he argued at length in a pamphlet entitled "A Persuasion to Moderation."
Moderation, as he defined it, meant "liberty of conscience to church
dissenters;" a cause which, with all humility, he said, he had
undertaken to plead against the prejudices of the times. He maintained
that toleration was not only a right inherent in religion, but that it
was for the political and commercial good of the nation. Repression and
persecution, he said, drive men into conspiracies. The importing of
religious distinctions into the affairs of state deprives the country of
the services of some of its best men. His father, upon the occasion of
the first Dutch war, had submitted to the king a list of the ablest sea
officers in the kingdom. The striking of the names of nonconformists
from this list had "robbed the king at that time of ten men, whose
greater knowledge and valour, than any other ten of that fleet, had, in
their room, been able to have saved a battle, or perfected a victory."
As for a declaration of indulgence, Penn deemed it "the sovereign remedy
of the English constitution."
That the "tests" should be removed, he urged on James's behalf upon
William of Orange, to whom he went in Holland on an informal commission
from the king. William, by his marriage with James's daughter, was heir
apparent to the throne of England, and his consent was necessary to any
serious change of national policy. He insisted on the tests.
Theoretically, Penn was right. The ideal state imposes no religious
tests; every good citizen, no matter what his private creed may be, is
eligible to any office. Practically, Penn was wrong, as William of
Orange plainly saw. That prince, as appeared afterwards, was as zealous
for religious freedom as was Penn himself; but it was plain to him that
as matters stood at that time in England, it was necessary to enforce
the tests in order to prevent the rise of an ecclesiastical party whose
supremacy would endanger all that Penn desired. Penn, with his stout
faith in the king, could not see it. There were times, indeed, when he
was perplexed and troubled. "The Lord keep us in this dark day!" he
wrote to his steward at Pennsbury. "Be wise, close, respectful to
superiors. The king has discharged all Friends by a general pardon, and
is courteous, though as to the Church of England, things seem pinching.
Several Roman Catholics got much into places in the army, navy, court."
Nevertheless, the king's plan, as he understood it, gave assurance of
liberty of conscience, and the end of persecution for opinion's sake;
and he supported the king.
Under these conditions, misled by friendship, seeing, but not
perceiving, Penn persuaded himself that he could excellently serve God
and his neighbors by becoming a courtier. He took a house in London,
within easy distance of Whitehall, and visited the king daily. A great
many people therefore visited Penn daily; sometimes as many as two
hundred were waiting to confer with him. They desired that he would do
this or that for their good with the king. Most of them were Quakers;
many were in need of pardon, or were burdened by some oppression.
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.
This was a hard change for William Penn, and he seems to have done
nothing to make it easier. There were courtiers who passed with
incredible swiftness from one allegiance to the other; he was not among
them. Others fled to France, but he stayed. He was arrested. In his
examination before the Privy Council he declared that he "had done
nothing but what he could answer for before God and all the princes in
the world; that he loved his country and the Protestant religion above
his life, and had never acted against either; that all he had ever aimed
at in his public endeavors was none other than what the king had
declared for [religious liberty]; that King James had always been his
friend, and his father's friend, and that in gratitude he himself was
the king's, and did ever, as much as in him lay, influence him to his
true interest." Penn was released.
The new king began his reign with the Toleration Act, which Parliament
passed in 1688, and from which dates the establishment of actual and
abiding religious liberty in England. Thus Penn's great purpose was
accomplished by one with whom he was not in accord. Sometimes a
political party adopts the projects for which its opponents have long
labored, and carries them out even more vigorously than they had been
planned originally. The initial reformers are glad that their ideals
have been realized, but their zeal must be uncommonly impersonal if the
success brings them quite so much joy as it logically ought. It is not
likely that the Toleration Act filled the soul of William Penn with
great jubilation. Indeed, we know that he insisted to the end of his
life that James, if he had been let alone, would have done all that
William did, and more too, and better.
The years which followed were full of trouble. Macaulay says that in
1689 Penn was plotting against the government; but the evidence does not
suffice to establish the fact. The Privy Council, in 1690, confronted
Penn with an intercepted letter to him from James, asking for help. But,
as Penn said, he could not hinder the king from writing to him. He
added, however, with characteristic boldness, that since he had loved
King James in his prosperity he should not hate him in his adversity. He
was again discharged.
In that same year, however, James invaded Ireland, and the situation of
his friends in England was thereby made increasingly difficult. Penn was
arrested with others, and in prison awaited trial for several months.
The result was as before,--he was found in no offense. But before a
month had passed, he learned that another warrant was out against his
liberty. Officers went to take him at the funeral of George Fox, but
arrived too late. By this time he had concluded that the path of
prudence was that which led into a wise retirement. He hid himself for
the space of three years. He was publicly proclaimed a traitor, and was
deprived of the government of his colony. He was "hunted up and down,"
he says, "and could never be allowed to live quietly in city or
country."
Finally, the government were persuaded either that Penn was innocent, or
that no further danger was to be apprehended from him, and several
noblemen, interceding with the king, procured his pardon. They
represented his case, he says, as not only hard, but oppressive, there
being no evidence but what "impostors, or those that fled, or that have
since their pardon refused to verify (and asked me pardon for saying
what they did) alleged against me." The king announced that Penn was his
old acquaintance, and that he might follow his business as freely as
ever, and that for his part he had nothing to say to him.
Thus again, and at last, the political accusations against William Penn
came to nothing. He had been in a hard position as the faithful friend
of a dethroned monarch in a day when conspiracies were being made on
every hand. That he should have been suspected of treason was
inevitable. That in his unconcealed affection for James and disapproval
of William he said imprudent things is likely enough. Prudence was not
one of his virtues. He was never calculatingly careful of his own
welfare. But that he was ever untrue to William, or did any act, or
consented to any, which could reasonably be called treacherous, is not
only quite unproved, but is out of accord with the true William Penn as
he is revealed in his writings and in all his life. The only fault which
has been clearly established against him is that of liking James better
than he liked William. He was a stanch friend to his friend; that is the
sum of his offending, wherein the only serious regret is that his friend
was not more worthy of his steadfast and unselfish friendship. "At no
time in his life," says Mr. Fiske, "does he seem more honest, brave, and
lovable, than during the years, so full of trouble for him, that
intervened between the accession of James and the accession of Anne."
VIII
PENN'S SECOND VISIT TO THE PROVINCE: CLOSING YEARS
The thoughts with which Penn's mind was occupied during the years of
hiding appear in his book, "Some Fruits of Solitude." Robert Louis
Stevenson found a copy of it in a book-shop in San Francisco, and
carried it in his pocket many days, reading it in street-cars and
ferry-boats. He found it, he says, "in all places a peaceful and sweet
companion;" and he adds, "there is not a man living, no, nor recently
dead, that could put, with so lovely a spirit, so much honest, kind
wisdom into words."
"The author blesseth God for his retirement," so the book begins, "and
kisses the gentle hand which led him into it; for though it should prove
barren to the world, it can never do so to him. He has now had some time
he can call his own; a property he was never so much master of before;
in which he has taken a view of himself and the world, and observed
wherein he hath hit and missed the mark. And he verily thinks, were he
to live his life over again, he could not only, with God's grace, serve
him, but his neighbor and himself, better than he hath done, and have
seven years of his life to spare."
Government and Religion have the longest chapters in this volume of
reflections, as being the matters in which William was most interested.
"Happy that king," he says, "who is great by justice, and that people
who are free by obedience." "Where example keeps pace with authority,
power hardly fails to be obeyed, and magistrates to be honoured." "Let
the people think they govern, and they will be governed." "Religion is
the fear of God, and its demonstration good works; and faith is the root
of both." "To be like Christ, then, is to be a Christian." "Some folk
think they may scold, rail, hate, rob, and kill too: so it be but for
God's sake. But nothing in us, unlike him, can please him." So the book
goes, page after page, always serious and sensible, full of simplicity
and kindliness, cheerful and brotherly and unfailingly religious. It is
the work of one who is trying his best to live for his brethren and in
Christ's spirit.
Another significant writing of this period is Penn's "Plan for the Peace
of Europe." The calamities of the war then in progress on the Continent
gave him arguments enough for the desirableness of peace. The means of
peace is justice, and the means of justice is government. It is plain to
all that a state wherein any private citizen might avenge himself upon
his neighbor would be a place of confusion and distress. "For this cause
they have sessions, terms, assizes, and parliaments, to overrule men's
passions and resentments, that they may not be judges in their own
cause, nor punishers of their own wrongs." Penn proposes that the same
relation between peace and justice which is enforced between citizen and
citizen be also enforced between nation and nation. "Now," he says, "if
the sovereign princes of Europe ... for love of peace and order [would]
agree to meet by their stated deputies in a general Diet, Estates or
Parliament and there establish rules of justice for sovereign princes to
observe one to another; and thus to meet yearly, or once in two or three
years at the farthest, or as they shall see cause, and to be stiled, The
Sovereign or Imperial Diet, Parliament or State of Europe: before which
Sovereign Assembly should be brought all differences depending between
one sovereign and another that cannot be made up by private embassies
before the sessions begin; and that if any of the sovereignties that
constitute these imperial states shall refuse to submit their claim or
pretensions to them, or to abide and perform the judgment thereof and
seek their remedy by arms, or delay their compliance beyond the time
prefixt in their resolutions, all the other sovereignties, united as one
strength, shall compel the submission and performance of the sentence,
with damages to the suffering party, and charges to the sovereignties
that obliged their submission; ... peace would be procured and
continued in Europe." The principle of international arbitration, the
Conference at the Hague, and all like meetings which shall be held
hereafter, are thus foreshadowed.
These two productions of Penn's season of retirement--the "Fruits of
Solitude," and the "Plan for the Peace of Europe"--illustrate again the
two qualities which make him singularly eminent among the founders of
commonwealths. He was at once a philosopher and a statesman; he was
interested alike in religion and in politics. There have been many
politicians to whom religion has been of no concern. There have been
many religious persons in high positions who have been so shut in by
church walls that they have been incapable of a wider outlook; they have
accordingly been narrow, prejudiced, and often unpractical people; they
have been blind to the elemental social fact of difference; they have
hated the thought of toleration. Penn was almost alone among the good
men of our era of colonization in being at the same time a man of the
world and a man of the other world.
Penn came out of his exile in 1693 burdened with misfortune. He had been
deprived of his government; he was sadly in debt; he had lost many of
his friends. His colonists in Pennsylvania declined to lend him money.
His brethren in England drew up a confession of wrong-doing for him to
sign: "If in any things during those late revolutions I have concerned
myself either by words or writings, in love, pity or good will to any in
distress [meaning the king] further than consisted with Truth's honor or
the Church's peace, I am sorry for it." But he would not sign. To these
troubles was added a greater grief in the death of his wife. "An
excellent wife and mother," he said of her, "an entire and constant
friend, of a more than common capacity, and greater modesty and
humility; yet most equal and undaunted in danger." A brave soul, no
doubt, as befitted her parentage, and of a devout and consecrated
spirit.
But William was ever of a serene and cheerful disposition. Neither loss,
nor disappointment, nor bereavement could shut out the sun. His
religious faith strengthened him. "We must needs disorder ourselves," he
had written in his "Fruits of Solitude," "if we only look at our losses.
But if we consider how little we deserve what is left, our passions will
cool, and our murmurs will turn into thankfulness." "Though our
Saviour's passion is over, his compassion is not. That never fails his
humble, sincere disciples; in him they find more than all that they lose
in the world."
During the six years which followed, this strong confidence was
justified. He regained his government and his good name. He also married
a second wife, Hannah Callowhill, a strong, sensible, and estimable
Quaker lady of some means, living in Bristol.
The only satisfactory information as to the personal appearance of Penn
in mature life is that which is given by Sylvanus Bevan. Bevan was a
Quaker apothecary in London, who had a remarkable gift for carving
portraits in ivory. After Penn's death, he made such a portrait of him
from memory. The men who had known William liked it greatly. Lord
Cobham, to whom Bevan sent it, said, "It is William Penn himself." It
represents him in a curled wig, with full cheeks and a double chin--a
pleasant, masterful, and serious person. Clarkson says that in his
attire he was "very neat, though plain." Penn advised his children to
choose clothes "neither unshapely nor fantastical;" and he illustrated
to King James the difference between the Roman Catholic and the Quaker
religions by the difference between his hat and the king's. "The only
difference," he said, "lies in the ornaments that have been added to
thine." His dress was probably that which was common to gentlemen in his
day, but without extremes of color or adornment. For some time after
becoming a Quaker he wore his sword, having consulted Fox, who said, "I
advise thee to wear it as long as thou canst." Presently Fox, seeing him
without it, said, "William, where is thy sword?" To which Penn replied,
"I have taken thy advice: I wore it as long as I could."
The sober cheerfulness of Penn's attire comported well with his
conversation. It is true that Bishop Burnet, who did not like him, says
that "he had a tedious, luscious way of talking, not apt to overcome a
man's reason, though it might tire his patience." But Dean Swift enjoyed
him, and testified that "he talked very agreeably and with great
spirit." The Friends of Reading Meeting even noted that he was
"facetious in conversation," and there is a tradition of a venerable
Friend who spoke of him "as having naturally an excess of levity of
spirit for a grave minister." A handsome, graceful, and even a merry
gentleman it was who married Hannah Callowhill.