William Penn

by George Hodges

For example, Sir Robert Stuart of Coltness had been in exile as a Presbyterian, and on his return found his lands in the possession of the Earl of Arran. He brought his case to Penn. Penn went to Arran. "What is this, friend James, that I hear of thee?" he said. "Thou hast taken possession of 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 if thou dost not give me this moment an order on thy chamberlain for two hundred pounds to Coltness to carry him down to his native country, and a hundred a year to subsist on till matters are adjusted, I will make it as many thousands out of thy way with the king." Arran complied immediately.

Again, one day after dinner, as they were drinking a glass of wine together, one of Penn's clients said, "I can tell you how you can prolong my life." "I am no physician," answered William, "but prithee 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 and then a bottle with Jack Trenchard would make me so cheerful that it would prolong my life." Penn smilingly promised to do what he could, and in a month the two friends were drinking his good health.

This was the kind of business which he transacted. He had found a way to be of eminent service to his neighbors, and especially to his Quaker brethren, and he made the most of the opportunity. There is no evidence that he departed from the disinterested 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 "principle of charity." "I never accepted any commission," he says, "but that of a free and common solicitor for sufferers of all sorts and in all parties." Neither is there any instance of his asking anything to increase his own estate or position.

Indeed, he was losing money; for the expenses of life at court were great. Worse still, he was losing his good name. His Quaker friends found him hard to understand. It was true that he had cast in his lot with them, and had suffered 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 company in Pennsylvania. They saw with their own eyes that he lived in a style which must have seemed to them altogether inconsistent with simplicity, and that he consorted with courtiers. And they did not like it,—they said so frankly.

As for enemies, the king's favorite had many, inevitably. The lords who waited in the antechamber while Penn was closeted with James did not look pleasantly at him when he came out. The stout Protestants, who hated the king's ways, and suspected the king's designs, could not easily think well of one who was so closely in his counsels. One of Penn's friends told him what these people said of 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 have since then frequently officiated as a priest in the celebration of the mass, at Whitehall, St. James's, and other places." It seems absurd enough to us, but many intelligent persons, even Archbishop Tillotson of Canterbury, believed it. The detail of St. Omer came, probably, from a confusion of the name with Saumur. The other suspicions grew out of Penn's place in the favor of the king.

It seemed as if nothing could prejudice the king's matters in the eyes of Penn. Monmouth's rebellion came, and the king's revenge followed. Judge Jeffreys went on his bloody 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, and one regrets to find Penn concerned in it. Still, his twenty probably fared better than their neighbors. It is likely that he sent them to be colonists in Pennsylvania.

In the matter of the maids of Taunton, William seems clearly to have had no part. A company of little schoolgirls, led by their teacher, had marched in procession to celebrate the landing of Monmouth. For 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-broker was William Penn. It is flagrantly inconsistent with his character, and he has been adequately vindicated by various writers. The agent in this case was probably George Penne, a person in that business.

Penn's course is not so clear in the matter of the presidency of Magdalen College. One of the steps in James's plan to change the religion of England was to get a foothold for teachers of his faith at the universities. He intended to capture Oxford and Cambridge. He had so far succeeded at Oxford as to get possession of Christ Church and University 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 statutes and oaths to justify us in all that we have done hitherto; but, setting this aside, we have a religion to defend, and I suppose yourself would think us knaves if we would tamely give it up. The Papists have already gotten Christ Church and University; the present struggle is for Magdalen; and in a short time they threaten they will have the rest."

To this Penn replied with vehemence: "That they shall never have, assure yourselves; if once they proceed so far they will quickly find themselves destitute of their present assistance. For my part, I have always declared my opinion that the preferments of the Church should not be put into any other hands but such as they are at present in; but I hope you would not have the two universities such invincible bulwarks for the Church of England, that none but they must be capable of giving their children a learned education. I suppose two or three colleges will content the Papists." 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 democratic ideas that the universities should be places of instruction for all the people; he would have liked to see not only the Roman Catholics, but all the great divisions of religion in England represented there. And that fine idea misled him. To hold him guilty, here or elsewhere, of malice or hypocrisy, is to misread his character. He was simply mistaken,—mistaken in the king, mistaken in the application of his own principles.

Meanwhile, the nation at large was making no mistake. The people saw James as he was, and detected his designs upon the liberties of England. At last, in April, 1688, he issued a Declaration 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 with speed. William of Orange was invited into England. The nation welcomed him with acclamations. James fled before him into France, where he lived the remainder of an inglorious life.