LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 000174310^2 / f'rom (he painliif^ in possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. William Penn Fou?2der of Ve?insylvania BY JOHN W. GRAHAM, M.A. Author of " The Destruction of Daylight " " Evolution and Empire,' " IVar from a Quaker Toint of FiervJ* ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY f / . ' -/ Gift Publishe'- Preface For many years there has been no life of William Penn in print ; nor has a " Life " in the usual sense, ever been written by an English Friend. It is true that the basis of all the biographies is the " Account of the Author's Life," by Joseph Besse, pre- fixed in 1726 to his edition of Penn's Collected Works, issued in two folio volumes. That invaluable record is, however, of the nature of annals, memoranda which are material for a history, rather than a history itself. It has all the value of a contemporary M S., for Besse says it was chiefly extracted out of Penn's own private memoirs. Of the same character is the " History of Pennsylvania " published in 1797 in two volumes by Robert Proud, the master of the Friends' School in Philadelphia. He had access to careful records made by order of the Yearly Meeting, preserved in the possession of leading Friends, and kept up to date. So that his also may be regarded as of the value of a contemporary record. The people of Pennsylvania have always had a wise regard for the importance of their unique history, and in consequence materials abound. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has published many volumes of Proceedings, beginning in 1826 and still continuing. Vol. III., part 2, is full of Penn material, and Vols. IX., X. are the Penn-Logan correspondence, of which a copy is at Devon- shire House. In modern times we owe the best work in the colonial part of the history to Isaac Sharpless, President of Haverford College, and to my late friend, Howard M. 6 PREFACE Jenkins, editor of the Friends' Intelligencer. Isaac Sharpless's work is in his "A Quaker Experiment in Government" in his "Quakers in the Revolution"; and in his chapters on Pennsylvania in " Quakers in the American Colonies," a book written in collaboration with Rufus M. Jones and Amelia M. Gummere. Howard M. Jenkins' s work is in his ' ' Memorial History of Philadelphia,' ' in chapters I. -VIII. of the great work he projected and edited till his death, " Colonial and Federal History of Pennsylvania " ; and in his monograph on " The Family of WilUam Penn." All these books have been of great use to me. " Memoirs of the Private and Public Life of William Penn," by Thomas Clarkson, M.A., 2 vols., 1813, was the first real biography attempted. The attractive author of " The Portraiture of Quakerism " felt that the Society whose philanthropic work he aided and whose Christian manner of life he admired from the outside, was a self- centred, retired and practically unknown body, with no spokesmen to the world ; and that in the dearth of Quaker scholars and writers, even their most famous leader was little known either to themselves, or outside their select circle. Posterity is greatly indebted to him for his work ; but its usefulness has long been over ; his style is monotonous and pious and not now easily read, his knowledge was very imperfect, compared with what is now known, and, as a good eighteenth century Evangelical, he did not really understand early Quakerism. In the middle of the nineteenth century a sudden interest in William Penn developed. Macaulay, in his rooms at the Albany, Piccadilly, was trying to destroy Penn's reputation — W. Hepworth Dixon, editor of ihe Atheno'um, stimulated by Macaulay' s attack, was writing near Regent's Park his brilliant and interesting book, " William. Penn, an Historical Biography " ; and contem- poraneously, at Springdale, in far away Virginia, Samuel M. Janney, who kept a school for the daughters of PREFACE 7 Friends, and was the leading minister at the neighbouring Goose Creek Meeting House of the " Hicksite " Friends, was devoting himself, as a labour of love, to his " Life of William Penn." I have slept in the room where he wrote it, in the house among the tall trees which his daughter and her husband and children still occupy, and contrasted the peace and sunshine of the grassy campus, where the girls played and Friends' horses were tethered, with the "labour house vast" of literary thought and ancient libraries, the London where Hepworth Dixon wrote. Both writers published in 185 1, Dixon first : and they must have been an unwelcome surprise to one another. But they are, in fact, supplementary. If you want to be interested, and to enjoy the work of an excellent literary craftsman, read Hepworth Dixon. If you want to know exactly and fully what happened, turn to Janney, whose book is therefore of greater value to his successors. He incorporates great masses of letters by Penn, Logan and others, which Dixon would think dull. All such documents in this book I have taken from Janney. Both books, however, represent real historical research, and remain useful Lives of Penn. But only second-hand copies are obtainable, Dixon ignores Penn's writings, which I expect he could not read nor really enjoy. He writes of Penn the statesman, hardly at all of the Quaker, and he fills out the records with picturesque imagination. Janney writes with Quaker plainness and caution, in a very simple narrative style, devoid of art. His book has unfortunately never been much read in England. But, as a Friend and a minister, he had William Penn in his soul. In 1867, Maria Webb brought out her charming book, " The Penns and Peningtons of the Seventeenth Century " on which many of us were brought up. It contains new matter on the domestic side, and includes in a short volume the families of Springett, Penn, Penington and EUwood. It is a woman's book and no worse for that. 8 PREFACE In 1872, Hepworth Dixon issued a more popular version of his book, called " A History of William Penn," much shortened and without references. In 1882 Dr. Stoughton compiled a Life of William Penn for Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton, in connection with the Bicentenary of Pennsylvania. Perhaps I may venture to add that my own interest in the subject began when, in 1882, on the day of the 200th anniversary of William Penn's landing in America, I contributed a youthful paper on " Pennsylvania as a Political Experiment " to the Political Society at King's College, Cambridge, afterwards published in two parts in the Friends' Quarterly Examiner, 1883 and 1884. It was based chiefly on Proud and Dixon and Pennsylvania Historical Society Proceedings. I am glad now to have the opportuniy cf completing a long cherished design. No original investigation into M.S. sources has gone to the making of this volume. For the purpose of a book of this size these have already been well worked over. Nor would any one undertake such a task at the moment, knowing that Albert Cook Myers is at Devonshire House and elsewhere collecting in enormous trunks every scrap of matter written by or about Penn, to be published in the fulness of time in some fifteen or twenty monumental volumes under the patronage of an influential committee in Philadelphia. Other writers must await his results with due modesty and fear. In this volume I have given greater space to the enormous volume of William Penn's writings than has been given before, and I have tried to bring out his personal characteristics, so that he may be no longer regarded as just one of the mythological heroes of Quakerism, but as a living and striving man. J W. G Dalton Hall, Manchester. October, 1916. Contents I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX. XXI. XXII. XXIII. PARENTAGE - - - "13 YOUTH - - - - - 19 A QUAKER - - - - - 32 THE TOWER OF LONDON - - - 39 THE RIGHTS OF JURIES, 167O - " 5^ BEREAVEMENT AND COURTSHIP - * 5^ NEWGATE - - - - - 71 A QUAKER APOSTLE IN CONTROVERSY, 1672-75 - - - - 78 NEW JERSEY - - - "99 HOLLAND AND GERMANY, 1677 - " I07 HIGH POLITICS, 1678-80 _ - - 115 CHARTER OF PENNSYLVANIA, 1680-I - I27 THE COLONISTS AND THE FRAME OF GOVERN- MENT, 1681-2 - - - - 133 IN PENNSYLVANIA, 1682-4 - ^54 COURTIER, 1684-8 _ - - - 167 HUNTED AND HIDDEN, 1689-93 - - 186 AUTHORSHIP IN SOLITUDE, 169I-93 - I98 PENNSYLVANIA, 1684-1699 - - - 213 THE BATTLE OF LIFE, 1693-1699 - " 228 IN PENNSYLVANIA AGAIN, 1699-I7OI - 249 FURTHER HISTORY OF PENNSYLVANIA - 266 THE FORDS _ - - - 29I LAST DAYS - - - - 296 NOTE ON MACAULAY'S CHARGES - - 3^9 BIBLIOGRAPHY - - - - 314 CHRONOLOGY _ _ - - 318 INDEX ----- 323 NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS - ' 329 Illustrations PORTRAIT OF PENN IN ARMOUR - - Frontispiece GRAMMAR SCHOOL, CHIGWELL - - - I9 ADMIRAL PENN - - - - "33 GATEWAY OF NEWGATE 1666 - - - 48 TABLET COMMEMORATING THE TRIAL IN THE SESSIONS HOUSE, LONDON - - - "50 FACSIMILE OF ORIGINAL TITLE-PAGE OF PENN AND MEAD TRIAL - - - " 5^ GULIELMA MARIA PENN - - - - 64 INTERIOR OF KING JOHN FARM, CHORLEY WOOD 76 COPY OF WILLIAM PENN'S MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE JJ BASING HOUSE, RICKMANSWORTH - - - 81 JORDANS MEETING HOUSE - - - "95 MAP OF PENNSYLVANIA _ - - - 128 CITY OF PHILADELPHIA IN I718 - - - 156 PENN'S treaty WITH THE INDIANS - - 160 INDIAN VERSION OF PENN'S TREATY - - 161 FRIENDS' MEETING HOUSE, FOURTH STREET - IQI FACSIMILE LETTER OF WILLIAM PENN GIVING ACCOUNT OF DEATH OF GEORGE FOX - - I92 PENN'S cottage, PHILADELPHIA - - - 224 PORTRAIT OF HANNAH PENN - - - 238 PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM PENN IN MIDDLE LIFE - 24I JAMES LOGAN ----- 256 INDIAN WALK MONUMENT OF I737 - - 288 THE BEVAN MEDALLION OF WILLIAM PENN - 296 JORDANS BURIAL GROUND - . - 304 CHAPTER 1. Parentage WiLiiAM Penn's immediate ancestors were seafaring adventurers of some distinction, and his more remote forerunners were English squires. In the southern part of the county of Bucks, till lately secluded in its lovely woods at a safe distance from all railways, but now being reached by the longest suburban tentacles of London, planting red-tiled villas here and there wh^re the Great Central and Metropolitan Railways run — in this beautiful district, bounded by the Thames, is a parish called Penn. And here the Penns of Penn lived in former days for many generations. Howard M. Jenkins, in his invaluable book on " The Family of William Penn," gives strong reasons for believing that all the Penns originally came from Wales. A branch of this family occupied a smaller estate, with residences at Penn's Lodge and Minety in the north of Wiltshire. William Penn's grandfather's grand- father, also a William, was the last of these, and at his death, in 1592, the estate was sold. This man's grandson, our hero's grandfather, Giles by name, started life afresh as a sea captain and trader at Bristol. His most frequent voyages were to the towns held by the Barbary pirates in northern Africa, and he developed trade connections with them. It was a dangerous business, for the Spaniards had a paper blockade against the Barbary ports. Finding that there were some hundreds of English men and women kept as captives 14 WILLIAM PENN in the pirate stronghold of Sallee, he interested himself in trying to have them liberated, and Sallee reduced to order and to submission to the Emperor of Morocco from when it had revolted. He was already known to King Charles I., having brought him Tetuan hawks and Barbary horses, and on his advice and with his guidance a British fleet under Admiral Rainsborough set out to clear out the pirates and liberate the captives. They succeeded, and on the prayer of the London merchants, Captain Penn was sent out in 1637 as British Consul to Sallee, now under the authority of Muley Mohammed, Emperor of Morocco. The trading business and the ship were taken over by his son William, the future Admiral, at the early age of seventeen. When he was twenty-one, he received a Commission in the Royal Navy. Next year he was married to Margaret, daughter of John Jasper, a Rotterdam merchant. The absence of knowledge about William Penn's mother is unfortunate for his biographer. One wonders whether there is anything in his heredity on his mother's side, to account for him. Among the Penns he seems a kind of isolated sport. Neither among his fore-elders nor among his descendants do we know of anyone resembling him, except that his father had great ability and some religious perception, and his son Springett promised to be a sympathetic soul. Since all the bio- graphers wrote there has been unearthed information which makes out Margaret Jasper more likely to be Anglo-Irish than Dutch,* The name is English, and no record of such a name has rewarded some search into Rotterdam records. The new information states that John Jasper and his wife Marie (a name which sounds foreign) and family lived at Ballycase, Co. Clare, before 1641. Also before that date his daughter Margaret was * Albert Cook Myers, in Journal of Friends' Historical Society, 1908 (Vol. v., p. 118), PARENTAGE 15 married to Nicasius Van der Scure or Van der Schu-ren of Kilconry, Co. Clare, by the rites of the Anglican church. This is from the register of Attestations of the Dutch Reformed Church of Austin Friars, London. This fact, and his name, would point to the husband being a Dutch- man. He died very soon, and as Margaret Van der Schuren, his young widow was married to Captain Wm. Penn at S. Martin's Church, Ludgate, London, on January 6th, 1643, old style, or 1644 new style. A. C. Myers has it June 6th, 1643 — but as Pepys attended a wedding-day dinner at Admiral Penn's on January 6th, 1661-2, where there were eighteen mince pies to notify eighteen years of married life, we must I think accept that date. These scattered hints would fit most easily into a suggestion that the Rotterdam merchant was Anglo-Irish or English by race, and that her name was the only Dutch feature about the bride. If Lady Penn was brought up in the west of Ireland, it is not unnatural that her husband should obtain an Irish sequestrated estate from Cromwell, rather than one in England, of which there were many. Pepys, who may not have been well-informed, calls her Dutch. In his diary we read under August 19th, 1664 : " To Sir W. Pen's, to see his lady for the first time, who is a well looked, fat, short old Dutchwoman, but one that has been heretofore pretty handsome, and is now very discreet, and I believe hath more wit than her husband. Here we stayed talking a good while, and very well pleased I was with the old woman." This is high praise from the spiteful Pepys. The curious thing is that Pepys should never have seen the wife of his neighbour and colleague, with whom he was very intimate, between 1660 and 1664, particularly at the wedding-day dinner. It is clear that our information is very incomplete about one of whom we should like to have full knowledge. William, their eldest child, the subject of this book, was born on October 14th, 1644. i6 WILLIAM PENN The young naval captain was living on or close to Tower Hill, conveniently near the river, and his boy was baptized in the church of All Hallows, Barking. Captain Penn showed conspicuous ability. His promotion was rapid and deserved. We know that his mother was tender and helpful to her Quaker son, even through his early troubles with his father. In the Restoration period, at any rate, she was a gay woman of fashion, and did the usual riotous entertaining at their house in Navy Gardens. Pepys records that during the Dutch War in 1665, when Admiral Penn was away with the fleet : " Going to my Lady Ballen, there found a great many women with her in her chamber, merry ; my Lady Penn and her daughter among others, when my Lady Penn flung me down on the bed, [he was a little man], and herself and others, one after another, upon me, and very merry we were." They were evidently short of men's society in those days of war. Pepys again, the next year: " Supped at home and very merry, and about nine to Mrs. Mercer's gate . . . and there mighty merry ; My Lady Penn and Peg going thither with us, and Nan Wright, till about twelve at night, flinging our fireworks and burning one another, and the people over the way ; and at last, our business being much spent, we went into Mrs. Mercer's and there mighty merry, smutting one another with candle grease and soot, till most of us were like devils." Then to Pepys' s lodgings in the Navy Office, where they drank more and began to dance. Pepys and two more men put on women's clothes. They dressed the maid- servant like a boy and got her to dance a jig. " Nan Wright, my wife and Peg Penn put on periwigs ; thus we spent till three or four in the morning ; mighty merry and then parted and to bed." It is the more baffling not to know more of another side of Pena's mother, seeing that this is what Pepys can give us, PARENTAGE 17 Captain Penn's naval duty for some years was to cruise about St. George's Channel between Milford Haven and the Cove of Cork. He became Rear Admiral almost immediately, Vice-Admiral of England next, acting about the Straits of Gibraltar, and General (a term then used in one or two cases for a commander on the sea as well as on land) in the first Dutch war at thirty-two. His chief exploit is in all English histories. He was placed in command of dne of the two fleets which Cromwell sent against the Spanish dominions in 1655. Blake was to operate in European waters and Penn in the West Indies, where, if possible, he was to take San Domingo first, and some place on the mainland afterwards. The expedition failed. Venables, the general on land, was defeated in his attack on San Domingo ; but, in order to have something to show, Penn captured Jamaica on his way home without orders, and so began the British West Indian Empire. Both generals were stripped of their offices and sent to the Tower by Oliver. The fact was that both were traitors to his government. Penn had written to Prince Charles in exile offering him the support of his army and fleet when required, and Oliver's spies kept him informed of the correspondence. Admiral Penn was a professional sailor and care- less of politics. He was willing to serve the party in power. He had already changed his allegiance from King to ParHament and to Protector. He was now paving the way for a return to Royalism, when Royalty returned, and he duly became Sir William Penn at the Restoration. It was not a very noble line to take, in fact it might be described much more severely ; but it was a line fairly common among the " average sensual men " of that time. He spent five weeks in the Tower and was then released on condition that he lost his commission as General, and left London to reside on the Irish lands which the Protector had given him, the town, castle and manor of Macroom in County Cork, formerly the pro- i8 WILLIAM PENN perty of the Royalist Lord Muskerry. Here he spent time and money in planting and improving his estate, and in buying further land, raising its value, in the three years he had it, to £858 a year. He was one of the many who owed much to the Protector's persistent clemency. On the fall of Richard Cromwell, he sailed to Holland and offered his services to Charles. He was made a Commissioner for the Navy, and entered Parliament as member for Weymouth. But he had to restore the Macroom estate to its original owner. To make up to him for this, he was made Governor of Kinsale, and out of the Puritan property confiscated, Shangarry Castle and estate in County Cork were handed over to him. His rank as Admiral was restored; and the family embarked on the gay and extravagant career proper to Charles's friends. Shangarry is on the Atlantic, bounded on the west by Cork Harbour, and on the east side towards Youghal by an inlet of the sea, so that it is a peninsula, with sea breezes bracing the soft climate of those parts. The estate is four miles long by two broad. Its coast line is visible to the passengers steaming by from America. It remained the chief source of William Penn's income during his lifetime. It is still nine miles from a railway ; Midleton is the nearest station, on the line between Cork and Youghal. The castle is now a formless heap of ruin ; and the estate is divided into two parts, one owned by the Penn-Gaskells, who are descendants of Admiral Penn, and the other by the descendants of a man named Durdin, who was for sixty days the husband of the widow of William Penn's grandson. This division was the upshot of a long Chancery case. CHAPTER II Youth Two other children, Margaret and Richard, were born to Admiral Penn and his wife. When the children were still very young, they moved into the country to Wanstead in Essex, and lived there during the successful period of the Admiral's career under the Parliament and the Common- wealth. Hainault Forest, close by, would be a glorious haunt for an enterprising boy. One attraction of Wanstead was the nearness of Chigwell Grammar School, then new and famous ; and thither till he was about twelve years old William Penn was sent. The school was under rigid statutes and severe management, and the neighbourhood was strongly Puritan. When the boy was eleven his father came out of the Tower a banished and disgraced man ; and the family removed to Macroom, in County Cork. Here occurred the first meeting with the Quaker Thomas Loe, whose preaching was to influence the whole life of the boy. " He said, while he was but a child living at Cork with his father, Thomas Loe came thither. When it was rumoured a Quaker was come from England, his father proposed to some others to be like the noble Bereans, to hear him before they judged him. He accordingly sent to Thomas Loe to come to his house, where he had a meeting in the family. Though William was very young, he observed what effect Thomas Loe's preaching had on the hearers. A black servant of his father's could not contain himself from weeping aloud ; and, looking on his father, 20 WILLIAM PENN he saw the tears running down his cheeks also. He (little William) then thought within himself, ' WTiat if they would all be Quakers ? ' This opportunity be never quite forgot — the remembrance of it still recurring at times."* Th3 childish event which is of importance in this biography is a spiritual experience which befel the boy at the age of twelve. When alone in his room " 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 convictions of the being of a God, and that the soul of man was capable of enjoying communion with Him. He believed that the seal of Divinity had been put upon him at this moment, or that he had been awakened, or called to a holy life."f Thus the religious expert, the anima naturaliter Chris- tiana, shows young. This impact from the spiritual world will be regarded, as to its origin, differently according to the different general theories men hold concerning man and God and the relation between them. Every one, however, will agree that the experience shows a remarkable sensitiveness to religious impressions, which the. rest of his life, especially his undergraduate days, continued. For myself, I see no reason for not taking these impressions at their face value, and believing that we really have here the record of a Divine message sent to a soul capable of receiving it. The boy took an active grown-up interest in his father's estate improvements, and in all the athletic enjoyments of the country. He was growing tall, graceful and well knit. Private tutors attended to his education, and his remarkable ability pointed to a University career. In 1660, just after his father's fortunes rose, he was • " Penns and Peningtons," p. 174, from the Huntly M.S. t Clarkson 's "Life of Penn . ' ' He says in his letter to Mary Pennyman (Complete Works, i. 159) that " the knowledge of God from the living witness, from thirteen years of age, hath been dear to me." YOUTH 21 entered as a gentleman commoner at Christchurch, Oxford.* He began at once with a group of friends to hold meetings for exhortation and prayer, " withdrawing from the national way of worship." This brought down the College authorities upon them as sectaries ; thus imprudently turning the bright flame of devoutness to a consuming Are, fighting against spiritual tyranny. At the age of sixteen he was fined for nonconformity. An open air meeting held by his old acquaintance, Thomas Loe, who was an Oxford citizen, attracted the boy under- graduate, whose spirit chimed at once with the Quaker gospel of the Inward Christ. In his earliest published work, William Penn describes the Universities as " signal places for idleness, looseness, profaneness, prodigality, and gross ignorance." Among the dons at Christchurch, however, was that great man, John Locke, twelve years older than young Penn, with whom in later life he was to have very friendly relations. We do not know that any acquaintanceship arose at Oxford. About the spring of 1662, the Admiral's son was sent down for being religious in too original a way. The Huntly MS.t which is supposed to have Penn's authority, states that he was sent down for writing a book which the priests and masters of the college did not like. The AngHcan triumph was fresh and the persecuting spirit keen. Clarkson has it that Penn was sent down for joining with other undergraduates in tearing off the newly com- manded gowns from men's backs. This gown was supposed to be a step towards Popery. The Court was at that time making definite attempts to capture the Universities for a high ritual, and the subject was very * Besse has it 1659, but is sometimes a little wrong in dates. Anthony Woods Oxford Register gives 1660. t " Penns and Peningtons," p. 174. 22 WILLIAM PENN much alive. There is, however, an inaccuracy in the account, which says that Robert Spencer participated in the ragging. But Penn and Spencer, afterwards Earl of Sunderland, did not meet till 1663 in France.* The story represents an unverified tradition. As there are geniuses in music and in painting, in science and even in trade, whose great capacity comes out in their youth — Mozart's and Benjamin West's, Clerk Maxwell's and Rockefeller's ; so there are religious geniuses who are apt to function in youth also. We do not all have it in us to become religious leaders. No mere virtue will make us openers of the gates of God to our fellows. Vision is unequally distributed, and vision is of the essence of great religious achievement. Of the founders of Quakerism, George Fox was noticeably religious from his boyhood ; his religion drove him from home and friends and business at twenty-three. Isaac Pcnington was tender and much drawn to God from his earliest years ; and so was his wife. So, too, was Margaret Fell of Swarthmoor. No religious revival comes without gifted souls like these to lead it. Such religious geniuses seldom feel at home among established forms. These are devised to make a decorous home for the dull, the feeble-souled and the rehgious slacker. They are alloyed with errors, and they substitute routine for reality where this has failed. So the path of those who have learnt from youth upwards much of the Way, and know its landmarks, is often a path of thorns. Their type of genius does not lead to honours, to the House of Lords or to the National Gallery, but to mar- tyrdom. After their day men build the tombs of the prophets. There was for a long time a portrait of William Penn in the Hall of Christchurch. He thus went home from Oxford disgraced in the eyes of his father. The Admiral first argued with him, then thrashed him and finally turned him out of doors. But * See Penn's letter to Spencer, 1683. Janney, p. 22. YOUTH 23 he soon cooled down and hit on a better method of exorcism. He sent the boy to France on a tour with " Persons of QuaUty " to complete his education. Robert Barclay, his friend in later years, had a similar training in Paris, but was hurriedly recalled by his father who feared that Rome was attracting him. William Penn, at the wise age of eighteen, ran real danger of a different kind from the gaiety and worldly charm of French society. In fact " a quite different conversation had diverted his mind from the serious thoughts of religion." One incident of his life in Paris has been accidentally recorded. He gives it in " No Cross, No Crown," as an instance of the foolishness of the theory of " honour." A man with a drawn sword in his hand waylaid him at eleven at night as he was going home, and demanded satisfaction for ignoring his polite salutation in the street, where he had raised his hat to Penn without response. The young Englishman had never seen the bow, but when his assailant made several passes, Penn responded and succeeded in disarming him, but did not kill or wound him. He says the Earl of Crawford's servant was by, probably accompanying Penn home as one of the party travelling together. Most of the time in France, however, was spent not in gaieties in Paris, but in study at Saumur, in the pleasant country of Anjou. Here he was taught by Professor Moses Amyraut, of the Huguenot College. Two quiet years of work here greatly extended the classical and theological knowledge begun at Oxford, and added a special knowledge of the French language and literature. He then went through Switzerland into Italy with Robert Spencer, and had his first meeting with Spencer's uncle and his own future friend, Algernon Sidney, then living in exile. Penn came home accomplished in French and in polite and courtly behaviour, but the change of environ- ment brought the old crisis back. Then came the 24 WILLIAM PENN great struggle between the flesh and the spirit. Duty to his father, a distinguished career at Court, the pressure of his social circle, found an echo in his own bright and sprightly disposition, and pointed to pleasure as his goal. But he was not built that way. The power of the Spirit overcame, and he chose the beatitude of those who are persecuted for Christ's sake. This fierce conflict seems to us not so real nor so common as it was among these saints of the Restoration. Are times better ? Is the " world " not so bad as it was ? Or are we a diluted type of Christian ? Separation from the ordinary ways of our social circle, unless in a few details, is not practised nor required. Perhaps, even then, "the world" was not so bad as they thought it was. We should however be presumptuous, if in our ignorance we tried to judge them. What we must guard against is pure imitation of them, apart from a living conviction of our own. No age can copy another without losing sincerity and endangering charity. None can deride the great men of another without losing humility and failing in the historical sense. We find William Penn at twenty-four urging, in a long epistle, a young lady friend of his to leave her entertain- ments, frolics and indulgences. He realises how different his style is from that of the gallant of the period ; and concludes : " I have not sought fine words or chiming expressions ; the gravity, the concernment and nature of my subject admits no such butterflies. In short, be advised, my Friend, to be serious, and to ponder that which belongs to thy eternal peace. Retire from the noise and clatter of tempting visibles, to the beholding Him who is invisible, that He may reign in thy soul. God over all, exalted and blessed for ever. Farewell." In order of time, however, we have not yet reached th^s letter, by some four years. In 1664 his father had called him home. His two years of quiet study by the Loire go far to account for the scholarship which he afterwards YOUTH 25 showed in his writings. His knowledge of the text of the Bible was great, and his quotation of it ready and volumin- ous. He was an easy reader of the classics ; Dutch he had learnt early from his mother, very thorough French was the result of his living at Paris and Saumur, and he spoke German and Italian. He was evidently by mental temper- ament a good linguist. Apart from languages his studies were theological, and so far on Calvinistic Huguenot lines. This was the usual preparation for Quakerism. All the founders passed through the current Calvinism, and their revolt from it was the more decided and complete, the more they had tried to harmonise its incongruities and accept its essential immorality. All report says that William Penn was an unusually handsome man ; both now at twenty and afterwards at forty, and the Cavalier's long locks and fine dress doubtless set off his natural good looks. In every way the world was at his feet. To give him employment he read law at Lincoln's Inn. Pepys (always inclined to be spiteful when talking privately to his Diary) described him as " a most modish person, grown a fine gentleman." " Something of learning he has got, but a great deal, if not too much, of the vanity of the French garb, and affected manner of gait and speech."* One reason for the sudden summons to England was the outbreak of war with the Dutch, whom France showed some secret sign of supporting. So that it was safer to be on this side the Channel. James, Duke of York, himself no sailor, was — with the usual inefficiency which goes with active royalty — Lord High Admiral of the English fleet, and took one of the three squadrons under his personal command ; he therefore took with him his friend Admiral Penn, as " Great Captain Commander," on his flagship to tell him what to do. This made Mr. Pepys very envious. * Diary. Vol. I., p. 267. 26 WILLIAM PENN " That Sir William Penn should go in the same vessel as the Duke is an honour which, God forgive me, I could grudge him for his knavery and dissimulation." (Diary, ii. 235.) On Penn's advice the Duke of York filled up his commands with the tried sailors of the Commonwealth, Puritan or not. The result was victory in June, 1665. William was once employed by his father and the Duke to bear dispatches from the fleet via Harwich to King Charles personally. That summer of 1665 was the summer of the Great Plague in London. The solemnity of this great reality seems to have aided William to throw off the frivolities which his parents were urging upon him, and to come out victorious in his inward struggle. Signs of soberness and gravity alarmed his father, and to prevent any scandalous outbreak of religion the young man was sent to Ireland to occupy his mind with some- thing practical, in the management of the Shangarry estate, and as clerk of the cheque at Kinsale Harbour.* First, however, he was to call on the Duke of Ormonde, the Lord Lieutenant, at Dublin. In the Commonwealth days he and the banished Admiral Penn had drunk many a surreptitious health to the exiled Charles ; and the Duke welcomed his old friend's son and sent glowing accounts home of his gay spirit, charming manners, and dashing ways. A mutiny among the soldiers occurred at Carrick- fergus, whose castle fell into their hands. Ormonde's son. Lord Arran, was sent to quell it, and his new friend took service with him. They had a stiff task, but stormed the fort yard by yard ; in the fighting the coolness and courage of the Admiral's son was marked by all ; and Ormonde promised him the command of a company at Kinsale, which he, having tasted the joy of fighting, was most eager to obtain. But it did not happen to suit the Admiral, who preferred that he should keep ♦ There is some doubt whether this was exactly his position. The point is not important. YOUTH 27 the profitable civilian appointment of clerk of the cheque. In anticipation of his military rank, however, the young man had his portrait painted in armour : incongruous as it is we are glad to have it, for as a Quaker he never sat for his portrait.* But he had to stick to his civil clerkship and stayed managing the business of the port, auditing, and representing the Crown on the business side. He became very intimate with his father's old friend Roger Boyle, now Earl of Orrery and President of Munster, one of the family who produced Richard Boyle, the founder of the Royal Society. Roger's line was poetry and drama, not science. He gave his young friend, by way of satisfying his military ambitions, the title of Ensign in the cavalry. As the Dutch were now masters of the seas, Kinsale had to be guarded with care. Colonel Wallis, the former Puritan owner of Shangarry Castle, brought a suit against Admiral Penn, denying that his lands were forfeit to the Crown. Ireland was full of such suits at this time of political change and repeated con- fiscations : and much diplomacy was needed by the young man faced with the fierce old Cromwellian. His title to the lands, we may remember, was only recent, and as political as Penn's. Wniiam came over to London to see the case through the Land Commissioners' Court, and the estate was, as might be expected from a Royalist commission, confirmed to his father at the end of 1666. The rental was over a thousand a year. In February 1667, his sister Margaret (" Peg,") was married to Anthony Lowther, F.R.S., of Marske, Yorkshire, a wealthy man of good family and high character ; her father is said to have given her a fortune on the occasion, which was one of great display. After the wedding William returned to Cork to attend to business. He was now near the end of the unsettled years of his youth. Maria Webb, quoting the Huntly MS.f writes, (p. 175) : * Granville Penn says so, but I think it is doubtful. I This paper is headed : " An account of the convincement of Wm. Penn, delivered by himself to Thomas Harvey about thirty years since, 28 WILLIAM PENN " The manuscript goes on to say that, on his second coming to Cori<, being the only one of the family there, and requiring some articles of clothing, he went to the shop of a woman Friend in the city to procure them. He expected she would have known him, but she did not. He was too much altered from the days of his boyhood, when the Friend had seen him, to be now recog- nised by her. However, he told her who he was, and he spoke to her of Thomas Loe, and of the meeting at his father's house ten or eleven years before. The manuscript says, ' She admired at his remembering, but he told her he should never forget it ; also if he only knew where that person was, if 'twere a hundred miles off, he would go again to hear him.' She said he need not go so far, for the Friend had lately come thither, and would be at meeting the next day. So he went to the meeting, and when Thomas Loe stood up to preach, he was exceedingly reached, and wept much." Thomas preached from the words, " There is a faith that overcometh the world, and there is a faith that is overcome by the world." Doubtless the sermon reached the deep places of the soul and laid bare the meaning of William Penn's experiences. He was " convinced" and became a Quaker. The crisis had come. The influence of the obscure and otherwise forgotten Thomas Loe on his famous convert on three occasions, as boy, undergraduate, and man, is truly remarkable. Per- haps the impression made in childhood at Cork, at an impressionable age, may have helped the later influence (see p. 33). It has been impossible to reach close touch with Penn's inward life between Oxford and his convince- ment. But he has himself left a summary account of it, relating an interview with friends abroad.* " 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 which Thomas Harvey related to me in the following brief manner." It is dated 1727, and was kept among the MSS. of the Huntly family of High Wycombe, Bucks. * Travels in Holland and Germany. YOUTH 29 me, and the divine impressions he gave me of m3'self ; of my persecution at Oxford, and how the Lord sustained me in the midst of that helhsh 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 or sufferings should attend me, and that with great reverence and brokenness 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 restitution of all things." " It was at this time that the Lord visited me with a certain sound and testimony of his Eternal Word, through one of those the world calls Quakers, namely, Thomas Loe. I related to them the bitter mockings and scornings that fell upon me, the displeasure of my parents, the invectiveness and cruelty of the priests, the strangeness of all my companions, what a sign and wonder they made of me, but, above all, that great cross of resisting and watching against mine own inward vain affections and thoughts. " This is a record of development, of effort, of the strivings of a living thing, of a soul growing to maturity. The men most temperamentally religious conform to this type, normally. A strong emotional uplift in childhood, a clear view of the Divine nature and Presence then, but after that much pilgrim work, doubts, strivings, changes of faith, the alternations of gaiety with moodiness which his parents noticed in William Penn, and then, about the time of com- pleted manhood, in the early twenties, a life-long consecra- tion to a tested call. Thenceforth the main battle is outside. A great putting forth of energy results. The religious or social reformer is made. The great leader comes when this religious gift arises in a man whose other qualities are attractive or powerful. Beauty of form and face. 30 WILLIAM PENN the mirror both of gentleness and strength, great intellectual power, the best education then obtainable, dauntless courage, wealth and rank, added in William Penn's case outward qualifications to the inward anointing. It will be noted that Penn was thus not one of the original founders of Quakerism, the " first Publishers of Truth." Fifteen years had passed since the sermon on Fir Bank Fell, near Sedbergh, in 1652, when the local groups of Seekers had gathered round George Fox and formed the earliest Friends' Meetings. Penn was a boy of eight at that time. He came late, as Paul into Christianity, and brought like him the culture of the upper class into a body founded by simpler folk. We have not given a particularly attractive account of the Admiral ; yet the bond of affection between father and son was clearly real and close. Such incidents as the flogging and expulsion from home which followed the Oxford trouble, would then be a less uncommon and less epoch-making incident between father and son than it would now ; and the alienation cannot have lasted long. We have the following letter, for instance, written by the son to the father at sea, from Harwich, on the morning of his arrival with despatches to the King in 1665, noted above. " From Harwich, 23d April, 1665. " Honoured Father : — " We could not arrive here sooner than this day, about twelve of the clock, by reason of the continued cross winds, and, as I thought, foul weather. I pray God, after all the foul weather and dangers you are exposed to, and shall be, that you come home as secure. And I bless God my heart does not in any way fail, but firmly believe that if God has called you out to battle, he will cover your head in that smoky day. And, as I never knew what a father was till I had wisdom enough to prize him, so I can safely say, that now, of aU times, your concerns are most dear to me. It's hard, meantime, to lose both a father and a friend, . . . " W. P." YOUTH 31 For most of the time in the critical years now to be recorded, we find the Admiral quietly supporting his son wherever he could help him in a tight place, and the son at times writing almost daily to his father. It is easy to realise what a blow to all his social hopes and excellent prospects was given to a worldly-wise parent by his son's astonishing freak of joining himself to a body regarded as ignorant Puritan fanatics from the barbarous north. CHAPTER III A Quaker Persecution began at once. A Friends' Meeting was broken up in Cork in September, 1667, and the Friends haled before the Mayor. Seeing Penn's cavaUer attire, and finding that he was son of the owner of Shangarry Castle, the mayor offered to release him on his giving bond for his good behaviour. But he refused any advantage over the other Friends. From his prison he wrote a letter to his friend the Earl of Orrery, who gave an order for his release. News of these wretched transactions were sent by local noblemen to the Admiral in London, and William was ordered home. Terrible for both father and son was the conflict of conviction battling with real family affection on both sides. Finally, the father, in despair of more, begged his son at least to doff his hat to himself, to the King and to the Duke of York, his father's friend and the heir to the throne. Truly, it seems a little matter to us, and even a sheer mistake on the Quaker's part. William Penn asked leave to consider it alone. He came out from his private struggle and prayer determined to refuse even that. We can sympathise with both father and son and with human nature which makes tragedies out of so little. " Hat Honour" can only be judged fairly when we realise that it stood then for much more. People wore their hats at meals. Pepys took cold by dining without one. They were worn indoors all the time. ^■f^^i^^'^^'^^pt Mm ADMIRAL SIR WILLIAM PENN. After the painting by Sir Peter Lely, at Greenwich Hospital. A QUAKER 33 In church they were only taken off at the solemn utterance of the name of God. But French fashions had come in, and the habit of doffing the hat was one. It stood as the central symbol of a wicked way of life. To reserve the act for reverence to God alone was simply to stand for the conservative upright English Puritan way of life. It was really an unquakerly error to stiffen a symbol into the substance ; but there were extenuating circumstances. We know from other evidence that the men to whom this apparent crotchet appealed were neither bigots nor fools. The Huntly MS.* gives a narrative of the critical moments between father and son : " When the morning came, they went in the coach together, without William knowing where they were going, till the coach- man was ordered to drive into the Park. Thus he found his father's intent was to have private intercourse with him. He commenced by asking him what he could think of himself, after being trained up in learning and courtly accomplishments, nothing being spared to fit him to take the position of an ambassador at foreign courts, or that of a minister at home, that he should now become a Quaker. William told him that it was in obedience to the manifestation of God's will in his conscience, but that it was a cross to his own nature. He also reminded him of that former meeting in Cork, and told him that he was himself at that time convinced of the truth of the doctrine of the Quakers ; only that the grandeur of the world had been felt to be too great a sacrifice to give up. After more discourse they turned home- wards. They stopped at a tavern on the way, where Sir William ordered a glass of wine. On entering a room on this pretext, he immediately locked the door. Father and son were now face to face, under the influence of stem displeasure on the one hand, and on the other, prayerful feeling to God for strength rightly to withstand or hear what was coming. William, remembering his early experience on returning from Oxford, expected something desperate. The thought arose that the Admiral was going to cane him. But, instead of that, the father, looking earnestly at him, * "Pennsand Peningtons," p. 177. 34 WILLIAM PENN and laying his hands down on the table, solemnly told him he was going to kneel down to pray to Almightj^ God that his son might not be a Quaker, and that he might never again go to a Quaker meeting. William, opening the casement, declared that before he would listen to his father putting up such a prayer to God, he would leap out of the window. At that time a nobleman was passing the tavern in his coach, and observing Sir William's at the door, he aUghted. Being directed to the room in which father and son were together, his knock came in time to arrest the catastrophe. He had evidently heard of William's return, and of the Admiral's high displeasure. After saluting the former, the MS. says that ' he turned to the father, and told him he might think himself happy in having a son who could despise the grandeur of the world, and refrain from the vices which so many were running into.' " They paid a visit before they returned home to another nobleman, and the discourse with him also turned on the change in William. Here again, the father was congratulated and the son's resolution commended. These congratulations were cheering to the young convert, whatever they may have been to the father. The Admiral expelled his son from home and threatened to disinherit him. He was dependent on charity and on what his mother privately sent him. Time — indeed, no long time — mollified and reconciled the father. His son's return, very likely arranged by his mother, was regarded with a blind eye, though for a time his father refused openly to recognise him. In 1668 William Penn began his service as a Quaker minister, which he was to keep up for fifty years. His earliest published work dates also from this year. The flow of authorship lasted so long as he retained his mental faculties. His Collected Works include fifty-eight original volumes ; they cover 1,586 closely printed folio pages. His printed words reach one million and a quarter. To give an account in any detail, or indeed any account at all, of this enormous literary output, would be beyond our scope here. Nor would it be serviceable to analyse or A QUAKER 35 critically estimate every work. For the same Quaker gospel is expounded many times over. Each book or pamphlet was written for its occasion ; and no body of collected works was ever in the author's mind. Never- theless, it is of real biographical importance to understand the nature of the enthusiasm which laid hold on William Penn in the heyday of his youth and lasted him with no looking back nor momentary hesitation till the end of his long hfe, bearing him through persecution and calamity, and stimulating his ceaseless labour. His first work, only the length of a bulky pamphlet, will reveal this. Its descriptive title page, like all the title pages of that day, gives the purpose and drift of what follows. It runs : — Truth Exalted in a short but sure Testimony against all these Religions, Faiths, and Worships, that have been formed and followed in the darkness of Apostasy : — and for that Glorious Light which is now risen and shines forth, in the Life and Doctrine of the despised Quakers as the alone good old way of Life and Salvation. " Presented to Princes, Priests and People, that they may repent, believe and obey. " By William Penn, whom Divine Love constrains in an holy contempt, to trample on Egypt's glory, not fearing the King's wrath, having beheld the majesty of Him who is invisible." This, properly spaced out, and with capital letters and various types employed, gave a vivid summary to a possible reader. The author summons the various Churches to answer his condemnation. First, the Papists are attacked root and branch, on grounds familiar to all Protestants. Then the Protestants, i.e., " those who profess the Scriptures for the Rule of Life and Doctrine," are bidden " to stand their trial by them." The Church of England is accused of " not being yet got out of the borders of Babylon's form, and being altogether in her lustful, proud, persecuting and wicked nature." The persecutions under Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I., 36 WILLIAM PENN are mentioned, " but more particularly the many thousands now of late that have been clubbed, bruised, imprisoned, exiled, poisoned to death by stinking dungeons, and ruined in their outward estates, contrary to law. Christian or human." Upon them the invective of Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel is poured. " You deny present Revelation to any, though, without it, as Christ saith, no man can know God, whom to know is life eternal, and place the ground of Divine knowledge in human arts and sciences, that thereby you may engross a function to yourselves, and keep up your trade of yearly gain upon the poor people, preaching sin for term of life, thereby render- ing invalid the glorious power of the second Adam, and indulging people in transgression." This constant dwell- ing upon the helplessness of human nature caused one of the central lines of protest of the Society, which stood for the perfectibility of human nature. Our author demands Scriptural authority, since the Scriptures are avowed as the rule, for tithes, worldly pomp of Bishops and their lordship and authority, for " forms of prayer, litanies, responses, singing, choristers, organs, altars, bowing, surplices, square caps, hoods, rockets, fonts, baby-baptism, Holy days, with much more such like dirty trash and foul superstition." " Are ye baptized by the Holy Ghost and with Fire, crucified through the daily cross to the world, born again and your affections set on things above. But alas ! poor souls ! are you not at ' Have mercy upon us miserable sinners, there is no health in us, ' from seven to seventy ? " The tract goes on to lay at the door of the Church the manifold wickedness of the Restoration period ; a connection inappropriate now and generally ; but the alliance between Church and Court could hardly help occurring to those persecuted by that alhance. He then attacks the separatists of various names for living on the tradition of their Uving founders, " com- passing yourselves with the sparks of your own fire." A QUAKER 37 He denies their doctrine of imputed righteousness, as being a cloak and excuse for sin, also the common (though not universal) doctrine of election and reprobation, "whereby the glorious God of mercy is represented more infamously unjust than the worst of men." They are said " to rely on the conceivings and apprehensions of other men and books well refuted, whereby God's grace and light have lost their office of leading and teaching." I am afraid that this danger is one to which every religious body, including the Society of Friends, is and always will be, subject. From these he turns to preach the new and living faith he had embraced : " This is the second Adam, the quickening Spirit, the Lord from Heaven, the new and spiritual man, the heavenly bread, the true vine, the flesh and blood that was given for the life of the world, the second covenant, the Law writ in the heart and spirit, put in the inward parts, the way in which the fool cannot err, the truth before deceit was, the life that's hid in God, eternal in the heavens, glorified before the world began ; the power, the wisdom, the righteousness of God, the plant of renown, the royal seed that bruiseth the serpent's head ; in short, the grace which hath appeared unto all men, teaching them to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live godlikely and soberly in this present world." In such rhetoric and flood of quotation, does he attempt to express the undefinable. But if the reader grasps it, he has got at the heart of the Quaker message. In such storm of controversy and fierceness of attack it was born. Perhaps it could not, one may even say definitely it could not, have come into existence and sur- vived without this fierce fire of destructive testimony, these garments rolled in blood. It needed spiritual assertiveness to survive. Pepys tried to read this book. " A ridiculous, nonsensical book. I was ashamed to read in it," com- ments that worthy. 3^ WILLIAM PENN But we cannot and would not write in this vein now, of other Christian bodies. We desire to hold our own with more urbanity and more charity. We must remem- ber that this tract expresses the zeal of a young convert at the age of twenty-four. We must not forget nevertheless, that we have not had to meet the episcopal argument of gaol fever. Very many of the young men who founded the Society had fallen in the battle when William Penn became a leader : and the gaols were, for a generation, always full of martyrs. I I CHAPTER IV The Tower of London A CONTROVERSY of little importance in itself soon came in William Penn's way ; but as it is somewhat typical of the atmosphere of those days, it is worth recording, particularly as it led to imprisonment and to important authorship. A Presbyterian minister, Thomas Vincent, whose " lectures " in Spittleyard were connived at by the Government, lost two members of his congregation, a mother and daughter, to the Quakers. Hence an attack from the pulpit on their " erroneous and damnable doctrines." Rather would the reverend gentleman indulge in gross immorality or drink poison than embrace Quakerism. Fear of hell and fear of husband and father equally failed to break the resolution of the two newly convinced Friends. George Whitehead and William Penn demanded a public debate in the Spitalfields chapel to clear their characters, and it was fixed for two in the afternoon. The Presbyterian congregation were, however, advised to come at one and occupy the seats. Three assistants were also unexpectedly provided for Thomas Vincent. Amid uproar and much disorder and abuse the debate went on till after dark. Any less hopeful environment for a discussion about the Trinity, dealing with substances, subsistences, manifestations, operations and persons, could hardly be found. The matter was closed in the unfair manner sometimes employed in religious controversy, by Mr. Vincent falling on his knees and praying, " with many strangely affected 39 40 WILLIAM PENN whines " against his opponents as blasphemers. He then dismissed the assembly and had the candles put out. But Friends continued to reply, and the people stayed. So Mr. Vincent, very pale, came in with a candle and promised them another debate. This promise being broken. Friends appeared at his next service, and spoke after he had done, though he " slunk away," and left them stranded without an opponent. >^ This caused William Penn to relieve his pent up feelings in an important, though brief work, " The Sandy Foundation Shaken." This was a refutation of three of the current doctrines, viz. : — 1. One God subsisting in three distinct and separate Persons. 2. The impossibility of God's pardoning sinners without a plenary satisfaction. 3,, The justification of impure persons by an imputative righteousness. " from the authority of Scripture testimonies and right reason." There was indeed ample testimony to his hand from both sources. The three texts selected for the title page may be taken as samples. " But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things." " Who is a God like unto thee that pardoneth iniquity ? He retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy." " For I will not justify the wicked." It is a sign of soundness and of well-guided freedom that the Quakers' claim to direct knowledge of spiritual things led them first to an attack upon this preposterous Puritan scholasticism. Penn proved his case, to a modern reader's mind, abundantly. " Too good for him ever to have writ it," snarls Pepys. Vincent called on the Government to put down by force the writer of this attack upon what passed then for essential Christian verities. It happened unfortunately THE TOWER OF LONDON 41 that Arlington the Secretary of State had had and was still having a quarrel with Sir WiUiam Penn, in fact abetting a hostile intrigue against his position. He had not suc- ceeded as yet in ruining his enemy ; but to attack him through his eccentric son seemed to a worthless buffoon like Lord Arlington an excellent chance. The vulnerable point in William Penn's position was that he had not obtained the Bishop of London's licence for printing " The Sandy Foundation Shaken." This timorous law was not, in fact, effective nor usually obeyed, though recently enacted as part of the war against Non- conformity. It would however, enable any plotter of harm, like Arlington, to have the author and printer before a magistrate, who might send them to trial for misdemeanour, probably with bail. But Arlington did not wait for these legal formalities, and this relatively mild course. Penn had called upon him and confessed the technical fault, asking that his printer, already incarcerated, might be set at hberty and he the author alone be blamed. He promptly had William Penn arrested and sent off to the Tower, without charge, or trial, or any kind of authority. This was in December, 1668. But he found a new difficulty at the gate of the Tower. Sir John Robinson, the Lieutenant, refused to take him in without a proper legal warrant signed by the King in Council, H he had done so he would have put himself into danger, for Admiral Penn and his friend the Duke of York, might yet prove stronger than a fool like Lord Arlington in the fortune's wheel of politics. Robinson was there because he was unscrupulous, but this young man had friends who gave a cautious man pause, particularly when one was getting on in life, and had made many enemies. Two of his predecessors had come to a bad end. Sir John asked Arlington to legalise the proposed confinement by a royal warrant. This put Arlington into a difficulty. Printing an unlicensed book was not a matter for the Tower or a 42 WILLIAM PENN Royal warrant signed by the King in Council. These were used for treasonable conduct. So a charge of treason must be concocted. Arlington interviewed Penn at the Tower, and said that he had dropped a paper full of treason against the King on the floor of Arlington's house, and tried to frighten him into confessing it — a poor and desperate trick which naturally did not succeed, however moving were the Secretary of State's theatrical gifts. So he dissembled, professed joy at Penn's denial, and said he would go at once to the King on his behalf. He went to Charles at Whitehall, where as a comic entertainer he was always welcome. Doubtless he put the case comically, acted the Quaker, and then asked Charles to help him out of the difficulty he had hastily got into. The two consulted, and then Charles remem- bered that Penn's pamphlet had been called blasphemous. This gave an opening to the Defender of the Faith, the Head of the Church in England. A charge of blasphemy was substituted for that of unlicensed printing. More- over, sending for the Council's minute book, Charles held a mock meeting, himself and Arlington present, and wrote the necessary minute, committing William Penn to the Tower for blasphemy. Charles was usually a friend of the Penns, but he was given to understand that a very short dose of the Tower would bring the youth to reason, and then he could easily be pardoned. But Robinson did not yet feel safe. He must have more signatures. He got them. A hasty council was convened, and seven members signed it. A " close " imprisonment in the Tower was terribly severe. The prisoner was locked up in his cell with a keeper. He had little fuel in a memorably cold winter. He could, without special licence, see no friend — no doctor, clergyman or lawyer. He could write no letters and receive no presents. He ate prison fare. He seems to have been allowed to write freely. Arlington, however, still dreaded the future vengeance THE TOWER OF LONDON 43 of the Admiral, a man much more necessary to the safety of England than himself, or even than his patron Prince Rupert. He gave it out that all was done on the initi- ative of the Bishop of London, whose licence had been ignored. The standard Quaker biographies still state this ; and Penn in the Tower believed it. It was reported to him that the Bishop had said he should either recant or die a prisoner. His reply was : " All is well. I wish they had told me so before, since the expecting of a release put a stop to some business ; thou mayest tell my father, who, I know, will ask thee, these words : ' My prison shall be my grave before I will budge a jot ; for I owe my conscience to no mortal man. I have no need to fear. God will make f mends for all. They are mistaken in me. I value not their threats and resolutions, for they shall know T 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 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 labour must faint with 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,"* This memorable saying, so characteristic of the author, has done some injustice to the Bishop of London. For to him Charles and Arlington turned to pull their chesnuts out of the fire. The King found that Arlington's anti- cipation of the boy's early surrender was mistaken. He sent various divines to him to try to persuade him of the error of his views. They reported him reasonable but unyielding. Penn's father had yielded to a Tower imprisonment, in Oliver's time, very quickly. Meantime, the Admiral was ill, mostly in bed, unable to attend at the * " Life," by Besse. 44 WILLIAM PENN Navy Board, and surrounded by enemies. His star was setting. After his son had been in prison over three months, he managed to get to Whitehall and presented to the King a petition for his release. The Council refused. The King ordered the Bishop of London to proceed against him in the Consistory Court for " blas- phemous heresies." But the Bishop was too prudent to do anything of the sort. He knew there was no blas- phemy in the " Sandy Foundation Shaken." He wanted no disturbance or scandal in his diocesan court. He did not want to meet in argument so able an advocate ; so he took no steps, and, ignoring the royal instruction, let Arlington find some other way out. The Bishop showed good judgment and probably good will.* Meantime the Admiral lost his seat at the Naval Board and his official residence, and retired to Wanstead. He was very ill, and begged the Duke of York to help his imprisoned son. Penn himself also wrote a letter to Arlington on the ist of July, in which a careful discussion on religious toleration with classical examples was, I fear, an instance of pearls being cast in a wrong direction. The intervention of the Duke of York caused Charles to send his chaplain, none other than the good and wise Stillingfleet, to see if he could come to such terms with William Penn as to enable him to be released. A great theologian, and a large and charitable soul, was at last enlisted to cure the bungling of Vincent, Arlington and the Defender of the Faith. Penn and he were kindred spirits, they were both young, they respected one another and had fruitful discussions. Under Stillingfleet' s advice and influence Penn wrote and published his " Innocency with her Open Face." Yield he would not, but explain * This account of the responsibility of Arlington is taken from Hepworth Dixon 'slater volume, " The History of William Penn," 1872. It is based on facts discovered since his former book, and Janney's. He gives no authorities in this later more popular book, but it appears to be based on a paper read by John Bruce in 1853, before the Society of Antiquaries, and published in Archaeologia, Vol. XXXV., pp. 72-90. This reference is from H. M. Jenkins, " Family of William Penn," p. 230. THE TOWER OF LONDON 45 what he had or had not said, he could. Stillingfleet, whom he frequently quotes, was a liberal theologian, and liberalism is a great reconciler. The King's theological sensitiveness was satisfied, and Penn was released, after between eight and nine months' close confinement. The author asserts in this book his belief in the Divinity of Christ, in a very full sense. His opponents had said " in press, pulpit and talk," that a denial of this followed from his denial of the Trinity, a much more elaborate conception. The unity of Christ and God, not their separateness, was Penn's contention. Secondly, though not believing in the need for plenary satisfaction, " I believe in no other name by which remission, atonement and salvation can be obtained, but Jesus Christ the Saviour." He says his position is that of Stillingfleet' s " Discourse about Christ's Suffering." He also believes in the Holy Spirit, " as the same Almighty and Eternal God." He concludes by saying that if the persecution of Friends is to continue, " our case can never change nor happiness abate, for no human edict can possibly deprive us of His glorious presence, who is able to make the dismalest prisons so many receptacles of pleasure." William Penn thus pleaded that Friends were orthodox Christians, as Christian doctrine was then understood in its broad features, whilst declining to follow the Calvinist system. It cannot, however, be said that there is any exact or self-consistent Christology in the two treatises taken together. Scripture texts were freely quoted and left to others or to intuition to expound as spiritual insight served.* His enemies would have hesitated before giving eight months' leisure to the ardent spirit of Penn, if they had foreseen the use that would be made of it. In the Tower he wrote his greatest work, " No Cross no Crown." In the Preface to the second edition of 1682, we read : — * See below. Chapter VIII. p. 46 WILLIAM PENN " Christ's Cross is Christ's way to Christ's crown. This is the subject of the following discourse, first writ during my confine- ment in the Tower of London in 1668, now reprinted with great enlargements of matter and testimonies ; that thou, reader, mayst be won to Christ and if won already, brought nearer to him. 'Tis a path God in His everlasting kindness guided my feet into, in the flower of my youth, when about two-and-twenty years of age. Then he took me by the hand and led me out of the pleasures, vanities and hopes of the world. I have tasted of Christ's judgments and of His mercies, and of the world's frowns and reproaches ; I rejoice in my experience and dedicate it to thy service in Christ. 'Tis a debt I have long owed, and has been long expected : I have now paid it and delivered my soul." The book is an appeal for practical Christ janity, and a statement of its demands, covering both worship and conduct, in fact the whole of life, public and private. Such a book was sure to come out as a typical efflorescence of Quakerism. For its appeal was always from tradition to experience, from authority to life. Practice is Quaker- ism's strongest side. If William Penn had never written anything else his message to the world would have been delivered in this volume. It is one of the notable voices of Christianity, an unflinching presentment of what Christian experience is and demands of those faithful to it. It contains all the Quaker testimonies, against ritual, professional preaching, ornamental worship, prayer from books ; and a defence of meetings based on silence and depending upon individual initiative in ministry. It is unrestrained and voluminous in expression, and hortatory in manner. But it contains many purple passages of pungent quality, and the style is aflame with conviction. It became for two centuries the standard book of Friends' practice, as Barclay's Apology was of their theory, and Fox's Journal of their history and origin. It has been the stay and the standard of thousands of strong men and women. Perhaps it cannot be, even ought not to be, to us what it was to our fathers. Each age must write its own " No Cross, no Crown." The THE TOWER OF LONDON 47 religious conflicts of a past age have burnt into it and for us discoloured it. We must have a less controversial help to Christian conduct ; but it is hardly likely that we shall produce one so penetrating. It is a book now rarely read. By 1857 it had gone through twenty-four editions, but since that time its circulation has been very slight, and due to the desire of some persons that other persons should read it. In all cases it is the second edition of 1682 that has been reprinted. It is a more complete and mature work than the hasty production under prison conditions of the young man of four-and-twenty in 1668. Some of the minor Quaker peculiarities took a more prominent place in the first edition than they did in the complete work. As an example of the invective which alternates with loving appeal, we may quote a passage which incidentally treats the Restoration Drama from an unusual angle of vision (Chap. XVII. § i). " Next, those customs and fashions, which make up the common attire and conversation of the times, do eminently obstruct the inward retirement of people's minds, by which they may come to behold the glories of immortality ; who instead of fearing their Creator in the days of their youth, and seeking the kingdom of God in the first place (Eccl. xii. i ; Luke xii. 31), expecting the addition of such other things as may be necessary and convenient, according to the injimctions of God and the Lord Jesus Christ ; as soon as they can do anything, they look after pride, vanity and that conversation which is most delightful to the flesh (Jer. xviii. 18-20), which becomes their most delightful entertainment : all which do but evidently beget lustful con- ceptions, and inflame to inordinate thoughts, wanton discourses, lascivious treats, if not at least to wicked actions. To such it is tedious and offensive to speak of heaven or another life. Bid them reflect upon their actions, not grieve the Holy Spirit, con- sider of an eternal doom, prepare for judgment ; and the best return that is usual is reproachful jests (Eph. v. 3, 4), profane repartees, if not direct blows. Their thoughts are otherwise employed ; their mornings are too short for them to wash, to 48 WILLIAM PENN smooth, to paint, to patch, to braid, to curl, to gum, to powder, and otherwise to attire and adorn themselves (Psalm xii. 2 ; Isaiah v. ; lix. 3, 4.) ; whilst their afternoons are as commonly bespoke for visits and for plays ; where their usual entertainment is some stories fetched from the more approved romances ; some strange adventures, some passionate amours, unkind refusals, grand impediments, importunate addresses, miserable disappoint- ments, wonderful surprises, unexpected encounters, castles surprised, imprisoned lovers rescued, and meetings of supposed dead ones ; bloody duels, languishing voices echoing from solitary groves, overheard mournful complaints, deep-fetched sighs sent from wild deserts, intrigues managed with unheard of subtlety ; and whilst all things seem at the greatest distance, then are dead people alive, enemies friends, despair turned to enjoyment, and all their impossibilities reconciled ; things that never were, nor are, nor ever shall or can be, they all come to pass. And as if man and woman were too slow to answer the loose suggestions of corrupt nature, or were too intent on more divine speculations and heavenly affairs, they have all that is possible for the most extravagant wits to invent ; not only express lies, but utter im- possibilities to very nature, on purpose to excite their minds to those idle passions, and intoxicate their giddy fancies with swelling nothings but airy fictions ; which not only consume their time, effeminate their natures, debase their reason, and set them on work to reduce these things to practice, and make each adven- ture theirs by imitation ; but if disappointed, — as who can other- wise expect from such mere phantasms ? — the present remedy is latitude in the greatest vice. And yet these are some of their most innocent recreations, which are the very gins of Satan, to ensnare people ; contrived most agreeable to their weakness, and in a more insensible manner mastering their affections by entertainments most taking to their senses. On such occasions it is their hearts breed vanity, and their eyes turn interpreters to their thoughts and their looks whisper the secret inflammations of their intemperate minds (Prov. vii. 10-21) ; wandering so long abroad, till their lascivious actings bring night home, and load their minds and reputations with lust and infamy."* * A fuller account of the three books named in this chapter may be found in the author's work, " The Faith of a Quaker," Book II., Chap. III. (Camb. Univ. "Press), a book who.se publication is postponed till after the war. GATEWAY OF NEWGATE, 1666. THE TOWER OF LONDON 49 In the summer of 1669 William Penn went again to Ireland on the business of his father's estates and stayed about nine months. He visited many meetings and the prisons where Friends were. On their behalf he presented an address to the Lord Lieutenant, and repeatedly applied to him, to the Chancellor, and to Lord Arran, for the release of Friends ; and he had the happiness of seeing his efforts successful before he returned to England. An order in Council liberated Friends. A " National Meet- ing " of Friends in Ireland was held in Dublin, at William Penn's lodgings, in November of 1669. He seems to have been gladly accepted as a leader from the first. Oddly enough, on his voyage to Ireland, a Friend was a passenger who had been also a fellow passenger with him on his last voyage from Ireland when just " convinced," and had then helped and encouraged him. This good man now felt himself left far behind spiritually by one who had set out after him, and was much humbled, " was led to a solid reflection upon his own negligence and unfaith- fulness and expressed with many tears a renewed visitation and deep concern upon his spirit." Probably this excellent Friend need not have been distressed. It is a common experience. CHAPTER V The Rights of Juries The few years of William Penn's Quakerism had been times of adventure and of strain, but the year 1670 brought with it still larger and keener encounters in the Holy War. The trial of Penn and Mead in that year was an event of great moment in the constitutional history of England. Already from his prison in the Tower he had written a long manifesto to Lord Arlington the Secretary of State, a member of the famous Cabal govern- ment, pointing out how illegal his confinement was, under the constitution. He was not an unlikely man to find himself called on to defend the rights of citizenship. In 1670 the second Conventicle Act was passed, con- firming and making effectual the provisions of the earlier Act of 1664. Under these Acts the Church of England committed the greatest folly in her history, in attempting to destroy Nonconformity by forbidding all its meetings by law. It deprived the accused of the benefit of trial by jury. Any justice of the peace, whether sitting in sessions or not, could convict at his pleasure. It con- tained also the extraordinary clause that in case of doubt arising about its interpretation " the. Act shall be construed most largely and beneficially for the suppression of conventicles," i.e., it was to be construed against the prisoner, contrary to a maxim of English legal practice. Most of the religious bodies attacked bowed outwardly to the storm. That is, they abandoned their chapels and met secretly elsewhere when they could. No such recog- 50 THE RIGHTS OF JURIES 51 nition of the power of evil commended itself to the daring and inflexible spirit of Friends, They met as usual ; and many a time the soldiers had to break up a meeting and hale the congregation, or, it might be, a speaker and some others, to jail. The third offence meant a fine of £100, or transportation to the convict station on Barbadoes, and every succeeding offence a fine of ;£ioo. The Meeting House in Gracechurch Street in the City of London was found guarded by soldiers, on Sunday, August 14th, 1670. Friends, therefore, naturally met for worship in the street outside. William Penn was preaching when the police appeared, with warrants ready written by the Lord Mayor against him and William Mead, who was of the company. Penn gives an account of it in a letter to his father, written the next day from a place of semi-imprisonment. " Yesterday I was taken by a band of soldiers, with one Capt. Mead, a linen draper, and in the evening carried before the Mayor. He proceeded against me according to the ancient law ; he told me I should have my hat pulled off, for all I was Admiral Penn's son. I told him that I desired to be in common with others, and sought no refuge from the common usage. He answered, it had been no matter if thou hadst been a commander twenty years ago. ... He bade his clerk write me for Bridewell, and there would he see me whipt himself, for all I was Penn's son, that starved the seamen. Indeed these words grieved me as well as that it manifested his great weakness and mahce to the whole Company, that were about one hundred people. I told him I could very well hear his severe expressions to me concerning myself, but was sorry to hear him speak those abuses of my father, that was not present, at which the assembly seemed to murmur." Starhng the Lord Mayor was a renegade Cromwellian, once a great persecutor of Royalists. The Friends were indicted at the Old Bailey on September i. The charge was, in summarised form, that the defendants, with other persons to the number of three hundred, did with force and ^2 WILLIAM PENN arms unlawfully and tumultuously assemble and congre- gate themselves together to the disturbance of the peace —that William Penn, by agreement between him and WilHam Mead, before made, and by abetment of the said William Mead, did take upon himself to preach and speak, by reason whereof a great concourse and tumult of people in the street did a long time remain and continue in con- tempt of the Lord the King and of his law ; to the great disturbance of his peace, to the great terror of many of his lieges, and to the ill example of all others." ^^ ^ . One can realise that the authorities could hardly afford to allow themselves to be baffled by this open-air demon- stration of the Quakers whom they had turned out of doors. Thus does one ill course lead to another ; and the path of compulsion descends rapidly to an intolerable ^ ^ The trial occupied September ist, 3rd, 4tli, and 5tli. The Justices were Sir Samuel Starling, the Lord Mayor, Sir John Howel, the Recorder, five Aldermen and three Sheriffs. At the beginning the Recorder refused to the pnsoners a copy of the lengthy indictment: on which Penn demanded that no undue advantage should be taken of this, and that he should have a fair hearing in defence. They then pleaded Not Guilty. Then the court adjourned, and the prsoners were brought up in the afternoon but made to stand aside while felons and murderers were tried ; thus both wearying and insulting them. After five hours' attendance the court broke up without reaching their case. Two days later, on Saturday the third, they were again brought up, and the case began in earnest. The poUce had, with kmdly intention, removed the prisoners' hats, which they had a conscientious objection to doing themselves, but the Bench were determined not to be denied their cunmng device on this point, and ordered their hats to be put on again and they brought up to the bar, where they were fined THE RIGHTS OF JURIES 53 forty marks apiece for contempt of court for having them on. Penn remarked that as the Bench was responsible for their hats being on, the Bench should be fined. The tone of the prisoners' minds comes out in William Mead's protest : " I desire the Jury and all people to take notice of this injustice of the Recorder, who spake not to me to pull off my hat, and yet hath he put a fine upon my head. fear the Lord and dread His power, and yield to the guidance of His Holy Spirit, for He is not far from every one of you." So far the Bench had not gained much moral weight, but had ensured that, whatever the verdict, the accused should go back to prison for not paying this fine. The authorities seem to have known and feared Edward Bushel, one of the jurors, and pretended that he had not kissed the book ; and so brought him up again to swear. He was thought to have a conscience against swearing twice. But the trick failed. The police evidence was to the effect that they could not get near to William Penn because of the crowd, nor hear him because of the noise ; but that William Mead had arranged that if William Penn was allowed peaceably to finish, he would give himself up at the close. Then followed a long duel between the Recorder and William Penn. The accused demanded by what law they were being tried, and the Recorder refused informa- tion beyond saying that it was the Common Law, and abusing Penn as a saucy and impertinent fellow. Penn quoted Coke's Institutes and pleaded the privileges of Magna Charta. He managed to get out some forcible pleas in defence of the liberty of the subject, and after many undignified attempts to silence him, they haled him off to the " Bale Dock " at the far back of the court. William Mead then stated in his defence that though once a Captain in the army he had now no freedom to use violence of any kind, so could not be guilty of behaving 54 WILLIAM PENN vi et armis. He demanded an order of the law, and quoted Coke on the nature of a Riot. Here the Recorder interrupted him and thanked him for teaching him the law, scornfully pulling off his hat. Mead replied " Thou mayst put on thy hat, I have never a fee for thee now." On finding themselves no more a match for him than for Penn, and receiving from the prisoner a quantity of troublesome and impressive Latin, they sent him away also, to join his friend in the Bale Dock. The Recorder then charged the Jury in the prisoners' absence ; but he was interrupted by William Penn shouting, though unseen, from the distant Bale Dock, appealing against the charge being given in their absence, and quoting Coke again, on the right of prisoners to be heard. The only thing the Recorder could do was to order the prisoners into " the Hole," a stinking place in Newgate, close by, where they were safely out of hearing at any rate. Penn describes this foul place as not fit for pigs. The Jury debated an hour and a half. Then eight walked in, and agreed to convict. The four dissentients were ordered down also, among them Edward Bushel, the hero of this story. The Recorder threatened him. " I shall set a mark upon you, sir." Other Aldermen and the Lord Mayor abused him, and sent the Jury back. After a considerable time they returned, unanimous. " William Penn is guilty of speaking in Gracechurch Street."* This would never do. But not another word would the jury consent to say. They were sent back for half an hour, but returned with a similar verdict in writing. The court fell upon Bushel and Thomas Vere, the fore- man, and threatened to lock the jury up without meat, drink, fire or tobacco, till they revised their verdict. Penn vigorously interfered in defence of his jury. " The agreement of Twelve men is a verdict in law, and such a one being given by the jury, I require the Clerk of the Court to record it, as he will answer it at his peril • The contemporary spelling is " Gracious Street." THE RIGHTS OF JURIES 55 and if the jury bring in another verdict contrary to this, I affirm they are perjured men in law. (And looking upon the Jury, said), " You are Englishmen, mind your privilege, give not away your right." " Nor will we ever do it," responded the jurymen. A juryman pleaded illness, but the Court refused to release him. " Starve and hold your principles." They were kept all night without food or drink, or any other necessity. At seven the next day, Sunday, the court met again, but their verdict was unchanged. The court fell upon Bushel. " That conscience of yours would cut my throat," remarked the Lord Mayor. " No, my lord, it never shall," replied the juror. " But I will cut yours as soon as I can," replied the Lord Mayor. The Recorder, not to be outdone in throwing away his dignity added, " He has inspired the jury ; he has the spirit of divination : methinks I feel him. I will have a positive verdict, or you shall starve for it." Penn now intervened on behalf of Mead, who ought to be liberated on the verdict : and as the charge was for conspiracy, he should be freed too, as one man cannot conspire alone. But the Recorder declared that Not Guilty was no ver- dict. He threatened to pursue Bushel with future vengeance, and the Lord Mayor said he would slit his nose. Penn intervened with a defence of the rights of Juries, and the Lord Mayor ordered him to be fettered and fastened to the ground. The Recorder longed audibly for the Inquisition in England, and promised a new act of complete outlawry for Nonconformists in the next session of Parliament. He then ordered the Clerk to draw up another verdict for the Jury to adopt ; but he said he did not know how. The Recorder threatened to starve the jury, and cart them round the city. They were sent upstairs again with a threat of force, and kept again with- out food, drink, or sanitary accommodation all night. At seven in the morning of Monday, the court met again ; and received a direct verdict of " Not guilty " from the 56 WILLIAM PENN indomitable jury, now pale and weak. Each juryman was then compelled to give the verdict separately and did so. Each said " Not guilty" ; the people in the court were evidently delighted. Penn says they made a sort of hymn. Clearly bullying would not overcome this jury. The court then dared to tine them forty marks each, and send them to prison till it was paid. Penn and Mead accompanied them to Newgate for not paying their fines for contempt of Court about the hats : not however without a final appeal from William Penn to the fundamental Uberties of Englishmen from the Inquisition so dear to the Recorder's heart. Penn's defence, as it would have been given, if he had been allowed to give it, was pubUshed shortly afterwards, with a long documented criticism of the action of the court, based on the ancient charters. For two days and two nights this brave jury had endured the cruelty of these miserable Restoration magistrates. Some were in high fever, some wandered in their minds, from overstrain, lack of sleep and raging thirst. Their room had become foul. They had sup- ported one another in the dark hours of misery, weakness strengthening weakness, with the strength of an over- coming spirit. They did much to save trial by jury for the Englishmen that have followed them. Their case became the classic one on the independence of juries. Penn wrote to his father that the jury were determined to lie in prison till they could be legally released without paying their fine, and that, by advice of counsel, they demanded their liberty every six hours. They were released after a few days by the Court of Common Pleas, their commitment being pronounced illegal. Thus the final victory was won. Twelve judges, after an elaborate trial and notable speeches of counsel, decided unanimously that a jury alone is the judge of the facts, and that " the court may try to open the eyes of the jurors, but not to lead them by the nose." To Bushel and his companions THE Peoples {::-^ Liberties ASSERTED, IN THE T Jbv X A JL O F William Tem, and William Mead, At the Seflions held at the Old-Baily in London^ the firft, third, fourth and fifth of Sept. 70, againft the moft Arbitrary procedure of that Court. If a. 10. I, 2. fVa untoth^m that Decree Vtirighteous Decrees^ and write grievoufnefs ^ which they have frefcrib^d -, to tarn away the Needy from Judgment, and to take away the right from the Poct^ CTT . Pfal. 94. 20. Shall the Throne of Iniquity ha'&e fel/ow/hip with thee, which fraweth mifchief by a Law. Sicvolo, fie jubeo, flat pro ratione voluntas. Old-Sailyy I ft. 3d. 4tb, 5th oi Sept, 1670. Printed in the Year, 16^0^ FACSIMILE OF TITLE PAGE OF ACCOUNT OF THE FAMOUS TRIAL- THE RIGHTS OF JURIES 57 Englishmen owe one of the strongholds of their freedom from bureaucratic tyranny. It is noticeable that Penn and Mead were not tried under the Conventicle Act. The prosecution evidently thought they could rely on the Common Law against riot. The indictment was, however, a preposterous document. It had the date wrong, to begin with ; it accused the notoriously peaceable Quakers of proceeding by force and by arms — it stated that there was a con- spiracy or arrangement under which William Penn was speaking, a statement which any one who knew Friends knew to be the exact contrary of their practice, under which the individual speaks wholly on his own initiative. CHAPTER VI Bereavement and Courtship Not the least of the troubles of imprisonment was the anxiety of William Penn to be with his father, who was very ill at Wanstead. We have seen what efforts the Admiral had made for his son's release from the Tower all through the long and trying spring of i66g. William's courage and gentle power had quite conquered his father's hostility. He became justly proud of the lad, however misguided ; and indeed the world he had served was turning its back upon him. A full reconciliation took place when Penn was released from the Tower ; and it was from signs that his father's health was seriously failing that he had come home from Ireland. Every day from Newgate he had written affectionate letters to him ; and when finally detained by the non-payment of the hat fine, he longed to be home, but begged his father not to pay the fine. This was however done, and Penn released, after about a week's confinement. It was reported by the doctors that the Admiral had not many days to live, and he died eleven days after the trial, on September i6th, 1670, aged only forty-nine years. His last sayings were inserted by his son in the second edition of " No Cross, 110 Crown, " among the edifying utterances of the great and wise of all ages, as they summed up their judgment on life. The passage runs as follows : " My own father, after thirty years' emplo5mient, with good success, in divers places of eminent trust and honour in his own country, upon a serious reflection, not long before his death, 50 BEREAVEMENT AND COURTSHIP 59 spoke to me in this manner : ' 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, that has followed me to this day. Oh, have a care of sin : that 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 conscience : I charge you do nothing against your conscience, so will you keep peace at home, which will be a feast to you in the day of trouble. Secondly, whatever you desire to do, lay it justly and time it seasonably ; for that gives security and dispatch. 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 submitting 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.' At another time he in- veighed against the profaneness and impiety of the age ; often crying out, with an earnestness of spirit, ' Woe to thee, O England ! God will judge thee, O England ! Plagues are at thy door, O England ! ' He much bewailed that divers men in power, and many of the nobility and gentry of the kingdom, were grown so dissolute and profane ; often saying, ' God has forsaken us ; we are infatuated ; we will shut our eyes ; we will not see our true interests and happiness ; we shall be destroyed ! Apprehending the consequences of the growing looseness of the age to be our ruin, and that the methods most fit to serve the kingdom with true credit, at home and abroad, were too much neglected, the trouble of which did not a Httle help to feed his distemper, which drew him daily nearer to his end : and as he believed it, so less concerned or disordered, I never saw him at any time ; of which I took good notice : wearied to live as well as near to die he took his leave of us, and of me, with this expression, and a most com- posed countenance : ' Son William, if you and 3'our friends keep to your plain way of preaching, and keep 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 all in love : shun all manner of evil : and I pray God to bless you all ; and He will bless you." 6o WILLIAM PENN There is a monument to his memory in the church of S. Mary Redclyffe, Bristol, erected by his widow. One of the consequences of the trial of Penn and Mead was a controversy, of the violent type then expected, between William Penn and a certain S. S. (Was it Sir Samuel Starling the Lord Mayor?). Penn published a full account of the trial with extensive comment, which went through two editions the first year. S. S. wrote an answer. Penn wrote in reply, " Truth rescued from Imposture, or a brief reply to a mere rhapsody of lies, folly and slander ; but a pretended answer to ' The Trial of William Penn and William Mead,' writ and subscribed S. S. — by a professed enemy to oppression W. P." Part III. of this book is a " Defence of my deceased father's reputation from the false and unworthy reflect- tions of this scandalous libeller." The opponent S. S. had made much of Admiral's Penn's record as a servant both of the Protectorate and the Monarchy. His son replies that he was not a political partisan, but a defender of his country under all rulers against foreign enemies. S. S. ascribes his rapid promotion to his zeal in producing " The Instrument of Government," which gave Oliver the Protectorship. William Penn shows that dates are all against this ; and that under Oliver only ability caused promotion. Next the Admiral is blamed wrong- fully for the defeat at Hispaniola, which was a land battle under Vcnables ; in fact the sailors rescued the soldiers from destruction on that occasion. Next come charges of plunder and peculation easily rebutted, and a testimony to the Admiral's honesty in his country's service, with definite instances given. After saying that S. S. (whose identity he did not appear to know) " showed a greater want of humanity than I was willing to think the debauchery of our age had reduced any man to," he quaintly concludes, " I wish him repentance of these impieties and sincerely declare my hearty forgiveness of all his aggravating injuries." Thus did grace in the end BEREAVEMENT AND COURTSHIP 6i mix itself with calling a spade a very decided spade. To anticipate a little, one may add that this tract also was written from prison. Pepys's Diary is sprinkled with allusions to Admiral Penn, These allusions are all hostile. Penn is called a rogue in various forms of speech, throughout this self- revealing private record. But nevertheless there was the greatest outward friendship, which Pepys tells his Diary it was his interest to keep up for social reasons. Altogether it is an unpleasing picture of an acquaintance- ship in that bad Restoration society ; and we cannot take Pepys's opinion of Sir William Penn as reliable. Penn had interfered with Pepys's illegal professional pickings. He would seem to have been a very able, rather worldly man who took the colour of his political surround- ings, but in his later years of misfortune and weakness had the grace to see in the end the beauty of holiness when it unexpectedly intruded into his family. Subject to Lady Penn's Hfe interest he left the bulk of his property to his son William, whom he made sole executor. Margaret had had her portion, Richard died three years after, and the portion left to him then fell in also to WiUiam. His lands in Ireland and England brought in £1,500 a year,* ; now worth in real value several times as much. He had a claim on the Crown for loans and arrears of salary of iri5,ooo. He had also sundry other claims in Jamaica and in Spain, of doubtful value, and never realised. Knowing how vulnerable to attack was property in the hands of an uncompromising young Quaker, the father wrote from his deathbed to the King and his brother James, asking them to continue to his son the kindness they had shown to him. The Duke of York in * Clarkson. H. M. Jenkins apparently thinks this too much (p. 47, of Family of William Penn.) 62 WILLIAM PENN reply accepted the duty of guardian and protector in William Penn's estate and business affairs. The Quaker propaganda must have required, and we know that it received, a good deal of money. To it chiefly this access of income went till a greater use appeared. The record of this eventful year 1670 is yet far from finished. The new faith gave its prophets no rest. William Penn had a public controversy at West Wycomb in Bucks. An attack on Friends and their teaching by a Baptist minister provoked a challenge to a public debate from Penn. The subject in dispute was the Universality of the Divine Light. Jeremy Ives, the minister's " brother," appeared, and delivered a prepared speech. Then — contrary to all good form — he departed with all who would follow, without hearing the reply. But most of the people very naturally stayed behind, and appeared satisfied and friendly. A return by Ives, to reproach the people for stajdng, concluded the affair.* One cannot imagine crowds attending a discussion on such a subject now. In November Penn was at Oxford, and found a cruel persecution going on there against Friends ; ragging by undergraduates being connived at by the authorities. He wrote a very hot letter to the Vice Chancellor about it, declaring the divine vengeance. " Poor mushroom, wilt thou war against the Lord, and lift up thyself in battle against the Almighty." No notice was taken by the mushroom. The upbraidings in the letter, however, were not too severe. The Vice Chancellor carried on a miserable spy system. He employed men to go among the Nonconfor- mists, pretending unity with them, and then, having heard them talk freely, to prosecute them for their unsuspecting words. Nothing could be more contrary to all decent University instincts. But at this time the Universities were denominational colleges, and these Quakers and Baptists, ♦ See " Life of Thomas Ellwood." BEREAVEMENT AND COURTSHIP 63 advocating a lay ministry based not on learning but on inspiration, endangered the whole craft with which the place was identified. Both the Universities were fierce against Friends. During that winter William Penn lived quietly for a time at Penn in Buckinghamshire, and became a frequent visitor at the home of Isaac Penington. From this visit much followed later, of a happier kind than the dread ceaseless struggle for truth, and for the liberty of the human soul, which consumed at present his whole energies and fills the story of his life. At present we must follow the holy war. He wrote in the country at this time " A Seasonable Caveat against Popery." That it was seasonable we know from history. Charles II., that very year, had concluded with His Catholic Majesty Louis XIV. of France, the secret Treaty of Dover, subordinating English foreign policy to Louis's designs upon his Protestant neighbours, and containing a clause that Charles would at an appropriate time confess his Roman- ism, and be supported, by a French army if necessary, against an English revolt. The Caveat was as thorough- going an attack as the author's other works ; but it had the peculiarity of demanding toleration for the persons who held these pernicious beliefs. Catholicism was the enemy, not Catholics. This was the Quaker position, and a generation later it became the national practice, with some exceptions in the way of religious disabilities and privileges. So the end of this crowded year 1670, with its imprison- ments, controversies, bereavement, and literary labours, came at last with a few weeks of peace, in which arose the dawning of the greatest event of all in a young man's hfe. From the crowd and noise of London we now pass to the old world villages which nestle among the wooded uplands looking down on the Thames valley near Windsor. Both for marriage and for burial our far-roaming spiritual adventurer and statesman drew to this secluded spot in 64 WILLIAM PENN quiet English woodlands, and there our memories of him centre. Our story will end in the graveyard at the ancient meeting-house at Jordans. But it was for completeness of life that the battered young warrior came down to Buckinghamshire. He stayed at his ancestral village of Penn, but his interests were mainly with the household of Isaac Penington. The Penington's home had been at the Grange, a modest mansion at Chalfont St. Peter, still standing. But in 1665 they had been turned out by the Duke of Grafton, at a time when Isaac Penington was in gaol, and the family had been scattered, and lived for some years in an unsettled condition. At the time of this visit, at the end of 1670, Isaac Penington was in gaol at Reading. He had gone thither to visit Friends in prison, and Sir William Armoner had thought it humorous to keep him there for a year and three quarters, till the King's Declaration of Indulgence in 1672 brought his series of six imprisonments to an end. The family consisted of Isaac Penington, his wife Mary, and three little children, and his beautiful step- daughter, Gulielma Maria Springett, aged twenty-six. Isaac Penington, now a man of fifty-four, was, with Fox, Barclay and Penn, one of the four outstanding leaders of the Quaker reformation. He was not one of the earliest band of " First Publishers " of 1652. It was not till 1658, at the great meetings at John Crook's in Bedford shire, that George Fox had pointed to him the way to spiritual freedom and power. Like Fox, Barclay and Penn, from his earliest childhood he had been religious. Like the other Quaker reformers he too had had a long and " sorely distressed " period of spiritual unsettlement, " I could not be satisfied with the things of this perishing world, which naturally pass away, but I desired true sense of, and unity with, that which abideth for ever." " But I was exceedingly entangled about election and reprobation." He joined one of the many (See note page 331) BEREAVEMENT AND COURTSHIP 65 sects of the time, each anxiously trying to follow more closely the letter of the Scripture than the others, and so reach ultimate truth. But his religious genius and his critical faculty remained unsatisfied, and, throwing up the outward observances of rehgion, he mingled with the world for a while, though not of it. His prospects there, like Penn's, were excellent. His father was Alderman Penington, one of the " Parliament Grandees," High Sheriff of London, member for the City in the Long Parliament, Lord Mayor, Governor of the Tower, Member of the High Court of Justice which tried the King. He was knighted by the Speaker and became a member of the Council of State which controlled the Commonwealth. He represented finance in the Roundhead party, and was their means of communication with the City and its loans. He was thus a convinced Puritan and Parliament man ; and his son's adoption of Quakerism just when his party's fortunes were sinking, was a great grief to him ; though for far other reasons than those which troubled the professional soldier Sir William Penn, who was essentially Royalist and " of the world." Alderman Penington, whose name was also Isaac, died in the Tower soon after the Restoration, under cruel imprisonment, having, with other regicides, surrendered on Charles's proclamation of clemency. When Isaac Penington the younger, was wandering in the arid fields of society, unable to find a religion, he met there a young widow, Lady Springett, who was in exactly similar case, and they were married in 1654. Guli was then a child of ten. She had been born a few weeks after the death of her father, Sir William Springett, of Darling, in Sussex, a Puritan commander who suc- cumbed to an attack of fever at the siege of Arundel Castle in February, 1643-4, in the second year of the civil war. Lady Springett, as an orphan heiress, daughter of Sir John Proud, had been brought up with the young Springetts. She had been born in Holland. Like other 66 WILLIAM PENN characters in this history Mary Proud was earnestly rehgious in an original way in childhood, discovered the futility of formal prayer, refused prayers out of books, tried to write some for herself, then grew out of that, and went great distances, thought unsuitable for a girl and undesirable for an heiress, to hear a Puritan preacher named Wilson, one of the sectaries then so numerous. From the domestic friction which ensued, William Springett, then a law student in London, res- cued her by a youthful marriage. He was knighted by the King in early manhood. The young couple had given up the use of hymns, as insincere, and when their first child was born, the aristocratic father created a county sensa- tion by refusing to have it baptised by the priest, but carried it in his arms five miles to Wilson, the deprived Puritan preacher, and held it himself to be baptised. Be- fore he died, he abandoned both ordinances altogether. This was before George Fox had begun his mission. It shows that his teaching was in the air, and had been reached independently by kindred souls.* Gulielma Maria, born shortly after her father's death, was never baptised. The family fortunes of the Peningtons had collapsed at the Restoration. But Mary Penington retained her father's inheritance, and during her husband's six imprisonments managed the business affairs of the family. These early Friends were never safe from sudden arrest, legal or illegal. Isaac Penington, unlike his best known colleagues, was not a travelling preacher. He was chiefly an author, and a selection from his voluminous works gives forcibly still the deep mystical teaching round which Quakerism gathered. He was its central, typical exponent in print, and his works are still not neglected. * A fuller account of the early history of Mary Penington was written by her for her grandson, Springett Penn.and is printed in Joseph Gurney Sevan's Memoirs of Isaac Penington, and in Maria Webb's " Penns and Peningtons of the Seventeenth Century." BEREAVEMENT AND COURTSHIP 67 But our interest at the moment is where William Penn's was. Gull Springett had refused a crowd of suitors. Her beauty and charm, added to her considerable estate, had attracted many neighbouring young gentle- men, not Friends. But when William Penn appeared, handsomer, stronger than them all, incomparably wiser and braver than any young man she had seen, fresh from his sufferings and his victories for their common faith, the young people found one another at once. They met first early in 1668, when she was twenty-four and he six months younger.* We do not know whether an attachment began then ; but Maria Webb (p. 172) notices with woman's instinct that it was just after that that Thomas Ellwood felt that he should find a wife elsewhere. We get a delightful account of Guli in the autobiography of Thomas Ellwood. He was a scholarly young gentleman, the son of a neighbouring landowner. He had become a Friend, with the usual home opposition. He was often at the Grange, and had for seven years, from 1662 till his marriage in 1669, undertaken the education of the children, and given lessons also to Guli. He felt however that she was not for him, but was reserved for someone more worthy, and with nobility and resignation he tells of the coming of him for whom she was reserved. Thomas Ellwood was afterwards the editor of George Fox's Journal. He also wrote a number of tedious poems, but his autobiography is an authentic and delightful source of our knowledge. It is in Morley's Universal Library, and in another excellent modern edition edited by S. Graveson.f Ellwood figures in every history of English literature, as the friend, pupil, and secretary of Milton. They were particularly intimate when the poet lived at Chalfont St. Giles during the year of the Plague. Ellwood tells us that he found the cottage for him, " a pretty box a mile from me." He had the wonderful fortune of reading " Paradise Lost " * " Penns and Peningtons," p. 180. \ Headley Brothers. 68 WILLIAM PENN in manuscript ; and it was he who asked Milton, " Thou hast told us much about Paradise lost, what hast thou to say about Paradise found ? " a suggestion which bore more fruit than most. Milton, when handing him his second poem, on the temptation of Christ, said it was due to his words. Thus we owe " Paradise Regained," as well as the current edition of Fox's Journal, and Guli's peace of mind, to the modest tutor of the young Pening- tons. He lived all his life near Jordans and Chalfont, and remained always a valued friend of William and Guli Penn. Ellwood spent some years of childhood in London, to which his father had removed for safety during the first civil war. There they made the acquaintance of Lady Springett, newly widowed, and Ellwood says " I became an early and particular playfellow to her daughter Guli ; being admitted as such to ride with her in her little coach drawn by her footman about Lincoln's Inn Fields." So the lifelong friendship began at the perambulator period. The next meeting was in 1659, when Ellwood was twenty and Guli fifteen. Ellwood and his father went to pay their friends, now Isaac and Mary Penington, a visit, on their coming to live at the Grange, Chalfont, about fifteen miles from their own home at Crowell. They were astounded to find they had turned Quaker, whatever that might be. " So great change from a free, debonair and courtly sort of behaviour to so strict a gravity as they now received us with, did not a little amuse us, and disappoint our expectation of such a pleasant visit as we used to have, and had now promised our- selves. For my part I sought and at length found means to cast myself into the company of the daughter, whom I found gather- ing some flowers in the garden, attended by her maid. But when I addressed myself to her, though she treated me with a courteous mien, yet (young as she was), the gravity of her look and behaviour struck such an awe upon me, that I found myself not so much master of myself as to pursue any further converse BEREAVEMENT AND COURTSHIP 69 with her. Wherefore, asking pardon for my boldness in having intruded myself into her private walks, I withdrew, not without some disorder of mind." " We stayed dinner, which was very handsome, and lacked nothing to recommend it to me, but the want of mirth and pleasant discourse." The next visit, however, was the means of Ellwood's own conversion to Quakerism, and he became, from 1662, an inmate of the Peningtons' home as tutor. He writes : " While thus I remained in this Family, various Suspicions arose in the Minds of some concerning me with respect to Mary Penington's fair Daughter Guli. For she having now arrived at a Marriageable Age, and being in all respects a very desirable Woman, (whether regard was had to her outward Person, which wanted nothing to render her completely Comely, or to the Endowments of her mind, which were every way Extra- ordinary and highly Obliging, or to her outward Fortune, which was fair, and which with some hath not the last nor the least place in Consideration), she was openly and secretly sought and solicited by many, and some of them almost of every rank and condition : good and Bad, Rich and Poor, Friend and Foe. To whom, in their respective turns, (till he at length came for whom she was reserved), she carried herself with so much evenness of Temper, such courteous Freedom, guarded with the strictest Modesty, that as it gave Encouragement or grounds of Hope to none, so neither did it minister any matter of Offence or just Cause of Com- plaint to any. But such as were thus engaged for themselves or desirous to make themselves Advocates for others, could not, I observed, but look upon me with an Eye of Jealousie and Fear, that I would improve the Opportunities I had by frequent and familiar Conversation with her, to my own Advantage, in working myself into her good Opinion and Favour, to the Ruin of their Pretences." ****** " Some others, measuring me by the Propensity of their own Inclinations, concluded I would steal her, run away with her, and Marry her ; which they thought I might be the more easily induced to do, from the advantageous opportunities I frequently 70 WILLIAM PENN had of riding and walking abroad with her, by Night as well as by Day, without any other company than her Maid." ****** " I was not ignorant of the various Fears which filled the jealous Heads of some concerning me, neither was I so stupid, nor so divested of all humanity, as not to be sensible of the real and innate Worth and Vertue which adorned that excellent Dame, and attracted the Eyes and Hearts of so many, with the greatest Importunity to seek and solicit her ; nor was I so devoid of Natural Heat, as not to feel some Sparklings of Desire, as well as others. But the force of Truth and Sense of Honour supprest whatever would have arisen beyond the bounds of fair and vertuous Friendship." ****** " Wherefore, having observed how some others had befool'd themselves, by misconstruing her common Kindness (expressed in an innocent, open, free, and familiar Conversation, springing form the abundant Affability, Courtesy, and Sweetness of her natural Temper), to be the Effect of a singular Regard and peculiar Affection to them, I resolved to shun the Rock, on which I had seen so many run and spUt ; and remembering that saying of the Poet : ' Felix quem faciunt aliena Pericula cautum, Happy's He Whom others' Dangers wary make to be.' I governed myself in a free yet respectful Carriage towards her, that I thereby both preserved a fair Reputation with my Friends and Enjoyed as much of her Favour and Kindness, in a virtuous and firm Friendship, as was fit for her to show or for me to seek."* Ellwood's account of his defence of Guli from rough soldiers on the road, by skilful horsemanship, in 1669, is very entertaining. He acted as business manager for her in dealing with her tenants ; and in 1682, when she had been married ten years, she fell ill when her husband was in America, and sent for their friend Thomas Ellwood to support and advise her as of old. The whole story is a beautiful idyll, and a charming Quaker interior, in strong relief from the stormy exterior events which fill the biography of William Penn. * Autobiography, pp. 181-6. CHAPTER VII Newgate On the 5th of February, 1671 (new style), we find William Penn in London again, suffering from the machi- nations of Sir Samuel Starling the Lord Mayor, and Sir John Robinson the Governor of the Tower, whom Pepys calls a "bufflehead" and a "loggerhead." He attended meeting at Wheeler Street, and was arrested by a picket of soldiers as he rose to speak, and taken to the Tower. But the authorities now had a trick which did not need the support of a jury whom they could not count on. If you cannot gaol a Quaker in any other way, you present to him the oath of allegiance to the king. He cannot take an oath of any kind, and will refuse to do so, though loyal to the king. You can then send him to gaol easily. This suffering by Friends for apparent disloyalty of which they had none, because they were against all oaths, is a parallel to the reproach for want of patriotism, to which they are liable in time of war, when they are as patriotic as other people, but are against all war. This trick, which constantly assisted the Quaker persecutions, they determined to try on William Penn. After three hours in the guard room at the Tower he was taken upstairs to the Governor, Starling also being present, and others. But the public were carefully excluded, as experience recommended. The prisoner was examined by Robinson, who began by insolently pretending not to know him, though he had been under his 71 72 WILLIAM PENN charge in the Tower for eight months, and they had met recently in the Lord Mayor's court at the Old Bailey. It then appeared that the court did not proceed under the Conventicle Act, but under the Five Mile Act, by which Nonconformist ministers were to be forbidden to reside within five miles of a corporate town. The Lord Mayor had apparently not realised that neither his prisoner nor any other Friend was an official or ordained minister, to whom alone the Act applied. To cut short this diffi- culty, the Court demanded that the accused should take the oath of allegiance. The usual consequence followed from his refusal. He was sent to Newgate for six months. The verbatim report of the trial is in all the Lives of Penn ; it was utterly undignified on the part of the Court, brilliant and courageous on Penn's side. These trials give one the lowest idea of English public life at this degraded time. Penn's final address ran :— " I would have thee and all other men to know that I scorn that religion which is not worth suffering for, and able to sustain those that are afflicted for it ; mine is, and whatever may be my lot for my constant profession of it I am nowise careful, but resigned to answer the will of God, by the loss of goods, liberty, and life itself. When you have all, you can have no more ; and then, perhaps, you will be contented, and by that you will be better informed of our innocency. Thy religion persecutes, and mine forgives ; and I desire my God to forgive you all that are concerned in my commitment, and I leave you all in perfect charity, wishing your everlasting salvation. " Robinson. — Send a corporal with a file of musketeers along with him. " Penn. — No, no, send thy lacquey ; I know the way to Newgate." No biography of William Penn would be complete Without some description of the Newgate of his day. Thomas Ellwood gives the following account of it in his '* Autobiography." NEWGATE 73 " The common side of Newgate is generally accounted, as it really is, the Worst Part of that Prison ; not so much from the Place, as the People : it being usually stocked from the veriest Rogues and meanest sort of Felons and Pick-Pockets, who, not being able to pay Chamber-Rent on the Master's Side, are thrust in there. And if they come in Bad, to be sure they do not go out better : for here they have the opportunity to instruct one another in their Art, and impart to each other what Improvements they have made therein. " The Common Hall is a good Place to walk in, when the Prisoners are out of it (saving the danger of catching some Cattle, which they may have left in it) : and there I used to walk in a Morning before they were let up, and sometimes in the Day time when they have been there. " We had the liberty of the Hall (which is on the first story over the gate, and which in the daytime is common to all the prisoners on that side, felons as well as others, to walk in, and to beg out of), and we had also the liberty of some other rooms over the Hall to walk or to work in a-days ; but in the night we all lodged in one room, which was large and round, having in the middle of it a great pillar of oaken timber, which bore up the chapel that is over it. To this pillar we fastened our hammocks at one end, and to the opposite wall on the other end, quite round the room, and in three degrees or three stories high, one over the other ; so that they who lay in the upper and middle row of hammocks were obliged to go to bed first, because they were to climb up to the higher by getting into the lower ; and under the lower rank of hammocks, by the wall sides, were laid beds upon the floor, in which the sick and such weak persons as could not get into the hammocks lay ; and indeed, though the room was large and pretty airy, yet the breath and steam that came from so many bodies of different ages, conditions, and constitutions, packed up so close together, was enough to cause sickness amongst us, and I believe did so, for there were many sick, and some very weak. Though we were not long there, yet in that time one of our fellow prisoners, who lay in one of those pallet-beds, died. " A coroner's inquest being held over the body of the deceased, one of the jury insisted upon being shown the room where he died ; this was granted by the keeper with great reluctance, and when the jury came to the door, the foreman who led them, lifting 74 WILLIAM PENN up liis hands said, ' Lord bless me, what a sight is here ? I did not think there had been so much cruelty in the hearts of English- men, to use Englishmen in this manner ! We need not now question, (said he to the rest of the jury), how this man came by his death : we may rather wonder that they are not all dead, for this place is enough to breed an infection among them." .... " I have sometimes occasionally been in the Hall in an Evening and have seen the Whores let in unto them (which I take to be a common Practice) : Nasty sluts indeed they were, and in that respect the more suitable. And as I have passed by them, I have heard the Rogues and them making their Bargains, which and which of them should Company together that Night. Which abominable Wickedness must be imputed to the Dishonesty of the Turnkeys ; who, for vile Gain to themselves, not only suffer but further this Lewdness. " These are some of the common Evih, which make the Common Side of Newgate in measure a Type of Hell upon Earth. But there was, at that time, something of another Nature, more Particular and Accidental, which was very Offensive to me. " When we came first into Newgate, there lay (in a little By- place like a Closet, near the room where we were Lodged) the Quartered Booies of three men, who had been Executed some days before, for a real or pretended Plot : which was the ground or at least Pretext, for that Storm in the City, which had caused this Imprisonment. The Names of these three men were Philips, Tongue and Gibs : and the Reason why their Quarters lay so long there was. The Relations were all that while Petitioning to have leave to bury them : which at length, with much ado, was obtained for the Quarters, but not for the Heads, which were Ordered to be set up in some parts of the City. " I saw the Heads when they were brought up to be Boyled. The Hangman fetch'd them in a dirty Dust Basket, out of some By-Place, and setting them down amongst the Felons, he and they made Sport with them. They took them by the Hair, Flouting, Jeering, and Laughing at them : and then giving them some ill names, box'd them on the Ears and Cheeks. Which done, the Hangman put them into his Kettle, and parboyl'd them with Bay-Salt and Cummin-Seed : that to keep them from Putre- faction, and this to keep off the Fowls from seizing on them. The whole Sight (as well that of the Bloody Quarters first, as this NEWGATE 75 of the Heads afterwards) was both frightful and loathsom, and begat an Abhorrence in my Nature. Which as it had rendered my Confinement there by much the more uneasie, so it made our removal from thence to Bridewell, even in that respect, the more welcome." Penn and his friends had hired lodgings on the other side of the gaol, but the ill treatment and abuse they received from the gaolers caused them, as a testimony, to go into " the common stinking gaol, among the felons." He wrote a complaint to the Sheriff of London about it. William Penn pointed out to Robinson and Starling at the trial that imprisonment would only have the effect of making the sufferer more conspicuous and influential. It might also have been pointed out to them that they were giving him the leisure to write books. During the half year in Newgate he was busy with " The Great Case of Liberty of Concience," a vigorous defence of Toleration, then a novelty: " Truth Rescued from Imposture," the work quoted above on Sir William Penn, " A Serious Apology for Quakers," and several shorter manifestoes. When WilHam Penn was released in August, he went over to Holland and Germany, not, as one might suppose, to recuperate, or not wholly so, for he was preaching the Quaker gospel all the time. Our knowledge of this short journey is derived from incidental allusions taken from his own account of his travels in Holland and Germany in 1677, by which time there was evidently quite a widespread organisation of the Society in that part of the continent. We may remember that William Penn's mother had Dutch connections, and that he could speak both Low and High German, that is both Dutch and what we now call German. A letter which he wrote after his return, to Dr. Haesbert, of Embden, shows that that town on the estuary of the Ems was a place where he found scope for his gospel. The letter to Dr. Haesbert shows that, as ever, Quakerism was an appeal from theo- logical belief and ritual form to inward experience. 76 WILLIAM PENN " This thou must expect from the carnal fleshly and historical Christian of the outward courts and suburbs of religion, who is an enemy to the spiritual seed that sees to the end of all meats, drinks, washings, figures and bodily exercises." The letter is really a sermon, like most of the epistles of the time. The only personal allusion is in a postcript, " My love is to thy wife, and salute me kindly to those who were at Meeting when I was at Embden." Penn paid a visit, which must have interested him a good deal, to a little group of Catholic sectaries under the leadership of De Labadie, who had left the Catholic Church in revolt against formalities, and had joined the French Protestants ; but their Calvinistic doctrine was not more satisfactory to a seeking mystic, so with a few disciples he moved into Holland, where there was toler- ation for religious opinions ; there he carried on a controversy against the clerical systems about him, so that he had once more to flee, and found protection at the Court of Princess Elisabeth of the Rhine at Herwerden. Here William Penn found him. But De Labadie gave Penn no opportunity to influence any of his flock. This intrusion of personal jealousy into a lofty mysticism struck Penn unfavourably. " I saw the airiness and unstableness of the man's spirit and that a sect master was his name," "and it was upon me, both by word of mouth and by writing, that the enemy would prevail against them to draw them into inconvenient things, if they came not to be stayed in the light of Jesus Christ and to know the holy silence." Penn records later that this did happen to them. Miscarriages fell out at Herwerden and they removed to the north of Holland to the mansion house of the Somerdyke family. Penn says, " Yea, they were something angelical and like to the celestial bodies, yet if they kept not their station they would prove fallen stars." Great indeed in all ages have been the dangers in the path of spiritual research. ~-^4 (^^ -V.'-A r,/ d^i /^y,J ^^fi- M*-^'^J^* /Xi- y^..,A, I^ r-^iiU/ ^^A^Ji*" ,K?,wO-W /CS^r - r^U~^^.i'j '^ trt^'yf'^^J c^ Vi i,«. i^v/;*^ v/X'z-v*/. ; •f ^^/r c/. «y^