William Penn

did not see that pleasant land again until 1699. The fifteen intervening yea

reme in England. Penn was stoutly opposed to the king's religion. In his "Seasonable Caveat against Popery," as well as in his other writings, he had expressed his dislike with characteristic frankness. That he had himself been accused of being a Jesuit had naturally impelled him to use the strongest language to belie the accusatio

only serious blot on Penn's fair fame, appea

ting his petitions. "Anybody," said Penn, "that has the least pretense to good-nature, gratitude, or generosity, must needs know how to interpret my access to the king." With his advance to the crown James's graciousness had increased. He kept great

st the character of men whom he had appointed to office: he was unwilling to believe evil of any man. He fell into bankruptcy, and even into a debtor's prison, by his blind, unquestioning confidence in

from religion. He purposed not only to put an end to the laws under which honest men were kept in prison, but to abolish the "tests" which prevented a Roman Catholic from holding offi

nherent in religion, but that it was for the political and commercial good of the nation. Repression and persecution, he said, drive men into conspiracies. The importing of religious distinctions into the affairs of state deprives the country of the services of some of its best men. His father, upon the occasion of the first Dutch war, had submitted to the king a list of the ablest

ny office. Practically, Penn was wrong, as William of Orange plainly saw. That prince, as appeared afterwards, was as zealous for religious freedom as was Penn himself; but it was plain to him that as matters stood at that time in England, it was necessary to enforce the tests in order to prevent the rise of an ecclesiastical party whose supremacy would endanger all that Penn desired. Penn, with his stout faith in the king, could not see it. There were times, indeed, when he was perplexed and

a house in London, within easy distance of Whitehall, and visited the king daily. A great many people therefore visited Penn daily; sometimes as many as two hundred were waiting to

f Coltness's castle. Thou knowest that it is not thine." "That estate," Arran explained, "I paid a great price for. I received no other reward for my expensive and troublesome embassy to France, except this estate." "All very well, friend James," said Penn, "but of this assure thyself, that

tell me what thou meanest." The client replied that a good friend of his, Jack Trenchard, was in exile, and "if you," he said, "could get him leave to come home with safety and honour, the drinking now

sted life which he had previously lived. He attended the court of King James, as he had undertaken the settlement of Pennsylvania, not for what he could get out of it, but for the good he could do by means of it. What he did, he tells us, was upon a

fered for their cause,-he was their great theologian and preacher; but he seemed, nevertheless, to be still a cavalier and a worldly person. They heard-though there was no truth in the report-that he had set up a military compan

him: "Your post is too considerable for a Papist of an ordinary form, and therefore you must be a Jesuit; nay, to confirm that suggestion, it must be accompanied with all the circumstances that may best give it an air of probability,-as that you have been bred at St. Omer's in the Jesuit College; that you have taken orders at Rome, and there obtained a dispensation to marry; and that you h

ody circuit. "About three hundred hanged," Penn wrote, "in divers towns of the west; about one thousand to be transported. I begged twenty of the king." It was all bad, a

this offense their parents were heavily fined, and the fines were given to the queen's maids of honor. These ladies wrote to a "Mr. Penne" to get him to collect them. Macaulay thought that this pardon-brok

College, and, the presidency of Magdalen falling vacant, he ordered the fellows to elect a man of his own choice. The fellows refused to obey the order,-thereupon Penn, who had at first taken their part with the king, advised them to surrender. "Mr. Penn," said Dr. Hough, representing the fellows, "in this I will be plain with you. We have our statu

rch of England, that none but they must be capable of giving their children a learned education. I suppose two or three colleges will content the Papists." Finally, the king's men broke down the doors, turned out the professors and students, and gave the king his way. Penn was thus the agent of tyranny; but he was an innocent agent. He made a bad blunder; but he made it honestly and ignorantly. It was in accord with his democr

ation of Indulgence. He added insult to injury by ordering that it should be read in every church in the realm. The seven bishops who protested were sent to the Tower. Then the end came

re the Privy Council he declared that he "had done nothing but what he could answer for before God and all the princes in the world; that he loved his country and the Protestant religion above his life, and had never acted against either; that all he had ever aimed at in his public ende

dopts the projects for which its opponents have long labored, and carries them out even more vigorously than they had been planned originally. The initial reformers are glad that their ideals have been realized, but their zeal must be uncommonly impersonal if the success brings them quite

The Privy Council, in 1690, confronted Penn with an intercepted letter to him from James, asking for help. But, as Penn said, he could not hinder the king from writing to

no offense. But before a month had passed, he learned that another warrant was out against his liberty. Officers went to take him at the funeral of George Fox, but arrived too late. By this time he had concluded that the path of prudence was that which led

epresented his case, he says, as not only hard, but oppressive, there being no evidence but what "impostors, or those that fled, or that have since their pardon refused to verify (and asked me pardon for

of his virtues. He was never calculatingly careful of his own welfare. But that he was ever untrue to William, or did any act, or consented to any, which could reasonably be called treacherous, is not only quite unproved, but is out of accord with the true William Penn as he is revealed in his writings and in all his life. The only fault which has been clearly established against him is that of liking James better t