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Part V We have already seen how Penn secured from the king a pardon for Vickris. Soon afterwards he obtained a pardon for his college-mate, John Locke, who was an exile in Holland. But the proud philosopher declined it He had done nothing, he said, which required a pardon. Penn's friendship and influence with the king being now well established, the demands on him became incessant, and Gerard Croese tells us of his busy life.
We are not informed of the various kinds of cases Penn managed for his clients. A great deal of his business was obtaining pardons, for, in that age of turmoil, rebellions, and civil war, there were hundreds of people constantly in exile or in danger of death. There were many pardon-brokers about the court, and some of them were very nefarious in their operations, demanding enormous sums or all a man's estate for saving his life. Penn, however, we are assured, took no fees. There was a certain Charlewood Lawton, who had taken part in Monmouth's rebellion and had been obliged to hide himself in the moorlands of Staffordshire; but being relieved from apprehension when the general pardon was published, Penn sought him out and made friends with him in that cordial manner which he seems to have bestowed on so many people to whom he took a fancy. Lawton, in return, became a great admirer of Penn, and in a memoir he left speaks with enthusiasm of his “inexhaustible spring of benevolence towards all his fellow-creatures, without any narrow or stingy regard to either civil or religious parties." After telling how Penn at his request obtained a free pardon for Aaron Smith, who was about to buy one by the surrender of his whole estate, Lawton gives a description which throws some light on Penn's manner and the times.
This throng of clients compelled Penn to live at Kensington in London. He rented Holland House, a handsome residence belonging to the Earl of Warwick; and he keept a coach and four horses. He may have seemed to have been paying the expenses of his Quaker clients out of his own abundance, as Croese calls it; but that abundance was being rapidly drained, for in addition to his other expenses he was losing money by Pennsylvania. He was paying all the expenses of government there, and the officials had a bad habit "of drawing on him for whatever they wanted, as if he were an inexhaustible mine. "I have bad two letters more," he writes to his steward, "with three bills of exchange. I am sorry the public is so unmindful of me as not to prevent bills upon me that am come on their errand, and had rather have lost a thousand pounds, than have stirred from Pennsylvania. James, send no more bills, for I have enough to do to keep all even here, and think of returning with my family; that can't be without vast charge." His heart was set on enjoying again the simple,
honest pleasures of his wilderness colony, and never
leaving them. But he was held fast in England not
only by the dispute with Lord Baltimore, but by the
critical condition of politics and the demands of the
Quakers. Then he speaks of the Declaration of Indulgence in the last reign, which, by relieving the dissenters from persecution, greatly encouraged trade. So long as the indulgence lasted, "all men," he says, labored cheerfully and traded boldly when they had the royal word to keep what they got." He does not seem, however, to realize sufficiently that it was a dangerous violation of the constitution to allow the king to suspend laws even to accomplish such a good purpose. He had not then written his maxim, "To do evil that good may come of it, is for bunglers in politics as well as morals." He calls the Declaration of Indulgence the "sovereign remedy of our English constitution."Such an indulgence, he thinks, will be the panacea for all political ills. If full religious liberty were allowed the dissenters, they would all, he says, be united in favor of the government, and such rebellions as Monmouth's and such designs as the Rye House plot would cease. This last was a sound suggestion; but it was not sound to favor granting that liberty by allowing the king to suspend the laws, and it is surprising to find Penn in effect arguing for another declaration of indulgence. Penn afterwards spoke of this pamphlet as having not a little circulation and influence, and he was not a man who was conceited about his own writings or over-estimated them. Whether it influenced the king or not, the king was on this occasion wiser than Penn, for he merely pardoned the dissenters who were in prison, which he had a right to do, without attempting as yet to violate constitutional right by suspending the laws. Penn and the Quakers were, of course, well pleased with this result; but Penn seems to have known that things were not quite so rosy as they seemed. In writing to his steward, after saying how he longs to be back again in Pennsylvania, but "great undertakings crowd him,” he says, "The Lord keeps us here in this dark day. Be wise, close, respectful to superiors. The king has discharged all Friends by a general pardon, and is courteous to us, though as to the Church of England things seem pinching. Several Roman Catholics have gotten high into places in the army, navy, and court." So Penn was well aware that the king was “pinching" the Church of England. The letter is somewhat guarded; but Penn evidently saw that the king had pardoned the dissenters for the sake of avoiding their hostility for a time, while he worked Roman Catholics into power and turned both government and church over to Rome. This, Penn says, made a “dark day;" and he must have foreseen that when the people once fully realized what the king was doing, there would be a terrible outbreak of some kind. He was powerless to turn the king from this course; and we do not know that he even tried at this time. His influence extended only to obtaining favors for individuals. Referring to his losses in Pennsylvania, he said declared that the neglect of the supply, which the council had promised him in consequence of his great expense on account of the province, was one cause which kept him from Pennsylvania, adding, "that he would not spend his private estate to discharge a public station. There is nothing my soul breathes more for in this world, next my dear family's life, than that I may see poor Pennsylvania again, but I cannot force my way here, and see nothing done on that side inviting." Why, then, did he continue to stand in with the king? It was his only way of obtaining relief for the Quakers, and this was certainly a great temptation when thirteen hundred of them had just been released. As for a general liberty of conscience established by law, he apparently had no hope of it at that time, except in Pennsylvania. In England liberty must be picked up as you could get it He had to protect from interference both Pennsylvania and the Jerseys, and he had his litigation with Lord Baltimore. These important interests might all be injured by losing favor at court. It is curious to note that for a time after the king had pardoned everybody who was in jail for their religion, the magistrates and judges continued to enforce the laws against dissenters; the informers continued to pry about, and constables made arrests. A person who had just been let out by the pardon might, by a zealous magistrate, be locked up again for a fresh offence. Penn himself though he was so intimate with the king and daily obtaining favors for his clients, was not safe from the magistrates and informers, who would send constables to “pull him down" while he was preaching. “I have been thrice," he writes to his steward, "taken at meetings, but got off; blessed be God." It was a strange condition of affairs, and Penn was leading a strange life; so influential with the king that he had become a courtier with hundreds of clients, and at the same time going out to preach to the Quakers, the supposed enemies of the government, and pulled down for it by constables and soldiers. The king, however, after a time stopped the magistrates and constables, so that the laws against dissenters stood on the books unexecuted. The Quakers were glad enough to have a friend at court, and there was no doubt but that Penn was a very influential man. In those days there were many men with some standing at court who were known as "pardon-brokers;" men whose business it was to obtain pardons for persons accused of crimes, usually exacting payment of all the accused person's wealth in return. Penn used his influence to obtain pardons only because of his belief in the innocence of the man or woman under accusation, and this honesty of his, in an age when treachery and deceit were the usual standards, made him more than ever a marked and notable man. Matters of state were growing more and more tangled in England. The king was appointing Roman Catholics to office, and was not as well disposed toward the men of the Church of England as the Protestants thought proper. On all sides men and women were plotting for their own advancement, too often changing their religion to suit their ambitions of the moment. Penn, who would preach to a Quaker meeting, and then go to the king's chambers, where he would meet Catholics and priests, seemed to be acting after the general fashion of the time, but nevertheless his intimacy with the king caused gossip and widespread suspicions of his motives. He trod a very difficult path in those days, often seeming to be "carrying water on both shoulders." In the summer of this year, 1686, Penn made a third journey to Holland and Germany. It was partly a political and partly a religious journey, but of the religious part we know little or nothing, because he has left us no account of it. But we may infer that he spoke much of Pennsylvania and urged the Mennonites, Schwenkfelders, and other Quaker-like German sects to migrate to his province, as many of them did. The Quaker historian, Sewell, was then engaged in translating into Dutch Penn's description of Pennsylvania, and also No Cross, No Crown, and Penn met him in Holland. Of the political part of the journey, however, something is known, and it is important, because it shows how Penn was becoming more and more involved in the schemes of the king. Whether the king actually commissioned him to visit, in Holland, William, the Prince of Orange, is not certain, but, at any rate, he did so and advocated the king's policy. The Prince of Orange had married James's daughter Mary, who would succeed to the throne if James had no son, and, as things happened, she and the prince took the throne from James by violence two years afterwards. The object of Penn's visit was to persuade the prince, whose wife was heir presumptive to the crown, to agree that there should be not only freedom of religious worship in England, but that the test laws, which kept both Roman Catholics and dissenters out of Parliament and office, should be abolished. William was an ardent and liberal Protestant, and as sincere a believer in religious liberty as Penn. He readily agreed that there should be freedom of worship not only to dissenters, but to papists; but he very naturally declined to have a hand in removing the test laws which blocked a Roman Catholic king from turning over to Rome the British government and church. It is strange that Penn should have been willing to press such a request; for he knew that James II was drawing Roman Catholics into office as fast as he could in spite of the tests. Penn might, perhaps, have defended himself by saying that he believed in absolute religious liberty without restrictions or tests of any kind. To which William of Orange would very justly have replied that such complete liberty might be possible someday; but at the present time the tests must be retained in order to keep the Roman Catholics out of power; for all English history had shown that, if once in full control, they would organize the worst sort of religious despotism. William also, of course, wanted the tests retained to keep out of power the dissenters who might destroy the Church of England. His theory which he afterwards put into practice, and which proved to be the sound one, was to protect the English Church, keep it in power, and keep dissenters, Roman and otherwise, out of power; at the same time allowing all of them complete freedom, so far as concerned their worship. The British government has been conducted on this principle with gradual relaxation of it down into our own time. Penn on this occasion seems to have been unaware in how he appeared to be a tool of the Catholics. While professing himself a lover of liberty and a Protestant, he was appearing at the court of the future King of England, as the dupe and tool of James II, a Roman Catholic and well known to be an enemy of liberty. He made himself very unpopular with important people who were really his friends, and laid up a store of trouble for himself. The followers of the Prince of Orange learned to despise him, and that talking and very violent follower Bishop Burnet acquired for him a relentless antipathy which he afterwards took no pains to conceal. As for the prince himself he was supremely strong in the quality in which Penn was weak. He saw through and through human nature at a glance. He wasted no antipathy on Penn, because he saw that he was merely a sincere man who was making a great mistake. Penn, Burnet afterwards tells us, persuaded a Scottish lawyer, Steward, to leave his Puritan and Presbyterian party and become an ardent follower of King James. This Steward also came over to Holland to persuade William to agree that the tests should be abolished, and declared that James would never abolish the penal laws against dissenters' worship, unless the tests were abolished also; so that no sort of religious liberty could be had in England unless the test laws were sacrificed. In Holland he met some Presbyterian refugees from Scotland, among them Sir Robert Stuart, of Coltness. When he returned to England, Penn recommended that King James should allow these men to return, since they were in exile solely on account of their religion, and were not guilty of any treason. The king consented, but when Sir Robert Stuart did return, he found that he was penniless, because all his property had been given over to the Earl of Arran. Sir Robert went to Penn and told him the state of affairs. Penn took the matter up at once, and went to the Earl of Arran, [an old friend of Penn's younger days in Ireland]. The Earl of Buchan has described how Penn managed the matter.
So spoke Penn, and as a result the Earl of Arran complied with Penn's request, and a little later the entire estate was restored to Sir Robert Stuart. Evidently men understood that William Penn had great influence with the king of England. When he returned from Holland, Penn found that the Quakers were increasing in numbers, and he often preached to as many as a thousand listeners at a single meeting. At the same time his steward and others in Pennsylvania were writing to him for more money, and he was sending them all he could spare, and more too, although, as he sometimes complained in his letters, he could not see why such a naturally wealthy province should require any help from him. He wrote that he would gladly go out to his province again, if it were not that the boundary dispute with Lord Baltimore kept him in England. But naturally he wanted his people there to make a profit for him out of his great possessions. "If my table, cellar and stable may be provided for," he wrote, "with a barge and yacht or sloop for the service of governor or government, I may try to get here, for in the sight of God, I can say I am five thousand pounds behindhand more than I ever received or saw for land in that province, and to be so baffled by the merchants is discouraging and not to be put up." In the spring of 1687 James II made what on its face was a grand proclamation of liberty. He issued a declaration of indulgence suspending not only the laws against the worship of Romanists and other dissenters, but also the test acts which kept them out of Parliament and civil and military offices. He threw down the bars and laid open the government in a way which he could certainly say was far in advance of his time; for such liberality was not afterwards attained in a hundred years. Lawton, whose memoir has been already quoted, says that Penn had opposed an indulgence which suspended the laws in such an unconstitutional and unpopular way. We do not know what passed between Penn and the king on the subject, and Lawton does not give us the source of his knowledge. But Penn's writings do not show an opposition to the Declaration of Indulgence; nor does his conduct. He was one of those who made efforts to procure from the various religious bodies addresses and memorials thanking the king for his declaration, and he himself presented the address from the Quakers describing the indulgence as well accepted throughout the country. We have the king's answer to this latter address, and it is worth reading and remembering.
This was the king's “word for liberty," in which Penn afterwards said he had implicit faith. He believed that the king would in the end establish complete liberty, and this was one of the reasons why he was willing to stand by him. The whole court had, indeed, put on the most extraordinary airs of liberality. The popish priests outdid Penn and described with enthusiasm the immense benefits that would result from religious liberty. But the king had peculiar methods for establishing this very desirable thing, and how Penn could continue to support him is a mystery which each reader must explain for himself as we go on. Before he resorted to the Declaration of Indulgence James had been drawing Roman Catholics into office and into the livings of the Established Church. By dismissing some judges and packing the court with his favorites he had obtained a decision that although he might not have the right to dispense with the tests which prohibited Romanists as a body from holding office, he might on special grounds dispense with these tests in individual instances. In this way he thought that the offices of government might be given to people of his own religion one by one. A start once made and the fashion set, many of the aristocracy would change their religion, as they had done in former reigns, and those who would not change could be forced. He supposed that English Churchmen were still very much attached to the doctrine of passive obedience and ready to accept without question the religion of the civil power if backed by force. In this, however, he was mistaken. That the game had been successfully played before was true. In the early days of the Reformation when everything was in a state of flux, when men's minds were bewildered and their convictions unsteady, anyone who captured the government machinery could force the religion of England into almost any channel he chose. But that day was passed, as James soon discovered, and Penn having failed to obtain for him the consent of William of Orange to a repeal of the tests which kept Roman Catholics out of power, he resolved to repeal those tests on his own responsibility by the Declaration of Indulgence. To make it more acceptable he said that he would try to induce Parliament to abolish by law the tests which he was then abolishing by decree. Penn retained his confidence in James in the face of all facts and warnings. He knew the situation. He knew that the great object of the Roman church in that age was to seize political power, and that it was often successful; and he knew also the consequences of such success. He knew that Louis XIV of France was on friendly terms with James, and when opportunity offered would assist in capturing the English government for Rome. He had letters from friends on the continent describing the persecutions that still continued there; how the Protestants were hunted down by soldiers, who kept them awake by throwing water on them until they turned Catholic or went mad. He remembered that his uncle, George Penn, had been caught by the Inquisition in Spain, his property confiscated by the church, himself imprisoned for three years, during which time he was whipped once a month, and finally tortured on the rack and sent back to England a wrecked and dying man. He must have felt the force of all this; but he attempted to argue against it in a most extraordinary pamphlet called Good Advice to Roman Catholic and Protestant Dissenters. This pamphlet was issued soon after the Declaration of Indulgence appeared, and was avowedly in support of the king's policy. It is significant that Penn would not sign his name to it, but published it anonymously. The substance of it is that the test laws should be abolished in the interests of religious liberty, because there was now no danger from the Roman Catholics. They could not capture the government, even if the tests were removed, because, first of all, the masses of the English people were opposed to such an attempt The Catholics were a sensible people, knew their own interest, and would not want to do what the majority in England disapproved of "Toleration," he says, "and no more, is that which all Romanists ought to be satisfied with." And he professed to think that because they ought to be satisfied that therefore they would be satisfied. They would not, he said, take too much. Some of them, undoubtedly, wanted to take everything, but they were not sufficiently numerous. In fact, the whole body of the Catholics was only a small fraction of the population, - scarcely thirty thousand out of eight million, - and they were very much divided in opinion. As for the king's putting the Romanists in power, that was impossible, because he was an old man of fifty-three years, of a short-lived family, and he would not have time before his death to accomplish the designs of which he was suspected. Moreover, he had given his word against anything of that kind, and why should not a king's word be as good as any man’s? Penn actually had the face to say that James would not establish popery and despotism because he had promised not to do so. As for Louis XIV of France coming to assist James in such a design, Penn said there was nothing to fear in that because it was not likely that James would be so ill advised as to admit a foreign army into England, and, even if he did, England had enough ships and men to prevent it. The pamphlet upheld freedom of worship while supporting the abolition of the tests, and therefore upheld the policy of James. This anonymous pamphlet was not received well by the people of England, equally suspicious of the motives of James, as Penn was supportive of the freedoms guaranteed to all, particularly his beloved Quaker Friends. The suspicion and distrust of Penn's motives in support of the Catholic King was fueled by this pamphlet. But if the Quakers were pleased at this act of the king, the Roman Catholics were even more delighted. Soon it became apparent that the latter were going to reap the greatest benefit from this new act of clemency on the part of King James. As it became evident that the king meant to have his own way, in spite of Parliament or public opinion, and that his way was probably to turn the government over to the followers of the Church of Rome, the dissenters flocked to the aid of the Church of England. Much as Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, and other dissenting people disagreed with the English Established Church, they all felt that it was far preferable to the Church of Rome. They believed that King James was hand in glove with the Pope and with the French king, Louis XIV, and they could foresee that if their sovereign should have his way, the country might quickly return to the conditions of the reign of "Bloody Mary." So practically all Protestants now opposed King James's illegal Declaration of Indulgence. But William Penn did not; he said he still trusted the king. Then he traveled over the country, trying to induce people to agree with his view of James. The king next tried to seize the universities of
Oxford and Cambridge for the Catholics. He
made over to them Christ Church College and
University College at Oxford, and when there was a
vacancy in the office of president of Magdalen
College, he ordered the fellows to elect a Catholic.
The fellows refused, and the king's officers broke
down the college doors, turned out the president
whom the fellows had elected, the fellows themselves,
and the students, and turned the place into
a Papal seminary. At first Penn argued
with the king about this, but soon afterward he
changed and advised the college to yield. Here
Penn made a grievous mistake; no wonder people
began to think that the former champion of
religious liberty was no longer a Quaker at heart.
King James went on with his schemes. He was
growing so bold that he tried to run all the counties
and boroughs, and force people to choose his own
favorites for their officers. Wherever he could he
turned out the old officers and put in his Catholic
friends. Then, in April, 1688, he made another
blunder. He issued another Declaration of Indulgence
very similar to his first one, and said
that he would appoint no one to public office
except those who would support him in maintaining
this indulgence, and then ordered that this new
law should be read on two successive Sundays by
the clergymen in all the churches of England. About the same time a son was born to the king and queen, and the English people thought this meant that the Catholics would secure control of the government for the next reign. They were determined that this should not be, and so they invited William, the Protestant Prince of Orange, and his wife Mary, the daughter of James II, to come and take the throne of England. William landed and took the crown with very little opposition. James, deserted by his court, his army, and his navy, threw the Great Seal of England into the river Thames, and fled to France, where he lived the remainder of his days in a palace given to him by Louis XIV. England was now in a much better way. The
country had an honest king and queen who shortly
proclaimed a religious liberty that was sincere. They failed, as their methods in the long run have usually failed, and they ruined James. Was it not, however, entirely natural that Penn should be thought to be one of them. His protests against the measures of the king were in secret and known only to a few of his friends. Before the public and the world he stood as at best the mediator who was trying to make the king's measures palatable to the people; and most people very naturally inferred that he inspired and approved of those measures. They soon discovered that James had sent him to the Prince of Orange to persuade that prince to agree that the tests that kept the papists out of office should be removed, and they discovered also that he was the author of the anonymous pamphlet already mentioned, Good Advice to the Church of England, in which he advocated the removal of the tests and laughed at the fears of papal supremacy as childish. Thousands of people in England were then as thoroughly convinced that Penn was a Jesuit in disguise as we are now to the contrary. He had taken orders, they said, in Rome, where he had been granted a dispensation to marry, and he had since then frequently officiated as a priest in the celebration of the mass at Whitehall, St James's, and other places in England. If we had lived then, we should probably have had the same opinion they held; for the Jesuits at that time were not the comparatively insignificant and harmless body they have since become. The Jesuits were so feared that until James II, they could be executed if caught in England or her colonies; they were viewed as the secret police of the Pope, with no limitation on their methods to further the Pope's cause, including murder, assassinations, revolutions, coups, etc. They pervaded the political and social life of all Europe. Their methods and purposes were then rapidly reaching that enormity for which they were afterwards expelled from every country of Europe, and for a time from the Roman church itself. They adopted every imaginable form of disguise. Some became Baptist or Puritan preachers, some were celebrant, swearing cavaliers; some became domestic servants. They were the most learned, astute, untiring, and unscrupulous of men. Their disguises were so perfect and in many cases so dramatic that the people had grown accustomed to look for them in the most unexpected forms and places. It would be just like one of them to take the role of the most strenuous advocate of religious liberty in England, to be the sort of man in every way that Penn was, and in that guise, along with private intimacy with the king, secure the abolition of the tests and let all his brother Jesuits into power. In the autumn of 1688, a few weeks before the Prince of Orange landed at Torbay to drive James from the throne, these suspicions against Penn became so wide-spread that some of his friends tried to save him from them by giving him a chance to contradict them in writing and explain his relations with the king. William Popple, secretary of the Privy Council's Committee on Trade and Plantations, wrote him a long, formal, but beautiful letter, asking him, in the gentlest and most friendly manner, if he was aware of the condition in which he stood. The consciousness of innocence, Popple said, was giving him too great a contempt for slanders. It was possible to be too serene and sublime. An unswerving prosecution of an honest purpose was well, but at the same time a man should guard his reputation. He was deep in intimacy with a king who was believed by the whole kingdom to be establishing popery by force as the national religion. He had so great a part in the councils of that king that it was difficult for people to suppose he was anything but an absolute papist. "Your post is too considerable," said Popple, "for a papist of an ordinary form, and therefore you must be a Jesuit." He was offering a most melancholy prospect to his friends, for he was giving his enemies the opportunity they desired of destroying him. The aspersion of Jesuitism that had been cast upon him was offsetting the benefit of all his efforts in the great cause of liberty of conscience, the cause to which he had devoted his life.
In his reply to this letter Penn laid aside the set phraseology of his sect, and wrote in that plain but soft and pleasant English he could at times command. He denied, of course, in the fullest and most detailed manner, that he was a papist or a Jesuit, and he denied each one of the particular instances of Jesuitism brought against him: his officiating as a priest, his dispensation to marry, or his having kidnapped one formerly a monk out of Pennsylvania to deliver him over to his enemies in England.
Then he goes on to tell why he likes King James and believes in him. Cannot, he asks, "a Protestant dissenter be dutiful, thankful, and serviceable to the king though he be of the Roman Catholic communion. We hold not our property or protection from him by our persuasion, and therefore his persuasion should not be the measure of our allegiance." This was a most extraordinary sentence to write in view of recent events. The king's persuasion was leading him to violate property in the most outrageous manner. He was taking the colleges of the Church of England away from their lawful owners to give them to papists. He was compelling towns to surrender their charters so that he might turn them over to papist officials. He was packing Parliament by bribery and corruption that it might turn over to papists the livings, church buildings, and other property of the Church of England. Religious persuasion was becoming very closely connected with property rights and allegiance. But Penn goes on.
This was certainly a strange statement for Penn to make. It appears to many that he took the king's word for everything and shut his eyes to the facts; took his word that he was not forcing popery on colleges, Parliament, government, and Church of England; calmly looked at him doing it, and said he could not see it. It also appeared that for the sake of securing present relief to the Quakers and some other dissenters, he was willing that the king should establish popery in the Church of England and in the government. In another passage he argues against the opinion that he was supporting the measures of James.
His final reason for his support of James lay in these words of his:
And that was probably the true explanation of William Penn's devotion to an unjust king, - his gratitude to a man who had been the friend of both his father and himself.* That same strong trait of friendship was shown time and again in Penn's dealings with agents in Pennsylvania who, relying on his friendship, deceived him. It was, perhaps, a noble trait; but it placed this Quaker leader, a man who had fought so long and so earnestly to secure religious freedom in England, in the curious position of friend and supporter of a sovereign who had been doing his best to suppress liberty of religion. It is small wonder that many people in England failed to understand Penn's attitude; and small wonder that, when William and Mary came to the throne, Penn stood in a discredited and very difficult position.
CHAPTER XII PENN IN DISFAVOR THE new king of England, William III, was an honest, upright man, and made a fine ruler, in many ways one of the very finest that England has ever had. The government had been very corrupt under the last two Stuart kings; under William and Mary it became respectable. William had already made the small country of the Netherlands a power in the world, and had fought valiantly to defend the Protestant cause. When he became king of the much stronger country of England, he said to a friend, "At last I have a weapon whose blows will hurt!" Some say he meant that he could now do more than ever for religious freedom, others say in his opposition to France. And he did more for religious freedom than any king of England ever had done. He did not make promises only to break them, nor playoff one party against another for his own selfish aims. He found the country a very network of intrigue and plotting, and he straightened it out as speedily as he could. He was a colder, more reserved man than either Charles, the "Merry Monarch," or James II had been, and he had of course to make a great many changes in the government, so that it followed quite naturally that those men who were used to the two Stuart kings were not altogether pleased with William. Penn was one of those men; having been fond of Charles and James, he did not appeared kindly to William; and he allowed himself to appear almost an enemy to the new ruling house. Now King William, although he had no particular affection for the Quaker leader, was quite ready to be perfectly fair with him. He would probably have been glad to ask Penn's advice in regard to matters that concerned the Quakers, had not an unfortunate accident happened which placed Penn under suspicion. The exiled King James wrote a letter to Penn from France; and, as King William's spies were careful to trace all the letters James sent to England, it soon became known that Penn had been receiving messages from the exiled king. The first thing Penn knew, he was served with an order to appear before the Privy Council and answer to a charge of carrying on a treasonable correspondence. He was not frightened. He went at once to the Council, surrendered himself, and asked that he might be allowed to make his answer in the presence of the king. This was agreed to, and the meeting was set for the next day. William was gracious and kindly when the Quaker appeared before him; and the king alluded to the pleasure he had had in meeting Mr. Penn at the Hague. Then he drew out the letter from King James that his spies had intercepted, and handed it to Penn, saying that the signature was undoubtedly that of James Stuart. He then asked Penn to read the letter aloud. This Penn did, and found that the letter reminded Penn of James's friendship for his father and for himself, and hoped that in its hour of need he would come to the aid of the Stuart cause. Penn handed the letter back to the king, who asked what King James meant by requesting Penn to come to his aid, and why James had written to him. Penn answered that it was impossible for him to prevent James writing to him, if the late king wished to do so. He then went on to admit that he had loved King James in his prosperity, and could not hate him now in his adversity; that he was willing to repay his kindness in any private way he could; but that he had no thought of disloyalty to the new sovereign, and had never been guilty of any disloyal act. His defense was so manly and frank that William was willing to discharge Penn at once, but, as some of his Council objected, the king ordered William Penn to give bail to appear at the next "Trinity term" of court, which began on May 22 and ended on June. When Penn furnished this bail, he was given his liberty. In the summer of this year, 1690, James invaded Ireland with an army, and William went there to meet him. The French admiral, having beaten the combined Dutch and English fleets, was hovering off the coast. Queen Mary was left alone in London to govern as best she could; and as the plots for the overthrow of herself and her husband thickened, Penn was suspected, along with Lord Clarendon, Lord Preston, and about fifteen others. He was arrested by proclamation, July 18, 1690, and remained many months in prison until tried at the close of the year. Several of those arrested with him were convicted, and one of them was executed, but he himself was acquitted. Lord Preston, who turned state's evidence, seems to have had nothing against him except conversations, in which Penn had mentioned long lists of persons who were friendly to King James. Such statements, of course, amounted to nothing. He naturally often spoke favorably of James, and spies and informers might easily construe his words as evidence of a plot. It had now become evident that William, in becoming king, had other purposes to accomplish besides delivering England from a tyrant He intended to use England in an alliance with the Protestant powers to crush France. The war was already beginning, and the English people foresaw the expenses of a great army with increased taxation. This alienated not a few friends of William, who had assisted in bringing him to the throne. We would naturally suppose that it would alienate Penn more than ever, and he might naturally be brought into association with those who, like himself were friendly to James. He could not very well avoid talking to them; some of them might be plotting for his old friend's return; and from his association with such people it is not surprising that the government often suspected him. But for a short time after his trial, at the close of 1690, the government seems to have been satisfied that he was altogether innocent of plotting, for almost immediately after the trial the secretary of state granted him an order for a convoy to take him to Pennsylvania. He published proposals for settlers, a number of whom he intended to take with him, and he was soon to depart. But George Fox died on the 13th of January, and on the 14th Penn preached at his funeral. Soon after the ceremony he learned that a warrant had been issued for him, and that the officers intended to take him at the funeral, but, mistaking the hour, came too late. What the evidence was on this occasion we do not know. He went into hiding, an act which some of his biographers have attempted to obscure by calling it “retirement," “living in seclusion," or “taking private lodgings." Clarkson, however, informs us without hesitation that he took “a private lodging in London;”and all the biographers seem to be agreed that during the three years he remained in concealment he was in London all the time. Stoughton describes the London of that day with its queer secluded courts and alleys with rambling, overhanging houses, where, he says, Penn could have been as effectually concealed as in a wilderness. But this is mere picturesque guessing. In a letter written towards the close of his concealment, Penn says, “I have been above these three years hunted up and down, and could never be allowed to live quietly in city or country." Narcissus Luttrell, in his diary, says that at one time during his concealment, Penn went to France. So it would seem that he was constantly on the move, and did not remain all the time in London. There is no doubt, however, that he was at times in London; and he seems to have had some special place of concealment there; for after the king withdrew his suspicions, and concealment was no longer necessary, he says that he preached in London and then went “to visit the sanctuary of my solitude." He adds, “and after that to see my poor wife and children; the eldest being with me all this while." Exactly why Penn hid himself during those three years we shall never know. Besse, in the life of him already often referred to, says that the warrant had been issued on information furnished by the notorious Fuller, who made a business, like Titus Oates, of accusing prominent people. In the absence of a modern detective system the government was compelled to rely on these irregular informers. Fuller was not long afterwards declared, by Parliament, to be a cheat and impostor, and punished. Besse's statement has been accepted by all subsequent biographers and they argue that Penn was unwilling to take the chances of a trial on evidence furnished by this wretch, and so resolved to escape arrest altogether. Fuller was, however, not then known to be so infamous as he was afterwards proved. Macaulay points out that, according to his own life of himself he was not at that time in England, and he also cites a letter written by Caermarthen to King William, February 3, saying that the only witness against Penn was Preston. Penn nowhere says that this warrant was based on Fuller's information. He says that he was indicted in Ireland on information furnished by Fuller and some others; but that was another matter. It should also be observed that Fuller was discredited a few months after this warrant for Penn was issued; but Penn remained in hiding for three years. Penn being in hiding is disputed by Maria Webb, author of the Penns and Penningtons. Here is her version of what happened:
{End of Maria Webb's version of Penn's troubles with William and Mary.
It hardly seems credible that Penn could have actually conspired against the new king and queen. In any event, he seems at that time to have been treated as an object of suspicion. We can say that unless he had sacrificed a fundamental principle of Christianity and the Quakers,* he was certainly the unhappy victim of unscrupulous "informers." King William left England on a visit to the Hague, and in his absence another plot was discovered, this time to bring James over from France in the king's absence and seize London before the army could be ready to defend it. The plot was discovered before it had made any real headway. Bishop Burnet [an admitted enemy of Penn] said, "The men who laid this design were the Earl of Clarendon, the Bishop of Ely, the Lord Preston, and his brother Mr. Graham, and Penn, the famous Quaker."
The first four of these men were really guilty, and one of them, Preston, being actually caught with the papers in his possession, saved his life by turning state's evidence, and in his confession named William Penn as one of the conspirators. So Penn was included in the order for the arrest of all the traitors. There was nothing to prove Penn guilty. He did, however, send his brother-in-law to Henry Sydney, an old friend of his who was high in favor with King William. Sydney agreed to meet Penn and hear his side of the matter. The two men met, and afterward Sydney wrote to the king and told him what Penn had said. The sum of this was that Penn was really a loyal subject of William's. He said that he was not plotting and knew of no plot, and only asked that the king would grant him an interview so that he might clear himself. Being busy in Ireland, the king could not see him at that time, and so Penn kept in concealment. A little later he wrote again to Sydney, urging him to beg the king not to believe all the unjust stories that were being spread concerning him. He said that he only desired to be allowed to live quietly in England or America, and added that the Quakers would vouch for his keeping quiet and doing no harm. He ended by saying that he felt that he had been very much mistreated, and that a less peaceable subject might almost have been driven to conspiracies by such hard usage. He did not dare, however, to give himself up for trial on any of the charges against him. He felt certain that he could explain away those charges if he might meet the king privately, but he would not stand an open trial in court. He said to Sydney, "Let me be believed and I am ready to appear; but when I remember how they began to use me in Ireland upon corrupt evidence before this business, and what some ill people have threatened here, besides those under temptation, and the providences that have successively appeared for my preservation under this retirement, I can not, without unjustifiable presumption, put myself into the power of my enemies." There seems no doubt that, as his private residence at
London could have easily been known, the king and queen
had no desire to bring him to trial, believing his innocence; but that his name had been included in the warrant by some of the king's advisers for the sake of the effect on the public mind.
In the meantime King William took away from him the government of his province of Pennsylvania, and the rents of his estates in Ireland were declared confiscated. After some time he must have thought that the government might have become more friendly to him, for he tried to get Lord Rochester to make his peace with King William. He said that if the king would dismiss the charges against him, he would go back to Pennsylvania, although he would like first to go to Ireland and try to recover some of his ruined estates. There was now less fear of conspiracies of followers of James II. Three noblemen, Lords Rochester, Ranelagh, and Romney, the new title of his friend Henry Sydney, saw the king on Penn's behalf. William was willing to be lenient. So Penn was able to write this interesting letter to his friends in his American colony:
King William answered, 'That I was his old acquaintance, as well as theirs; and that I might follow my business as freely as ever; and that he had nothing to say to me,' - upon which they pressed him to command one of them to declare the same to the Secretary of State, Sir John Trenchard, that if I came to him, or otherwise, he might signify the same to me, which he also did. The Lords were Rochester, Ranelagh, and Sydney; and the last, as my greatest acquaintance, was to tell the Secretary; accordingly he did; and the Secretary, after speaking himself, and having it from King William's own mouth, appointed me a time to meet him at home; and did with the Marquis of Winchester, and told me I was as free as ever; and as he doubted not my prudence about my quiet living, for he assured me I should not be molested or injured in any of my affairs, at least while he held that post. The Secretary is my old friend, and one I served after the Duke of Monmouth and Lord Russel's business. I carried him in my coach to Windsor, and presented him to King James; and when the Revolution came, he bought my four horses that carried us. It was about three or four months before the Revolution. The Lords spoke the 25th of November, and he discharged me on the 30th. "From the Secretary I went to our meeting, at the Bull and Mouth; there to visit the sanctuary of my solitude; and after that to see my poor wife and children; the eldest being with me all this while. My wife is yet weakly; but I am not without hopes of her recovery, who is of the best of wives and women." So Penn appeared
again in the full light of London; he began attending Quakers meetings at at the Bull
and Mouth in St. Martin's almost immediately. The man who was now known in the world as the Great Quaker, Proprietor and Governor of his Majesty's Colony of Pennsylvania, was in a very sad plight, - his wife dead, his influence as a courtier worse than lost, his property wasted, and his high sounding province a source of cruel expense to him. He wanted to go at once to that province, but was faced by the humiliating condition that he could not scrape together enough money to take him there. He wrote a pathetic letter to his friends in the province, describing his losses, and asked that a hundred of the colonists should each lend him a hundred pounds for four years free of interest, and after four years with interest; his own bond to be given as security. I am sorry to be obliged to relate that there was not the slightest notice taken in Pennsylvania of this very reasonable request. Penn had said that if they would not lend him the whole £10,000 which he asked for, he would be satisfied if they would lend him as much as they could. But they never lent him a penny. It may be said here, in partial explanation of this conduct, that Penn was not then popular in Pennsylvania. His attempt to govern the colony at a distance of three thousand miles through the disturbed reign of James II and the years that followed the revolution had been a failure. He had also lost caste among the Quakers. Many of them were in favor of King William rather than James, and Penn had now for many years appeared to have been deep in politics and a courtier's occupations, which was all inconsistent with the practice and principles of his people. They could excuse a great deal for the sake of his distinguished position and the good he had been able to do them, but he had gone entirely too far. There is no doubt that at this time they regarded him with coldness. Penn had been deserted by a some of his people, which, added to the detestation in which he was held by the followers of William, made him almost an outcast of society. Clarkson implies that the Quaker disapproval of him was only because they believed “he had meddled more with politics or with the concerns of government than became a member of their Christian body." Thomas Lower, a prominent Quaker and son-in-law of George Fox, prepared a paper for Penn to sign, in the hope of bringing about a reconciliation. In this he was to be made to say:
Apparently at least some of the Quakers,
believed that Penn had gone wrong in the revolution.
This is definitely not a statement of admission of wrong, which indicates that Lower was addressing controversy rather than censure. It is simply a statement of regret that some might consider what he did as wrong; it admits of no wrong doing - only a vague, if anything I did was wrong, (in hindsight), I am sorry. Even this, Penn did not agree to sign, at least immediately; but a year or two afterwards, in the summer of 1694,
there was, according to Clarkson, a complete reconciliation, but the details are not available to report. Penn having his property restored was somewhat cheering, but a source of anxious feeling arose in another direction. He was deeply concerned on noticing the health of his eldest son. Gulielma had left three children, Springett, William, and Letitia. Another daughter, Gulielma Maria, died in 1689; and now Springett, his father's most attached and devoted companion, seemed to be declining. Letitia was still but a child. William was generous, but was too much devoted to amusement and celebrant company.It was probably from these circumstances in his family that William Penn felt the necessity of choosing another wife. His second choice was Hannah, daughter of Thomas Callowhill, and granddaughter of Dennis Hollister, both eminent merchants of Bristol, and members of the Society of Friends. They were married in the spring of 1696. Springette died in a great sorrow to Penn. Penn's son Springette was a very religious young man, and his father wrote a long account of his death. It is very touching and tender, and an interesting revelation of the workings of the Quaker mind falling back upon itself and communing by the inward way with God. It is supplied in the touching account of his death and character entitled, Sorrow and Joy in the Love and End of Springett Penn, from which the following extracts are taken:
In the year 1697, William Penn removed with his family to Bristol, his wife's native place. The following spring he visited Ireland, taking with him his son William. They arrived in Dublin in due time to attend the half year's meeting. Thomas Story, who was also there on this occasion, speaks of it thus, "Great was the resort of people of all ranks and professions to our meetings; chiefly on account of our friend William Penn, who was ever furnished by the Truth with matter fully to answer their expectations. Many of the clergy were there, and the people with one voice spoke well of what they heard. Of the clergy the Dean of Derry was one, who being there several times, was asked by his bishop whether he heard anything but blasphemy and nonsense, and whether he took off his hat in time of prayer. He answered that "he heard no blasphemy nor nonsense, but the everlasting Truth, and did not only take off his hat at prayer, but his heart said Amen to what he heard." The language of these two dignitaries gives a fair idea of the variety of treatment and opinion which William Penn met with in Ireland as well as in England from the Episcopal church party. He spent over three months in Ireland on that occasion, most of which time was occupied in gospel labor from place to place. A few weeks were devoted to the examination of his estates in the county of Cork; first those in the barony of Imokelly, in which was situated Shangarry castle, the scene of some memorable associations of his early days. What reminiscences that region must have awakened! The father and son afterwards proceeded to "the Barony of Ibaune and Barryroe, to view the rest of his estates in those parts." At Cork and Bandon they had good meetings, attended by large numbers of all ranks and professions. Here they were informed, by letters from England, that during William Penn's absence a base attack had been made upon his character, even in the Yearly Meeting of London. "But this," says Thomas Story, "was done by a shameless and implacable party, being moved by envy at the honor and dignity which the Most High had been pleased to confer on him." He adds that, "soon after receiving those tidings, they had another large and crowded meeting at Cork, where all who had heard of the evil suggestions made at London might be assured that they sprang from a false and evil root, for the Lord was pleased to clothe William that day with majesty, holy zeal, and divine wisdom, to the great satisfaction of Friends, and the admiration and applause of the people."
The" implacable party," to which Thomas Story alludes, were probably those to whom Gulielma Penn referred in her last letter to Margaret Fox, as "bad spirits," who had been disturbing the harmony of their meetings. Soon after William Penn's return from Ireland, he began preparations for removing with his family to America. With this prospect his arrangements went forward during the early months of 1699. Of Gulielma's children only Letitia went with him. William was married, and he and his young wife chose to remain in England. The documents with which, in his capacity of a minister of the Society of Friends, he was furnished on this occasion, abundantly show, (as his American biographer, Samuel Janney, remarks), that he was in full unity with, and greatly beloved by his own fellow-professors. The certificate from the monthly meeting in Essex to which he had belonged for the greater part of his membership in the society, was copied by Janney from the records of Friends in Philadelphia. From our Monthly Meeting held at Horsham, Old England, 14th 5th Mo. 1699.
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