary, which
remained disputed for the next seventy years. Penn
was accompanied by his council, and Lord Balti
more also had his retinue, each trying to impress
the other with his dignity and importance. They
met at West River, and the fine clothes and pom
pous arrangements of those times must have made
a showy and pretty scene in the wilderness. Lord
Baltimore's letters to Penn are very grand and em-
236

FIRST VISIT TO THE PROVINCE
peror-like. Penn's are bluff" and plain. He seems
to have crossed Chesapeake Bay to the eastern shore
and visited a Quaker meeting on the Choptank,
and on his return he settled down for the winter at
Chester. I am aware that it has been said that he
passed the winter at Philadelphia in the Letitia
House. But his letters are dated at Chester as late
as February, and this seems to me conclusive.
The wild pigeons are described as migrating at
that time in such numbers that they almost darkened
the air. They often flew so low and were so tame
that the colonists knocked them down with sticks
and stones ; and those that were not immediately
used were salted for the winter. Penn, no doubt,
saw these great pigeon flights that autumn.
It would be interesting if we knew more of the
details of his life during that winter on the river
shore at Chester. We should like to know what
the ice did that year as the tide forced it in great
masses to and fro ; how he and the few families
round him passed the time. They must all have
been living in rude cabins, with the forest behind
them and the drifting ice in front It is strange that
those people who for four or five months were with
him in the intimacy of long winter evenings in a
wilderness have left no account of his sayings and
doings. But most of them I suppose were Quakers,
and to record such things might have been thought
vain. We know, however, that he was enjoying him
self, for he writes to England in high spirits of his
travels, the wonders of the country, its game and
237

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
fish, the abundance of provisions, the clear air, the
twenty-three ships that had arrived so swiftly that
few had taken longer than six weeks, and with such
good luck that only three were infected with the
small-pox. " O how sweet," he says, " is the quiet of these parts, freed from
the anxious and troublesome solicitations, hurries, and perplexities
of woful Europe !"
Simple nature, he thinks, is better than base art,
and he expresses the desire he often had afterwards
of settling with his family in his province.
" I like it so well that a plentiful estate, and a great acquaintance
on the other side, have no charms to remove ; my family being once
fixed with me, and if no other thing occur, I am like to be an
adopted American."
In another letter we find that he was under great
expense, spending money lavishly in forwarding his
enterprise. He did it all for the sake of the people
of his faith, and the province, he says, is now in their
hands. " Through my travail, faith, and patience it came. If Friends
here keep to God in the justice, mercy, equity, and fear of the Lord
their enemies will be their footstool ; if not, their heirs, and my heirs
too, will lose all, and desolation will follow."
He sent presents of beaver and other furs to the
king and the Duke of York ; and he wrote letters
to important people. As spring opened he renewed
his activity. He was again superintending the build
ing of Philadelphia, and probably made excursions
there from Chester. Soon, I have no doubt, he
went to live in the Letitia House, which had been
238

FIRST VISIT TO THE PROVINCE
built for him in the town, for in the summer his
letters are dated there.
This house his commissioners had placed for him,
as he requested, facing the river. It was on Front
Street south of the present Market Street, in the
centre of a lot which ran back to Second Street,
along Market, and included about half the block.
There were no houses then between Front Street
and the river-shore. The house was of brick, and
is still preserved, as we suppose, but has been re
moved to Fairmount Park. It was always known as
the Letitia House because he afterwards gave it,
with its large lot, to his daughter. In it, I have no
doubt, many of the early meetings of the Provincial
Council were held, and it may be considered the first
state-house of the province.
Ships were rapidly arriving with immigrants.
Some brought with them the frames of houses
ready to set up. They lived in huts of bark and
turf while they were building their houses, and some
dug caves in the river-bank, which then was quite
steep. It must have been an interesting scene, with
the handsome, accomplished young proprietor — for
he was then only thirty-eight years old — moving
about among the people and suggesting plans for
their houses, while all were stimulated by the novelty
of the enterprise and the freshness and excitement
of the wilderness.
There were none of the severe privations and dan
gerous hardships, none of the sickness and famine,
which we read of as attending the first settlements
of Virginia and Massachusetts. The woods close
239

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
round the town were described as swarming with
animal life, not only then, but for many years after
wards. There was abundance of everything. It
was really a sort of picnic or camping-out party to
found a great city. Many of the houses had stone
cellars, and were built of both brick and stone, for
stone was abundant and bricks were easily made
from the clay beds which underlay the soil. This
immediate buUding of brick and stone shows the
ease of life and the quick prosperity.
Curious stories have come down by tradition of
the pleasant happenings to these people who were
enjoying an outing in huts and caves in the river-
bank while they were building their substantial
houses. A woman was seen sitting at the door
of her cave and allowing a snake to share her bowl
of porridge, while she called it pet names. Another
woman, told by her husband to prepare dinner
while he continued to work on the house, went
away sad, wondering what she would get. Then
she reflected how foolish she was, for was she not
enjoying the complete religious Hberty she had come
for, and when she reached their cave she found her
cat had brought in a rabbit, which she served dressed
as an English hare. Her name was Morris, and her
family down to recent times is said to have pre
served a silver box they had had made with the cat
and rabbit engraved on it.
A few of the Germans in whom Penn had been
interested during his travels in their country had
already arrived. Their leader, Pastorius, a heavily
learned man after the German manner, was living in
240

FIRST VISIT TO THE PROVINCE
one of the caves in the river-bank, and Penn was
much amused by the Latin motto which he put up
over the door of his abode : "Parva domus, sed
amica bonis, procul este profani."
In March Penn had the Assembly meet again,
and the constitution was further amended. An act
was passed creating peace-makers to prevent law
suits, and the session of twenty-one days was spent
in revising the old laws and enacting new ones. This
must have been a busy time with Penn, for he felt
bound to use his influence in all these proceedings.
His affability, fairness, and frankness of manner
seems in these first days of his colony to have won
the complete devotion of the people. The Assem
bly voted him the proceeds of all future taxes on
certain exports and imports, which he generously
declined for the present But if he had known the
expense and losses that were in store for him he
would have retained this golden opportunity of a
sure income. The Assembly sharply took advantage
of his generosity, repealed the law, and could never
again be persuaded to repass it Twenty years
afterwards he wrote of this lost opportunity with the
most poignant regret
He presided over the meetings of the Provincial
Council, which seems to have met in the new town,
Philadelphia. It frequently sat as a court, and Penn
charged the jury. One of the trials was for witch
craft among the Swedes, and the case has been often
noticed in colonial history for the quick way in
which the ancient superstition was disposed of and
prevented from running riot among the people as it
i6 241

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
did a few years afterwards in Massachusetts. We
have not Penn's charge to the jury, but it is highly
probable that he charged against the delusion, for
the jury returned a verdict of " guilty of the com
mon fame of being a witch ; but not guilty in manner
and form as she stands indicted."
In June of this year, 1683, it is probable that he
made the treaty with the Indians which has become
so famous. There were two treaties or purchases of
land made with them that month, one on the 23d,
and one on the 25 th, and there was also a third one
on July 14. It was probably the one on June 23
which has aroused the tradition on which so much
imagination has been expended. The document or
words of the treaty have not been preserved. In
fact, the treaty, so called, was like most of Penn's
deahngs with the Indians, merely a purchase of land
at which certain things were said. He thought
nothing of it at the time, for he had adopted the
principle of deaUng fairly with the Indians and pay
ing them a full and fair price for all their land as he
or his province wanted it ; and he carried out this
principle in all his negotiations with them.
The usual description of this treaty as a formal
function, at which the chiefs assembled under the
great elm at Kensington on the river-shore just
above Philadelphia, Penn appearing with a sky-blue
sash around his waist, and all making wonderful
speeches, conscious that they were doing a great
thiftg, is all pure imagination and fiction. There is
no record or proof whatever of anything of the
kind. The speech usually assigned to Penn on
242

FIRST VISIT TO THE PROVINCE
that occasion is now known to have been made
twenty years afterwards. If such a treaty was
made as is supposed to have been made, it was a
mere business transaction in the purchase of land,
like many that were made about that period and
afterwards. Benjamin West's painting of the scene, which has
been so often reproduced, is largely responsible for
the growth of this treaty myth. Writers have taken
the picture as a fact and written up to it Histori
cally considered, the picture is all wrong. West
merely guessed or supposed that there had been
such a scene. Penn, who at t'^at time, according
to all the accounts we have of him, was a vigorous
young man of thirty-eight, is represented as fat,
short, and old ; and he and his companions are
dressed in clothes which were not worn until nearly
half a century afterwards.
On one point, however, there is no question. The
Indians always retained a distinct tradition of a
treaty of some sort with Penn, or rather of some
promises he had made which he always kept ; and
his keeping them was the great point It is sup
posed that Penn refers to these promises in his letter
to the Free Society of Traders, written August i6,
of that year, 1683, about two months after the land
purchase of June 23.
" When the purchase was agreed, great promises passed between
us, of kindness and good neighbourhood, and that the Indians and
English must live in love as long as the sun gave light: which
done, another made a speech to the Indians, in the name of all the
Sachamakan, or kings, first to tell them what was done ; next, to
243

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
charge and command them to love the Christians, and particularly
live in peace with me and the people under my government. That
many governors had been in the river, but that no governor had
come himself to live and stay here before ; and having now such an
one that had treated them well, they should never do him or his any
wrong. At every sentence of which they shouted, and said. Amen,
in their way."
We have the records of speeches made by the
Indians at treaties many years afterwards, in which
they refer to these promises made of old by Penn ;
and their description of the promises closely re
sembles what Penn describes in his letter to the So
ciety of Traders. The Indians said that they often
assembled in the v'^oods and spread out a blanket,
on which they laid all the words of Penn, that they
might go over them and refresh their memories.
By this they meant that they laid on the blanket the
belts of wampum, each of which represented a
clause of the promises or treaty. Each belt had
been originally given to an Indian, with the clause
he was to remember ; and it was in this way that
they preserved what civilized nations preserve in
documents. The substance of the promises was merely that the
Indians were to be treated fairly and not defrauded.
There was nothing wonderful in this. Such treaties
had been made before with Indians and with savages
of aU sorts from the dawn of history. Almost thirty
years before Penn's arrival, when the Swedes con
trolled the Delaware, their governor. Rising, had made
a treaty with the Indians with similar promises. Soon
afterwards the Quakers of Burlington, New Jersey,
made the same sort of treaty of friendship. Penn
244

FIRST VISIT TO THE PROVINCE
was doing nothing remarkable, nothing which re
quired a formal celebration or the exhibition of him
self in a sky-blue sash ; and no one at the time
thought of these land purchases or treaties as in any
way wonderful.
It was after-events and not the treaty itself which
made it famous. The Indians had often before and
often after heard fair promises. But Penn kept his,
not merely in his own opinion or in the opinion of
his followers, but in the opinion of the Indians. As
ten, fifteen, twenty, and thirty years rolled by, and
the Indians found every word of the treaty fulfilled
by Mignon, as the Delawares called him, or Onas,
as he was called by the Iroquois, the fame of the one
white man and Christian who could keep his faith
with the savage spread far and wide, and the savage
sent it across the Atlantic.
In France and on the continent of Europe the
great men and writers seized upon it as the most re
markable occurrence of the age. To these men,
brought up under Latin Christianity and accu.stomed
to the atrocities and horrors inflicted by Cortes
and Pizarro on the natives of South America, the
thought of a Christian keeping his promise inviolate
for forty years with heathen Indians was idealism
realized. It was Hke refreshment in a great weary
desert. Who was the man, and what queer sort of
Christian was he that he kept his word with the
heathen; that he had done what had never been
done before, and what it was supposed never would
be done ?
Voltaire was delighted. From that time he loved
245

THE TRUE WiLLIAM PENN
the Quakers, and even thought of going to Pennsyl
vania to live among them. Soon he wrote of the
great treaty the immortal sentence, " This was the
only treaty between these people and the Christians
that was not ratified by an oath and that was never
broken." Raynal said, —
" Here it is the mind rests with pleasure upon modem history and
feels some kind of compensation for the disgust, melancholy, and
horror which the whole of it, but particularly that of the European
settlement in America, inspires."
No other part of Penn's career gave him such
fame, so wide-spread and so well deserved, as this.
He stood alone and supreme, and, so far as the
United States is concerned, he has stood alone ever
since. No one of us, certainly not our government
at Washington, has ever kept its faith with the In
dians for a stretch of forty years.
In Penn's case the period was even longer than
that in the good results that followed from his con
duct Pennsylvania was at peace with the Indians
not only during his lifetime, but for long after his
death ; in fact, for almost seventy-five years, or until
the French and Indian Wars, which began in 1755.
This gave the province an enormous advantage over
the other colonies, which were continually harassed
and checked in their growth by Indian hostilities, so
that Pennsylvania, which was founded long after
most of them, caught up to and surpassed nearly aU
in population and material prosperity. When the
French war began, in 1755, the frontier population
246

SUPPOSED WAMPUM KELT OF THE GREAT TREATY

FIRST VISIT TO THE PROVINCE
of Pennsylvania were almost without weapons, and
so unaccustomed to warfare that the first invaders
swept everything before them.*
The first settlers of Pennsylvania, either because
they were Quakers, or through the influence of Penn,
seem to have been on the most friendly terms with
the Indians. From the letters of the time we learn
that they were received by both the Swedes and the
Indians with a very hearty welcome. Indians meet
ing children in the woods directed them home, that
they might not be lost
" And their parents, about that time, going to the yearly meeting,
and leaving a young family at home, the Indians would come every
day to see that nothing was amiss among them."
Richard Townsend, one of the first settlers, gives
Penn the credit for this mildness of the Indians.
" As our worthy proprietor treated the Indians with extraordinary
humanity, they became very civil and loving to us, and brought in
abundance of venison. As in other countries the Indians were exas
perated by hard treatment, which hath been the foundation of much
bloodshed, the contrary treatment here hath produced their love and
affection." (Proud's History of Pennsylvania, vol. i. p. 229.)
A letter written by Penn in the summer of that
year, 1683, after he had finished the land purchases
from the Indians, reports that fifty sail of vessels had
arrived within the past year, about eighty houses had
been built in Philadelphia, and about three hundred
farms laid out round the town. It is supposed that
about three thousand immigrants had arrived.
* For a full discussion of this subject, see " Pennsylvania : Colony
and Commonwealth," chap. vii. 247

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
This was very gratifying success ; and while he
was enjoying it, he was amused to hear that in Eng
land he was reported to have died in his province
and confessed himself a Jesuit To famUiarize him
self more thoroughly with his friends, the Indians,
and with the resources of his delightful colony, this
unarmed Quaker made an extended journey on
horseback into the interior, reaching, it is supposed,
the Susquehanna River. In a printed paper caUed
" Proposals for a Second Settlement in the Province
of Pennsylvania," now in the American Philosophical
Society, he seems to be describing what he had seen
on this journey, and he speaks of the large herds of
elk on the Susquehanna. He also seems to refer to
this journey in his " Further Account of the Prov
ince," written in 1685. He Hved in the Indians'
wigwams, and learned much of their language and
customs. It is to be regretted that he did not keep
a minute journal of this tour. We know only, from
a chance passage in Oldmixon,* that he went, and
the time and length of his journey is uncertain.
He summed up, however, all that he knew of the
province in a long letter to the Free Society of
Traders, which was published and translated into
several languages. This society was a corporation
which he had had organized to encourage settlers
and development ; but it was never successful. His
letter, however, is very interesting. It shows a most
keen and careful observation, and a passionate

* British Empire in America, vol. i. p. 161. See also Back's
Penn in America, p. 132. 248

FIRST VISIT TO THE PROVINCE
fondness for the province, which is one of many
incidents that convince us that it would have been
much better if he had always lived in the colony
and governed it in person. It would have been a
better commonwealth, closer to his ideals, and his
personal government would have been a most inter
esting chapter in human history.
His descriptions of the climate, soil, trees, and
various conditions almost startle the modern reader
in their absolute accuracy. He was evidently a
great lover of nature. This we might have already
inferred from many of his maxims and from his liv
ing so much in the country in England. But this
letter to the Society of Traders shows a very ardent
love and a great deal of knowledge of natural things,
which was not to be expected from a man who had
spent so much time on theology, languages, and the
biographies of Greeks, Romans, and the fathers of
the church.
He describes with great particularity the trees and
the plants which we find in the woods to-day. We
learn from him that the climate has not changed,
either in winter or in summer. He tells us what we
learn also from other sources, and what surprised
him very much, that the woods were then quite open
and free from underbrush. In another letter he says
that a coach could be driven through them for twenty
miles round Philadelphia ; and in a letter to Lord
Sunderland he speaks of " many open spaces that
have been old Indian fields." With not a little
pride, he tells the Society of Traders that the whole
royal navy could be laid up in one of the large creeks
249

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
that flowed into his mighty Delaware. He gives
much space to the Indians and their customs, which
he had studied minutely. They would never give
any trouble. It was the easiest thing in the world
to manage them. Simply be just He tells us of
the elk and all the animals of the woods, the wild
turkeys, the pheasants, the pigeons, the swans,
brant, ducks, snipe, and curlews in vast numbers ; the
large oysters down the bay ; and he enumerates the
shad and all the fish we have long known in the river.
When he makes his only mistake it is not his own,
but because he quotes the report of others, as when
he writes, "Some say salmon above the FaUs." *
He was determined to enjoy to the full the wild
nature which he took so much pleasure in describing,
and he had a country place, which he called Penns-
bury, laid out for himself on the river about twenty
miles above Philadelphia, near where Bristol now
stands. But as it was scarcely finished in time for
him to Hve there during this visit we must defer the
description of it to another chapter.
Soon after writing the letter to the Society of
Traders he had to return to England. The most
pressing reason for his going seems to have been the
controversy with Lord Baltimore about the Mary
land boundary. They had failed to agree on a
compromise, and the question must be argued before
the Committee of Trades and Plantations of the
Privy CouncU. Lord Baltimore had already set out,

* The Falls were the rapids in the Delaware where Trenton now
stands. 250

FIRST VISIT TO THE PROVINCE
conceahng his departure from Penn so as to get the
start of him and make interest before he arrived.
Penn also had a reason for returning in his desire
to see his family again. He may possibly have been
influenced by the thought that he ought to return to
his old life of protecting the Quakers from persecu
tion in England. He received from one of his old
friends, William Crisp, a whining letter, such as over-
good people sometimes write, telling him in a sort of
indirect way that he was neglecting the interest of
truth and the testimony of God for the sake of gov
erning a colony, and rather implying that he was
seeking his own selfish interests.
But Penn had, I think, too much sense to be led
by anything this pious goose would say to him. In
any event, he had to go home for the boundary dis
pute, and leave the wholesome pleasures and inter
ests of his province, which would have been better
and always was the better for his immediate presence.
So home he sailed, August i6, 1684, on a little ship
of a kind called in those days a ketch. She was
not so slow, however, for her size and the times, for
she made the passage in seven weeks.

251

XVII
RETURNS TO ENGLAND AND BECOMES A COURTIER
When he arrived in England the officious Stephen
Crisp was quick to inform him of the talk among
the Quakers that he had sanctioned military pro
ceedings in Pennsylvania, was growing very rich,
had deprived the Swedes of their land, and other
tales which always delight the gossips of both
sexes. But Penn took notice of such stuff only
to deny it More important matters demanded his
attention. He found his people as hard pressed by the laws
as ever. He talked to the king and the duke only
to find them sour and stern. They believed that
the opposition which made their government uneasy
came from dissenters of all sorts, and they would
make such people yield or break them. Under
these circumstances Penn found himself in a curious
position. " One day I was received well at court as proprietor and governor
of a province of the crown and the next taken up at a meeting by
Hilton and CoUingwood and the third smoakt and informed of for
meeting with the men of the whig stamp."
In leaving Pennsylvania he had, with characteristic
carelessness, neglected to bring with him the most
important papers in the boundary case ; or, rather,
he had instructed one of his servants to bring them,
252

BECOMES A COURTIER
and neglected to see that he did it before saihng.
He wrote a very angry letter on the subject, for the
delay of many months in sending across the ocean
for the papers was both exasperating and dangerous.
Meantime, he comforted himself by writing instruc
tions for improving his country seat, Pennsbuiy,
which he had taken such pleasure in establishing
in the province. He took great delight in sending
out seeds for Ralph, the gardener, and in writing
all manner of directions to his steward, James Har
rison, whom he had left in charge of the place.
Among other things he sent him wine and beer,
some to be sold for his account and the rest to be
stored at Pennsbury to improve by age._
For serious public occupation he set to work on
his old subject, liberty of conscience. There was
no use in arguing or striving for a general liberty
with the government in such a morose temper. " I
therefore," he says, "sought out some bleeding
cases, which was not hard to do." One in particular
he devoted himself to, the case of Richard Vickris,
a very quiet man who was under sentence of death
for his religion, for refusing to swear, and for vio
lating statutes for the suppression of dissenters.
Penn appealed on his behalf to the duke, and the
duke to the king ; and Penn succeeded. Vickris
was pardoned.
Penn relates that he had to proceed carefully in
public matters, lest by offending the government he
might injure his case against Lord Baltimore. But
he went so far as to write out an argument to show
that in the violent party heats, and the factions into
253

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
which the kingdom was nearly equally divided, the
crown should gratify neither extreme party, but rule
wisely over all. This argument he presented to the
king in manuscript, for the times, he tells us, were
" too set and rough for print ;" and they must have,
indeed, been very rough if Penn was unwilling to
print his opinions.
In the winter of 1684-85 Charles II. died of a
stroke of apoplexy, as most historians tell us. But
Bishop Burnet always insisted on believing that he
was poisoned by the Jesuits because he was on the
eve of breaking away from them and allowing some
liberal reforms. We cannot, however, discuss here
the bishop's interesting proofs on this subject The
gay, careless king was dead, and his brother, the
Roman Catholic Duke of York, took the throne as
James II.
Penn wrote an account of these events to Thomas
Lloyd, in Pennsylvania, and in this letter mentioned
that he had thus far lost by the province ^^3000,
while the speculators who had bought land from
him were growing rich. The next year he an
nounces that he has lost ;^5000. He hoped, how
ever, to return to his colony in the autumn.
With his own particular friend and his father's
friend, the Duke of York, on the throne, Penn was
in a stronger and more influential position than
ever. He could now go directly to the crown for
favors, and be tolerably well assured of success.
But there was in this intimacy and success, as we
shaU soon see, a great danger. James II. was by
no means disposed to keep his Romanism a secret,
254

.^to- 1^^ !% ¦/»;

BoT-a 0-2
 1633 —

JAMES II., DUKE OF YORK

BECOMES A COURTIER
as his brother had done. His whole family went
openly to mass, and he himself began to advance
the cause of his rehgion by allowing the Jesuits to
build a college in London. He sent an ambassador
to Rome, and received one from the Pope. How
long would the English people, who dreaded the
Pope and his religion more than they dreaded
France or the plague, endure such a king? And
what would happen to the Quaker, already sus
pected of Jesuitism, who was his favorite?
But Penn was not much accustomed to calculating
on risks of this kind ; and it is easy to see how in
the first instance he was led into closer relations with
James. He expected from him religious liberty, and
great relief to the Quakers. James promised this,
and spoke so beautifully about liberty that he
seemed to be putting Protestants and Whigs to
shame. Within a year or so he was as good as his
word. The Quakers had sent him a petition show
ing that thirteen hundred of their faith were then in
prison, and that in the last five years hundreds of
them had died of prison hardships. Within a year,
by a proclamation of King James, they were every
one set at liberty, along with all the other dissenters,
and a large number of Roman Catholics, who were
in prison for their religion.
We are not informed of the exact number of these
prisoners at this time ; but as there were about thir
teen hundred Quakers, there must have been at
least as many more of other sects ; so that we can
say that several thousand came trooping out of
the noisome pest-houses in which they had been
25s

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
confined, and fathers and brothers, even sisters,
wives, and mothers, were restored to their famUies.
It was a strange condition of society which we now
can scarcely understand, such a jail dehvery as this
of people who had been imprisoned for years for
nothing but their religion. There was great rejoicing
all over England, especially among the Quakers,
who at their next annual meeting in London saw
the faces of valued friends, some of whom, accord
ing to their historian, Gough, had been in prison
"twelve or fifteen years and upward."
Penn's biographers have been inclined to describe
this wonderful delivery in such a way that the reader
infers that Penn was the cause of it But this is
hardly fair to the reader or to Penn. The delivery
was part of a deep policy adopted by the king. He
wanted to deliver the people of his own religion.
He could not very well deliver them without deliver
ing all the others, and in delivering others he thought
he would win them to his side and accomplish cer
tain purposes he had in view. What part Penn had
in the delivery, or whether he had any, cannot now
be determined. But there is no doubt that, along
with others, he had for years been advocating such a
delivery, and we can easily believe that he worked
hard for his own thirteen hundred. Was he not,
therefore, more than ever bound by gratitude, policy,
and every other tie to the king, who had done more
for the Quakers than his predecessor, who passed for
a Protestant. Gerard Croese, the historian of the Quakers, has
described for us Penn's intimacy with the king.
256

BECOMES A COURTIER
" William Penn was greatly in favor with the king — the Quaker's
sole patron at court — on whom the hateful eyes of his enemies were
intent. The king loved him as a singular and entire friend, and im
parted to him many of his secrets and counsels. He often honored
him with his company in private, discoursing with him of various
affairs, and that, not for one, but many hours together, and delaying
to hear the best of his peers who at the same time were waiting for
an audience. One of these being envious, and impatient of delay,
and taking it as an affront to see the other more regarded than him
self, adventured to take the freedom to tell his majesty, that when he
met with Penn he thought little of his nobility. The king made no
other reply, than that Penn always talked ingenuously, and he heard
him willingly." (" General History of the Quakers," p. io5.)
But a horrible thing occurred which one might
suppose would try Penn to the utmost The young
Duke of Monmouth, the attractive and accomplished,
but illegitimate son of Charles II. made a dash at
the throne, relying on his popularity with the people,
which was great and secured him many Protestant
followers. His insurrection was put down, and a ter
rible slaughter made among those who had assisted
or even passively assented to his rebellion. Judge
Jeffreys, of whom we have read so much, and whom
Macaulay describes with such vividness, went up and
down the country condemning to execution with the
delight of a fiend, and roaring curses at his victims.
Soon their bleeding heads and quarters were orna
menting almost every village in the western counties
near where Monmouth had landed, a shocking sight
to modern eyes, but one on which the men and even
women of that age could look with comparative in
difference. One would suppose that such cruel wholesale ven
geance would have shaken Penn's regard for the
17 257

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
king; but it did not "The king," he said, "was
much to be pitied, who was hurried into all this effu
sion of blood by Jeffrey's impetuous and cruel tem
per." He writes of these events to his steward at
Pennsbury in the matter-of-fact way men wrote of
such things in those days ; for no one then spoke of
cruelty with the excitement and horror which are
now used.
" About three hundred hanged in divers towns in the West, about
one thousand to be transported. I begged twenty of the king. Col.
Holmes, young Hays, the two Hewlings, Lark, and Hix, ministers,
are executed. . . . There is daily inquisition for those engaged in
the late plots, some die denying, as Alderman Cornish, others con
fessing but justifying. ... A woman, one Gaunt of Wappen, of
Doct. Moore's acquaintance, was burned the same day at Tyburn
for the high treason of hiding one of Monmouth's army, and the man
saved came in against her. She died composedly and fearless, in
terpreting the cause of her death God's cause. Many more to be
hanged, great and small. It is a day to be wise."
By saying that it was a day to be wise, Penn prob
ably meant that in such a turmoil of affairs Quakers
had best stand aside, be quiet and prudent, and get
what relief they could. It is to be observed that of
those to be transported, he begged twenty of the
king, and these, it is supposed, he sent to Pennsylva
nia. This saved them from the worse fate of a penal
colony. But whether he was able at this time to
save anybody's life is not known.
He has been charged, however, by Macaulay in
his History of England, with being concerned at this
time in a most nefarious transaction. The victims
of the rebeUion were so numerous that many low
pardon-brokers and courtiers were driving a very
258

BECOMES A COURTIER
thriving trade in selling ransoms. Some little girls,
it seems, had by the direction of their school-mis
tress, marched in a procession when Monmouth
landed. The maids of honor at court demanded
these girls as their share of the spoil, and when this
wzis granted informed the parents of the chUdren
that seven thousand pounds would save them. Wil
liam Penn, says Macaulay, was the go-between se
lected to extort this money.
If this charge is true, Penn was a contemptible
villain, the virtues usually ascribed to him mere
hypocrisy, and we should forget as soon as possible
that he ever lived, and change the name of Pennsyl
vania. When, however, we examine the evidence
on which Macaulay relied, we find that it is a letter
written by Lord Sunderland to a Mr. Penne, asking
him to undertake the task in company with a Mr.
Walden. There is no evidence that the Mr. Penne
accepted the offer, or that he was the same person
as William Penn, and it is well known that there -was
at that time a notorious pardon-broker named George
Penne. Moreover, Oldmixon, a contemporary au
thority, tells us that Brent, the popish laviyer, was
the agent who finally acted for the maids of honor,
Macaulay, as sometimes happened, was hasty in his
investigations as well as in his conclusions.
He also sneers at Penn for attending, at this time,
the executions of Cornish and Elizabeth Gaunt
" William Penn, for whom exhibitions, which humane men gen
erally avoid, seem to have had a strong attraction, hastened from
Cheapside where he had seen Cornish hanged to Tyburn in order to
see Elizabeth Gaunt burnt." 259

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
Macaulay is very careless in asserting that humane
men generally avoid such exhibitions. They do
now ; but they did not then. The admirers and
friends of a victim or martyr usually made a point
of going to see him die. Evelyn, who was a devoted
adherent of Charles I., went to his execution, and
calmly describes it in his diary.
Elizabeth Gaunt had concealed one of the Mon
mouth rebels in her house. He informed on her
and was allowed to go free, while she perished.
Bishop Burnet, in his " History of his Own Times,"
tells us how Penn described to him both her death
and Cornish's, and Penn's description shows the
spirit in which he viewed these shocking events.
" She rejoiced that God had honoured her to be the first that
suffered by fire in this reign ; and that her suffering was a martyrdom
for that religion which was all love. Pen, the quaker told me, he
saw her die. She laid the straw about her for burning her speedily ;
and behaved herself in such a manner, that all the spectators melted
in tears. . . .
" Cornish, at his death, asserted his innocence with great vehe
mence ; and with some acrimony complained of the methods taken
to destroy him. And so they gave it out, that he died in a fit of fury.
But Pen who saw the execution, said to me, there appeared nothing
but a just indignation that innocence might very naturally give. Pen
might be well relied on in such matters, he being so entirely in the
king's interests." (History of his Own Times," pp. 649, 651.)
It must be confessed, however, that Penn, in be
coming a courtier and associating with the syco
phants and corruptionists which at that time crowded
the court, ran a great risk of being confused with
them, and accused of their crimes. He was himself
an obtainer of pardons, and obtained many of them ;
260

BECOMES A COURTIER
but as we are assured from several sources that he
took no pay, he cannot be called one of the pardon-
brokers, of whom he must often have seen many at
court It was, however, in accordance with his prin
ciples to disregard all such risks as this. He found
he had an influence with the king, and he was deter
mined to use it to assist the Quakers and all others
who were suffering from the tyranny of the times.
But in one respect he was very blind, perhaps
deliberately blind, to the condition of things. In
a letter to his steward at Pennsbury, he shows that
he was well aware of what the Roman Catholics
were doing in other countries. It seems almost in
credible that he did not realize what he would be
supporting if he supported a king like James.
" In France, not a meeting of Protestants left, they force all, by not
suffering them to sleep, to conform ; they use drums or fling water on
the drowsy till they submit or run mad. . . . Such as fly and are
caught are executed or sent to the galleys to row. . . . Believe me
it is an extraordinary day, such as has not been since generations ago.
Read this to weighty friends and magistrates in private."
From the last injunction it would seem that he did
not want this letter to be made public and come
back to England to be read at court He was in a
delicate position with his boundary case still pend
ing before the Privy Council, the burden of obtain
ing relief for the people of his faith, and compelled
to obtain the relief from such a source as James II.
Some one wrote verses extolling the king and
popery and signed them with Penn's initials. It was
a petty trick, but in the prevaUing excitement it
helped to spread the suspicion that he was a Jesuit
25l

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
He had to write a long statement to deny the author
ship and offset the effect of the verses. About the
same time he discovered that Dr. TiUotson, after
wards Archbishop of Canterbury, had been report
ing him as in correspondence with the Jesuits at
Rome ; and he had to write several letters to set
Tillotson right.
But if some were inclined to attack his reputation,
because of his intimacy with the king, there were
others who for the same reason sought his assist
ance. He rapidly became a very active and influen
tial courtier, and soon had all the business in this
line that he could handle.
In modern times the British government is carried
on by the cabinet officers or ministry, and divided
into great and permanently organized departments.
Those who have favors to ask or claims to press
deal with the officials of these departments or with
parliamentary committees. But in Penn's time there
was none of this system. Government by ministry
had not been developed to its present form ; nor
was Parliament so important as it is now. The
king was the source of all favors and the authority
for the allowance of claims. His assent must first
be obtained before the machinery of the departments
could be set in motion.
So the courtiers — the men who by their manners,
accomplishments, political sagacity, or influence with
sects or parties were most pleasing to the king — be
came the middlemen, or attorneys and agents, to help
on the affairs of the crowd of suitors. It was busi
ness, but it was managed in a strolling way, as pleas-
262

BECOMES A COURTIER
antly as possible, so as to seem not like business, but
as part of the gracious favor or amusement of his
Majesty. Judging from Pepys's "Diary" and other
books, the courtiers managed a great many of their
affairs and collected information and gossip walking
to and fro with one another or with their clients in
the gardens or in the corridors of White Hall. They
saw the king as best they could : sometimes when he
was dressing in the morning, which was a favorite
time with Charles II. for receiving visitors.
We have already seen how Penn secured from the
king a pardon for Vickris. Soon afterwards he ob
tained a pardon for his college-mate, John Locke,
who was an exile in Holland. But the proud philos
opher declined it He had done nothing, he said,
which required a pardon.
Penn's friendship and influence with the king being
now well established, the demands on him became
incessant, and Gerard Croese tells us of his busy life.
" Penn, being so highly favored, acquired thereby a number of
friends. Those also who formerly knew him, when they had any
favor to ask at court, came to, courted, and entreated Penn to pro
mote their several requests. Penn refused none of his friends any
reasonable office he could do for them, but was ready to serve them
all, but more especially the Quakers, and these wherever their re
ligion was concerned. It is usually thought, when you do me one
favor readily, you thereby encourage me to expect a second. Thus
they ran to Penn without intermission, as their only pillar and sup
port, who always caressed and received them cheerfully, and effected
their business by his influence and eloquence. Hence his house and
gates were daily thronged by a numerous train of clients and sup
pliants, desiring him to present their addresses to his Majesty. There
were sometimes two hundred and more. When the carrying on of
these affairs required money for writings, such as drawing things out
into form and copyings, and for fees and other charges which are
263

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
usually made on such occasions, Penn so discreetly managed matters,
that out of his own, which he had in abundance, he liberally dis
charged many emergent expenses." (" General History of the
Quakers," p. io6.)
We are not informed of the various kinds of cases
Penn managed for his clients. A great deal of his
business was obtaining pardons, for, in that age of
turmoil, rebellions, and civil war, there were hun
dreds of people constantly in exile or in danger
of death. There were many pardon-brokers about
the court, and some of them were very nefarious
in their operations, demanding enormous sums or
all a man's estate for saving his life. Penn, how
ever, we are assured, took no fees.
There was a certain Charlewood Lawton, who had
taken part in Monmouth's rebellion and had been
obliged to hide himself in the moorlands of Staf
fordshire ; but being relieved from apprehension
when the general pardon was published, Penn sought
him out and made friends with him in that cordial
manner which he seems to have bestowed on so
many people to whom he took a fancy. Lawton, in
return, became a great admirer of Penn, and in a
memoir he left speaks with enthusiasm of his " in
exhaustible spring of benevolence towards all his
fellow-creatures, without any narrow or stingy regard
to either civU or religious parties." After telling
how Penn at his request obtained a free pardon for
Aaron Smith, who was about to buy one by the sur
render of his whole estate, Lawton gives a de
scription which throws some light on Penn's manner
and the times. 264

BECOMES A COURTIER
" After dinner as we were drinking a glass of wine, Mr. Penn,
turning to him, told Mr. Popple that he had brought him such a man
as he had never met with before. ' I have just now asked him how
I might do something for himself, and he hath desired me to get
pardon for another man.' And so Mr. Penn repeated at length what
had passed between us upon the terrace walk, and then turning to
me, he said, ' though I will, at thy request, get, if I can, Aaron
Smith's pardon, yet I desire thou wilt think of something wherein I
can do a kindness for thyself.'
" Upon that I said I could tell him how he might prolong my
life. Mr. Penn replied, ' I am no physician, but prithee tell me
what thou meanest?' And so I told him Jack Trenchard (for so
we State Whigs used to call him) who was afterwards Secretary
of State, was abroad, and if he could get him leave to come home
with safety and honor, the drinking now and then a bottle with
Jack Trenchard would make me so cheerful, that it would prolong
my life.
" To this Mr. Penn smilingly answered, ' To show thee I will not
deny thee anything thou canst reasonably ask, I promise thee I will
get him too a pardon, if I can ;' and after this we chatted half an
hour, and so parted.
" In three weeks or a month he got Aaron Smith's pardon ; and
prevailing with my Lord Jefferies (then Lord Chancellor) to join
with him, they in a short time obtained Mr. Trenchard's." (Me
moirs, Penna. Hist. Soc, vol. iii. part ii. p. 215.)
This throng of clients compeUed Penn to live at
Kensington in London. He rented Holland House,
a handsome residence belonging to the Earl of
Warwick ; and he led a very expensive life, keeping
a coach and four and other extravagances. He may
have seemed to have been paying the expenses of
his Quaker clients out of his own abundance, as
Croese calls it ; but that abundance was being
rapidly drained, for in addition to his other ex
penses he was losing money by Pennsylvania. He
was paying all the expenses of government there,
and the officials had a bad habit of drawing on him
265

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
for whatever they wanted, as if he were an inex
haustible mine.
"I have had two letters more," he writes to his steward, "with
three bills of exchange. I am sorry the public is so unmindful of
me as not to prevent bills upon me that am come on their errand,
and had rather have lost a thousand pounds, than have stirred from
Pennsylvania. . . . James, send no more bills, for I have enough to
do to keep all even here, and think of returning with my family ;
that can't be without vast charge."
His heart was set on enjoying again the simple,
honest pleasures of his wilderness colony, and never
leaving them. But he was held fast in England not
only by the dispute with Lord Baltimore, but by the
critical condition of politics and the demands of the
Quakers. He was in too deep with the king to get
out Neither his conscience nor his ambition could
quite permit him to drop the important public po
sition in which he had suddenly found himself since
the accession of James.
In the spring of 1686, shortly before the king set
at liberty the thirteen hundred Quakers with>>the
other dissenters, Penn wrote an important pamphlet
called "A Persuasive to Moderation." It was his
old subject, liberty of conscience, but he argues it out
afresh with new suggestions. It is in some respects
one of his best arguments on this subject, which he
handled so often, for in this instance he takes par
ticular pains to give instances where toleration had
proved itself a political and commercial success. He
begins, of course, with ancient times and the flour
ishing state of the Roman empire, which tolerated
over thirty thousand different religious rites among
266

BECOMES A COURTIER
her people. But he soon comes down to his own
time, and gives numerous instances of the success
of toleration in the small states of Europe and in
most of the British colonies in America. He con
sidered himself as proving conclusively by these
that toleration never endangered monarchy.
His most important instance, of course, is Hol
land, " that bog of the world," as he calls it,
" neither sea nor dry land, now the rival of the
tallest monarchies ; not by conquests, marriages, or
accession of royal blood, the usual ways of empire,
but by her own superlative clemency and industry."
Then he goes on to show that toleration gave se
curity to property, which could never be secure
when estates were at any moment liable to be
swept away by the sheriff" to pay the fines for re
ligious dissent
Then he speaks of the Declaration of Indulgence
in the last reign, which, by relieving the dissenters
from persecution, greatly encouraged trade. So
long as the indulgence lasted, " all men," he says,
" labored cheerfully and traded boldly when they
had the royal word to keep what they got." He
does not seem, however, to realize sufficiently that
it was a dangerous violation of the constitution to
allow the king to suspend laws even to accomplish
such a good purpose. He had not then written his
maxim, ' ' To do evil that good may come of it, is for
bunglers in politics as well as morals."
He calls the Declaration of Indulgence the "sov
ereign remedy of our English constitution." Such
an indulgence, he thinks, wiU be the panacea for aU
267

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
political ills. If full religious liberty were allowed
the dissenters, they would all, he says, be united in
favor of the government, and such rebellions as
Monmouth's and such designs as the Rye House
plot would cease. This last was a sound suggestion ;
but it was not sound to favor granting that liberty
by allowing the king to suspend the laws, and it is
surprising to find Penn in effect arguing for another
declaration of indulgence.
Penn afterwards spoke of this pamphlet as having
not a little circulation and influence, and he was not
a man who was conceited about his own writings or
over-estimated them. Whether it influenced the
king or not, the king was on this occasion wiser than
Penn, for he merely pardoned the dissenters who
were in prison, which he had a right to do, without
attempting as yet to violate constitutional right by
suspending the laws.
Penn and the Quakers were, of course, well
pleased with this result ; but Penn seems to have
known that things were not quite so rosy as they
seemed. In writing to his steward, after saying how
he longs to be back again in Pennsylvania, but
"great undertakings" crowd him, he says, —
" The Lord keep us here in this dark day. Be wise, close, respect
ful to superiors. The king has discharged all Friends by a general
pardon, and is courteous to us, though as to the Church of England
things seem pinching. Several Roman Catholics get much into
places in the army, navy, and court."
So Penn was well aware that the king was " pinch
ing" the Church of England. The letter is some
what guarded ; but Penn evidently saw that the king
268

BECOMES A COURTIER
had pardoned the dissenters for the sake of avoiding
their hostihty for a time, while he worked Roman
Catholics into power and turned both government
and church over to Rome. This, Penn says, made
a " dark day ;' ' and he must have foreseen that when
the people once fully realized what the king was
doing, there would be a terrible outbreak of some
kind. He was powerless to turn the king from this
course ; and we do not know that he even tried at
this time. His influence extended only to obtaining
favors for individuals.
Why, then, did he continue to stand in with the
king? It was his only way of obtaining relief for
the Quakers, and this was certainly a great tempta
tion when thirteen hundred of them had just been
released. As for a general liberty of conscience
established by law, he apparently had no hope of it
at that time, except in Pennsylvania. In England
liberty must be picked up as you could get it He
had to protect from interference both Pennsylvania
and the Jerseys, and he had his litigation with Lord
Baltimore. These important interests might all be
injured by losing favor at court
It is curious to note that for a time after the king
had pardoned everybody who was in jail for their
religion, the magistrates and judges continued to
enforce the laws against dissenters ; the informers
continued to pry about, and constables made arrests.
A person who had just been let out by the pardon
might, by a zealous magistrate, be locked up again
for a fresh offence. Penn himself, though he was so
intimate with the king and daily obtaining favors for
269

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
his clients, was not safe from the magistrates and
informers, who would send constables to " pull him
down" while he was preaching. "I have been
thrice," he writes to his steward, " taken at meetings,
but got off", blessed be God."
It was a strange condition of aff"airs, and Penn
was leading a strange life ; so influential with the
king that he had become a courtier with hundreds
of clients, and at the same time going out to preach
to the Quakers, the supposed enemies of the govern
ment, and pulled down for it by constables and
soldiers. The king, however, after a time stopped
the magistrates and constables, so that the laws
against dissenters stood on the books unexecuted.
In the summer of this year, 1686, Penn made a
third journey to Holland and Germany. It was partly
a political and partly a religious journey, but of the
religious part we know little or nothing, because
he has left us no account of it But we may infer
that he spoke much of Pennsylvania and urged the
Mennonites, Schwenkfelders, and other Quaker-like
German sects to migrate to his province, as many of
them did. The Quaker historian, Sewell, was then
engaged in translating into Dutch Penn's description
of Pennsylvania, and also "No Cross, No Crown,"
and Penn met him in Holland. Of the political
part of the journey, however, something is known,
and it is important, because it shows how Penn was
becoming more and more involved in the schemes
of the king.
Whether the king actually commissioned him to
visit, in Holland, WiUiam, the Prince of Orange, is
270

BECOMES A COURTIER
not certain, but, at any rate, he did so and advocated
the king's policy. The Prince of Orange had mar
ried James's daughter Mary, who would succeed to
the throne if James had no son, and, as things hap
pened, she and the prince took the throne from
James by violence two years afterwards. The ob
ject of Penn's visit was to persuade the prince, whose
wife was heir presumptive to the crown, to agree
that there should be not only freedom of religious
worship in England, but that the test laws, which
kept both Roman Catholics and dissenters out of
Parliament and office, should be abolished. William
was an ardent and liberal Protestant, and as sincere
a believer in religious liberty as Penn. He readily
agreed that there should be freedom of worship not
only to dissenters, but to papists ; but he very natu
rally declined to have a hand in removing the test
laws which blocked a Roman Cathohc king from
turning over to Rome the British government and
church. Bishop Burnet, who was then at William's court,
has described Penn's efforts and William's answer
in a passage which is well worth quoting.

" But for the tests he would enter into no treaty about them. He
said it was a plain betraying the security of the Protestant re
ligion to give them up. Nothing was left unsaid that might move
him to agree to this in the way of interest. The king would enter
into an entire confidence with him, and would put his best friends in
the chief trusts. Pen undertook for this so positively, that he seemed
to believe it himself, or he was a great proficient in the art of dis
simulation. Many suspected that he was a concealed Papist. It is
certain he was much with Father Peter, and was particularly trusted
by the Earl of Sunderland. So tho' he did not pretend any com-
271

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
mission for what he promised, yet we looked on him as a man em
ployed. To all this the Prince answered, that no man was more
for toleration in principle than he was : He thought the conscience
was only subject to God : And as far as a general toleration, even
of Papists, would content the king, he would concur in it heartily :
But he looked on the Tests as such a real security, and indeed the
only one, when the king was of another religion, that he would
join in no counsels with those that intended to repeal those laws
that enacted them. Pen said the king would have all or noth
ing : But that if this was once done the king would secure the tolera
tion by a solemn and unalterable law. To this the late repeal of the
edict of Nantes that was declared perpetual and irrevocable furnished
an answer that admitted of no reply." (" Burnet's History of his
Own Times," vol. i. 693, 694.)
It is strange that Penn should have been willing
to press such a request ; for he knew that James II.
was drawing Roman Catholics into office as fast as
he could in spite of the tests. Penn might, perhaps,
have defended himself by saying that he believed in
absolute rehgious liberty without restrictions or tests
of any kind. To which William of Orange would
very justly have replied that such complete liberty
might be possible some day ; but at the present time
the tests must be retained in order to keep the
Roman Catholics out of power ; for all English his
tory had shown that, if once in full control, they
would organize the worst sort of rehgious despotism.
William, as Burnet tells us, had about that time
seen an intercepted letter of the Jesuits in which
they boasted that James had declared that he would
establish the Roman religion in England, or die a
martyr in the attempt*

* Burnet's History of his Own Times, vol. i. p. 711.
272

BECOMES A COURTIER
William also, of course, wanted the tests retained
to keep out of power the dissenters who would de
stroy the Church of England. His theory which he
afterwards put into practice, and which proved to be
the sound one, was to protect the Enghsh Church,
keep it in power, and keep dissenters, Roman and
otherwise, out of power ; at the same time aUowing
all of them complete freedom, so far as concerned
their worship. The British government has been
conducted on this principle with gradual relaxation
of it down into our own time.
Penn on this occasion seems to have been utterly
lacking in common shrewdness. While professing
himself a lover of liberty and a Protestant, he was
appearing at the court of the future King of Eng
land, as the dupe and tool of James IL, a Roman
Catholic and well known to be an enemy of liberty.
He made himself very unpopular with important
people who were really his friends, and laid up a
store of trouble for himself The followers of the
Prince of Orange learned to despise him, and that
talking and very violent follower Bishop Burnet
acquired for him a relentless antipathy which he
afterwards took no pains to conceal.
As for the prince himself, he was supremely strong
in the quality in which Penn was weak. He saw
through and through human nature at a glance. He
wasted no antipathy on Penn, because he saw that
he was merely a sincere man who was making a
great mistake.
Penn, Burnet afterwards tells us, persuaded a
Scottish lawyer. Steward, to leave his Puritan and
i8 273

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
Presbyterian party and become an ardent follower
of King James. This Steward also came over to
Holland to persuade William to agree that the tests
should be abolished, and declared that James would
never abolish the penal laws against dissenters' wor
ship, unless the tests were abolished also ; so that no
sort of religious liberty could be had in England
unless the test laws were sacrificed.
There is another incident connected with Penn's
visit to the prince's court which should be mentioned,
because it shows the strength of his relations with
James II. He met there some prominent Presby
terian refugees from Scotland, and among them Sir
Robert Stuart of Coltness. On his return to Eng
land he recommended to James that these men
should be allowed to return from exile because they
were merely zealous for their religion, and had not
been engaged in treasonable acts against the govern
ment James complied, but Sir Robert Stuart, on
his return, found himself penniless, because his es
tate had been given to the Earl of Arran. He told
Penn of it ; and in the Earl of Buchan's " Essays
on Fletcher and Thompson," we have a description
of the very sharp and quick way by which Penn
compelled the restoration of the estate.
" Thou hast taken possession of Coltness's estate," said Penn.
" Thou knowest that it is not thine."
" That estate,'' said Arran, " I paid a great price for. I received
no other reward for my expensive and troublesome embassy in
France." " All very well, friend James, but of this assure thyself, that if
thou dost not give me this moment an order on thy chamberlain for
two hundred pounds to Coltness to carry him down to his native
274

BECOMES A COURTIER
country, and a hundred a year to subsist on till matters are adjusted,
I will make it as many thousands out of thy way with the king"
(p. 29).
Arran, we are told, instantly complied, and after
the revolution the estate was fully restored. This
strength of Penn's influence with the king leads us
to infer that the king must have considered Penn's
services of great value, and that Penn must have
been doing a good deal for him. James II. was
hardly the man to allow Penn so many favors for
nothing. It will be remembered, in the passage just quoted
from Bishop Burnet, that he speaks of Penn as
the friend of Lord Sunderland, or, as he puts it,
"particularly trusted by the Earl of Sunderland."
Penn had first met Sunderland in Paris, or, as some
say, at Oxford, when the students rebelled against
the surplices. They were always intimate. He
sissisted Penn in obtaining his charter for Pennsyl
vania. Penn wrote letters to him from the province.
He addressed him in one letter as " Noble and old
Friend," * and he sought his aid against Lord Bal
timore. Penn's biographers usually mention this
intimacy in a casual way, and I am inchned to
think that the ordinary reader would infer that Sun
derland was some pleasant, philanthropic nobleman,
with a handsome country seat and plenty of game.
Unless, however, his biographers have very much
belied him, this Sunderland was the most unprinci-

* Buck's Penn in America, p. 159; Memoirs, Penna. Hist. Soc,
vol. iv. p. 183. 275

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
pled and low-lived politician that has ever been a
curse to Great Britain. He had neither morals,
honesty, nor honor. He was in the secret pay of
France, and received from that source .^2500 a
year for furnishing information. He posed as the
zealous friend of James II. ; but he allowed his wife
to have an amorous intrigue with Henry Sydney,
who was an adherent of the Prince of Orange, and
through his wife and her paramour he sent informa
tion to that prince at the very time he professed to
be upholding James. When he thought James was
about to succeed in turning the government over to
Rome, he became a Roman Catholic, having previ
ously compelled his son to take the same course.
When WiUiam III. arrived to drive James from the
throne, Sunderland hastily absconded, having first
robbed the jewel office and borrowed large sums
of money. He afterwards returned to England,
worked himself into the good graces of William,
and became a Protestant again.
I do not give this description for the purpose of
suggesting that it was wrong for Penn to be intimate
¦with him, or that Penn was in any way like him.
But if we would understand Penn's position and aU
that happened to him in the next few years, we must
know his surroundings and the sort of men on whom
he relied for favors and assistance.
Henry Sydney, who shared Sunderland's wife, was
the brother of Algernon Sydney, and, strangely
enough, his sister was Sunderland's mother. Henry
Sydney soon took a leading part in bringing over
WUham III. Penn was intimate with him, and, as
276

BECOMES A COURTIER
we shall see, was befriended by him ; but he was
not what we should call a saint
There were very few saints at court If Penn
had dechned to be intimate with any but good men,
his acquaintance would have been small. These
noblemen were all buying and selling one another.
They would accuse one of their number of treason,
give information against him, and immediately apply
to have his estate given them when he should be
convicted. In the autumn of this year, 1686, after his return
from Holland, we find Penn preaching in various
parts of England, and delighted at the numbers
which attended, — often a thousand at a meeting.
At the same time he was writing most pathetic
letters to the steward of his wilderness country-seat
in Pennsylvania. They were still drawing on him
for all sorts of things, the expenses of the govern
ment, and extravagant provisions and supplies for
his servants and people at Pennsbury. "Now I de
sire thee," he writes, " to draw no more upon me for
one penny." He was now, he says, ^5000 and
more behindhand. They have a good farm and
stock at Pennsbury, why should they be importing
meat and other things from Ireland and compelling
him to pay for them ? so again he says in the same
letter, " I beseech thee not to draw any more."
He could easily have stopped this nonsense by a
little firmness with his people, instead of beseeching
and begging them ; but he was a bad manager of
such things. This man Harrison, who was his
steward at Pennsbury, he liked and almost idolized,
277

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
as he did every one whom he employed. He wrote
him most confidential, affectionate letters, which are
very interesting now to read, because they show how
he delighted in all his plans for the province.
He was sending out grape-vines by the thousand ;
for every one at that time expected that grapes and
wine would be one of the great industries in America.
While in the province, Penn had written to Lord
Halifax about the "incredible number" of wild
grapes, and he describes having drunk "a good
claret" that had been made from them. It must have
been his extreme delight in all these natural things of
his province that made that claret seem good. Many
years afterwards travellers related how everywhere
in the environs of Philadelphia they saw grape-vines
and the remains of attempted vineyards. Silk-worm
raising was also another delusion which many people
had about America ; but Penn escaped that
He was giving directions about gardening, grass,
corn, and sheep, and the fertilizers soot and ashes
that might be used. And how he longed to be back
there again ; and how quickly he would fly there if
that detestable Baltimore litigation would only end !
" There is nothing my soul breathes more for in this
world, next to my dear family's life, than that I may
see poor Pennsylvania again." But the people there
must treat him better, or he would not come to
them. They really must.
" Besides that the country think not upon my supply, and I resolve
never to act the governor and keep another family and capacity upon
my private estate. If my table, cellar and stable may be provided
for, with a barge and yacht or sloop for the service of governor or
278

BECOMES A COURTIER
government I may try to get hence, for in the sight of God, I can say
I am five thousand pounds behindhand more than I ever received or
saw for land in that province, and to be so baffled by the merchants
is discouraging and not to be put up."
The yacht seems at first sight an extravagance ;
but it was really needed for his journeys up and
down his hundred miles of river-front, which was
the principal highway. In another letter he scolds
again. He really will not come to them unless they
behave better and stop wrangling and misgoverning
among themselves. He means what he says. " This
is no anger, though I am grieved, but a cool and
resolved thought" And then he goes on "entreat
ing" them to stop drawing on him, instead of order
ing them to stop ; and he cannot understand why he
should have to pay for sending beef to them from
England. When Penn's affections were deeply touched, —
when he took a fancy to a province, or to a man, or
to a king, — there seems to have been no limit to his
folly.

279

XVIII
SUPPORTS THE DESPOTISM OF JAMES II
In the spring of 1687 James II. made what on its
face was a grand proclamation of liberty. He issued
a declaration of indulgence suspending not only the
laws against the worship of Romanists and other dis
senters, but also the test acts which kept them out
of Parliament and civU and military offices. He threw
down the bars and laid open the government in
a way which he could certainly say was far in ad
vance of his time ; for such Hberality was not after
wards attained in a hundred years.
Lawton, whose memoir has been already quoted,
says that Penn had opposed an indulgence which
suspended the laws in such an unconstitutional and
unpopular way. We know not what passed between
Penn and the king on the subject, and Lawton does
not give us the source of his knowledge. But
Penn's writings do not show an opposition to the
Declaration of Indulgence ; nor does his conduct
He was one of those who made efforts to procure
from the various religious bodies addresses and me
morials thanking the king for his declaration, and
he himself presented the address from the Quakers
describing the indulgence as well accepted through
out the country. We have the king's answer to this
280

DESPOTISM OF JAMES II
latter address, and it is worth reading and remem
bering. " Gentlemen, I thank you heartily for your address. Some of you
know (I am sure you do Mr. Penn), that it was always my principle,
that consciences ought not to be forced, and that all men ought to
have the liberty of their consciences. And what I have promised in
my declaration I will continue to perform so long as I live. And I
hope before I die, to settle it, so that after ages shall have no reason
to alter it."
This was the king's " word for liberty," in which
Penn afterwards said he had implicit faith. He be
lieved that the king would in the end establish com
plete liberty, and this was one of the reasons why
he was willing to stand by him. The whole court
had, indeed, put on the most extraordinary airs of
liberality. The popish priests outdid Penn and de
scribed with enthusiasm the immense benefits that
would result from religious liberty. But the king
had peculiar methods for establishing this very de
sirable thing, and how Penn could continue to sup
port him is a mystery which each reader must ex
plain for himself as we go on.
Before he resorted to the Declaration of Indulgence
James had been drawing Roman Catholics into office
and into the livings of the Established Church. By
dismissing some judges and packing the court with
his favorites he had obtained a decision that although
he might not have the right to dispense with the
tests which prohibited Romanists as a body from
holding office, he might on special grounds dispense
with these tests in individual instances. In this way
he thought that the offices of government might be
2S1

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
given to people of his own religion one by one. A
start once made and the fashion set, many of the
aristocracy would change their religion, as they had
done in former reigns, and those who would not
change could be forced. He supposed that English
Churchmen were still very much attached to the
doctrine of passive obedience and ready to accept
without question the religion of the civil power if
backed by force.
In this, however, he was mistaken. That the game
had been successfully played before was true. In
the early days of the Reformation when everything
was in a state of flux, when men's minds were be
wildered and their convictions unsteady, any one who
captured the government machinery could force the
religion of England into almost any channel he
chose. But that day was passed, as James soon dis
covered, and Penn having failed to obtain for him
the consent of William of Orange to a repeal of the
tests which kept Roman Catholics out of power he
resolved to repeal those tests on his own responsi
bihty by the Declaration of Indulgence. To make
it more acceptable he said that he would try to
induce Parliament to abolish by law the tests which
he was then abolishing by despotism.
Penn retained his confidence in James in the face
of all facts and warnings. He knew the situation.
He knew that the great object of the Roman church
in that age was to seize political power, and that it
was often successful ; and he knew also the conse
quences of such success. He knew that Louis XIV.
of France was on friendly terms with James, and
282

DESPOTISM OF JAMES II
when opportunity offered would assist in capturing
the English government for Rome. He had letters
from friends on the continent describing the perse
cutions that still continued there : how the Protes
tants were hunted down by soldiers, who kept them
awake by throwing water on them until they turned
Catholic or went mad. He remembered that his
uncle, George Penn, had been caught by the Inqui
sition in Spain, his property confiscated by the
church, himself imprisoned for three years, during
which time he was whipped once a month, and
finally tortured . on the rack and sent back to Eng
land a wrecked and dying man.
He must have felt the force of all this ; but he at
tempted to argue against it in a most extraordinary
pamphlet called "Good Advice to Roman Catholic
and Protestant Dissenters." This pamphlet was issued
soon after the Declaration of Indulgence appeared,
and was avowedly in support of the king's policy.
It is significant that Penn would not sign his name
to it, but published it anonymously.
The substance of it is that the test laws should be
abolished in the interests of religious liberty, because
there was now no danger from the Roman Catholics.
They could not capture the government, even if the
tests were removed, because, first of all, the masses of
the English people were opposed to such an attempt
The Catholics were a sensible people, knew their
own interest, and would not want to do what the
majority in England disapproved of " Toleration,"
he says, " and no more, is that which all Romanists
ought to be satisfied with." And he professed to
283

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
think that because they ought to be satisfied that
therefore they would be satisfied. They would not,
he said, take too much. Some of them, undoubt
edly, wanted to take everything, but they were not
sufficiently numerous. In fact, the whole body of the
Catholics was only a small fraction of the popula
tion, — scarcely thirty thousand out of eight million,
— and they were very much divided in opinion.
As for the king's putting the Romanists in power,
that was impossible, because he was an old man of
fifty-three years, of a short-lived family, and he would
not have time before his death to accomplish the
designs of which he was suspected. Moreover, he
had given his word against anything of that kind,
and why should not a king's word be as good as any
man's? Penn actually had the face to say that
James would not establish popery and despotism
because he had promised not to do so.
As for Louis XIV. of France coming to assist
James in such a design, Penn said there was nothing
to fear in that because it was not likely that James
would be so ill advised as to admit a foreign army
into England, and, even if he did, England had
enough ships and men to prevent it
This anonymous pamphlet is a rather ugly cir
cumstance in Penn's life, and his biographers have
touched very lightly upon it or attempted to ob
scure that part of it which advocates the abolition
of the tests and upholds the policy of James. They
would prefer to have it seem to be a pamphlet in
favor only of the abolition of the penal laws against
worship. 284

DESPOTISM OF JAMES II
Some biographers not only ignore this pamphlet,
but go so far as to argue that Penn was opposed to
the policy of James. Dixon cites Clarendon as say
ing, under date of June 23, 1688, that Penn "labored
to thwart the Jesuitical influence that predominated."
But when we come to read this passage in Clarendon's
diary, we find that Dixon has paraphrased it, and it
is not quite so strong as he would have us believe.
"Robert Barclay dined with me: he told me that he and Penn
had reconciled Lord Sunderland and Lord Melfort ; which he hoped
would be the ruin of Father Peters."
Very likely Penn did oppose the Jesuitical influ
ence. He was, no doubt, as Dixon says, opposed to
the Declaration of Indulgence being read in the
churches ; and, as we shall see, he advised the king
to release the bishops who were imprisoned for not
ordering it to be read. He also, it appears, advised
the king "to be cautious in his connection with
France, lest the country should be discontented." It
will be observed, however, that he only advises him
to be cautious. He does not advise him to abstain
altogether. There is no doubt, however, that he re
monstrated with the king against many of his meas
ures, and we shall see more instances of his opposing
particular measures. But he wrote the anonymous
pamphlet favoring James's supreme measure of abol
ishing the tests, and he ridiculed the fears of what
might result from this abolition. He was in the ex
traordinary position of opposing important measures
of James's when they were first broached, and then,
when they were carried out, acquiescing in them or,
285

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
as in the Declaration of Indulgence, assisting in
carrying them out He was opposed to particular
measures ; in fact, if we can believe his biographers,
he was opposed to all the measures of James, and
yet remained with him and secretly supported his
most important measure in an anonymous pamphlet
But it is absurd for any one to attempt to show
that Penn was not an upholder of and believer in
James ; for Penn himself has expressly admitted it
He believed that James, in spite of his tyrannous
measures, would come out right in the end. After
James was dethroned by William III., Penn, in a
letter to the Quakers explaining his conduct, said, —
" Nor can I yet see that providence of liberty and peace which we
enjoyed under him was such a trick or snare as some have repre
sented it. . One thing I know — could I have apprehended that
the good days we had during his reign, were a trick to introduce evil
ones, all obligations would have ceased with me and no man more
earnestly and cheerfully engaged after my manner against his govern
ment than myself. (Janney's Life of Penn, p. 354.)
He was a very much deluded man ; that was the
simple truth of the matter ; and, besides the anony
mous pamphlet, he seems to have used his persond
influence among the dissenters to reconcile them to
the Declaration of Indulgence and the policy of the
king. For this purpose the Dutch ambassador tells
us he travelled over the kingdom.* But he could
win over only a few. The great mass of them would
not accept the measure, even though it contained a
benefit for them ; a benefit which was, indeed, great,
* Van Citters to States-General, 4/17 Oct. 1687; Mackintosh
Revolution, 1688, p. 290. 286

DESPOTISM OF JAMES II
for it relieved them from suffering which in this age we
can hardly realize. They were shocked and alarmed
at the principle involved, — that the king could without
the consent of Parliament repeal laws ; and in the re
moval of the tests, which excluded both the Catholics
and themselves from office, they saw nothing but the
trick of a Catholic king to bring his own followers
into power and crush out Protestantism by force.
But Penn went on believing in James. He still
had faith in the royal word for liberty, and thought
all fears to the contrary groundless. This expression,
the king's word for liberty, had then become a party
cry ; and there were many who maintained that the
king's word on this subject was a better safeguard
than law. But how Penn could continue to retain
his faith in James or his word in the transaction with
Magdalen College is difficult to understand.
James pursued his purpose steadily. He set out
to capture the universities of Oxford and Cambridge,
and began to force Roman Catholic officers upon
them. This was certainly attacking the stronghold,
for whoever could possess himself of those two seats
of Learning could control the religion of England.
Christ Church College and University were taken,
and when the presidency of Magdalen became vacant
he ordered the fellows to elect a Catholic. They
refused, and when in spite of threats they continued
to persist in their refusal, the king's officers broke
down the college doors, turned out the president, the
fellows, and the students, and the place was turned
into a popish seminary.
In this piece of tyranny I am glad to say that
287

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
Penn at first took the part of remonstrating with
the king. But unfortunately when he found the
king set in his purpose he changed his ground and
advised the college to yield. Two or three colleges
would, he said, content the papists. Let them have
Christ Church, University, and Magdalen. If they
dared to go farther they would lose his support
This was his method for establishing religious liberty
in England. He still professed to believe that James
would not take everything for the Catholics ; and he
had no objection to the papists acquiring colleges by
unlawful means. Colleges they must have, so he
would let them take by violence one or two that
belonged to the Protestants. His interview with the
fellows of Magdalen is given by Dr. Hough, their
president, and speaks for itself
" He said ' Majesty did not love to be thwarted ; and after so long
a dispute we could not expect to be restored to the king's favor with
out making some concessions. ..." However said I, 'Mr. Penn, in
this I will be plain with you. We have our statutes and oaths to
justify us in all that we have done hitherto ; but setting this aside, we
have a religion to defend, and I suppose yourself would think us
knaves if we would tamely give it up. The papists have already
gotten Christ Church and University: The present struggle is for
Magdalen; and in a short time they threaten they will have the rest.'
He replied with vehemence. ' That they shall never have, assure
yourselves; if once they proceed so far they will quickly find them
selves destitute of their present assistance. For my part, I have
always declared my opinion that the preferments of the Church should
not be put into any other hands but such as they are at present in ;
but I hope you would not have the two Universities such invincible
bulwarks for the Church of England, that none but they must be
capable of giving their children a learned education. I suppose two
or three colleges will content the Papists ; Christ Church is a noble
structure. University is a pleasant place, and Magdalen College is a
comely building. The walks are pleasant, and it is conveniently
288

DESPOTISM OF JAMES II
situated, just at the entrance of the town,' &c., &c. When I heard
him talk at this rate I concluded he was either off his guard, or had
a mind to droll upon us. ' However,' I replied, ' when they had
ours they would take the rest, as they and the present possessors
could never agree ! In short, I see it is resolved that the Papists
must have our college ; and I think all we have to do is, to let the
world see that they take it from us, and that we do not give it up."
(Janney's Life of Penn, 316.)
In all this conduct in support of James, Penn was
in the most absurd manner contradicting his former
principles. It will be remembered that at the time
he was assisting in electing Algernon Sydney to
Parliament, he wrote a pamphlet called " England's
Great Interest in the Choice of this New Parliament,"
and he there declared that no law could be made or
abrogated in England except by Parliament, that the
English constitution was a government of laws, and
that anything else was tyranny. Thus in 1679 he
wrote directly against a declaration of indulgence,
and in 1687 he was travelling about England trying
to persuade the people to accept an indulgence.
Just after the failure of Algernon Sydney to be
elected to Parliament, Penn wrote another pamphlet
called "One Project for the Good of England," in
which he spoke fiercely of the design of the papists
to capture the government ; declared that while no
body must be persecuted for their religion, yet Eng
land must be ruled by Protestants ; that the differ
ence between CathoHcs and Protestants was not only
religious, but civil and political ; that CathoHcs had
a different theory of government ; that they believed
in despotism ; and that if they got into power they
would wreck the liberties of England.
19 289

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
His whole design, stated again and again in this
pamphlet, was to band together the Church of Eng
land and the dissenters against the Romanists, to
show that it was absurd for the Church of England
to persecute the dissenters, because the dissenters
could save the country from Roman despotism.
Eight years later he had shifted to the opposite po
sition and was trying to band together Rome and
the dissenters against the Church of England.
The most curious part of all is, that at the end of
this pamphlet he offers a new test oath, composed
by himself drawn with great care, so that Quakers
could take it, and followed by provisions for
having it subscribed by all the freeholders of Eng
land, for the express purpose of keeping every Ro
man Catholic in the kingdom out of politics and
out of power. In 1679, therefore, he was advo
cating tests and inventing some of his own. In
1687 he was for abolishing the tests altogether.
James went on step by step, and doubtless Penn
thought that each step would be the last, and would
satisfy the papists. But the papists became so
abundantly satisfied that the Protestants could stand
it no longer. James being determined to have laws
made in support of his policy, attempted to pack
Parliament, or, in the language then used, regulate
it He attempted to regulate the counties, the
boroughs, and the returning officers, so that his own
favorites would be elected, and as fast as one vio
lent scheme of this sort failed he tried another.
When he found himself still unsuccessful in getting
the members he wanted he caUed on the boroughs
290

DESPOTISM OF JAMES II
to surrender their charters and receive new ones.
Few complied, and those that refused had soldiers
quartered on them to harass them into a surrender.
Through all the departments of government there
was a general turning out to make vacancies to be
filled by the king's men.
In this way a year passed by after the Declaration
of Indulgence had been issued, and in April, 1688,
James issued another of those dangerous instru
ments to the same effect as the first one. But he
made it more detestable by announcing that he
would put none into public office except those who
would support him in maintaining the indulgence,
and he completed his own ruin by ordering that this
second indulgence should be read on two successive
Sundays by the clergy in all the churches of the
kingdom. He intended to humiliate and break
down the Church of England and bend it to his
wUl. He would compel its clergy to read the in-
trument intended for their ruin, the instrument
which would allow papists to replace them in their
livings and parishes. As his Jesuit adviser, Father
Petre, expressed it, the English clergy must eat dirt,
the dirtiest of all dirt
But again James had miscalculated. The dis
senters had no love for the Established Church ; but
as Englishmen and lovers of liberty they encouraged
the Churchmen to resist this act of tyranny. The
Declaration was read in but few churches, and in
some of those the people all left as soon as they
heard the first words of it. Seven bishops had pe
titioned the king against the order requiring the
291

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
Declaration to be read, and James in his folly had
the seven tried for a seditious libel, and even went
so far as to imprison them in the Tower pending the
trial because they refused to give bail. But it is
hardly necessary to describe in detail this famous
episode in English history, the outburst of indigna
tion it caused, and the way in which it united the
whole nation against the king, who was now believed
to be another Bloody Mary.
At the same time another event occurred which
sealed his fate. The queen gave birth to a son, and
the people, seeing before them at least another gen
eration of papal despotism, were ready for revolu
tion. Russell and Henty Sydney formed the plan
of bringing over William, the Protestant Prince of
Orange, who had married James's daughter. He
landed in England that same year and took the
throne almost without opposition. James, deserted
by his army, navy, and court, threw the Great Seal
into the Thames and fled to France, where he lived
the rest of his days, a pensioner on the bounty of
Louis XIV.
We are informed in the memoir of Charlewood
Lawton, already quoted, that Penn opposed the
regulation of the boroughs, and the depriving them
of their charters, so that they would return the king's
men to Parliament. Very likely he did. We should
be sorry to think that with his principles he failed to
oppose such an outrageous piece of tyranny. But
he opposed it in a peculiar way, and Lawton's de
scription shows that Penn opposed in this case as
he did in the seizure of Magdalen College, — first op-
292

DESPOTISM OF JAMES II
posing, and then consenting when he saw opposition
was in vain.
Penn would get Lawton to write him letters op
posing unpopular measures, and these letters, being
unsigned, Penn would show to the king, appar
ently for the purpose of dissuading the king from
his purpose. He also took Lawton to see the king,
and the king listened to Lawton's arguments. Law-
ton says he is convinced that Penn had no hand in
setting on foot the measure for forcing the boroughs,
and no doubt this is true. But after Lawton had
been to the king, and expressed his mind very
bluntly, Penn came to him with a message that the
king was pleased with his sincerity, and wished to
give him a place. "The king," Penn is reported to
have said, " hath a mind thou shouldst be in com
mission of the peace and a member of the next
Parliament, and a corporation will be found where
some honest gentleman will bring thee in."
This was nothing more nor less than an attempt on
the part of the king to buy up Lawton's opposition,
and make him a member of his regulated Parliament,
which was to do his bidding ; and Penn was assisting
in it and carrying the message. Lawton rejected
the offer with indignation. "As to being a member
of Parliament, I told him I should be glad if a regu
lated Parliament did any good, but by the help of
God I would never make one amongst them."
Lawton's memoir praises Penn, and at the same
time reveals his rather unpraiseworthy political con
duct Apparently what Lawton means is that Penn's
intentions were honest in spite of his conduct
293

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
Lawton ridiculed the Declaration of Indulgence, and
expected that Penn would not like him for it, which
shows very clearly what Penn's position was in regard
to that instrument But Penn did not change his
feeling towards him ; pressed him again to take an
office under James ; and in describing this Lawton
shows that Penn was quite intimate with the infamous
Jeffreys. " But all that Mr. Penn replied upon hearing both was that I was
an honest man, but would go my own way ; and instead of growing
colder, offered me, the very next time he came down into the country,
to bring my Lord Chancellor Jefferies, who did not (tho' he went him
self too much in with the court) mislike a man for being stiff for the
Church of England, to junket, as Mr. Penn called it, one evening ;
and Mr. Penn again pressed me to come into Parliament, and the
commission of the peace ; I declined both." (Memoirs, Penna. Hist.
Soc, vol. iii. part ii. p. 230.)
Penn and Jeffreys were evidently working hard to
gather in Lawton to the side of King James. As to
Lawton and Penn associating in a friendly manner
with such a man as Jeffreys, that would not have
been much thought of then, because cruelty and no
torious oppression and corruption by a judge were
not so shocking as they have since become. Jef-
freys's reputation has grown worse with time. The
people of his day thought him a very wrong-headed
man ; but they would probably read with surprise
the modern frantic denunciations of him.
As to the imprisonment of the seven bishops,
Lawton assures us that Penn was from the first op
posed to their commitment, and on the day when the
king's son was born he went to the king "and pressed
him exceedingly to set them at liberty," as an act
294

DESPOTISM OF JAMES II
which would be so popular with the people that their
good-will towards the king might be restored. But
James had for advisers the Jesuits, who were deter
mined through him to establish the papacy in Eng
land. They failed, as their methods in the long run
have usually failed, and they ruined James. Was
it not, however, entirely natural that Penn should be
thought to be one of them. His protests against the
measures of the king were in secret and known only
to a few of his friends. Before the public and the
world he stood as at best the mediator who was try
ing to make the king's measures palatable to the
people ; and most people very naturally inferred that
he inspired and approved of those measures.
They soon discovered that James had sent him to
the Prince of Orange to persuade that prince to
agree that the tests that kept the papists out of
office should be removed, and they discovered also
that he was the author of the anonymous pamphlet
already mentioned, " Good Advice to the Church of
England," in which he advocated the removal of the
tests and laughed at the fears of papal supremacy
as chUdish. Thousands of people in England were
then as thoroughly convinced that Penn was a
Jesuit in disguise as we are now to the contrary.
He had taken orders, they said, in Rome, where he
had been granted a dispensation to marry, and he
had since then frequently officiated as a priest in
the celebration of the mass at Whitehall, St James's,
and other places in England. If we had lived then,
we should probably have had the same opinion they
held ; for the Jesuits at that time were not the com-
295

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
paratively insignificant and harmless body they have
since become.
They pervaded the political and social life of all
Europe. Their methods and purposes were then
rapidly reaching that enormity for which they were
afterwards expelled from every country of Europe,
and for a time from the Roman church itself They
adopted every imaginable form of disguise. Some
became Baptist or Puritan preachers, some were
gay, swearing cavaliers ; some became domestic ser
vants. They were the most learned, astute, untiring,
and unscrupulous of men. Their disguises were so
perfect and in many cases so dramatic that the
people had grown accustomed to look for them in
the most unexpected forms and places. It would
be just like one of them to take the role of the most
strenuous advocate of religious liberty in England,
to be the sort of man in every way that Penn was, and
in that guise, along with private intimacy with the
king, secure the abolition of the tests and let all his
brother Jesuits into power.
In the autumn of 1688, a few weeks before the
Prince of Orange landed at Torbay to drive James
from the throne, these suspicions against Penn be
came so wide-spread that some of his friends tried
to save him from them by giving him a chance to
contradict them in writing and explain his relations
with the king. WiUiam Popple, secretary of the
Privy Council's Committee on Trade and Planta
tions, wrote him a long, formal, but beautiful letter,
asking him, in the gentlest and most friendly manner,
if he was aware of the condition in which he stood.
296

DESPOTISM OF JAMES II
The consciousness of innocence. Popple said, was
giving him too great a contempt for slanders. It
was possible to be too serene and sublime. An un
swerving prosecution of an honest purpose was well,
but at the same time a man should guard his repu
tation. He was deep in intimacy with a king who
was believed by the whole kingdom to be establish
ing popery by force as the national religion. He
had so great a part in the councils of that king that
it was difficult for people to suppose he was anything
but an absolute papist. " Your post is too consider
able," said Popple, " for a papist of an ordinary form,
and therefore you must be a Jesuit"
He was offering a most melancholy prospect to his
friends, for he was giving his enemies the opportu
nity they desired of destroying him. The aspersion
of Jesuitism that had been cast upon him was off
setting the benefit of all his efforts in the great cause
of liberty of conscience, the cause to which he had
devoted his life.
" It has weakened the force of your endeavors, obstructed their
effect, and contributed greatly to disappoint this poor nation of that
inestimable happiness, and secure establishment, which I am per
suaded you designed, and which all good and wise men agree, that a
just and inviolable liberty of conscience would infallibly produce.
I heartily wish this consideration had been sooner laid to heart and
that some demonstrative evidence of your sincerity in the profession
you make had accompanied all your endeavors for liberty."
In his reply to this letter Penn laid aside the set
phraseology of his sect, and wrote in that plain but
soft and pleasant English he could at times com
mand. He denied, of course, in the fullest and most
297

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
detaUed manner, that he was a papist or a Jesuit, and
he denied each one of the particular instances of
Jesuitism brought against him : his officiating as a
priest, his dispensation to marry, or his having kid
napped one formerly a monk out of Pennsylvania to
deliver him over to his enemies in England.
" The only reason that I can apprehend, they have to repute me a
Roman Catholic, is my frequent going to Whitehall, a place no more
forbid to me than to the rest of the world, who yet, it seems, find
much fairer quarter. I have almost continually had one business or
other there for our Friends, whom I ever served with a steady solici
tation through all times since I was of their communion. I had also
a great many personal good offices to do, upon a principle of charity,
for people of all persuasions ; thinking it a duty to improve the little
interest I had for the good of those that needed it, especially the
poor. I must add something of my own affairs, too, though I must
own, if I may without vanity, that they have ever had the least share
of my thoughts or pains, or else they would not have still depended
as they yet do."
Then he goes on to tell why he likes King James
and believes in him. Cannot, he asks, " a Protestant
dissenter be dutiful, thankful, and serviceable to the
king though he be of the Roman Cathohc com
munion. We hold not our property or protection
from him by our persuasion, and therefore his per
suasion should not be the measure of our allegiance."
This was a most extraordinary sentence to write in
view of recent events. The king's persuasion was
leading him to violate property in the most outra
geous manner. He was taking the colleges of the
Church of England away from their lawful owners to
give them to papists. He was compelling towns to
surrender their charters so that he might turn them
298

DESPOTISM OF JAMES II
over to papist officials. He was packing Parlia
ment by bribery and corruption that it might turn
over to papists the livings, church buildings, and
other property of the Church of England. Re
ligious persuasion was becoming very closely con
nected with property rights and allegiance.
But Penn goes on.
" I am sorry to see so many, that seem fond of the reformed re
ligion by their disaffection to him [the king] recommend it so ill.
Whatever practices of Roman Catholics we might reasonably object
against, and no doubt but such there are, yet he has disclaimed and
reprehended those ill things by his declared opinion against persecu
tion, by the ease in which he actually indulges all dissenters, and by
the confirmation he offers in Parliament for the security of the Protes
tant religion and liberty of conscience. And in his honor, as well as
in my own defence, I am obliged in conscience to say, that he has
ever declared to me it was his opinion ; and on all occasions, when
Duke, he never refused me the repeated proofs of it, as often as I had
any poor suffisrers for conscience' sake to solicit his help for."
This was certainly a strange statement for Penn
to make. It meant that he took the king's word for
everything and shut his eyes to the facts ; took his
word that he was not forcing popery on colleges.
Parliament, government, and Church of England ;
calmly looked at him doing it, and said he could not
see it It meant also that for the sake of securing
present relief to the Quakers and some other dis
senters, he was willing that the king should estab
lish popery in the Church of England and in the
government. In another passage he argues with rather too much
subtlety against the opinion that he was supporting
the measures of James. 299

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
" Is anything more foolish as well as false, than that because I am
often at Whitehall, therefore I must be the author of all that is done
there that does not please abroad ? But supposing some such things
to have been done, pray tell me, if I am bound to oppose anything
that I am not called to do. I never was a member of council, cabi
net, or committee, where the affairs of the kingdom are transacted.
I have had no office or trust, and consequently nothing can be said
to be done by me. . . . However, one thing I know, that I have
everywhere most religiously observed, and endeavored in conversa
tion with persons of all ranks and opinions, to allay heats, and
moderate extremes, even in the politics."
All this sounds very pretty and innocent. But if
he was so entirely free from responsibility, and taking
no part whatever in the affairs of James, why did he
publish anonymously that pamphlet, " Good Advice
to the Church of England," advocating the abolition
of the tests, and ridiculing the notion that James
would force popery on the government ? Why did
he advise the fellows of Magdalen to give up their
coUege to James, on the ground that two or three
colleges would satisfy the papists ? Why was he
bringing Charlewood Lawton to the king to have
him argue against the king's measures ? Why was
he procuring Lawton to write letters to be read to
the king ? and why at the king's request did he ask
Lawton to accept an office which would compel
Lawton to change his opinions.
According to the diary of Narcissus Luttrell, Penn
himself had been appointed to an office before Pop
ple's letter was written. Under date of August 8,
1688,* LuttreU says, "Mr. Penn the Quaker is to be
superintendent of the revenues of excise and hearth

* Vol. i. p. 453.
300

DESPOTISM OF JAMES II
money," and September 17,* "Mr. Penn is made
supervisor of the excise and hearth money." Penn,
however, in his letter to Popple says, " I have had
no office or trust"
But hear his final excuse, which I think shows the
real cause of his infatuation.
" To this let me add the relation my father had to this king's
service, his particular favor in getting me released out of the Tower
of London in 1669, my father's humble request to him upon his death
bed to protect me frora the inconveniences and troubles my persuasion
raight expose me to, and his friendly promise to do it and exact per
formance of it from the moment I addressed myself to him; I say
when all this is considered, anybody, that has the least pretence to
good nature, gratitude, or generosity, must needs know how to inter
pret my access to the king."
I know of no other explanation than the above
that will fully account for Penn's bhnd determination
to stand by the king no matter what he did. If a
man was once his friend, he never could let him go.
Even men, like some of those he appointed deputy
governors of Pennsylvania, to whom he owed no
gratitude, could not forfeit his friendship even when
they were wrecking his property and interests. He
would cling to them in spite of everything, dismiss
them at last only when compelled to it, and do so
with the greatest regret But in the case of those
to whom he felt bound by gratitude, and such life
long gratitude as bound him to King James, it was
simply impossible and out of the question for him to
see any fault in them. His sense of gratitude and
affection in such cases was a more consuming passion
than his devotion to religious liberty.
* vol. i. p. 461.
301

XIX
SUSPICIONS, CONSPIRACIES, AND HIDING
The five years following that autumn of 1688,
when James II. fled to France, were a sad time
for Penn ; but his biographers, in their account of
this period, have not dealt honestly with their read
ers. In the hope of exalting their hero they have
obscured and confused the evidence and omitted
parts of it, as they pleased. This method, however,
is apt to be more of an injury than an advantage,
for when the truth comes out it seems disgraceful
from the attempt at concealment For my own part,
I cannot see that there was anything to conceal, and
I think Penn's reputation has been seriously injured
by the disingenuous way in which this part of his
life has been treated.
Penn did not believe in WUliam III. or in the
revolution of 1688, which brought him to the throne.
His whole course of conduct proves this most clearly,
and I cannot see the slightest use in attempting to
deny or conceal his position. He believed, on the
contrary, in James II. , whom he personally liked,
whom he supported to the last, and whom he would
have been glad to have had come back and displace
King WiUiam. He always insisted on believing that
there would be more toleration and liberty under
302

SUSPICIONS, CONSPIRACIES, AND HIDING
James than under William. There is no doubt that
this was his opinion. But it was merely a pohtical
opinion, and there is no necessity for assuming, as
his biographers do, that it was an infamous crime
which must be kept in the background. It was not
a crime at all. It was merely a mistake, a political
mistake, from our point of view. There were many
who thought it not even a mistake.
Penn has not told us what he thought and felt
when his royal friend and benefactor, the friend
of his father, fled the country. That flight left him
in a very awkward situation. There were several
courses he could pursue. He could follow his royal
friend to France, make one of his court there, at the
palace Louis XIV. gave him to live in, and assist him
in making war on England to win back his crown.
But that would not have been Quaker-like ; it would
have been inconsistent with Penn's life-long position
as protector and representative of his sect in Eng
land ; and what would have become of Pennsylva
nia, forfeited to the crown for the treason of its pro
prietor. It Wcis necessary, it would seem, for him to
stay at home ; and if he stayed at home, what should
he do?
Most of those who had been friends of James,
and had decided to stay at home, went quickly to
William and made their peace with him, promised
to serve him, to be his friend and James's enemy,
and they were given places in his household and
government Macaulay and other writers have given
us amusing descriptions of the sudden way in which
these distinguished men changed their aff"ections and
303

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
opinions and fell on their knees before the new
monarch. But Penn was not one of them. He was
incapable of that sort of thing.
He had never liked WiUiam ; and he did not be
lieve that he would establish religious liberty. In
his pamphlet, "A Persuasive to Moderation," written
in the beginning of the reign of James, Penn speaks
of the growing power of William as "an ebb to
the strength" of Holland. He was evidently one
of those who thought William was a mere self-
seeker, so infatuated with the pursuit of glory that
he would be an injury to both HoUand and England.
Penn liked him no better when he marched into
London over the fallen hopes and fortunes of his
friend James. To say that he did not rush to him
with the others and tell him a pack of sycophantic
lies may seem like small praise, but in that age of
rebellions and revolutions, when public men were
constantly shifting their ground, it is more to Penn's
credit than we might at first suppose.
Penn could have stayed at home as some did and
plot for the restoration of James. But that was a
dangerous game. It would also have been incon
sistent with Quaker principles and inconsistent with
Penn's long announced position, that he was a medi
ator and not an active participant in politics, one
whose mission was to soften the violence of rebels
and of partisans in the interest of peace.
There was, therefore, only one course left that he
could take, and that was to stay at home, follow his
usual avocations so far as possible, neither toady to
WiUiam nor plot to restore James, and at the same
304

WILLIAM HI

SUSPICIONS, CONSPIRACIES, AND HIDING
time admit that James was stiU his friend, and that
he did not believe in tlie revolution which had de
prived him of the crown. This was a difficult posi
tion to maintain, because ordinary minds would not
believe in its sincerity. They would insist that he
must be plotting ; that it was impossible for him to
stay at home and be the friend of James and not
plot for his return. Nevertheless, this difficult course
is, I think, the one Penn laid out for himself, and the
reader must form his own opinion as to how closely
he lived up to it
On the loth of December, 1688, soon after WiUiam
III. entered London, Penn was arrested while walk
ing, it is said, in Whitehall, the place where he had
carried on his courtier occupations under James,
and where he was probably now trying to attend to
some of the remains of that business. He was taken
immediately before the Privy Council, which was
then sitting, and in answer to questions he is reported
to have said, —
" He had done nothing but what he could answer before God and
all the princes in the world ; that he loved his country and the
Protestant religion above his life, and had never acted against either;
that all he had ever aimed at in his public endeavors was no other
than what the prince himself had declared for [religious liberty] ;
that King Jaraes had always been his friend, and his father's friend ;
and that in gratitude he himself was the king's, and did ever, as
much as in him lay, influence him to his true interest."
This statement seems to have satisfied the king.
It will be observed that there is not a word of flat
tery or even compliment to William, or a promise
of allegiance to him. He was the sort of king,
» 305

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
however, who could appreciate such straightforward
ness in a subject But Penn was at that time under
a terrible cloud of suspicion. All England was
screaming Jesuit and papist at him. It would be
unwise to assume at once that he would be a safe
man, and declare him innocent in the face of the
popular clamor against him. So he was compelled
to give security for his appearance the first day of
the next term. When he appeared at the ap
pointed time, his case was continued to Easter term,
and then, no witnesses appearing against him, he
was discharged.
Soon afterwards, in the year 1688, the Parliament
passed the famous Toleration Act which William
had promised when he announced that he had come
to drive James from the throne. This act estab
lished religious liberty by law. AU dissenters ex
cept Roman Catholics and Unitarians were given
the right to worship as they pleased ; but they
must take out licenses for their meeting-houses or
chapels, take the oath of allegiance, and not worship
behind closed doors, a precaution considered neces
sary at that time to prevent plots against the gov
ernment The Quakers were allowed to affirm in
stead of taking an oath. But the test oaths which
kept the Roman Catholics and all other dissenters
from holding office were retained as a safeguard,
proved by terrible experience to be necessary in
that age.
That was the end of religious persecution in Eng
land. From that date to this the British people
have enjoyed the fullest liberty in worship, and the
306

SUSPICIONS, CONSPIRACIES, AND HIDING
tests which kept the Roman Catholics and other
dissenters out of office have been slowly relaxed as
the desire of the Roman church for seizing political
power became less earnest and its ability to attain
that end was weakened.
So the great object of Penn's life was accom
plished, and by whom ? Not by his life-long friend
James, from whom apparently he expected it, but by
James's implacable enemy, William, the Dutchman.
What Penn had been trying to accomplish through
despotic declarations of indulgence, and what he
believed would never be accomplished in any other
way was now suddenly accomplished for all time
by an honest law passed by Parliament without any
attempt at despotism.
Penn's biographers at this point usually introduce
a few conventional sentences to the effect that this
great constitutional change must have been highly
gratifying to one who had labored so long to that
end, and so on. Clarkson goes so far as to assert
that Penn was really the author of the Toleration
Act, and had convinced William of the necessity of
it This is, of course, ridiculous, for William got his
notions of liberty without any aid from Penn.
Dixon says that Penn was very much pleased with
the results of the Toleration Act. But this is again
mere assumption, for Penn was entirely silent on the
subject There is not a word of his that can be quoted
for or against it It may be that he thought it well
enough so far as it went, but laboring under the de
lusion that James and the Jesuits would have been
contented with a few colleges and a few offices, he
307

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
would have preferred that the tests be repealed,
and a freedom in office-holding allowed, which has
scarcely yet been attained in England. Or, more
Hkely, he was so firm in his affection and friendship
for James that he could not be enthusiastic about
this great boon of liberty because it came from
James's detestable enemy.
Besides the Toleration Act, Parliament passed a
few months later what has ever since been known as
the Bill of Rights, a famous document, which, after
describing all the sins of James's despotism, proceeds
to abolish and make them odious. No king shall
ever again suspend or dispense with a law on any
pretext, or prosecute a citizen or bishop for petition
ing, or create by his own authority an ecclesiastical
court, or levy taxes, or keep a standing army with
out the consent of Parhament, or pack juries, or
Parliaments. Freedom of speech in Parliament
must never again be interfered with ; nor shall any
future king disarm Protestants while allowing papists
to retain their arms, nor grant away to his favor
ites the fines and forfeitures of persons accused of
crimes ; nor shall there be any more excessive bail
or fines, or cruel and illegal punishments. That
these things may be the more secure, frequent Par-
Haments shall be held ; and that they may be doubly
secure, the British crown shall never again descend
to a person who is not a Protestant.
This document was really a sort of British Decla
ration of Independence, and modern England has
grown up under it The reforms which it estabhshed
were the very ones for which Penn in his younger

SUSPICIONS, CONSPIRACIES, AND HIDING
days had ardently contended ; and it is a sad reflec
tion that he was now so infatuated with Jacobitism
that he could scarcely appreciate them.
During the remainder of the year 1689 and un
til the spring of 1690 he was undisturbed by the
government, and during that time he was probably
living in the country at Worminghurst But during
this period there is some evidence of an expression
of opinion on his part which Macaulay considers as
evidence that he was plotting to restore James and
doing " everything in his power to bring a foreign
army into the heart of his own country." The only
evidence Macaulay has is a letter written by Avaux,
the French ambassador, to Louis XIV, June 5,
1689, in which Avaux says that he encloses some
notes of news from England and Scotland, and then
adds that the beginning of his news from England
is taken from a letter written by Penn, the original
of which he has seen. In the notes enclosed the
news relating to England taken from Penn's letter is
merely to the effect that the Prince of Orange begins
to be disgusted with the English, and the aspect of
affairs is changing rapidly, as is the way with these
islanders, and that the prince's health is bad.
Macaulay assumes that Penn sent this letter to
James. But there is no evidence that he did. Avaux
does not say so. The letter may have been written
to anybody, and what it says was well known, —
namely, that William's health was bad, that the
people were not so enthusiastic for him as they had
been, and that he was becoming disgusted with
them. Penn, or anybody, WiUiam' s best friend or
309

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
William himself, might have written such statements.
There is not the slightest evidence of a plot in
them. In the spring of 1690, however, the government
intercepted a letter from James, asking Penn "to
come to his assistance in the present state and con
dition he was in, and express the resentments of his
favor and benevolence." This was very serious, and
Penn was ordered to appear before the Privy Council.
Our authority for what happened on that occasion is
Gerard Croese's " General History of the Quakers,"
published in 1696.
" Upon this, Penn being cited to appear, was asked why King
James wrote unto him, he answered he could not hinder such a thing.
Being further questioned what resentments these were which the late
king seemed to desire of him, he answered he knew not, but said he
supposed King James would have him to endeavor his restitution,
and that though he could not decline the suspicion, yet he could
avoid the guilt, and since he had loved King James in his prosperity
he should not hate him in his adversity, yea he loved him as yet for
many favors he had conferred on him, though he would not join with
him in what concerned the state of the kingdom. He owned he had
been much obliged to King James, and that he would reward his kind
ness by any private office as far as he could, observing inviolably and
entirely that duty to the public and government wliich was equally
incumbent upon all subjects, and therefore that he had never the
vanity to think of endeavoring to restore him that crown which was
fallen from his head, so that nothing in that letter could at all seem
to fix guilt upon him." (Croese, p. 113.)
This was certainly a very frank and honest state
ment, and it describes the very wise position of
friendly neutrality between William and James which
Penn intended to maintain. The letter James wrote
was not by itself conclusive evidence of plotting on
310

SUSPICIONS, CONSPIRACIES, AND HIDING
the part of Penn, for, as he said, he could not pre
vent the banished king from writing to him.
In the biography by Besse prefixed to Penn's
Works, we are told that when first brought before
the councU on this occasion, Penn asked to be heard
in the presence of the king, and this request was
granted. The examination lasted, it is said, two
hours ; and a great deal must have been said in that
time ; but Besse gives no report of it, nor does he
mention or refer in any way to the report which we
have quoted as given by Croese. Possibly Penn
may have told some one the substance of his an
swers to the king and council, and Croese may have
heard it at second or third hand. Besse goes on to
say that after the two hours' examination William
was inclined to acquit Penn entirely, but to please
some of the council he was held upon baU for a
while, and in Trinity term of the same year dis
charged. Croese is not the best sort of authority ; but as he
and Besse were contemporaries of Penn, I am en
tirely willing to accept what they say. But there I
draw the line. Clarkson, who wrote in 1814, says
that Penn was arrested on that occasion " by a body
of military ;" but Croese says only that he was
cited to appear, and Besse that he was brought
before the council. In Dixon's biography, written
in 1856, Clarkson's body of military becomes a
band of military which "one day beset his house
and placed him under arrest ;" and instead of quoting
what Croese says of the examination, which is all we
know of it, Dixon paraphrases it into a very dra-
311

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
matic conversation, stating at one point, "The Lords
were startled at this frank interpretation ;" and again,
"William was struck with a defence so unusual."
There would be no harm in Dixon using his imagi
nation, if he would warn the reader of it ; but he
states his suppositions and guesses as if they were
facts of the examination ; and this is not the only
episode of Penn's life which has been developed in
this way.
In the summer of this year, 1690, James invaded
Ireland with an army, and William went there to
meet him. The French admiral, having beaten the
combined Dutch and English fleets, was hovering off"
the coast Queen Mary was left alone in London to
govern as best she could ; and as the plots for the
overthrow of herself and her husband thickened,
Penn was suspected, along with Lord Clarendon,
Lord Preston, and about fifteen others. He was ar
rested by proclamation, July 18, 1690, and remained
many months in prison until tried at the close of the
year. Several of those arrested with him were con
victed, and one of them was executed, but he him
self was acquitted. Lord Preston, who turned state's
evidence, seems to have had nothing against him
except conversations, in which Penn had mentioned
long lists of persons who were friendly to King James.
Such statements, of course, amounted to nothing.
Penn, being friendly to Jame.s, and disHking Wil
liam, often, I have no doubt, spoke of those who
favored James's return. He would not, as I have
already said, assist actively in accomplishing that
return ; but from aU his previous conduct and words
312

SUSPICIONS, CONSPIRACIES, AND HIDING
I think we can say he would have been glad to see
it accomplished. He naturally often spoke favor
ably of James, and spies and informers might easily
construe his words as evidence of a plot
It had now become evident that WUliam, in be
coming king, had other purposes to accomplish be
sides delivering England from a tj^rant He intended
to use England in an alliance with the Protestant
powers to crush France. The war was already begin
ning, and the English people foresaw the expenses
of a great army with increased taxation. This
alienated not a few friends of William, who had as
sisted in bringing him to the throne. We would
naturally suppose that it would alienate Penn more
than ever, and he would naturally be brought into
association with those who, like himself, were friendly
to James. He could not very well avoid talking to
them ; some of them might be plotting for his old
friend's return ; and from his association with such
people it is not surprising that the government often
suspected him.
But for a short time after his trial, at the close of
1690, the government seems to have been satisfied
that he was altogether innocent of plotting, for al
most immediately after the trial the secretaiy of state
granted him an order for a convoy to take him to
Pennsylvania. He published proposals for settlers,
a number of whom he intended to take with him,
and he was soon to depart. But George Fox died
on the 13th of January, and on the i6th Penn
preached at his funeral. Soon after the ceremony
he learned that a warrant had been issued for him,
313

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
and that the officers intended to take him at the
funeral, but, mistaking the hour, came too late.
What the evidence was on this occasion we do
not know, for Penn did not give the officers another
chance to take him. He went into hiding, an act
which some of his biographers have attempted to
obscure by caUing it "retirement," "living in seclu
sion," or " taking private lodgings." But it is better
to state the fact and truth. No one now knows
where he went. Clarkson, however, informs us with
out hesitation that he took "a private lodging in
London ;" and all the biographers seem to be
agreed that during the three years he remained in
concealment he was in London aU the time. Stough
ton describes the London of that day with its queer
secluded courts and alleys with rambling, overhang
ing houses, where, he says, Penn could have been
as effectually concealed as in a wilderness.
But this is mere picturesque guessing. In a
letter written towards the close of his concealment,
Penn says, "I have been above these three years
hunted up and down, and could never be allowed
to live quietly in city or country." Narcissus Lut
trell, in his diary, says that at one time during his
concealment, Penn went to France. So it would
seem that he was constantly on the move, and did
not remain all the time in London. There is no
doubt, however, that he was at times in London ;
and he seems to have had some special place of
concealment there ; for after the king withdrew his
suspicions, and concealment was no longer neces
sary, he says that he preached in London and then
3'4

SUSPICIONS, CONSPIRACIES, AND HIDING
went "to visit the sanctuary of my solitude." He
adds, "and after that to see my poor wife and
children ; the eldest being with me all this whUe."
Exactly why Penn hid himself during those three
years we shall never know. Besse, in the life of him
already often referred to, says that the warrant had
been issued on information furnished by the notori
ous Fuller, who made a business, like Titus Oates,
of accusing prominent people. In the absence of a
modern detective system the government was com
pelled to rely on these irregular informers. Fuller
was not long afl:erwards declared, by Parliament, to
be a cheat and impostor, and punished. Besse's
statement has been accepted by all subsequent
biographers and they argue that Penn was unwilling
to take the chances of a trial on evidence furnished
by this wretch, and so resolved to escape arrest alto
gether. Fuller was, however, not then known to be so in
famous as he was afterwards proved. Macaulay
points out that, according to his own life of himself,
he was not at that time in England, and he also cites
a letter written by Caermarthen to King William,
February 3, saying that the only witness against
Penn was Preston. Penn nowhere says that this
warrant was based on Fuller's information. He says
that he was indicted in Ireland on information fur
nished by Fuller and some others ; but that was an
other matter. It should also be observed that Fuller
was discredited a few months after this warrant for
Perin was issued ; but Penn remained in hiding for
three years. There was evidently some reason for
315

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
this concealment which is not now apparent, and
Fuller seems to have had little or nothing to do
with it
Nothing that Penn has left in writing throws much
light upon it ; for he refers to his concealment only
in general terms, an unfortunate practice which he
and the Quakers indulged in too much on many oc
casions. He had, of course, to give up his voyage
to Pennsylvania, and, writing of it to the province,
he says, —
" By this time thou wilt have heard of the renewal of my troubles,
the only hinderance of my return, being in the midst of my prepara
tions with a great company of adventurers when they came upon me.
The jealousies of some and unworthy dealings of others, have made
way for them ; but under and over it all the ancient Rock has been
my shelter and comfort ; and I hope yet to see your faces with our
ancient satisfaction." (Janney, 359.)
In a letter written May 30, 1691, to the Yearly
Meeting of Quakers in London, he says, —
" My privacy is not because men have sworn truly, but falsely
against me ; ' for wicked men have laid in wait for me and false
witnesses have laid to my charge things that I knew not.' " (Janney,
356.) This last quotation would include an accusation
like Fuller's ; and yet if Fuller had been the cause
he would probably have named him as he did in
speaking of the indictment in Ireland. In the first
quotation it will be observed he refers his troubles
to " The jealousies of some and unworthy dealings
of others." Judging from all the evidence, which
we shall have more in detail later, it seems to me
316

SUSPICIONS, CONSPIRACIES, AND HIDING
that the government had information about him, not
merely from Fuller, but from other sources which
made them very suspicious of him. Their suspi
cion was not strong enough to make them hot in
his pursuit It was William's policy to be very easy
and generous with his enemies unless they became
decidedly dangerous. The government did not con
sider it essential to the safety of the throne to seize
and try Penn at once. They were willing he should
hide, and meantime they could await developments.
Soon after Penn's concealment a plot was dis
covered to bring over King James in the absence of
William, who had gone to The Hague to attend a
conference of princes. It was thought that with
William out of the country, only a small army left,
and the people discontented with the four millions
of taxes William's government had imposed, it would
be only necessary for James to arrive suddenly with
a very small force to have the whole nation flock to
him and achieve a complete revolution in his favor.
" The men who laid this design,'! says Burnet, " were
the Earl of Clarendon, the Bishop of Ely, the Lord
Preston, and his brother Mr. Graham, and Pen, the
famous Quaker."
There is no doubt that the first four were guilty.
Preston was caught red-handed with the papers in
his possession. He saved his life by turning state's
evidence, and named Penn, among others, as one of
those in the plot The papers found on him were
also believed by the government to implicate Penn,
and he was included in the proclamation for the
arrest of all these conspirators. 317

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
Penn may have had some remote and indefinite
connection with the plan ; but he was never proved
to have been guilty. It would be impossible, how
ever, to have convinced Burnet and other adherents
of William, including Lord Macaulay, that Penn was
not as guUty as the others. Burnet adds to his ac
count of the plot, " The Bishop of Ely, Grimes, and
Pen absconded."
Penn from his hiding-place sent his brother-in-law
to Henry Sydney, brother of his old deceased friend,
Algernon Sydney. Henry Sydney, who was about
this time made Lord Romney, had been very instru
mental in bringing over WiUiam, and now stood high
in his government He describes his interview with
Penn in a letter to King WiUiam of February 27,
I69f " About ten days ago, Mr. Penn sent his brother-in-law, Mr.
Lowther, to me to let me know that he would be very glad to see
me, if I would give him leave, and promise to let him return with
out being molested ; I sent him word I would, if the queen would
permit it ; he then desired me not to mention it to anybody but the
queen ; I said I would not : A Monday he sent to me to know what
time I would appoint ; I named Wednesday in the evening, and ac
cordingly I went to the place at the time, where I found him just as
he used to be, not at all disguised, but in the same clothes and the
same humour I formerly have seen him in : it would be too long
for your Majesty to read a full account of our discourse, but in short
it was this, that he was a true and faithful servant of King William
and Queen Mary, and if he knew anything that was prejudicial to
them or their government he would readily discover it : he protested
in the presence of God that he knew of no plot, nor did he believe
there was any one in Europe, but what King Lewis hath laid, and
he was of opinion that King James knew the bottom of this plot as
little as other people : he saith, he knows your Majesty hath a great
many enemies ; and some that came over with you, and some that
joined you soon after your arrival, he was sure were more inveterate
318

SUSPICIONS, CONSPIRACIES, AND HIDING
against you, and more dangerous than the Jacobites, for he saith that
there is not one man amongst them that hath common understand
ing. To the letters that were found with my Lord Preston, and the
paper of the conference, he would not give any positive answer, but
said if he could have the honor to see the king, and that he would
be pleased to believe the sincerity of what he saith, and pardon the
ingenuity of what he confessed, he would freely tell everything he
knew of himself, and other things that would be much for his
Majesty's service and interest to know, but if he cannot obtain this
favour he must be obliged to quit the kingdom ; which he is very
unwilling to do. He saith he might have gone away twenty times
if he had pleased, but he is so confident of giving your Majesty sat
isfaction if you would hear him, that he was resolved to expect your
return before he took any sort of measures. What he intends to do,
is all he can do for your service, for he can't be a witness if he
would, it being, as he saith, against his conscience and his principles
to take an oath. This is the sum of our conference, and I am sure
your Majesty will judge as you ought to do of it without any of my
reflections." This letter shows conclusively that there was other
evidence against Penn besides what the notorious
Fuller may have said. Sydney says that Penn would
give no positive answer " to the letters that were
found with my Lord Preston and the paper of the
conference." How far the letters criminated Penn
we cannot tell. Lord Preston, when brought before
William to confess and save his life, had directly
implicated Penn, as we are informed by Dalrymple.
"He confessed against the bishops and Clarendon, and many of
the known partisans of the late king. He then named among his
associates the Duke of Ormond, the Lords Dartmouth, Macclesfield,
Brandon, and Mr. Pen, the Quaker ; and added. Pen told him, that
although Lord Dorset and Lord Devonshire had not attended the
conference, they were of the party." (Dalrymple's Memoirs, part
ii. book vi. p. 189.)
The conference here referred to, and also men
tioned by Sydney in his interview with Penn, is de-
319

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
scribed for us by both Dalrymple and Burnet Some
of the Whigs, it seems, who had at first favored Wil
liam were now disgusted with him. He was worse,
they said, than James, who had at least sacredly re
spected the habeas corpus law, which William did
not respect at all and had suspended ; and they
went on to tell how he had dragged England into
a foreign war and allowed the navy, whose glory
had been unsuUied for centuries, to be disastrously
defeated. They joined themselves to some of the
Tories who were like-minded, and then called to
their aid the close adherents of James. A confer
ence was held which resulted in sending Preston and
some others to James with the papers that were
found on them when they were caught
The opinion of the participants in this conference,
Burnet tells us, was that if James were brought
back France would be inclined to oblige rather
than to conquer England, and that James himself
would be governed by Protestants and follow Prot
estant and English interests ; in other words, be a
hberal tolerant ruler as good as William, and proba
bly much better. These are very much like Penn's
views expressed on various occasions, and it is not
at all unlikely that he was connected in some way
with this conference.
His biographers have, however, carefully obscured
all this evidence which I have been describing, as if
any connection with the conference was a frightful
crime, from the imputation of which they must pro
tect Penn at aU hazards. But it is not a question
of crime, it is merely a question of political opinion.

SUSPICIONS, CONSPIRACIES, AND HIDING
There were thousands like Penn who could not then
see, what time has since shown, that WiUiam in the
end would be the safer ruler of England. These
people were deluded and mistaken, but not crimi
nals. To show their delusion, Dalrymple goes on to tell
how the conference proposed that when Louis XIV.
should start with his army and fleet to help James
land in England, he must first of all declare reli
gious liberty in France, so as to make his invasion
of England seem less distasteful to English Protes
tants. This was precisely the sort of wild notion
that would attract Penn. He would believe, as he
had often believed of James's temporary indulgences
of freedom in England, that the benefits of such
liberty to trade, commerce, and all the departments
of life would in a few weeks become so apparent
that rehgious freedom would be adopted all over
Europe. The conference also proposed that the French
king with his fleet and army must act only as a me
diator between James and his people, and not as an
ally of James to conquer the English people, .and
that James must remove all his Roman Catholic ad
visers, and publish a declaration that he would send
back the French fleet and army as soon asWilliam'3
forces should withdraw, and that he would refer all
subjects of dispute to a free Parliament In other
words, the wolf would be entirely acceptable as
king of the sheep if he would promise not to be a
wolf These were the same delusions Penn had
been indulging in about James for the last five years,
21 321

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
and the conference must have suited him exactly,
and had his full sympathy if not his active partici
pation. When Penn said to Sydney that he knew of no
plot, nor did he believe there was any except what
King Louis had laid, he was making a rather
strong statement, at which some have smiled and
others shaken their heads. Macaulay calls it a
downright lie, and Penn's biographer, Stoughton,
admits that he cannot swallow it. Penn may have
meant that he had no personal or actual knowledge
of a plot from having participated in it But that he
did not know of the existence of plots and their gen
eral intention and methods is impossible to suppose.
In his inteiview with Sydney he placed himself
in this position : that he was not plotting, and he
knew of no plot ; he could explain the evidence
against him in a private interview with the king, and
at the same time give the king valuable information,
but he would not be a witness in a trial because he
could not take an oath. If not allowed to explain
himself to the king, he would have to quit the king
dom. This seems to show that Penn was somewhat
inclined to turn state's evidence. He evidently
dreads a formal trial ; but seems to have no fear of
a direct interview with King WUliam, possibly for
the reason that William was well known to be very
liberal and magnanimous in these matters. William
was then in Ireland, and the interview with him was
not granted. Penn remained for some months in his
concealment, or privacy, as he called it, apparently
322

SUSPICIONS, CONSPIRACIES, AND HIDING
unmolested. The concluding words of Sydney's
letter are obscure, but they seem to me to imply
that he thought Penn was not dangerous to the
government. Two months afterwards we have a letter from
Penn to Sydney, dated " 22d A 91," in which he
urges Sydney to prevail with the king not to enter
tain "hard things" of him which ignorance, art, and
prejudice have suggested." He asks to be allowed
to live quietly anywhere in England or America.
He promises to make no ill use of this favor, and
adds that the Quakers will be the pledges of his
peaceful living. He goes on in a very humble man
ner to say that the king will never regret granting
this request Then he hints that it may also be
worth while for the king to oblige him, and not make
him and his family any more unhappy than they are
already. He has gone through enough, he says, in
the last two years " to have provoked, it may be, a
better man to a less peaceable and submissive con
duct" This mysterious mingling of humility and threats
leaves us more in the dark than ever. Penn in effect
says, if you continue to oppress me, I may be driven
from my neutral position and do you an injury. He
seems to have heard something more about Wil
liam's disposition towards him, for he closes by say
ing, " I confess I can by no means think him so
prejudiced or implacable as some represent him in
my affair ;" and then he adds the hint and threat,
"therefore I have refused all other offers of future
safety or accommodation." 323

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
Did Penn still possess some valuable information,
as he said in the interview with Sydney, and was he
trying to barter it for his future safety ?
Sydney is reported by Penn to have answered that
" the King took it so, as I should not have been dis
pleased to have heard it" And later Penn writes
again to Sydney.
" Let me be believed and I am ready to appear ; but when I re
member how they began to use me in Ireland upon corrupt evidence
before this business, and what some ill people have threatened here,
besides those under temptation, and the providences that have succes
sively appeared for my preservation under this retirement I can not
without unjustifiable presumption put myself into the power of my
enemies." This statement seems to imply that there had been
some previous communication which has not come
down to us. Penn says that if they will believe
what he will tell, he is ready to appear. He was
still trying to avoid a trial. He wished to come
into the king's presence, teU him everything he
knew, and have that accepted instead of a trial.
Or, in other words, if the king would promise him
that there should be no trial, he would appear and
tell everything. The rest of the statement seems to
mean that he has already been so badly handled
in Ireland on corrupt evidence, and had so many
narrow escapes in England, that it would be
foolish to give himself up voluntarily, and foolish
to appear in any way unless he was promised in
demnity. The trouble in Ireland to which he refers
was that he had been indicted there by the grand
jury for treasonable conspiracy, and although he
324

SUSPICIONS, CONSPIRACIES, AND HIDING
had never been tried on the indictment, the rents
of his Irish estates had been confiscated pending
the trial.
What he says about the providences that have
preserved him since his concealment would seem to
imply that many things had happened of which no
account has come down to us. Indeed, the impres
sion we obtain from all we read of him at this
period is that a great deal was going on between
him and the government of which no record has
been preseived. He goes on to say in the letter to
Sydney, just quoted, —
" Let it be enough to say and that truly, I know of no invasions or
insurrections, men, money, or arms, for them, or any juncto or con
sult, for advice or correspondency in order to it. Nor have I ever
met with those named as the members of this conspiracy, or prepared
any measures with them, or any else for the Lord's [Sunderland ?]
to carry with him as one sense or judgment, nor did I know of his
being sent for up for any such voyage. If I saw him a few days
before by his great importunity, as some say, I am able to defend
[myself] from the imputations cast upon me, and that with great truth
and sincerity. Though in rigor, perhaps, it may incur the censure
of a misdemeanor, and therefore I have no reason to own it without
an assurance that no hurt should ensue to me."
Here we have, as it seems, an instance of the sort
of evidence that, without his being able to prevent it,
was accumulating against Penn. As an old friend
of James he could not help occasionally seeing and
talking with those who were more or less actively
engaged in plotting for James's return. He admits
that he has been with one such person whom it
would have been better not to have seen. He adds,
also, that this person insisted on seeing him. At the
325

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
close of the letter he says, " Let me go to America
or be protected here."
Sydney's answer was that the king was in too great
a hurry to attend to this letter, but he would bring
it to his attention again in Holland, whither he was
going. Penn says he wrote a similar letter to Lady
Reneleagh, asking her to intercede on his behalf
with the queen. "What else can I do?" he says.
" I know false witnesses are rife against me, both
here and in Ireland."
He was evidently in great trouble, and not en
joying the easy retirement his biographers would
have us suppose. These last communications with
Sydney and Lady Reneleagh were presumably in
May or June. Two or three months afterwards, in
September, 1691, Narcissus Luttrell enters in his
diary for the 1 8th of that month that Penn left Eng
land and went to France.* This was in accordance
with what he had said, that if King William would
not hear him in person and free him from the danger
of a trial, he must leave the country.
This passage in Luttrell's diary, though noticed by
Macaulay, is not even mentioned by any of the
biographers of Penn, nor do they say anything of
his going to France. If they think that Luttrell is
mistaken, and that Penn did not leave England, they
should say so, and give their reasons. But to pass
by in silence such an important authority as Lut
trell is hardly fair to their readers. They make no
* " Wm Penn the Quaker is got off from Shoreham in Sussex and
gone to France.'' (Vol. ii. p. 286.) 326

SUSPICIONS, CONSPIRACIES, AND HIDING
attempt to explain the long blank in Penn's life from
the summer of 1691, when he ceased corresponding
with Sydney, to the close of 1693, a period of over
two years, during which we do not know what he was
doing or where he was. They skip their confiding
readers across this gulf without letting them know
of its existence.
Whether Penn remained any length of time in
France we cannot tell. There is a letter of his to
Robert Turner, in Pennsylvania, dated at London,
November 29, 1692,* a little more than a year after
Luttrell says he went to France. The date of this
letter is about a month after King WiUiam had de
prived him of the government of Pennsylvania ; and
this loss may have brought him to London. The
seizure of his government may have been because
the king had become more suspicious of him. That
he led a very wandering life during all the three
years of his concealment we are compelled to be
lieve from his own words already quoted.
" I have been above these three years hunted up and down, and
could never be allowed to live quietly in city or country." (Janney,
P- 367-) These words are in a letter not dated, but evi
dently, from the contents, written towards the end of
his concealment The king and queen, he says, are
still against him, and apparently so much so that he
considers himself still in danger. If he could only
make them believe that he was not working against
them, and that he would " sequester himself out of
* Janney, p. 364.
327

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
the way of having it in his power to offend them,"
they would not, he thinks, be so violently preju
diced. But he cannot convince them of it, and so
commits himself and family to the good and merci
ful God. He goes on to tell in full about the
indictment against him in Ireland and the confisca
tion of the rents of his estates there although he
had not been tried.
Some time afterwards he appears to have been in
negotiation with Lord Rochester, to make his peace
for him with the king, for we have an undated letter
of his to Rochester, from which it would seem that
Rochester had asked whether, if the king acquitted
him, he would go to Pennsylvania. Penn says
he certainly would go there, because his affairs in
that province are in a bad way. But he cannot
start before the following spring because he must
first go to Ireland to recover what he could of
his ruined estates and get rid of the indictment
there. Meantime, he will follow his " own occa
sions in as private and inoffensive a manner as he
can." The government may have thought it a good plan
to get rid of Penn and all possible danger from
him by making sure that he would cross three thou
sand mUes of ocean to Pennsylvania. This Penn
suspected, and he adds, "I will not receive my liberty
to go as a condition to go there, and be there as here
looked upon as an articled exile."
But the end of his troubles was near. Towards
the close of the year 1693 the government began
to consider him as no longer dangerous. Several of
.-.28

SUSPICIONS, CONSPIRACIES, AND HIDING
the noblemen to whom he had already several times
appealed — Rochester, Reneleagh, and Sydney — now
interceded for him with the king, and he has him
self described the result in a letter to his friends in
Pennsylvania. "This comes by the Pennsylvania Merchant, — Harrison, com
mander, and C. Saunders, merchant. By them and this know, that
it hath pleased God to work my enlargement, by three Lords repre
senting my case as not only hard, but oppressive ; that there was
nothing against me but what impostors, or those that are fled, or that
have, since their pardon refused to verify (and asked me pardon for
saying what they did), alleged against me ; that they had long known
me, some of them thirty years, and had never known me to do an
ill thing, but many good offices ; and that for not being thought to
go abroad in defiance of the Government, I might and would have
done it two years ago ; and that I was, therefore, willing to wait to
go about my affairs, as before, with leave; that I might be the better
respected in the liberty I took to follow it.
" King William answered, ' That I was his old acquaintance, as
well as theirs; and that I might follow my business as freely as
ever ; and that he had nothing to say to me,' — upon which they
pressed him to command one of them to declare the same to the
Secretary of State, Sir John Trenqhard, that if I came to him, or
otherwise, he might signify the same to me, which he also did. The
Lords were Rochester, Reneleagh, and Sydney ; and the last as my
greatest acquaintance, was to tell the Secretary ; accordingly he
did ; and the Secretary, after speaking himself, and having it from
King William's own mouth, appointed me a time to meet him at
home; and did with the Marquis of Winchester, and told me I was
as free as ever ; and as he doubted not my prudence about my quiet
living, for he assured me I should not be molested or injured in any
of my affairs, at least while he held that post. The Secretary is my
old friend, and one I served after the D. of Monmouth and Lord
Russel's business ; I carried him in my coach to Windsor, and pre
sented him to King James; and when the Revolution came, he
bought my four horses that carried us. It was about three or four
months before the Revolution. The Lords spoke the 25th of No
vember, and he discharged me on the 30th.
"From the Secretary I went to our meeting, at the Bull and
Mouth ; thence to visit the sanctuary of my solitude ; and after that
329

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
to see my poor wife and children ; the eldest being with me all this
while. My wife is yet weakly ; but I am not without hopes of her
recovery, who is of the best of wives and women.''
From this passage we learn that, when he was a
courtier in King James's time, Penn lived in a style
rather more magnificent than we now usually asso
ciate with Quakers, for he speaks of riding in his
coach and four to visit the king. There were, how
ever, other instances of this luxury among Quakers,
especially in Pennsylvania, where at the time of the
Revolution of 1776 John Dickinson is described as
riding in a coach and four.
Narcissus Luttrell, in his diary for December 5,
1693, speaks of Penn's acquittal by King William
rather more bluntly than Penn himself describes it.
" Wm. Penn, the Quaker, having for some time absconded, and
having compromised the matters against him, appears now in public,
and on Friday last held forth at the Bull and Mouth in St. Martin's."
(Vol. iii. p. 237.)
After having assailed Penn through two volumes of
his history, Macaulay at this point fires his last shot
" The return which he made for the lenity with which he had been
treated does not much raise his character. Scarcely had he again
begun to harrangue in public about the unlawfulness of war, when he
sent a message earnestly exhorting James to make an immediate
descent on England with thirty thousand men."
The message here referred to was contained in
a document sent to James and professing to inform
him what some of his prominent adherents in Eng
land thought of his chances of getting back his
crown. 330

SUSPICIONS, CONSPIRACIES, AND HIDING
" Mr. Penn says that your Majesty has had several occasions, but
never any so favorable as the present ; and he hopes that your Maj
esty will be earnest with the most Christian king not to neglect it : that
a descent with thirty thousand raen will not only re-establish your
Majesty, but according to all appearance break the league." (Mac-
pherson's " Original Papers," vol. i. p. 468.)
This is the language of a Roman Cathohc, not of
a Quaker ; for Penn is represented as caUing Louis
XIV. the most Christian king, and he urges James to
join with that king in a descent on England which
will not only restore him to the throne, but break up
the Protestant league which WiUiam was maintaining
by arms against France. If Penn really used such
language as this, it is not surprising that they sus
pected him of being a Jesuit.
But it is difficult to believe that he said anything
so inconsistent with the other expressions of his
opinion which we have. He has told us, in passages
which we have already quoted, that he had more
hope for religious liberty under James than under
WiUiam. He unquestionably would have liked to
see James again on the throne. But I must confess
I am not prepared to hear him urge a French inva
sion of England to accomplish this purpose.
It is still more difficult to believe that he ex
pressed it in the language reported. The report,
it should be remembered, is made by a Roman
Catholic, who does not apparently pretend to give
Penn's words, but only the substance of what he
said. The man who made this report was one
Williamson, who was regularly employed to bring
information from England. In the letter in which
he gives Penn's opinion will be found his reports of
331

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
what about a dozen other friends of James thought
on the subject of his return, and all these reports
are expressed in the same conventional form, and
they all speak of the thirty thousand men that are
to descend on England.
There is no evidence that Williamson spoke di
rectly with Penn in order to obtain his opinion. He
may have heard in a roundabout way something
which he chose to consider as Penn's opinion. Peo
ple may have told him what they understood Penn's
opinion to be, and Williamson may have entered it
as a make-weight in his reports. As evidence, his
report seems to me very weak. It seems all the
weaker when we find that twenty years later, in De
cember, 1 71 3, another information collector named
Plunket reports Penn as one of those who could be
relied on by the pretender to the English throne.
Plunket could not pos.sibly have communicated with
Penn; for in December, 171 3, he had been out of
his mind for a year and a half*
But we need concern ourselves no further with
these reports, for the English government never
again interfered with Penn, and we shall hear no
more of his relations with William III. During those
three years of hiding, he had employed his leisure in
writing several pamphlets, most of them defences of
Quaker doctrine, such as " The New Athenians no
Noble Bereans" and "A Key to the Quaker Re
ligion." During that time, also, he wrote his coUec
tion of maxims called " Fruits of Solitude." But
* Clarkson's Penn, vol. ii. p. 290.
332

SUSPICIONS, CONSPIRACIES, AND HIDING
the most interesting pamphlet he wrote during his
concealment was "An Essay towards the Present
Peace of Europe." In this he advocated what has
ever since been agitating the minds of phUanthropists
and public men, — a system of arbitration or general
government to settle aU the disputes of the European
nations and prevent war. He proposed to have a
United States of Europe, with a diet or general
council, to which each .state should send its repre
sentatives ; and he even went so far as to suggest
the number each nation should send.
Here we have Penn at his best in the midst of his
worst. While in punishment and hiding for uphold
ing a narrow-minded and stupid despot, he advocates
a broad and generous principle which that despot
could never have comprehended. The remarkable
part of Penn's mind was the ready and courageous
way in which he conceived and advocated liberal
ideas far in advance of his time ; and yet this faculty
could not save him from the delusion of following
James II. and wasting the best years of his life in
attempting to introduce liberty into England by the
assistance of a man who hated liberty with all his
heart Penn's wife Guli, who, as a pretty young girl,
appeared in this narrative when she married, twenty
odd years ago, was now a woman of middle age. It
is said that she had gone every year to France since
James was dethroned, carrying to him and his queen
the little presents and tokens of devotion which his
adherents in England were fond of sending. It is
said, also, that she was always affectionately received,
333

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
although she declared that the revolution was indis
pensable, and that she came only for the sake of
friendship and gratitude.*
At the time Penn obtained his freedom from Wil
liam she had been for some time in very ill health,
and about three months afterwards, February 23,
i69f, she died. He has left a touching description
of her death, too long to quote in fuU.
" She would not suffer me to neglect any public meeting after I
had my liberty, upon her account, saying often, ' Oh, go, my dearest;
do not hinder any good for me. I desire thee go ; I have cast my
care upon the Lord : I shall see thee again."
The man who was now known in the world as the
Great Quaker, Proprietor and Governor of his Maj
esty's Colony of Pennsylvania, was in a very sad
pHght, — his wife dead, his influence as a courtier
worse than lost, his property wasted, and his high-
sounding province a source of cruel expense to him.
He wanted to go at once to that province, but was
faced by the humiliating condition that he could not
scrape together enough money to take him there. He
wrote a pathetic letter to his friends in the province,
describing his losses, and asked that a hundred of
the colonists should each lend him a hundred pounds
for four years free of interest, and after four years
with interest ; his own bond to be given as security.
I am sorry to be obliged to relate that there was not
the slightest notice taken in Pennsylvania of this
very reasonable request. Penn had said that if they
would not lend him the whole ;^i 0,000 which he
* Strickland's Queens of England, Mary Beatrice.
334

SUSPICIONS, CONSPIRACIES, AND HIDING
asked for, he would be satisfied if they would lend
him as much as they could. But they never lent
him a penny.
It may be said here, in partial explanation of this
conduct, that Penn was not then popular in Penn
sylvania. His attempt to govern the colony at a
distance of three thousand miles through the dis
turbed reign of James II. and the years that fol
lowed the revolution had been a failure. He had
also lost caste among the Quakers. Many of them
were in favor of King William rather than James,
and Penn had now for many years been deep in
politics and a courtier's occupations, which was all
inconsistent with the practice and principles of his
people. They could excuse a great deal for the
sake of his distinguished position and the good he
had been able to do them, but he had gone entirely
too far. There is no doubt that at this time they
regarded him with coldness.
This I know has been vehemently denied by some
who deny everything that does not tend to manufac
ture Penn into a saint Clarkson, however, admits
in the fullest manner that Penn had been deserted
by a large number of his people, which, added to
the detestation in which he was held by the fol
lowers of William, made him. almost an outcast of
society. Clarkson implies that the Quaker disap
proval of him was only because " he had meddled
more with politics or with the concerns of govern
ment than became a member of their Christian
body." But the disapproval was for more than this.
It was for the part he had taken in the revolution.
335

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
Thomas Lower, a prominent Quaker, prepared a
paper for Penn to sign, in the hope of bringing
about a reconciliation. In this he was to be made
to say, —
" And if in any things during these late revolutions I have con
cerned myself either by words or writings (in love pity or good will
to any in distress) further than consisted with Truth's honor or the
Church's peace, I am sorry for it ; and the government having passed
it by I desire it may be by you also, that so we may be all kept and
preserved in the holy tie." (Clarkson, vol. ii. p. 75; Stoughton,
p. 270.) In other words. Lower, as representing the Qua
kers, believed that Penn had gone wrong in the rev
olution ; that the government had pardoned him for
it and that he ought to ask pardon from the Qua
kers. He must apologize for having assisted "in
love pity or good will" King James "in distress."
He would never have been asked to sign such a
strong statement as that unless the Quakers thought
that there was a great deal to be forgiven. He,
however, had always insisted that he was right, and
of course refused to sign it
A year or two afterwards, in the summer of 1694,
there was, according to Clarkson, a complete recon
ciliation. He is obliged, however, to admit that
"how this was eff'ected is not known ;" * and from
subsequent events it seems likely that the recon
ciliation was not entirely complete.
* Vol. ii. p. 105.

336

XX
RETURNS TO HIS OLD WAY OF LIFE
Though apparently anxious to return to Pennsyl
vania, Penn was unable to set out for six years, and
I suppose for the reason that he had no money, and
must stay in England to restore as far as possible
his estates. In August, 1694, King William returned
to him the goverment of his province. It had been
taken from him, it seems, principally as a war meas
ure ; for a colony in the hands of a Quaker Jacobite
might, too, easily become a prey to France.
During those six years that he remained in Eng
land, having ceased to be a courtier, he returned to
his old life of preaching, and travelled for this pur
pose over England and Ireland. The meetings of
his people and his own preaching were conducted
under the Toleration Act of his enemy William III.
By that act the Quakers obtained for their meetings
a formal license, which was always granted, as a mat
ter of course, and that license once obtained, no
magistrates, constables, or soldiers could interfere
with them. Persecution was ended forever, and
Penn never again wrote on his old topic of religious
liberty. But it would probably have been impossi
ble to get him to admit that he owed this happy con
dition to William III. So far as we know, he never
"^ 337

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
announced any alteration of his old opinion that he
had faith in King James's word for hberty.
His preaching journeys seem to have been emi
nently successful. Enormous numbers attended the
meetings. He was now fifty years old, of mature
powers, with considerable experience of the world
and of all phases of society. The vicissitudes and
troubles through which he had passed rendered him
an object of interest to thousands who may not
have approved of his course in the revolution, and
may not have been Quakers.
The great numbers attending the meetings — some
times several thousand — would lead us at first to
suppose that the Quakers were very numerou.s.
But from the descriptions of these meetings it is
evident that many attended out of mere curiosity to
see a remarkable man and learn something of this
curious religion which had fought its way to respect
ability through such terrible martyrdom. All ranks
and conditions, and even the clergy of the Estab
lished Church, came to listen. At one meeting in
Ireland the bishop sent the mayor to disperse the
people. Penn treated the mayor with great respect,
and persuaded him to retire until the meeting was
over, when he promised to call on the bishop.
Upon Penn's remonstrating with the bishop, he said,
" that he went that morning to church to perform
his office as usual, and when there he had nobody
to preach to but the mayor, church wardens, some
of the constables, and the walls." He had, there
fore, decided to disperse the great Quaker meeting
in the hope of obtaining an auditory for himself
338

HANNAH CALLOWHILL, I'KNN S SECOND WIFE

RETURNS TO HIS OLD WAY OF LIFE
In the spring of 1696, three years after the death
of his first wife, Penn married Hannah CaUowhiU,
of Bristol, and to her and to her children Pennsyl
vania descended, and not to GuH's offspring. Guli
had had seven children, three of whom survived
her, — Springett, William, and Letitia. But about
five weeks after this second marriage Springett
died. He was a very religious young man, and his father
wrote a long account of his death. It is very touch
ing and tender, and an interesting revelation of the
workings of the Quaker mind falling back upon
itself and communing by the inward way with God.
But there are some who will always resent a father's
making in this way an exhibition of his son's death,
even though it be for edification. His description
of the last days of Guli also went rather far in this
direction. Of the two remaining chUdren, William became
a rake and Letitia married William Aubrey, who
became a very disagreeable son-in-law to Penn. So
Guli, who as a girl was so charming and married
Penn with such romantic affection, passes out of his
life leaving sad mementoes.
The next year, 1697, Penn left Worminghurst,
which had been Guli's inheritance from her family,
and took up his residence in Bristol, where his new
wife belonged. Thus he started a fresh page in his
domestic life, but continued his old habit of preach
ing and writing. By his second wife he had six
children, — John, Thomas, Hannah, Margaret, Rich
ard, and Dennis. Four of them — John, Thomas,
339

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
Margaret, and Richard — survived her and became
the proprietors of Pennsylvania.
Peter the Great of Russia was then a youth living
incognito in England and working in the ship-yards
to inform his barbaric mind about that curious thing
civilization, which he had heard would make a nation
powerful. He thought it might accomplish some
thing in his own frozen deserts. The Quakers,
especially Penn, sought him out He was rather
unpromising material for a proselyte, and asked of
what earthly use to a nation a people could be who
would not fight But Penn talked to him in Ger
man and gave him German Quaker books, with the
result, it is said, that he always retained a great
respect for the Quakers, and once in Denmark
attended one of their meetings.
We also find Penn back at his old work of writing
pamphlets on Quaker doctrine, and indulging oc
casionally in controversy with opponents of his faith.
He disapproved of controversy as too disturbing to
the peace of the church ; but in practice he could
seldom resist the temptation to fight a round or two
in the ecclesiastical prize-ring. He loved it just as
he loved politics ; but I suppose wild horses could
not have dragged from him an admission of such a
worldly passion.
At this time we find him proposing to the Lords
of Trade a plan of union or general government for
the colonies in America, which is quite remarkable
because it foreshadows some of the provisions of
our national constitution. It is pleasant to find
Penn once more himself after having been so long
340

penn's son THOMAS

RETURNS TO HIS OLD WAY OF LIFE
obscured in Jacobitism ; and his mind was always at
its best in proposing improvements far in advance
of his time. He wanted a general government for
the colonies, so as to make customs duties the same
in all, regulate commerce and military quotas, and
return absconding debtors. In other words, he was
the first to call public attention to these difficulties,
and he suggested the remedy which within a hun
dred years was carried into effect by the American
people.* At the Yearly Meeting of Quakers in London in
1697 there was a violent attack on his character,
which shows that the reconciliation which Clarkson
speaks of was by no means complete. But he could
easily afford to disregard such things, for his hold
on the people and his power as a preacher were
strong, and there had been abundant manifestations
of this in his recent journeys through England and
Ireland. His words and presence seem to have been
very efficacious in arousing in a meeting that pe
culiar state of mind, half serene, half exulting, which
was the foundation of Quaker feeling.
He probably did his best preaching at this period,
and his farewell sermon before sailing to Pennsylva
nia has been preserved, the only one of his sermons,
so far as I can discover, that was taken down and
kept for posterity. Quaker sermons are not of a
sort to be admired in other religious bodies, and
scarcely any of them are preserved, because their
preservation might encourage vanity in the preacher.
* See The Evolution of the Constitution, p. 223.
341

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
This sermon of Penn's reads like a good but not a
remarkable one, and seems to have a more modern
tone than we should have expected.
We have a slight glimpse of his life and methods
at this time in an account of his going to bid fare
well to Thomas Story, who was about to sail for
America. Penn, with other friends of Story, went on
board the ship, and Penn, " after they had sat to
gether in solemn silence, appeared in supplication
for the well-being and preservation of all present, in
reverent thankfulness for all the favors of God, and
especially for the precious enjoyment of his divine
presence which they then experienced." He cer
tainly was a many-sided man, this Quaker courtier
and politician.
In such occupations the six years passed away,
and in September, 1699, he at last saUed for Penn
sylvania. In a farewell letter to the people of his
faith, after describing his love for them, which, he
says, was like David's and Jonathan's, he refers to
their disapproval of his conduct in the revolution.
" And suffer me to say, that, to my power, I have from the first
endeavored to serve you (and my poor country), and that at my own
charges with an upright mind, however misunderstood and treated
by sorae whom I heartily forgive."

342

XXI
PENNSYLVANIA AGAIN
Fifteen years had elapsed since Penn's former
visit to his province ; and in that time how much
had happened ! In Great Britain a dynasty had been
overthrown and a new England begun under im
proved ideas of liberty. Political government was
returning more and more to the ancient Anglo-
Saxon freedom, and England was starting out on an
enlarged career of commercial success just as Penn
had prophesied it would under the beneficent in
fluences of religious liberty. In Pennsylvania the
people had grown more numerous ; they numbered
now well on towards twenty thousand ; but the
province had given Penn as much trouble as old
England and her revolution.
That while three thousand miles away and in
volved in a courtier's occupations, and after that
hunted up and down as a conspirator, he should
govern Pennsylvania well was not to be expected.
He seems to have done well enough when he lived
in the province, and very badly when away from it
There must have been something in his manner,
some atractiveness of personality which gave him
his best success when face to face with people.
When he was directing men and measures from
a distance he appears unreasonable, weak, inju-
343

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
dicious, censorious, and even illiberal. But when
face to face with the same individuals he had no
difficulties. It may have been a knowledge of this
.quality that when he was suspected of plots and
conspiracies led him to insist so persistently on a
personal interview with William III. He seems to
have had perfect confidence that if he could once
stand in sight of the king he could settle everything
with him.
When he returned to England in the summer of
1684 he had delegated his power as governor of the
province to the Provincial Council, which consisted
of eighteen members, so that there were in effect
eighteen governors. The Assembly of the people
were very jealous of this Provincial Council, and re
sisted them at every opportunity. As the Assembly
were not allowed to originate laws, they made up for
their lack of power by rejecting, on the slightest
pretext, those originated by the Council. They
would pass no laws at all except on condition that
they should be in force only one year. At the end
of the year, unless the Council yielded to their
wishes, they would refuse to renew the laws, which
was, in effect, to leave the colony without any laws
at aU. They produced a dead-lock several times in
this way, to the great annoyance of Penn. In the
hope of checking their wrangling, he altered the
arrangement, and, instead of having eighteen gov
ernors, reduced the number to five, whom he caUed
commissioners. To these commissioners he sent a letter of in
structions, telling them to rule the colony with a
344

PENNSYLVANIA AGAIN
high hand. They had, he said, the power to enact,
annul, or vary laws as if he himself were present
This was an extraordinary piece of news ; for no
body had supposed that Penn himself had any such
power. He certainly was not entitled to it under
the charter which gave him the right to make laws
only with the consent of the freemen or their dele
gates. If he could not make laws without the con
sent of the freemen, it was reasonable to suppose
that he could not annul them without their consent
But he went on in his instructions like an Eastern
despot, ordering the commissioners to keep the Pro
vincial Council to its duty. If that body, he said,
continued its slothful and dishonorable methods, he
would dissolve the whole frame of government ; and
the power to dissolve it he appeared to think rested
entirely with himself As a foretaste of what he
could do, he told the commissioners that at the next
meeting of the Assembly they were to announce that
all the laws except the constitution itself were abro
gated. They were then to dismiss the Assembly,
and, having called it again, pass such of the laws
afresh as seemed proper.
This strange outbreak is explained when we look
at its date and find that it was in the year 1686,
soon after James II. had ascended the throne and
Penn had become one of his courtiers' and a sup
porter of his policy. Penn must needs assert the
same power that his royal master professed to have,
— the right to suspend laws at his pleasure.
Such an assumption of power over his colony
would have created a great commotion among the
345

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
people, if it had become known. But fortunately
for him the commissioners kept his instructions
secret, wisely forebore to act upon them, and went
on governing in the usual way.
The province was giving him trouble enough
without the outbreak and rebellion which his in
structions might have caused. The commissioners
had hardly been in office a year before he again
changed the form of government, and in place of
the commissioners appointed a single deputy gov
ernor. Captain John Blackwell, an old Cromwellian
soldier. But the Quakers resented the appointment
of a professional soldier, a soldier, too, who was all
the more disliked for being a Puritan from New
England. They made it so hot for him that he
asked to be relieved from his ludicrous position. So
this experiment also faUed after being tried only a
year. Then he went back again to the plan of having
the whole Provincial Council act as governor. But
in 1692 this was changed, and he tried a single
deputy governor again. In the ten years since the
foundation of the colony the government had been
changed six times ; and in a few months there was
another change, when William III. took possession
of Pennsylvania and appointed over it a military
governor, or captain-general, as he was called, —
Colonel Benjamin Fletcher.
This Fletcher had also a stormy time in ruling the
province. But Penn was deprived of Pennsylvania
only a year and ten months from October 20, 1692,
to August 20, 1694. When he received it back
346

PENNSYLVANIA AGAIN
again, he appointed his cousin, Markham, to be
deputy governor, but gave him two assistants whose
advice he was compelled to accept, so that in effect
there were three deputy governors. Markham, how
ever, managed to get on after a fashion, and held his
post for five years, rather longer than any of the
other experiments. He remained, in fact, until Penn
arrived in 1699. The people secured from Mark
ham many liberties, and the Assembly secured for
itself the privilege of originating legislation which
Penn had confined to the Council.
These difficulties and constant changes in the gov
ernment seem to show very injudicious management
But the worst part of the business was that instead
of bringing him in large returns from quit-rents, the
province was involving him deeper and deeper in
debt He had been bearing the expense of the
government, paying salaries, and spending money on
his country place at Pennsbury, all in a generous
spirit to push on the fortunes of the colony and give
it prosperity and success. His bungling arrange
ments with the government were also well meant
But in all there is a total lack of skUful and busi
ness-like method.
However, he was now on the sea bound for his
colony to govern it in person. He had his family
with him, and there is every indication that he in
tended to spend a long time in Pennsylvania if not
end his days there. The voyage was a very long one
of over three months. But at last the ship entered
the Delaware towards the end of November, about a
month later than he had arrived on his previous
3.17

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
visit She was evidently very slow in working her
way up the river ; for on the 30th, at New Castle,
Penn took to a small boat and was rowed to Chester,
the same place where he had landed when he first
came out to the colony.
It had become known along the river that the
great proprietor and governor had arrived, and
Thomas Story hastened from New Castle to meet
him at Chester. This was the distinguished Quaker,
to whom, when setting out some time before on his
travels in America, Penn had bidden fareweU. It
must have been interesting for these two men, who
had seen and known so much in England, to meet
suddenly in this little village in the American wil
derness. They lodged together at the house of a
Quaker, Lydia Wade, who lived close to Chester ;
and Story, no doubt, described to Penn the frightful
scenes some months before when the yellow fever,
or Barbadoes distemper, as some called it, had visited
Philadelphia, killing two hundred and fifteen people
and frightening the most careless into seriousness.
But for the most part that evening, as Story tells us
in his diary, they talked about " matters of govern
ment," possibly English affairs, but more likely the
troublesome government of Pennsylvania.
The next day, the ship having caught up to Penn,
he went with her to Philadelphia. He arrived on
Sunday, and after distributing six pounds, a large
sum in those days, as a largess to the crew, he went
on shore, paid a short visit to his deputy governor,
Markham, and then attended the Quaker meeting,
where he preached, no doubt, with much effect ; for
348

lAMLS LOGAN

PENNSYLVANIA AGAIN
the occasion must have been to him a very interest
ing one.
He had brought out with him, as his secretaiy,
James Logan, who settled in the colony and became
one of its most prominent and distinguished men.
He took charge of all Penn's affairs, and on Penn's
death represented the family in the province for the
rest of his life.
On their arrival at PhUadelphia, he and Penn, with
Mrs. Penn and Penn's daughter, Letitia, lived for a
month at the house of Edward Shippen. After that
they moved to the slate-roof house, as it was called,
on the east side of Second street, north of Walnut
Penn rented it for two years, and used it for his town
residence. His son John was born there, always
known as John the American, and it was after
wards used by Logan as an office for the proprie
tary business. It should have been preserved as
a relic, for in later years it had many interesting
associations. A large part of the inhabitants, especially the
Quakers, seem to have been heartily glad to have
Penn with them again. The party opposed to him
was small, and was led by a certain Colonel Quarry,
who represented the British government in the colony
as judge of the admiralty, to see that the revenue
laws were enforced ; and he was also the leader of
the Church of England people. He had bitterly op
posed Penn before his arrival, and after Penn re
turned to England he opposed him again. But
while Penn was in the province that faculty he had
for dealing with people face to face seems to have
349

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
quieted all animosities. Almost as soon as he ar
rived he sent for Quarry, and they talked over their
differences frankly and with good results.
In truth, Penn, being now on the ground, could
remedy the matters of which Quarry had been com
plaining to the British, government One of these
¦was piracy ; and the home government had inti
mated rather strongly to Penn that unless he sup
pressed piracy in the neighborhood of his province
he might forfeit his charter. I have elsewhere de
scribed the extraordinary prevalence of piracy in
those times, and how prominent people and even
colonial governors were interested in its profits.*
Without going further into details, I may say here
that some of the pirates were living comfortably in
Philadelphia, and one of them, James Brown, had
married Governor Markham's daughter.
Penn went to work on them with a strong hand,
pursuing and arresting in a way which they probably
did not expect from a Quaker preacher. But the
Quakers were very active, energetic people in those
days ; and the best governor they ever had in the
Carolinas in colonial times was a Quaker. In deal
ing with the son-in-law of his deputy governor Penn
had a delicate matter on his hands, and the letter is
still extant in which, in his very kindly way, he re
quires the deputy to be security for his precious son-
in-law's appearance. t
He was busy enough with this and other matters,
* Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times, vol. ii. pp. 274-
286. f Buck's Penn in America, p. 238.
35°

PENNSYLVANIA AGAIN
surveying a manor of ten thousand acres at Rock-
hill, in Bucks County, for his new-born son, John
the American ; preaching at Quaker meetings in
Pennsylvania and New Jersey ; holding meetings
of the Council and Assembly ; attempting to have
laws passed to regulate marriages among the negro
slaves, and to break up the promiscuous concubinage
among them, and also arranging for religious meet
ings among them and the Indians. Although very
advanced in his ideas, he had not reached the point
of opposing negro slavery, and he was himself a
slaveholder. He established the plan of having a night-watch
man in Philadelphia, who should traverse the town at
regular hours, announcing the time, describing the
weather, and anything remarkable that had hap
pened. This custom continued untU long after the
Revolution. Penn also urged upon the people the
importance of carrying more effectually into prac
tice the Quaker reform of making prisons work
houses and reformatories ; and in after years the
Pennsylvania system of prison discipline became the
model for the rest of the country.
During his absence in England there had been so
many changes in the constitution that its validity
was in question. Markham had, without the ap
proval of Penn, allowed the Assembly the right to
originate laws and adjourn as they pleased. By
these changes, made without his consent, Penn
thought that the whole constitution had gone into
abeyance, and could be revived only by writ He
had already acted on this idea, and had summoned
351

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
the Assembly by his own writ, as if it had not power
to meet of itself This was somewhat high-handed,
but the people acquiesced in it, and as Penn, though
fond of such assertions of power, never used them
to oppress the colonists, it is difficult to find fault
with him. To settle all doubts, he told them, in his
broad, liberal way, to prepare a new constitution,
and put in it anything they wanted. Meantime,
they formally surrendered to him the old one, which
shows that their confidence in him was by no means
slight He was enjoying himself at his country-seat,
Pennsbury, where he went to live in spring. It
was twenty miles up the river, and there his chief
interests were centred during the rest of his visit
The upper river was less interesting than the wide
reaches and vast overflowed meadows below Phila
delphia, with which he had become familiar on his
first visit But he soon surrounded himself with
amusements at Pennsbury. He was fond of nature
and a country life, and knew how to create a world
of his own in the woods.
The building of the mansion house had been
started during his first visit, and it is said to have
cost ;^5000, which was certainly an extravagant sum
to spend on a house in the wilderness. It was
backed by vast forests, through which only a few
roads and trails had been cut We find Penn send
ing down to PhUadelphia for a compass to guide
him in his rides on horseback ; and the large creeks
not having been bridged, he could not drive in a
wagon to Philadelphia. 352

PENNSYLVANIA AGAIN
He communicated with the town almost ex
clusively by boat He had a fine barge, with six
oarsmen ; and he seems to have been very fond of
these journeys by water. Of the barge itself he
was particularly . careful. " But above all dead
things," he writes to his steward at Pennsbuiy, " my
barge, I hope nobody uses it on any account, and
that she is kept in a dry-dock, or at least covered
from the weather." In this barge he was rowed to
Philadelphia to attend the meetings of the Provin
cial Council ; and if indisposed he would send the
barge to bring the members of the Council to Penns
bury. The house was built of brick, two stories and a
half high and sixty feet in front, facing the river.
There was a very large hall on the first floor, ex
tending, it is supposed, the whole length of the
house, and this was for meetings of the Council and
for entertainments of all sorts, especially for the
Indian chiefs who often came to see him. A small
hall and three parlors are said to have communicated
with this large room. The kitchen was in a separate
building at the side, as was common at many of the
country houses built in Pennsylvania in colonial
times. There was also a brew-house, a laundry, and
a stable for twelve horses ; and all these out-build
ings were on a line with the main house facing the
river. From the house to the river the ground was ter
raced, and an avenue of poplars shaded the path to
the water. Gardens and a well-laid lawn extended
all round the house, and vistas were cut through the
« 353

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
neighboring forest-trees to give views up and down
the river. Penn sent out from England walnut-
trees, hawthorns, hazels, and a great quantity of
fruit-trees, and all sorts of seeds and roots. He had
trees and shrubs brought from Maryland to experi
ment in their culture ; and had the native wild flow
ers transplanted into his gardens.
The house was well furnished with the pewter, sil
ver, and chinaware used at that time, handsome oak
and walnut chairs and tables, satin curtains, a good
supply of sherry, madeira, canary, and claret in
the cellar, and six large vessels called cisterns for
holding water or beer, which were probably used in
entertaining the Indians. He once, it is said, gave
the chiefs a grand feast at a table spread for them in
the avenue, and provided a hundred turkeys, besides
venison. He appears to have had a coach, a calash, and a
sedan chair. The coach and calash may have been
used at Pennsbury, but the chair was probably used
only in the town. Most of his travelling was done
on horseback, and his wife and daughter appear to
have amused themselves in this way, for three side
saddles and two pillions are enumerated among the
articles at Pennsbury.- He was rather fond of good
horses, and brought with him from England on this
visit a fine colt called Tamerlane, sired, it is sup
posed, by the famous British staUion Godolphin. It
has also been inferred that Penn used a shot-gun at
Pennsbury, for in his cash-book there is an entry,
"repair of the governor's gun."
He seems to have wandered on horseback all over
354

PENNSYLVANIA AGAIN
the country for a circuit of thirty or forty miles
round Philadelphia ; and we can be quite sure that
all the prominent places we now know so well were
carefully examined by him when there was nothing
much to be seen but forest-trees or an Indian clear
ing. Many of these excursions were taken for the
purpose of looking at manors or tracts which his
surveyors were marking out He also made a long
expedition to the Susquehanna, as he had done on
his former visit
It was on his return from this expedition, as is
supposed, that he was lost for a time on the hill near
Valley Forge. He wandered aimlessly until, cross
ing Valley Creek and ascending the hill on the south
of it, he saw the Schuylkill, which gave him his true
direction. He named the hill which misled him.
Mount Misery, and the hill from which he saw the
Schuylkill, Mount Joy, and they are still sometimes
called by those names.
A pretty story is told of his riding one day to the
meeting-house at Haverford, west of Philadelphia,
and overtaking a little barefooted girl, Rebecca
Wood, who afterwards told the story, also going to
the meeting. He took her up behind him on the
horse, and the two rode on, the little girl with her
bare legs dangling against the horse's side, and the
governor with his long coat and knee-breeches.
Judging from the entries in his cash-book, he gave
away a considerable sum in charity to all sorts of
poor people, and even after he returned to England
he instructed his secretary to continue these gifts.
He' and his family were fond of attending fairs and
355

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
the Indian dances called canticoes. Numerous
speeches of Penn to the Indians have come down
to us, and, like all such speeches, they seem very
plausible and unanswerable, or, at least, the answers
of the Indians are not usually reported. The Penn
sylvania Germans have, however, preserved an an
swer some Indians made to Penn, and it does not
appear that Penn rephed.
" You ask us to believe in the great Creator and Ruler of heaven
and earth, and yet you yourself do not believe nor trust Him, for
you have taken the land unto yourself which we and our friends
occupied in common. You scheme night and day how you may
preserve it so that none can take it from you. Yea, you even
scheme beyond your life and parcel it out between your children, —
this manor for one child, that manor for another. We believe in
God the Creator and Ruler of heaven and earth. He maintains
the sun ; He maintained our fathers for so many, many moons. He
maintains us, and we believe and are sure that He will also protect
our children as well as ourselves. And so long as we have this faith
we trust in Him, and never bequeath a foot of ground." (Sachse's
" German Pietists in America,'' p. 150.)
Besides his Pennsylvania journeys, Penn travelled
to New Jersey, New York, and Maryland. These
journeys were partly for the purpose of seeing the
country and partly in continuance of his old habit
of visiting the Quakers and preaching at their meet
ings. A Quaker meeting at Easton, Maryland, has
preserved the record of one of these visits in the
year 1700.
" We were at a Yearly Meeting at Tredhaven, in Maryland, upon
the Eastern shore, to which meeting for worship came Wm. Penn,
Lord and Lady Baltimore, with their retinue ; but it was late when
they came, and the strength and glory of the heavenly power of the
Lord was going off from the meeting. The lady was much disap-
356

PENNSYLVANIA AGAIN
pointed, as I understand from Wm. Penn, for she told him she did
not want to hear him, and such as he, for he was a scholar and a wise
man, and she did not question but he could preach ; but she wanted
to hear some of our mechanics preach, as husbandmen, shoemakers,
and such like rustics, for she thought they could not preach to any
purpose. Wm. Penn told her ' some of these were rather the best
preachers we had among us.' " (Buck's " Penn in America," p. 320.)
In such employments and pleasures he passed
nearly two years. The full details of his acts as a
governor, his dealings with the Assembly, and his
troubles with the three lower counties, as Dela
ware was then called, are given in full by some of
his biographers, and best of all by Janney and by
Buck. I can touch on these subjects only lightly
and merely say that he seemed to manage all these
affairs easily and without the gnawing care and an
noyance which they gave him in England. He was
stUl paying official salaries and assisting this person
and that with money ; and he declared that Pennsyl
vania now stood him a loss of ;^20,ooo.* The As
sembly would do nothing to make this up, and the
returns from his quit-rents and sales of land were
very slow.
Still he seems to have intended to remain in his
province for an indefinite period. He was enjoying
to the utmost the wilderness and what he called " a
country and proprietary life." But in the summer
of 1 70 1 he heard that there was a movement in
England to turn all the proprietary governments
into royal colonies under the direct rule of the crown,
and that a bill for that purpose had been already
* Janney, p. 438.
357

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
introduced in Parliament He felt that he must
return to check this measure, and he prepared for
his departure with the greatest regret He hoped
to return so soon that he wanted to leave his wife
and daughter in Pennsylvania ; but they insisted on
returning with him.
In a letter to Logan at this time, after saying that
all he has to dispose of in the world is in the prov
ince, he adds, " having no more gains by govern
ment to trust to for bread." * This chance sentence
may possibly throw some light on the vexed ques
tion whether he had any position of profit under the
government of James II.
At the close of October he was ready to saU ; but
before leaving he agreed with the Assembly on the
new constitution he had promised them. It was a
more simple document than those which had pre
ceded it. There was no provincial council, or double
house of legislature, but merely a governor to be
appointed by him, and an assembly elected by the
people ; and this assembly had the right to choose
its own speaker and other officers, originate laws,
and could adjourn when it pleased. It was a very
liberal government ; for in many of the colonies the
adjournment of the assembly was in control of the
governor, who by that means could worry them into
passing the laws he wanted.
The constitution abolished the provincial council,
which had been a legislative body elected by the
people like the assembly ; and apparently there was

* Janney, p. 431
358

PENNSYLVANIA AGAIN
not even to be a governor's council ; but Penn and
his heirs after him always appointed a body of this
sort to assist the governor ; the people in vain pro
testing that it was unconstitutional. The constitu
tion, as a whole, proved to be an excellent one, and
the Pennsylvanians lived under it for seventy-five
years, down to the outbreak of the Revolution, a
longer period than they have lived under any of
their subsequent frames of government.

359

XXII
A COURTIER AGAIN, AND AGAIN IN PRISON
When Penn sailed away from his province, at the
close of October, 1701, he thought he could quickly
dispose of the measure in Parliament against the
proprietary colonies, and would soon enjoy Penns
bury again. But he became absorbed in other things,
and he never again returned to Pennsylvania.
He had a quick voyage of only a month, instead
of the three months of his outward passage. But as
soon as he arrived we find Pennsylvania becoming a
torment to him, instead of the great pleasure it
always seems to have been when he lived in it His
expenses were no doubt greater in England, which
made his steady losses by the province more appar
ent But a greater loss was to find that during the
two years of his absence his son William had got
into very evil ways of dissipation. This young man
was the last of Guli's chUdren, — bright and accom
plished in a way, but he had been keeping "top
company," as his father called it He was married
and had a family of children, but that seems to have
been no restraint upon him.
In great bitterness of spirit, Penn ever after
blamed this loss on Pennsylvania : for if he had not
been absent there for two years, he thought he could
have saved his son. As time passed and the young
360

A COURTIER AGAIN, AND AGAIN IN PRISON
man's condition became more and more irreclaim
able, Penn became all the more convinced that if it
had not been for those two years of separation he
could have stopped the evil habits before they be
came so firmly fixed.
The best thing to do, he thought, was to send him
out to the province, where there was very little "top
company," where he could live at Pennsbury and
enjoy the simple pleasures of the woods. He had, it
seems, contracted heavy debts in England, and his
creditors were beginning to press, which in those
days meant imprisonment Penn evidently hoped
to reclaim his son by indulging part of his love of
pleasure. He was to have hounds for hunting foxes,
deer, and wolves, to be taken on fishing excursions,
little journeys to see the Indians, and everything of
that sort that was wholesome ; and the servants at
Pennsbury were instructed to take good care of his
dogs. The young man, in short, was sent to Amer
ica with a very expensive outfit, and, in a letter to
Logan, Penn complains of this as another heavy
loss. Logan was instructed to look after the way
ward youth, get him good acquaintances, encourage
Penn's old friends to be kind and helpful to him,
and prevent, if possible, " rambling to New York
and mongrel correspondence."
In the spring of 1702, a few months after Penn's
return, WiUiam III. died, and I cannot find any rec
ord of Penn's sorrow on that occasion. Queen Anne
succeeded to the throne. She was the daughter of
James, but a Protestant, and married to a Protestant,
Prince George of Denmark. She continued the Tol-
361

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
eration Act and the tests, and made no serious
changes in the general pohcy established by WiUiam.
But as the daughter of James she seemed to have
kindly feelings for Penn, and he again became a
courtier, living at Kensington in London, while his
wife, for economy's sake, went to live for a time with
her father.
In the fourteen years since William III. came to
the throne England had greatly changed. The most
striking change was that violence, cruelty, and brutal
executions had largely passed away. All things
were more regular and orderly. The court had be
come decent, and ribald conversation and obscenity
were passing out of fashion. William and Mary were
virtuous and honorable rulers, and set the example
which is now the modern requirement in kings.
The government was settled ; civil war was not
threatening every month ; bright and independent
minds were no longer living in banishment, or orna
menting the towns with their bleeding heads and
quarters ; the statesman who failed lost his office
and not his head. In fact, under the liberty estab
lished by William III. the modern world was be
ginning to appear.
Literature was no longer monopolized by drama
tists and theologians. Essayists, critics, and satirists
began to show themselves. Journalism begins in
this period and becomes recognized as a political
force. Pope was now thirteen years old and was
writing his first boyish epic. Swift was about to
bring forth his "Battle of the Books" and "Tale
of a Tub," in which he anticipated Carlisle. Addi-
362

A COURTIER AGAIN, AND AGAIN IN PRISON
son and Steele in a few years were writing the Tat-
ler and the Spectator. Defoe had already written
his " Essay on Projects," recommending insurance,
friendly societies, savings-banks, insane asylums, and
other modern methods. It was this book which in
the previous volume of this series we described as
having had such a profound influence on Franklin.
In fact, we have now entered the period and the
tone of thought which produced Franklin and his
worldly-wise practical philosophy. This change from
cruelty to philanthropy, from superstition to common
sense, must have deeply interested Penn ; but he has
left us no comments.
His return to court was fortunate, because he
needed a courtier's influence to stop the measure
in Parliament for abolishing proprietary colonies.
But it was a very expensive life, and his financial
condition grew worse and worse. Before he left
Pennsylvania the very economical Quaker Assembly
had voted him .^2000, but that was a mere trifle ;
and, besides, most of it was very slowly paid, and
part, it seems, not paid at all. * He must have more,
as he wrote to Logan, or he was undone.

" Never had poor man my task, with neither men nor money to
assist me. I therefore strictly charge thee that thou represent to
Friends there, that I am distressed for want of supply ; that I am
forced to borrow money, and add debts to debts, instead of paying
them off; besides, my uncomfortable distance from my family, and
the unspeakable fatigue and vexation of following attendance,
draughts of answer, conferences, council's opinions, hearings, &c.,
with the charge that follows them, guineas melting, four, five, six a
* Janney, p. 483.
363

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
week, and sometimes as many in a day. My wife hitherto has been
maintained by her father. . . . Make return with all speed or I'm
undone." Soon after this the proprietorship of the Jerseys
was abolished, and the two colonies of East and
West Jersey made one under the direct government
of the crown. This looked as if Pennsylvania might
go the same way, and Penn had to double his ex
ertions. Every one thought that the proprietor
of such a mighty province must be rich. They
think, he wrote Logan, " I have brought over the
whole world with me." This was very inconve
nient, "for," says Penn, "many call upon me for
old scores." He had been evidently heaping up
debts for a long time, which was a serious injury
to the reputation of a Quaker, because the sect at
tached great importance to solvency, and sometimes
disowned a member who suffered the misfortune of
bankruptcy. The Church of England party in the province,
which had long opposed his interests, but had been
depressed during his residence there, now sprang up
again, arid sent a representative to England to favor
the taking of the province by the crown. The war
of the Spanish succession which William III. had
started was now raging, to the great destruction of
British trade. Pennsylvania languished, and the
colonists had an excuse for paying Penn neither
quit-rents nor supplies. So he no doubt beheved
more firmly than ever that he had been right in
supporting James against that William whose evU
wars were stUl working such havoc. But furs
364

A COURTIER AGAIN, AND AGAIN IN PRISON
brought a high price in England, and Penn writes
urgent letters to Logan to buy up and send him
over as many as possible. So the great Quaker was
in his distress trying to become a fur dealer ; and if
Logan had sent him enough peltries, a large part of
his embarrassment might have been relieved.
People took the most annoying advantages of
him. He had given some land to George Fox, who
in his will lefi: it to the Quakers of Pennsylvania. It
had never been definitely located, and the thrifty
Quaker meeting, wishing to have as valuable a gift
as possible, demanded that it should be laid out in
the heart of Philadelphia. Penn, I am glad to say,
resisted this imposition. It seems the Quakers had
not long before obtained from Governor Markham,
but without Penn's consent, the land at Second and
Market Streets which he had intended for his daugh
ter. He also about this time discovered that An
drew Hamilton, whom he had appointed deputy
governor of the province, was secretly favoring the
party in England that wished to abolish the pro
prietorship. Yet, Hamilton dying at this time, Penn
exerted himself to obtain employment for one of his
sons. So great were his difficulties that, as the move
ment to abolish the proprietary governments waned,
he tried to turn the tables by himself proposing to
sell his government to the crown. A good round
sum obtained for it would pay his debts, reheve him
from a world of annoyance and expense, and he
would still remain the proprietor of the land and
enjoy the quit-rents. He intended to part with no
36s

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
more than his mere political right to govern. He
would still, he wrote Logan, be able to come and
live in the province and love it as much as ever. A
great many Quakers, he says, were about to migrate
to Pennsylvania, so that the superiority would be
preserved. This plan of selling his right to govern
he kept pressing for the next fifteen years, and came
very near accomplishing it for a good price.
His son William finally went out to Pennsylvania
in company with the new governor, one John Evans,
a young man of only twenty-six years, to whom
Penn had taken a fancy and fondly supposed he
would be a check on his son. The two scamps at
first, however, gave a very favorable impression.
Logan was inclined to be hopeful, and others were
not a little pleased and flattered by the manners
and elegance of William, whose association with
" top company" had not been without effect He
was taken up to Pennsbury to meet a hundred
Indians who had come to pay their respects to
the son of the only white man who could keep
his word, and everything seemed very favorable.
Logan took the young man to live with him in
a large house which then stood at the southwest
corner of Third and Chestnut Streets. No other
place, says Logan, could be found suitable for the
residence of the heir presumptive to the province.
He was given-a place in the Council and a seat next
to the governor.
He succeeded in restraining himself within mod
erate bounds for considerably more than a year;
but I suppose colonial life became at last too monot-
365

A COURTIER AGAIN, AND AGAIN IN PRISON
onous ; for we find that one night he and his young
friend, the governor, broke loose entirely, and in
good old English roystering fashion began to beat
the watch. They were in a public house at the
time and quite drunk. Young Penn caUed for pis
tols ; but the lights were put out, and he received a
good thrashing from Alderman Wilcox, who pre
tended he could not recognize him in the darkness,
and, when he announced himself as the heir pre
sumptive, beat him again as a slanderer.
He was very indignant at this treatment, and also
at being afterwards treated as a common rioter. The
Quakers endeavored to deal with him for his mis
conduct ; but he resented their attempt, resigned his
membership, proclaimed himself no longer a Quaker,
and determined to leave the colony. His father also,
finding him as expensive as ever and unimproved in
morals, preferred to have him come home. He
would, he said, stop his allowance and let him face
his creditors. He had been given a manor in Penn
sylvania, which it was hoped he would look afl:er,
but he soon sold it for ^850 to William Trent and
Isaac Norris. It was a large tract of seven thousand
acres, and the flourishing borough of Norristown
now stands upon it He needed the money for his
expenses, he said, because his father did not give
him enough. On reaching England, however, he
immediately began to sponge again on his father,
who was not told that he had sold the manor.
" A melancholy scene enough upon my poor child. Pennsylvania
began it by my absence here, and there it is accomplished, with ex
pense, disappointment, ingratitude, and poverty." (Janney, p. 467.)
367

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
He now placed his losses by the province at
;^30,ooo ; a demagogue, David Lloyd, was exciting
the colonists against him ; and the young man
Evans was becoming the worst deputy governor he
had ever had.
" O Pennsylvania what hast thou cost me ? Above jf 30,000 more
than I ever got by it, two hazardous and most fatiguing voyages, my
straits and slavery here, and my child's soul almost. ... In short
I must sell all or be undone, and disgraced into the bargain."
The Assembly, under the leadership of Lloyd,
would not pay the deputy governor his salary of
;^400, which Penn was still compelled to pay. Yet
Penn was all this time, and, indeed, all his life, fight
ing off" Lord Baltimore's claim, which would have
made Philadelphia a Maryland town, and doing his
best to protect the colony from interference in Par
liament He at this time supported Evans against the
Assembly, who claimed that they had a right under
the constitution to adjourn as they pleased. Evans
contended, as his predecessor Hamilton had done,
that they had a right to adjourn from day to day or
for short periods within the session, but that the
session could be closed and the Assembly finally ad
journed only by the governor. Penn supported him
in this because, as he was negotiating with the crown
for the sale of his government, he could get a better
price if the governor retained the same power of
adjournment that governors in most of the other
colonies had. The crown would not be likely to
want to step into the shoes of a weak governor
368

A COURTIER AGAIN, AND AGAIN IN PRISON
among a people who were accustomed to their lib
erties. The Assembly passed a bill confirming in
themselves the power of adjournment ; but Evans
refused his assent to it ; and of this bUl Penn said,
" What a bargain should I have made for my gov
ernment with the crown after such a bill had taken
from me the power I should dispose of!"*
There was not a Httle resentment among the
people, and the Assembly passed nine resolutions
against Penn, which were referred to a committee
instructed to prepare an address to be sent to him.
The address, however, was sent without having been
submitted to the house, and was more vindictively
expressed than the house would have approved of
Lloyd seems to have drawn it and sent it without
authority. It charged Penn with having instructed his deputy
to resist the right of adjournment, of allowing his
colonists' consciences to be oppressed by oaths
under royal orders, of suffering their laws to remain
unconfirmed by the crown, and of extortion and
corruption in the sale of land. His personal govern
ment whUe in the colony had been one of resent
ment and recrimination, and he had taken sides with
the enemies of the province. The smallest point
was seized upon and by adroit language magnified
against him. He was reminded of his neglect to
pay a former governor's salary, and he was impu
dently asked if the province was expected to dis
charge it And, finally, he was informed that some-

* Janney, p. 478.
369

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
thing must be done to suppress vice, which had
greatly increased since the arrival of his son.
This last was an unkind cut ; and to make matters
worse Lloyd sent the address to some Quakers in
England who were the remains of the party that
had been unfriendly to Penn since the revolution.
They were told to use the address as they thought
best But Lloyd had overreached himself The address
was too violent and offensive to be popular among
the people of the province, and there was a strong
reaction in favor of Penn, which quite unseated Lloyd
and his party. The Assembly disapproved of the
address, and even went so far as to vote ;£'i200 for
the support of government. Lloyd was ordered to
recall the address, which he did, but accompanied
the recall with a private letter to the bearer instruct
ing him not to execute it
Affairs went on so smoothly that Penn began to
hesitate about selling the government to the crown,
and everything might have continued in this happy
condition if Evans had not attempted a boy's trick
for scaring the Quakers. He had been trying to
organize a militia for the province, and, meeting with
much difficulty from Quaker principles, he arranged
a plan for the day of the annual fair in Philadel
phia, and had a messenger arrive in great haste
and terror with the news that the French had en
tered the river in force and were moving on the city.
Buckling on his sword and mounting his horse, he
rode up and down among the people entreating
them to arm and defend the province.
370

A COURTIER AGAIN, AND AGAIN IN PRISON
He succeeded in stirring up a slight alarm. The
large vessels were sailed up the river ; the small
boats hidden in the creeks ; and silverware and
valuables thrown into weUs. But the farce was soon
over, and he gained just four militiamen, who came
to the meeting he had appointed with their weapons.
For these four he paid the price of ruining his career
as governor. Popular feeling again turned against
him, and Lloyd went once more into power. Evans
tried to secure for Penn the proceeds of tavern
licenses and fines and forfeitures ; and also the right
to establish courts of law by proclamation without
the consent of the Assembly ; but this only made
matters worse.
The Assembly now attempted to strike at Penn
through Logan, and Logan was formally impeached.
But this failing, they prepared an address to be sent
to Penn, in which they avoided the mistakes of vio
lence and bitterness which Lloyd had made in the
first one. There was nothing offensive in it ; but
Penn was reminded that unless the evU practices of
his deputy governor were remedied the Assembly
must appeal to the queen. Evans was becoming
unbearable, and was guilty of gross immoralities
with the Indians. There were other complaints
about Penn's failure to have the Quakers relieved
from administering oaths ; but the main point of the
address was the disgraceful conduct of Evans.
Some time before this another burden had been
laid on Penn's shoulders by the marriage of his
daughter, Letitia, to William Aubrey, who was very
much of a man of business, " a scraping man," Penn
371

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
called him. He insisted on such prompt payment
of his daughter's marriage portion, and was so con
tinuously persistent about it, that Penn seems to have
hated him more than he ever hated anybody.
Then just at the time of the Assembly's address
about Evans there was a revelation in Penn's busi
ness affairs that was most unfortunate. He had had
for a long time a steward or manager, Philip Ford,
supposed to be a most exemplary Quaker, who had
charge of his estates in England and Ireland. He
was very fond of Ford, as he was of so many peo
ple, kings included, and he gave him ten thousand
acres in Pennsylvania, a city lot in Philadelphia, one
hundred and fifty acres in the suburbs, and seemed
to think that he was scarcely giving him enough.
But Ford had, it seems, other means of enriching
himself He rendered accounts from time to time, which
Penn, with his careless business habits, received and
set aside without examination and without even
opening some of them. Finally, when an investiga
tion was made, it appeared that although Ford had
received ;^i 7,000 of Penn's money and expended
only ;^i6,ooo, yet Penn owed him ^10,500. He
accomplished this remarkable result by charging
compound interest at eight per cent every six
months on all advances, to which he added large
commissions, charged again and again on the same
sums, and an enormous salary. He allowed Penn
no interest on receipts, and sometimes faUed to set
down money received.
Penn had for years been writing Logan how the
372

A COURTIER AGAIN, AND AGAIN IN PRISON
income from his estates in Great Britain was grow
ing less and less, and now it was quite evident how
the depreciation had occurred. It must have as
tonished Penn when Ford first reported to him
that instead of any income from the estates the
owner of the estates was in debt to the manager in
some thousands of pounds. But still Penn made no
investigation, and his debt to Ford kept rolling up.
Ford pressed for payment, and Penn, still making
no investigation, committed the monstrous folly of
giving Ford a deed in fee simple of the whole prov
ince of Pennsylvania as security. Some time after
wards he committed another extraordinary piece of
folly, and accepted from Ford a lease of the prov
ince. The lease was of course strong evidence to
show that the deed was intended to be an absolute
conveyance ; and yet there is no doubt that Penn
intended the deed to be only a mortgage.
It is probable that Ford also regarded it as only a
mortgage, and during his life time the whole affair
was kept secret In fact, Penn seems to have always
dealt with Ford in a private, confidential manner, and
without taking advice from any one. During all
this time it was never generally known that the great
Quaker, as he was called, the proprietor and gov
ernor of her Majesty's colony of Pennsylvania, had
been juggled out of his province by a book-keeper.
When Ford died, however, his widow and son
made everything public ; declared that the deed
passed an absolute title, and announced themselves
as the proprietors of Pennsylvania. They treated
Penn as their tenant, and brought suit against him for
373

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
;^3000 rent in arrear, and, having obtained a judg
ment for that amount, they had Penn arrested and
imprisoned for debt They even went so far as to
attempt to get a proclamation from the crown de
claring them to be the proprietors of Pennsylvania,
and commanding the colonists to obey them.
When they arrested Penn the officers took him
while he was at the meeting in Gracechurch Street,
or, as the Londoners sometimes called it. Gracious
Street This must have been a strange and sad re
calling of old times, for it was at this same meeting
that he had been arrested thirty-seven years before
when a young man for preaching to the Quakers ;
and it was under this arrest that he had so eloquently
claimed the rights of a British freeman to a fair trial
by jury.
For nine months the Fords kept Penn confined to
the Fleet prison, and meantime his controversy with
them was going through the tedious process of a
chancery suit His friends, however, were trying
to effect a compromise. Penn had allowed the
iniquitous account to run on so long, and had so
often tacitly confirmed it, that the Fords had a strong
case against him. But he displayed all his old cour
age and serenity in prison, to which he had been well
seasoned in his youth. He was allowed rather com
fortable quarters, and appears to have held small re
ligious meetings there, as well as meetings of his
friends. Isaac Norris, one of the most prominent
colonists of Pennsylvania, was in London, and did all
he could for him. He speaks particularly of his
firmness and good spirits. 374

THE HOLY
BIBLE,
C^iraiiiiii^ the OU .rv.V N--j
TESTAMENTS,
Ncwiy Tr.infl.itcd out oftlie
Orii;iii.il Tont^ucs,and\('ith
ill. Inimci "iLnillinnn^ diliw
gently Compared and
Rci'ifcd,
With Marginal Notes,
5 H E If ING j
I ThcScripturcrothel>clH?(;^tt/i:r of Scripmre. ,

L O V D O N, ,-^
PrimcJ by CharhiniU, and the Executrix of TkomM
^ iVrnn'T;), dc-.fu'J, Prini<r,< ra tJicKJDgand iiioll
I E\c^llcnt Majellj. ,-/w.' Dom, 1658,

PKNN'S BIBLE, WITH BnOlC-l'LATR

A COURTIER AGAIN, AND AGAIN IN PRISON
" After all, I think the fable of the palm good in him — ' the more
he is pressed, the more he rises.' He seems of a spirit fit to bear
and rub through difficulties ; and as thou observes his foundation re
mains. I have been at some meetings with him, and have been
much comforted in thera, and particularly last First-day." (Janney,
p. SOI.) Before he had been imprisoned his friends were
making good progress in raising money to enable him
to settle with the Fords. But just at this point the
hostile Quakers to whom Lloyd had sent the violent
memorial came forward and made it public. The very
serious charges in it staggered many of Penn's ad
mirers, and an ill-feeling against him began to spread
among the Quakers. Fortunately Norris, who was
in London, had been in the Assembly when Lloyd
sent the memorial, and he disclosed the truth about
it. He certified in writing that the memorial as it
stood had never been passed by the Assembly, nor
even once read therein.
The manner of Penn's arrest, seizing him while at
a religious meeting, began now to work in his favor
by appealing to the better feelings of his people,
arousing no doubt their recollections of the old days
when he had freely gone to prison for their faith.
The Fords had gone rather too far, for such severe
treatment of a great man brought him unusual sym
pathy and assistance.
It was a sort of difficulty in which Penn always
shone at his best, for he knew by long experience
how to take it He had, indeed, built up his repu
tation and attained the position which gave him
influence largely by the heroic endurance of im
prisonment At the end of his nine months in the
375

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
Fleet £y6oo was raised, and this the Fords accepted
as a settlement ; and a mortgage on Pennsylvania to
secure that sum was given to the friends who had
furnished the money.
But before this settlement was made they used
the recent memorial the Assembly had sent to force
Penn to dismiss Deputy-Governor Evans. It was
strange how he clung to this man, in spite of the
numerous proofs of his bad morals and vUe conduct
He had written him a most gentle, kindly letter of
rebuke, exhorting him to a better life. If Penn once
liked a man, or believed in him, it was almost im
possible for him to change his relations with him,
in spite of the plainest evidence. He would prob
ably have kept Evans if those three sturdy Quakers,
Whitehead, Mead, and Lowther, to whom the As
sembly's complaint was sent, had not visited him in
prison and told him plainly that if he did not dismiss
Evans they would lay the whole matter before the
queen. Even then he was determined to make it as easy
for Evans as possible, and he wrote to Logan, —
" Pray break it to him and that the reason why I chose to change,
rather than contest with the complaints before the queen in council,
is, that he may stand the fairer for any employment elsewhere;
which would be very doubtful if those blemishes were aggravated in
such a presence."

376

XXIII
THE END
The deputy governor Penn sent out in place of
Evans was Colonel Charles Gookin, and Penn, of
course, had a great fancy and liking for him, and sent
a most flattering description of his good qualities to
the colonists. Penn had presented him to the queen,
who gave him her hand to kiss and wished him a
good journey.
He had his difficulties with the Assembly. They
objected very seriously to the instruction Penn had
given him not to approve any law without the con
sent of his Council ; for the Council, they said, had
been given no power or even existence by the con
stitution of 1 70 1, and by this instruction of Penn's
it was given a secret control of legislation. Then
they began to attack Logan, who they thought had
entirely too much influence with the deputy governor
and with Penn, and Logan replied with so many
taunts on their past conduct and ill-treatment of
Penn that they ordered his arrest, and he was taken
on a writ issued by the speaker.
The governor, however, immediately released him,
on the ground that the Assembly could not arrest
any one outside of its own membership, and least of
all a member of the CouncU. Logan sailed for Eng
land to lay the whole subject before Penn, who en-
377

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
tirely approved of his conduct But before Logan
could return there was another reaction in Penn's
favor among the people. The Assembly had gone
too far. The people believed that both the new
governor and Penn were doing their best, and at the
next election — in October, 1710 — they returned an
Assembly every member of which was on Penn's
side. Lloyd was so discomfited that he went to live
in Chester, and for the next two years he and his
anti-proprietary party were seldom heard of
This change in the feeling of the people, as soon
as they saw the prospect of a little good government,
shows that Penn was in reality very popular among
them, and that if he had governed in person, or
appointed fairly discreet deputies, there would have
been no anti-proprietary party and few difficulties.
Before the election which turned everything in his
favor took place, Penn wrote a long letter to the
colonists, addressing them as " My old Friends," and
dealing with them in a frank and affectionate man
ner, which seems to have increased their regard for
him. He described the pleasure it had been to him
to watch the early prosperity of the colony, and how
it had since then been to him a cause of suffering.
" The many combats I have engaged in, the great pains and in
credible expense to your welfare and ease, to the decay of my former
estate, of which (however some there would represent it) I too sensi
bly feel the effects, with the undeserved opposition I have met with
from thence, sink me into sorrow, that if not supported by a superior
hand, might have overwhelmed me long ago. And I cannot but
think it hard measure, that, while that has proved a land of freedom
and flourishing, it should become to me, by whose means it was prin
cipally made a country, the cause of grief, trouble, and poverty."
378

penn's writing-desk

THE END
He rehearses all the forms of government and
privileges he had given them, discusses their griev
ances, and then goes on to tell of some of his own.
" The attacks on my reputation ; the many indignities put upon me
in papers sent over hither into the hands of those who could not be
expected to make the most discreet and charitable use of them ; the
secret insinuations against my justice, besides the attempt made upon
my estate; resolves passed in the Assemblies for turning my quit-
rents, never sold by me, to the support of government; ray lands
entered upon without any regular method; my manors invaded
(under pretence I had not duly surveyed thera) and both these by
persons principally concerned in these atterapts against me here ; a
right to my overplus land unjustly claimed by the possessors of the
tracts in which they are found; my private estate continually ex
hausting for the support of that government, both here and there,
and no provision made for it by that country ; to all which I can
not but add the violence that has been particularly shown to my
secretary." They were not an oppressed people, he said.
The trifles of which they complained showed that
they were strangers to real oppression. They com
plained that official fees were not settled by act of
Assembly. By all means, let them settle those fees,
and make them such as to encourage fit persons to
undertake the offices. They had complained of the
tavern-licenses, but that matter was now settled.
They should remember that the eyes of all Europe
were upon them : that many nations looked to them
as a land of ease and quiet, wishing in vain for them
selves the same blessings.
"What are the distresses, grievances and oppressions, that the
papers, sent from thence, so often say you languish under, while
others have caUse to believe you have hitherto lived or might live, the
happiest of any in the queen's dominions." 379

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
We find him at this time also writing to Logan
about the supposed discovery of a . silver-mine by a
Swiss, named Michel, who had been prowling in the
woods near Conestoga, In his poverty and need,
Penn's imagination was easily aroused by such a sug
gestion. He had been told that the mine had al
ready been secretly worked, and that his former
deputy, Evans, had shared the profits.
" Pray scrutinize this matter well, and let me hear from thee with
all the speed thou canst ; for the assurance Michel gives me, makes
me solicitous to pry into this affair, whence help may arrive to deliver
me." But he was soon convinced that there was more
help to be had in a sale of his government to the
crown than in any silver-mines on the Susquehanna,
and he kept on trying to make a bargain. Every
thing was becoming easier for him. The settlement
of the Ford claim had stopped an exhausting drain
on his resources, and he could now get some returns
from his English property'. The deputy governor got
on tolerably well with the Assembly. They regu
lated official fees, established a judiciary system and
a systematic revenue system, and the province was
rapidly setthng down into the well-regulated sort of
commonwealth Penn had always wished to see it
It is pleasant to be able to think that he enjoyed
about three years of this quiet and prosperity.
He had given up his attendance at court, for the
movement against the proprietary colonies had
ceased and there was nothing more for him to do
there for the Quakers. He was now nearly seventy
380

THE END
years old, and seems to have at last abandoned all
intention of returning to Pennsylvania. But for
eight or nine years after his return to England, in
1 701, he had clung to the thought of quickly going
back, and was continually writing Logan that if he
could only settle his wretched affairs at home, he
would fly with delight to America.
Meantime, in spite of the difficulty with the Fords
and his attendance at court, he had made numerous
preaching journeys. He had also written somewhat,
and added a goodly number of maxims to those he
had prepared when in concealment in the reign of
William III. In 1 7 1 1 he wrote a preface to the
journal of an old Quaker friend, John Banks, and
this seems to have been the last time he wcote for
publication. After he ceased to attend court he seems to have
lived about eight miles from London, near Brentford.
In 1 7 10, however, when he was sixty-six he found
his strength declining, and that the air near London
did not suit him. He moved farther into the country,
near Ruscombe, where he lived the rest of his life.
About two years afterwards, while on a visit to
London, he was taken ill of what he called a fever,
and his wife called a "lethargic illness," and others
" a kind of apoplectic fit" or "palsy." It was evi
dently what we would now call a stroke of paralysis.
He seems to have recovered, and was able to at
tend to his affairs. He had almost completed the
sale of his government to the crown. His great
difficulty was in the conditions on which the sale
must be made. He wanted money ; but he also
381

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
had a great reputation to maintain. He would not
sell his right in a way that would jeopardize the
principles on which the colony was founded, and its
civU and religious liberty. It must always remain a
secure refuge for the Quakers. All this must be
made sure before he received a shUling; and he
was very particular on this point in negotiating with
the officers of the crown.
After his first stroke of paralysis he had brought
the matter to a state that was satisfactory ; a deed
was ready to be signed, and ;£^iooo had been paid
him on account of the purchase money, which was
to be ^18,150. This sum, it will be observed, was
about i^2000 more than the ;^ 16, 000 due from the
crown to his father, in liquidation of which Pennsyl
vania had been granted.
But before he could sign the deed he was stricken
again with paralysis while he was writing to Logan a
letter which he could not finish, and which proved
to be the last he ever wrote. He recovered suf
ficiently to attempt a little business, but within three
or four months he was seized again in the same way.
These three strokes, all within a year, completely
invahded him, and partially wrecked his mind. He
had been a much hated and abused man in his Hfe,
and after his death his enemies circulated the story
that he had died a raging madman. But there was
no truth in it His mind was merely weakened by
the paralysis. He forgot his cares, and a certain
serenity, which seemed partly natural and partly the
result of his religion, remained.
But the sale could not be completed ; for with his
382

THE END
mind impaired the deed would not have been valid
if he had signed it So the government of Pennsyl
vania as well as the ownership of the land remained
with his family until the American Revolution of
1776. In the year 17x3, the year after he was stricken
and his mind impaired, peace was at last declared,
and the trade of the Delaware River immediately
began to revive. This was the event for which he
had been waiting many years, the event that would
end the long wars in which his old enemy William
III. had involved England. He had even hesitated
in selling his government, expecting that he might
hear of the cessation of hostilities at any time. He
was confident that, as soon as peace came, his re
turns from sales of land and quit-rents would greatly
increase and soon place him beyond any necessity
of selling. But now the good time had come when
his mind could no longer appreciate it, and the re
sults had hardly time to gather very much headway
before he had ceased to live.
His wife had taken charge of all his affairs ; and
she proved herself an excellent manager. The
deputy governor was soon in a terrible quarrel with
the Assembly, and his recall was demanded. Mrs.
Penn dismissed him and appointed in his stead Sir
William Keith, who had a prosperous and popular
administration of ten years. Pennsylvania went to
her and her children, while the English and Irish
estates, at that time thought the more valuable, were
settled on Guli's son William, who seems to have
continued his dissipations. 383

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN
In a few years, however, Pennsylvania became
enormously valuable, and Penn's sons by his second
wife became very rich men. So Penn's ambition of
adding to his famUy fortune as well as establishing a
refuge for the Quakers was realized at last But the
history of the management of the province by his
sons and their great wealth cannot be given here.*
Penn's last years were very peaceful.
" Found him to appearance pretty well in health and cheerful of
disposition, but defective in memory ; so that, though he could relate
many past transactions, yet he could not readily recollect the names
of absent persons, nor could he deliver his words so readily as here
tofore ; yet raany savory and sensible expressions carae frora him,
rendering his company even yet acceptable, and manifesting the re
ligious stability of his mind." (Life prefixed to his Works, vol. i.
p. ISO.) He continued to decline very slowly and grad
ually for about six years. For two or three years
there was not much change. He received the
visits of his friends, and on Sundays was driven to
meeting, where he sometimes spoke a few sentences,
and on returning home took leave of his friends with
great tenderness. He enjoyed walking out of doors,
and when the weather was bad he diverted himself,
as his wife tells us, from room to room of his large
house. He took great delight in his children, and
could scarcely bear to have his wife out of his sight
As long as she kept from him the thoughts of his
business affairs he was happy ; but if his mind was
turned to his disastrous finances, or the deplorable
* See Pennsylvania: Colony and Commonwealth, pp. 66, 84, 122,
127, 128, 169, and passim. 384

PENN'S BURIAL-PLACE, JORDAN'S MEETING-HOUSE

THE END
condition of his interests in Pennsylvania, the effect
was most unfortunate.
In 1 716 he could no longer remember names,
but appeared to know who the persons were who
came to see him. The next year he scarcely knew
any one, and could no longer walk without leading ;
and in the following year, 17 18, on the 30th of July,
at the age of seventy-four, he died.

38s

Index

Affirmation instead of oath, l8s.
Albigenses, 86.
Amyrault, Moses, loo.
Antinomians, 82, 84.
Aubrey, William, 339, 371.
Baltimore, Lord, 236.
Barclay, Robert, 121, 201, 285.
Baxter, Penn's controversy with,
179.
Bevan, Sylvanus, 16.
Bishops, the seven, 292.
Buchan, Earl of, 274.
Burnett, Bishop, 28, 260, 271,
273. 317. 320-
Callowhill, Hannah, marries
Penn, 339.
Charles I., 35, 36.
Charles II., secret treaty with
Louis XIX., 166; death of,
2S4-
Chester, narae of, given to Up
land, 231.
Civil war, the, 37.
Cobham, Lord, 16.
Cole, Josiah, 198.
Congregationalists, 33.
Cornish, 260.
Corruption in Admiral Penn's
time, 44.

Crisp, William, 2SI, 252.
Croese, Gerard, 256, 263, 310.
Dalrymple, 319 321.
Delaware, State of, 208, 230.
Delaware, the, scenery of, 231.
Dyer, Mary, 84.
Elwood, John, 165.
England, condition of, in Penns'
time. III ; coarseness of lan
guage and life in, 114, 116.
Evans, Governor, 366, 368, 371,
376.
Evelyn waylaid by highway
men, 112.
Exclusive salvation, doctrine of,
80.
Executions in Penn's time, 117.
Familists, 82, 83.
Fifth-Monarchy men, 34.
Fletcher, Colonel Benjamin,
346-
Ford, Philip, 372-376.
Fox, George, 72-77, 122, 123,
132, 169, 173, 197,215,36s.
Friendship, dangers, of, 229.
Game on the Delaware, 232.
Gaunt, Elizabeth, 260.
Gentry of England, 43.
Gookin, Colonel Charles, 377.

387

INDEX

Hampden, John, 36.
Hart, Charles Henry, 17.
Hat, anecdote of, with James II.,
123.
Head, J. Merrick, 14.
Hemskirck, Egbert, 18.
Hicks, Penn's controversy with,
170, 171.
Indians, Penn's treaty with, 242-
247 ; treatment of, by Penn,
211.
Indulgence, Declaration of, by
Charles II., 166, 173 ; Penn
writes about it, 267 ; an in
dulgence by James 1 1., 280 ;
another by him, 291.
Ives, Penn's controversy with,
152.
James IL, Penn explains Quaker
faith to, 123 ; professes lib
erality, 255 ; releases Quakers
from prison, 2SS, 280, 290 ;
his word for liberty, 281 ; flies
to France, 292.
Jeffreys, Judge, 257.
Jesuits, 296.
Kinsale, Penn goes to, 102.
Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 19.
Labadie, De, 183.
Laud, Archbishop, 36.
Lawton, Charlewood, 264, 280.
Leslie criticises the Quakers,
122.
Liberty, Anglo-Saxon, 32.
 , Religious, Penn devotes
himself to, 122; Penn writes
on, 160, 189.
Lloyd, David, 368-370, 378.

Lloyd, Thomas, 254.
Locke, John, 263.
Loe, Thomas, 96, 199.
Logan, James, 349, 371, 377.
London in Penn's time, 113.
Louis XIX., secret treaty with
Charles II., 166.
Luttrell, Narcissus, 300, 326,
330.
Macaulay, Lord, 258-260, 303,
330-
Magdalen College, 287, 288.
Markham, William, 208.
Maxims, Penn's, 26.
Mead, William, arrested with
Penn, 141.
Middle Ages, the, effect of, 77 ;
religion of, 78-81.
Miracles in the Middle Ages,
79-
Monmouth, Duke of, 257.
Music in Penn's time, 118.
Navy, the, in Admiral Penn's
time, 44, 46-48.
New Jersey, 200-202 ; proprie
torship in, abolished, 364.
" No Cross, No Crown," 132.
Norris, Isaac, 375.
Gates, Titus, i86.
Oaths, Treatise of, by Penn, 22,
175-178.
Oxford in Penn's tirae, 62-64.
Parliament, Regulation of, by
James IL, 290.
Penn, Admiral, 39-57 ; rapid rise
in the navy, 45 ; pursues Prince
Rupert, 49 ; in the Dutch wars
of Cromwell, 50; treachery of.

388

INDEX

51, 52; in the Tower, 53;
friend of the Duke of York,
54 ; Pepys's description of hira,
55 ; Clarendon's description,
56 ; impeached, 56 ; fortune of,
57-
Penn, Dennis, 339.
 , Giles, 43, 45.
 , Hannah, 339.
 , John, 339.
 , John, the American, 349.
 , Lady, 39, 40.
 , Letitia, 339.
 , Margaret, 339.
 . Mrs., visits James II. , of
France, 333.
 , Richard, 339.
 , Springett, 339.
 , Thomas, 339.
 , William, portraits of hira,
12-20; his character and
traits, 20-30; birth, 31, 38;
his mother, 39 ; ancestry, 41,
42, 43 ; early political influ
ences, 58, 59 ; early religious
influences, 60 ; goes to col
lege, 61, 65 ; his use of " thee"
and " thou," 68 ; reasons for
joining the Quakers, 95 ; re
volts against surplices at Ox
ford, 96 ; expelled from col
lege, 97 ; turned out of doors by
his father, 98 ; travels in France
and Italy, 98, 99 ; fights in
Paris, 100 ; studies under Amy
rault, 100; studies law, loi ;
goes to Ireland, 102; becomes a
soldier, 103 ; joins the Quakers,
104; first imprisonment, 107,
108; turned out of doors
again, 1 10; protests against
obscenity, 115; becomes a

preacher, 121 ; retains his
sword, 123; becomes a con-
troversialist, 124; goes to
court, 125 ; controversy with
Vincent, 126 ; writes " The
Sandy Foundation," 126-130;
imprisoned for " Sandy Foun
dation,'' 131 ; writes "No
Cross, No Crown," 132 ; writes
" Innocency with her Open
Face," 135 ; released from
prison, 136 ; goes again to
Ireland, 138 ; reconciled to his
father, 140 ; arrested in Grace
church meeting, 140; defends
trial by jury, 142-146 ; released
by his father, 149 ; death of
his father, 150; becomes rich,
151 ; controversy with Ives,
152 ; attacks vice-chancellor
of Oxford, 153, 154 ; sus
pected of being a Jesuit, 154,
155 ; arrested as dangerous to
the government, 156-161 ; goes
to Holland, 162 ; marries,
166; traditions of, as a preacher,
168 ; controversy with Hicks,
170; secures release of Fox,
175 ; his " Treatise of Oaths,"
175-178; argues again on re
ligious liberty, 178, 179 ; con
troversy with Baxter, 179 ; goes
to Holland, 1 81-184; appeals
to Parliament for affirmation
instead of oath, 185 ; supports
Sydney for Parliament, 192 ;
argues that Protestants should
unite, 194 ; proposes new test
oath, 1 95 ; asks for the grant
of Pennsylvania, 197 ; first
suggestions of Pennsylvania,
199 ; his connection with New

389

INDEX

Jersey, 200 ; vast si^e of Penn
sylvania, 206 ; charter of
Pennsylvania, 207 ; obtains
Delaware, 208; sends out
Markham, 208; advertises for
settlers, 209 ; his motives, 210 ;
treatment of the Indians, 21 1 ;
lays out Philadelphia, 213,
214 ; resists Wilkinson's de
mand for more liberty, 215 ;
consults with Sydney about
constitution, 217 ; consults
with many others, 220 ; nu
merous drafts for Constitution,
221-226 ; advanced ideas of
governraent, 225-228 ; starts
for the province, 229, 230;
arrives in the Delaware, 231 ;
visits the site of Philadelphia,
234 ; goes to Maryland, 236 ;
passes the winter at Chester,
237 ; delighted with his prov
ince, 238 ; his famous treaty
with the Indians, 242-247 ;
travels to the Susquehanna,
248 ; his letter to Free Society
of Traders, 248 ; returns to
England, 250 ; takes up lib
erty of conscience again, 253 ;
losses by the province, 254;
becomes a courtier, 256; his
description of Monmouth's re
bellion, 258 ; accused of ex
torting money for Taunton
maids, 259 ; attends the exe
cution of Cornish and Gaunt,
259, 260 ; a pardon obtainer,
261 ; difficulty of his position
with the king, 261 ; his work
as a courtier, 262, 263 ; ex
travagance of his life as a
courtier, 265 ; another journey

to Holland, 270; visits the
Prince of Orange, 271 ; losses
by Pennsylvania, 277 ; en
courages grape-growing in
Pennsylvania, 278 ; supports
Declaration of Indulgence,
280 ; favors abolishing the
test laws, 283 ; his anonymous
pamphlet in support of James
IL, 283 ; supports James II. 's
Declaration of Indulgence,
286 ; believed in James II.,
286; inconsistency to his po
sition, 289 ; tries to win Law-
ton to the king, 293 ; his
association with Jeffreys, 294 ;
given a chance to explain him
self, 296 ; replies to Popple's
letter, 298 ; position in the
revolution of 1688, 302-305 ;
arrested on suspicion of treason,
305 ; his opinion of the Tol
eration Act, 307 ; accused by
Macaulay of plotting, 309 ; re
ceives a letter from James II.,
310; prepares to go to Penn
sylvania, 313 ; attempt to ar
rest him, 314 ; goes into
hiding, 314 ; appeals to Henry
Sydney, 318 ; inclines to turn
state's evidence, 322 ; ne
gotiations with the govern
ment, 323-326 ; goes to
France, 326 ; seizure of the
government of Pennsylvania,
327 ; negotiates again with the
government, 328 ; set free at
last, 329 ; still suspected of
treason, 331 ; his occupations
while in hiding, 332 ; his ar
guraent for arbitration, 333 ;
death of his wife, 334; un-

390

INDEX

popularity in Pennsylvania,
335 ; unpopularity araong the
Quakers in England, 335 ; his
governraent returned to hira,
337 ; preaching journeys, 338;
second raarriage, 339 ; pro
poses union of the colonies,
341 ; sails for Pennsylvania,
342 ; confused raethods of gov
ernment, 344; attempt at des
potism, 345 ; arrives in the
province, 348 ; puts down the
pirates, 350 ; enjoys himself at
Pennsbury, 352 ; his life there,
353 ; visits the Susquehanna
again, 355 ; visits Maryland,
356 ; his losses by the province,
357 ; obliged to return to Eng
land, 358 ; gives the people a
constitution, 358; becomes a.
courtier under Queen Anne,
362 ; deeply in debt, 364 ; tries
to sell his government, 365 ;
violent address against him
from the province, 369; re
action in his favor, 370; deal
ings with Philip Ford, 372-
376 ; imprisoned for debt, 374 ;
dismisses Evans, 376 ; reaction
in his favor again, 378 ; hope
from a silver-mine, 380 ; first
stroke of paralysis, 381 ; mind
impaired, 382 ; great improve
ments in Pennsylvania, 383 ;
last years, 384.
 , William, Jr., 339 ; becomes
dissipated, 360 ; sent to Penn
sylvania, 361, 366; returns
from Pennsylvania, 367.
Pennington, Isaac, 164.
Pennsbury, 253, 352, 354.
Penns-Lodge, 43.

Pennsylvania, origin of, 197 ;
boundary disputes of, 205 ;
vast size of, 206; charter of,
207 ; constitution of, by Penn,
221, 226; condition of, on
Penn's arrival, 231 ; seizure of
the government of, 327.
Peter the Great, of Russia, 340.
Petre, Father, 291.
Philadelphia, origin of name,
213; streets of, as laid out by
Penn, 235 ; building of, 239,
240.
Piracy in Pennsylvania, 350.
Place, Francis, 15.
Plague in London, loi.
Plot, popish, 186.
Popish plot, 186.
Popple's letter to Penn, 297.
Portraits of Penn, 12-20.
Presbyterians, 33.
Preston, Lord, 312, 317, 319, 320.
Proud, Robert, 17.
Puritans, 32, 33, 36.
Quakers, the, dress of, 21 ; eccen
tricities of, 69 ; doctrines of, 70,
71 ; objection to politics, 72;
objection to war, 72 ; the return
to primitive Christianity, 85,
86; legislation against, 87, 88-
91 ; heroism of, 89, 90; philan
thropy and liberalism of, 92 ;
distinguished men among, 93 ;
rationalism of, 94; thirteen
hundred released by James
IL, 255.
Quarry, Colonel, 349.
Ranters, 76, 82.
Raynal, his opinion of the
treaty with the Indians, 246.

391

INDEX

Retorraation, the, 32, 8l, 84.
Richardson, Jonathan, 20.
Rights, Bill of, 309.
Robinson, Sir John, puts Penn
in Newgate, X^g.
Roundheads, 31.
Royalists, 31, 35.
Sachse, Julius F., 18.
" Sandy Foundation, The," 126-
130.
Seekers, 82, 83.
Ship-money, 36.
Slate-roof house, the, 349.
Small-pox on Penn's ship, 230.
Springett, Guli, 163-166 ; visits
James II. in France, 333.
Stuart, Major W. D., 14.
 , Robert, of Coltness, 274.
Sunderland, Lord, 275.
Surplice, rebellion against, 65.
Susquehanna, expeditions to,
248, 3SS-
Sword, Penn retains his, 123.
Sydney, Algernon, 192, 193,
217-219.
 , Henry, 276, 318, 322-
324-

Tillotson, Dr., 262.
Toleration Act, the, 306.
Traders, Free Society of, 248.
Treaty, the, with the Indians,
1 ¦ 242-247.
Turner, Mrs., 40, 41.
Vickris, Richard, 253.
Vincent, Penn's controversy
with, 126.
Voltaire, his opinion of the
treaty with the Indians, 245,
246.
Waldenses, the, 86.
Wanstead, Penn's life at, 58, 59.
Waterhouse, Alfired, 18.
West, Benjamin, 20, 243.
William III. argues against
Penn, 271 ; his ideas of tol
eration, 273; coraes to Eng
land, 292 ; becomes less pop
ular in England, 313 ; dies,
361.
Witchcraft, 79.
Wood, Rebecca, 355.
York, Duke of, 166 174, 208.

THE END

392

0598

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