In his gloomy prison William Penn, like Cervantes and Walter Raleigh and John Bunyan, took to writing a book, one that he called "No Cross, No Crown." It became the most famous of all his writings. To people who read it now, when every one may think as he pleases on religious matters, the ideas in this book are not particularly new or striking; but Penn's statement that the cross was not meant to be considered as an outward thing of wood and nails, but as an inward inspiration, and that religion was the feeling of each individual regarding divine subjects rather than a matter of words and customs,—all this was startling and even revolutionary in that far-away time.
Fresh abuse was heaped upon him for his new writings, and he was called all the bitter names that the enemies of the Quakers could invent. Meantime he sent a letter to Lord Arlington, the Secretary of State, in which he asked to be freed from prison because he had had no trial and had not been allowed to make any defense. "Force," he wisely said, "may make hypocrites, but it can never make converts." He ended his letter boldly. "I make no apology for my letter, as a trouble—the usual style of supplicants; because I think the honor that will accrue to thee by being just and releasing the opprest exceeds the advantage that can succeed to me."
The Bishop and the government did not intend to give William Penn a chance to make a dramatic speech in defense of the Quakers at a trial, but instead they sent his father and other friends to argue with him. Their arguments had little effect, and the prisoner resigned himself to doing without a trial. He did not, however, want the world to think that he had meant to deny the divinity of Christ, and so he now wrote another pamphlet to explain his belief.
This pamphlet gave his friends a better chance to work for his release. Admiral Penn was a great friend of the king's brother, and the latter finally went to the king and persuaded him to order that William be set at liberty. So after nine months of imprisonment in the Tower the young Quaker Cavalier was free again, thanks not so much to the justice of his appeal for liberty as to his powerful friends at court.
He then began to look about to see how he could be of most service to the people who were of his own religious faith.
CHAPTER V Penn helps his Friends
By this time no one could doubt that William Penn had courage, for it took considerable bravery to face and endure imprisonment in the Tower of London as he had done, and this show of courage won admiration even from his father the Admiral. At this time Sir William was having troubles of his own. The command of his fleet had been taken from him, and he was suffering from the gout; altogether he was not in a very pleasant frame of mind, but he softened sufficiently toward his son to ask him to go again to Ireland to look after the family property there, although the request was made through William's devoted mother, and not directly. When he wrote to his son, he showed that he still rather doubted William's filial regard, for he said, "If you are ordained to be another cross to me, God's will be done, and I shall arm myself as best I can against it."
When William reached Ireland, he found the lot of the Quakers was then no better than it had been before. Their very virtues—for they were generally a hard-working and thrifty people—had set many against them. Indeed, nearly all the Quakers in Cork had been lodged in prison. Even in prison, however, they managed to carry on their affairs; for, said Penn, they turned the jail into "a meetinghouse and a workhouse, for they would not be idle anywhere."