naval commands, had been a commissioner of the Admiralty, had sat in Parliament, had received the honor of knighthood, and had been encouraged to expect a peerage. The son had been liberally educated, and had been designed for the profession of arms, but had, while still young, injured his prospects and disgusted his friends by joining what was then generally considered as a gang of crazy heretics. He had been sent sometimes to the Tower, and sometimes to Newgate. He had been tried at the Old Bailey for preaching in defiance of the law. After a time, however, he had been reconciled to his family, and had succeeded in obtaining such powerful protection, that, while all the jails of England were filled with his brethren, he was permitted, during many years, to profess his opinions without molestation. Toward the close of the late reign he had obtained, in satisfaction of an old debt due to him from the crown, the grant of an immense region in North America. In this tract, then peopled only by Indian hunters, he invited his persecuted friends to settle. His colony was still in its infancy when James mounted the throne.

Between James and Penn there had long been a familiar acquaintance. The Quaker now became a courtier, and almost a favorite. He was every day summoned from the gallery into the closet, and sometimes had long audiences while peers were kept waiting in the antechambers. It was noised abroad that he had more real power to help and hurt than many nobles who filled high offices. He was soon surrounded by flatterers and suppliants. His house at Kensington was sometimes thronged, at his hour of rising, by more than two hundred suitors. He paid dear, however, for this seeming prosperity. Even his own sect looked coldly on him, and requited his services with obloquy. He was loudly accused of being a papist, nay, a Jesuit. Some affirmed that he had been educated at St. Omer's, and others that he had been ordained at Rome. These calumnies, indeed, could find. credit only with the undiscerning multitude; but with

these calumnies were mingled accusations much better founded.*

To speak the whole truth concerning Penn is a task which requires some courage, for he is rather a mythical than a historical person. Rival nations and hostile sects have agreed in canonizing him. England is proud of his name. A great commonwealth beyond the Atlantic regards him with a reverence similar to that which the Athenians felt for Theseus, and the Romans for Quirinus. The respectable society of which he was a member honors him as an apostle. By pious men of other persuasions he is generally regarded as a bright pattern of Christian virtue. Meanwhile, admirers of a very different sort have sounded his praises. The French philosophers of the eighteenth century pardoned what they regarded as his superstitious fancies in consideration of his contempt for priests, and of his cosmopolitan benevolence, impartially extended to all races and to all creeds. His name has thus become, throughout all civilized countries, a synonym for probity and philanthropy.

Nor is this high reputation altogether unmerited. Penn was without doubt a man of eminent virtues. He had a strong sense of religious duty and a fervent desire to promote the happiness of mankind. On one or two points of high importance he had notions more correct than were, in his day, common even among men of enlarged minds; and, as the proprietor and legislator of a province which, being almost uninhabited when it came into his possession,

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* Penn's visits to Whitehall and levees at Kensington are described with great vivacity, though in very bad Latin, by Gerard Croese. "Sumebat," he says, rex sæpe secretum, non horarium, vero horarum plurium, in quo de variis rebus cum Penno serio sermonem conferebat, et interim differebat audire præcipuorum nobilium ordinem, qui hoc interim spatio in procœtone, in proximo, regem conventum præsto erant." Of the crowd of suitors at Penn's house, Croese says, "Vidi quandoque de hoc genere hominum non minus bis centum." His evidence as to the feeling with which Penn was regarded by his brethren is clear and full. "Etiam Quakeri Pennum non amplius, ut ante, ita amabant ac magnifaciabant, quidam aversabantur ac fugiebant."-Histo ria Quakeriana, lib. ii., 1695

His

afforded a clear field for moral experiments, he had the rare good fortune of being able to carry his theories into practice without any compromise, and yet without any shock to existing institutions. He will always be mentioned with honor as a founder of a colony, who did not, in his dealings with a savage people, abuse the strength derived from civilization, and as a law-giver who, in an age of persecution, made religious liberty the cornerstone of a polity. But his writings and his life furnish abundant proofs that he was not a man of strong sense. He had no skill in reading the characters of others. confidence in persons less virtuous than himself led him into great errors and misfortunes. His enthusiasm for one great principle sometimes impelled him to violate other great principles which he ought to have held sacred. Nor was his integrity altogether proof against the temptations to which it was exposed in that splendid and polite, but deeply corrupted society with which he now mingled. The whole court was in a ferment with intrigues of gallantry and intrigues of ambition. The traffic in honors, places, and pardons was incessant. It was natural that a man who was daily seen at the palace, and who was known to have free access to majesty, should be frequently importuned to use his influence for purposes which a rigid morality must condemn. The integrity of Penn had stood firm against obloquy and persecution; but now, attacked by royal smiles, by female blandishments, by the insinuating eloquence and delicate flattery of veteran diplomatists and courtiers, his resolution began to give way. Titles and phrases against which he had often borne his testimony dropped occasionally from his lips and his pen. It would be well if he had been guilty of nothing worse than such compliances with the fashions of the world. Unhappily, it can not be concealed that he bore a chief part in some transactions condemned, not merely by the rigid code of the society to which he belonged, but by the general sense of all honest men. He afterward solemnly protested that his hands were pure from illicit gain, and that

he had never received any gratuity from those whom he had obliged, though he might easily, while his influence. at court lasted, have made a hundred and twenty thousand pounds. To this assertion full credit is due. But bribes may be offered to vanity as well as to cupidity; and it is impossible to deny that Penn was cajoled into bearing a part in some unjustifiable transactions of which others enjoyed the profits.

The first use which he made of his credit was highly commendable. He strongly represented the sufferings of the Quakers to the new king, who saw with pleasure that it was possible to grant indulgence to these quiet sectaries and to the Roman Catholics without showing similar favor to other classes which were then under persecution. A list was framed of persons against whom proceedings had been instituted for not taking the oaths, or for not going to church, and of whose loyalty certificates had been produced to the government. These persons were discharged, and orders were given that no similar proceeding should be instituted till the royal pleasure should be further signified. In this way about fifteen hundred Quakers, and a still greater number of Roman Catholics, regained their liberty.†

And now the time had arrived when the English Parliament was to meet. The members of the House of Commons who had repaired to the capital were so numerous that there was much doubt whether their chamber, as it was then fitted up, would afford sufficient accommodation for them. They employed the days which immediately preceded the opening of the session in talking over

"Twenty thousand into my pocket, and a hundred thousand into my province."-Penn's Letter to Popple.

These orders, signed by Sunderland, will be found in Sewel's History. They bear date April 18, 1685. They are written in a style singularly ob scure and intricate; but I think that I have exhibited the meaning correctly. I have not been able to find any proof that any person, not a Roman Catho lic or a Quaker, regained his freedom under these orders. See Neal's His tory of the Puritans, vol. ii., chap. ii. Gerard Croese, lib. ii. Croese esti mates the number of Quakers liberated at fourteen hundred and sixty.

public affairs with each other and with the agents of the government. A great meeting of the loyal party was held at the Fountain Tavern in the Strand; and Roger Lestrange, who had recently been knighted by the king, and returned to Parliament by the city of Winchester, took a leading part in their consultations.*

It soon appeared that a large portion of the Commons had views which did not altogether agree with those of the court. The Tory country gentlemen were, with scarcely one exception, desirous to maintain the Test Act and the Habeas Corpus Act; and some among them talked of voting the revenue only for a term of years; but they were perfectly ready to enact severe laws against the Whigs, and would gladly have seen all the supporters of the Exclusion Bill made incapable of holding office. The king, on the other hand, desired to obtain from the Parliament a revenue for life, the admission of Roman Catholics to office, and the repeal of the Habeas Corpus Act. On these three objects his heart was set; and he was by no means disposed to accept as a substitute for them a penal law against exclusionists. Such a law, indeed, would have been positively unpleasing to him, for one class of exclusionists stood high in his favor; that class of which Sunderland was the representative; that class which had joined the Whigs in the days of the plot, merely because the Whigs were predominant, and which had changed with the change of fortune. James justly

regarded these renegades as the most serviceable tools that he could employ. It was not from the stout-hearted Cavaliers who had been true to him in his adversity that he could expect abject and unscrupulous obedience in his prosperity. The men who, impelled, not by zeal for liberty or for religion, but merely by selfish cupidity and selfish fear, had assisted to oppress him when he was weak, were the very men who, impelled by the same cupidity and the same fear, would assist him to oppress his people

1685; Observator, May 27, 1685; Sir J. Reresby's Me