No. LXVII.
Charles I. was King, when William Penn was born; and, when he died, George I. was on the throne. Penn therefore lived in the reins of nine rulers of the realm—Charles I.—the Cromwells, Oliver and Richard—Charles II.—James II.—William and Mary as joint sovereigns—William alone—Anne—and George I.
He was the son of Admiral, Sir William Penn, and was born on Tower Hill, London, Oct. 4, 1644. The spirit and the flesh strove hard for the mastery, before young William came forth a Quaker, fully developed. He was remarkable at Oxford, for his fine scholarship, and athletic performances.
Penn believed, that the Lord appeared to him, when he was very young. The devil seems to have made him a short visit afterwards, if we may rely upon the testimony of Penn’s biographers. Wood, in his Athenæ, iv. 645, gives this brief account of the Lord’s visit—Penn was “educated in puerile learning, at Chigwell in Essex, where, at eleven years of age, being retired in a chamber alone, he was so suddenly surprised with an inward comfort, and, as he thought, an external glory in the room, that he has, many times, said that, from that time, he had the seal of divinity and immortality, that there was also a God, and that the soul of man was capable of enjoying his divine communications.”
His biographer, Clarkson, says, that Penn, at the age of sixteen, was led to a sense of the corruptions of the established faith, by the preaching of Thomas Loe, a Quaker; and broke off at the chapel, and began to hold prayer meetings. For this he was fined and admonished. It is remarkable, that Wood, though he states, that Penn, after he became a Quaker, in good earnest, was imprisoned, once in Ireland, once in the Tower, and three times in Newgate, does not even allude, in his Athenæ, to the expulsion from Oxford, which is related, by Chalmers, Clarkson, and others.
It seems, that, after he had become impressed, by Loe’s preaching, an order came down from court, that the students should wear surplices. This so irritated Penn, that, instead of letting his yea be yea, and his nay nay—in company with others, says Clarkson, “he fell upon those students, who appeared in surplices, and tore them everywhere over their heads.” On the subject of his conversion, Wood says—“If you’ll believe a satirical pamphlet—‘The history of Will Penn’s conversion from a gentleman to a Quaker,’ printed at London, in 1682—you’ll find, that the reason of his turning Quaker was the loss of his mistress, a delicate young lady, that then lived in Dublin; or, as others say, because he refused to fight a duel.”
For two, good and sufficient reasons, this statement, contained in the “satirical pamphlet,” and referred to by Wood, is unworthy of the slightest credit. In the first place, though Penn met Loe, in Dublin, after the expulsion from Oxford, and became more fully impressed, yet his first meeting with Loe was at Oxford, before the expulsion, and the serious impression, produced by his preaching, led, albeit rather oddly, to the affair of the surplices.
In the second place, the notion, that Penn would put on Quakerism, to avoid a duel, is still more incredible. Nothing could be more unfortunate, than any imputation upon Penn’s courage, moral or physical. We have seen, that he was famous for his athletic exercises. Strange, though it may seem, to such as have contemplated Penn, as the quiet non-combatant, he was an accomplished swordsman, and, upon one occasion, was actually engaged in an affair, which had all the aspect, and all the peril, of the duellium, however it may have lacked the preliminary forms and ceremonies. “During his residence in Paris,” says Chalmers, “he was assaulted in the street, one evening, by a person with a drawn sword, on account of a supposed affront; but among other accomplishments of a gay man, he had become so good a swordsman, as to disarm his antagonist.”
After his expulsion from Oxford, in 1662, he returned home. His father, the Admiral, was greatly provoked, to see his son resorting to the company of religious people, who were, of all, the least likely, in the licentious reign of Charles II., to advance his worldly interest. The old gentleman tried severity, and finally, as Penn himself relates, gave the Quaker neophyte a thrashing, and turned him out of doors.
Ere long, the father got the better of the admiral. He relented: and, probably, supposing there was as little vitality in Paris, for a Quaker, as some of the old philosophers fancied there might be, in a vacuum, for an angel, he sent young William thither, as one of a fashionable travelling party.