this time he began to frequent the Quakers' meetings; and in September, 1667, he was imprisoned, with others, under the persecuting laws which then disgraced our statute-book. Upon application to the higher authorities, he was soon released.

Upon receiving tidings that William had connected himself with the Quakers, the Admiral immediately summoned him to England; and he soon became certified of the fact, among other peculiarities, by his son's pertinacious adherence to the Quakers' notions concerning what they called Hat Worship. This led him to a violent remonstrance. William Penn behaved with due respect; but in the main point, that of forsaking his associates and rule of conduct, he yielded nothing. The father confined his demands at last to the simple point, that his son should sit uncovered in the presence of himself, the King and the Duke of York. Still William Penn felt bound to make not even this concession; and on this refusal the Admiral again turned him out of doors.

Soon after, in 1668, he began to preach, and in the same year he published his first work, Truth Exalted, &c.' We cannot here notice his very numerous works, of which the titles run, for the most part, to an extraordinary length: but The Sandy Foundation Shaken,' published in the same year, claims notice, as having led to his first public persecution. In it he was induced, not to deny the doctrine of the Trinity, which in a certain sense he admitted, but to object to the language in which it is expounded by the English Church; and for this offence he was imprisoned for some time in the Tower. During this confinement, he composed No Cross, No Crown,' one of his principal and most popular works, of which the leading doctrine, admirably exemplified in his own life, was, that the way to future happiness and glory lies, in this world, not through

a course of misery and needless mortification, but still through labour, watchfulness, and self-denial, and continual striving against corrupt passions and inordinate indulgences. This is enforced by copious examples from profane as well as sacred history; and the work gives evidence of an extent of learning very creditable to its author, considering his youth, and the circumstances under which it was composed. He was detained in prison for seven months, and treated with much severity. In 1669 he had the satisfaction of being reconciled to his father.

William Penn was one of the first sufferers by the passing of the Conventicle Act, in 1670. He was imprisoned in Newgate, and tried for preaching to a seditious and riotous assembly in Gracechurch-street; and this trial is remarkable and celebrated in our criminal jurisprudence, for the firmness with which he defended himself, and still more for the admirable courage and constancy with which the jury maintained the verdict of acquittal which they pronounced. He showed on this, and on all other occasions, that he well understood and appreciated the free principles of our constitution, and that he was resolved not to surrender one iota of that liberty of conscience which he claimed for others, as well as for himself. "I am far from thinking it fit," he said, in addressing the House of Commons, "because I exclaim against the injustice of whipping Quakers for Papists, that Papists should be whipped for their consciences. No, for though the hand pretended to be lifted up against them hath lighted heavily upon us, and we complain, yet we do not mean that any should take a fresh aim at them, or that they should come in our room, for we must give the liberty we ask, and would have none suffer for a truly sober and conscientious dissent on any hand." His views of religious toleration and civil liberty he has well and

clearly explained in the treatise entitled 'England's present Interest, &c.,' published in 1674, in which it formed part of his argument that the liberties of Englishmen were anterior to the settlement of the English church, and could not be affected by discrepancies in their religious belief. He maintained that "to live honestly, to do no injury to another, and to give every man his due, was enough to entitle every native to English privileges. It was this, and not his religion, which gave him the great claim to the protection of the government under which he lived. Near three hundred years before Austin set his foot on English ground the inhabitants had a good constitution. This came not in with him. Neither did it come in with Luther; nor was it to go out with Calvin. We were a free people by the creation of God, by the redemption of Christ, and by the careful provision of our never-to-be-forgotten, honourable ancestors: so that our claim to these English privileges, rising higher than Protestantism, could never justly be invalidated on account of nonconformity to any tenet or fashion it might prescribe."

In the same year died Sir William Penn, in perfect harmony with his son, towards whom he now felt the most cordial regard and esteem, and to whom he bequeathed an estate computed at 1500l. a-year, a large sum in that age. Towards the end of the year he was again imprisoned in Newgate for six months, the statutable penalty for refusing to take the oath of allegiance, which was maliciously tendered to him by a magistrate. This appears to have been the last absolute persecution for religion's sake which he endured. Religion in England has generally met with more toleration in proportion as it has been backed by the worldly importance of its professors: and though his poor brethren continued

to suffer imprisonment in the stocks, fines, and whipping, as the penalty of their peaceable meetings for Divine worship, the wealthy proprietor, though he travelled largely, both in England and abroad, and laboured both in writing and in preaching, as the missionary of his sect, both escaped injury, and acquired reputation and esteem by his self-devotion. To the favour of the King and the Duke of York he had a hereditary claim, which appears always to have been cheerfully acknowledged; and an instance of the rising consideration in which he was held appears in his being admitted to plead, before a Committee of the House of Commons, the request of the Quakers that their solemn affirmation should be admitted in the place of an oath. An enactment to this effect passed the Commons in 1678, but was lost, in consequence of a prorogation, before it had passed the Lords. It was on this occasion that he made that appeal in behalf of general toleration, of which a part is quoted in the preceding page.

Penn married in 1672, and took up his abode at Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire. In 1677 we find him removed to Worminghurst in Sussex, which long continued to be his place of residence. His first engagement in the plantation of America was in 1676; in consequence of being chosen arbitrator in a dispute between two Quakers, who had become jointly concerned in the colony of New Jersey. Though nowise concerned, by interest or proprietorship, (until 1681, when he purchased a share in the eastern district in New Jersey,) he took great pains in this business; he arranged terms, upon which colonists were invited to settle; and he drew up the outline of a simple constitution, reserving to them the right of making all laws by their representatives, of security from imprisonment or fine except by the consent of twelve men of the neighbourhood,

and perfect freedom in the exercise of their religion: "regulations," he said, "by an adherence to which they could never be brought into bondage but by their own consent." In these transactions he had the opportunity of contemplating the glorious results which might be hoped from a colony founded with no interested views, but on the principles of universal peace, toleration, and liberty: and he felt an earnest desire to be the instrument in so great a work, more especially as it held out a prospect of deliverance to his persecuted Quaker brethren in England, by giving them a free and happy asylum in a foreign land. Circumstances favoured his wish. The Crown was indebted to him 16,000l. for money advanced by the late Admiral for the naval service. It was not unusual to grant not only the property, but the right of government, in large districts in the uncleared part of America, as in the case of New York and New Jersey respectively to the Duke of York and Lord Baltimore: and though it was hopeless to extract money from Charles, yet he was ready enough, in acquittal of this debt, to bestow on Penn, whom he loved, a tract of land from which he himself could never expect any pecuniary return. Accordingly, Penn received, in 1681, a grant by charter of that extensive province, named Pennsylvania by Charles himself, in honour of the Admiral: by which charter he was invested with the property in the soil, with the power of ruling and governing the same; of enacting laws, with the advice and approbation of the freemen of the territory assembled for the raising of money for public uses; of appointing judges, and administering justice. He immediately drew up and published Some Account of Pennsylvania, &c.;' and then Certain Conditions or Concessions, &c.' to be agreed on between himself and those who wished to purchase land in the province.