Beaufort soon met the royal coaches, and conducted them to Badminton, where a banquet worthy of the fame which his splendid housekeeping had won for him was prepared. In the afternoon the cavalcade proceeded to Gloucester. It was greeted two miles from the city by the Bishop and clergy. At the South Gate the Mayor waited with the keys. The bells rang and the conduits flowed with wine as the King passed through the streets to the close which encircles the venerable Cathedral. He lay that night at the deanery, and on the following morning set out for Worcester. From Worcester he went to Ludlow, Shrewsbury, and Chester, and was everywhere received with outward signs of joy and respect, which he was weak enough to consider as proofs that the discontent excited by his measures had subsided, and that an easy victory was before him. Barillon, more sagacious, informed Lewis that the King of England was under a delusion, that the progress had done no real good, and that those very gentlemen of Worcestershire and Shropshire who had thought it their duty to receive their Sovereign and their guest with every mark of honour would be found as refractory as ever when the question of the test should * come on. On the road the royal train was joined by two courtiers who in temper and opinions differed widely from each other. Penn was at Chester on a pastoral, or, to speak more correctly, on a political, tour. The chief object of his expedition was to induce the Dissenters, throughout England, to support the government. His popularity and authority among his brethren had greatly declined since he had become a tool of the King and of the Jesuits.† He was, how * See the London Gazette, from August 18. to September 1. 1687; Barillon, September 18. †“Penn, chef des Quakers, qu'on sait être dans les intérêts du Roi d'Angleterre, est si fort décrié parmi ceux de son parti qu'ils n'ont plus aucune confiance ever, most graciously received by James, and, on the Sunday, was permitted to harangue in the tennis. court, while Cartwright preached in the Cathedral, and while the King heard mass at an altar which had been decked in the Shire Hall. It is said, indeed, that His Majesty deigned to look into the tennis court and to listen with decency to his friend's melodious eloquence.* The furious Tyrconnel had crossed the sea from Dublin to give an account of his administration. All the most respectable English Roman Catholics looked coldly on him as an enemy of their race and a scandal to their religion. But he was cordially welcomed by his master, and dismissed with assurances of undiminished confidence and steady support. James expressed his delight at learning that in a short time the whole government of Ireland would be in Roman Catholic hands. The English colonists had already been stripped of all political power. Nothing remained but to strip them of their property; and this last outrage was deferred only till the cooperation of an Irish Parliament should have been secured. † From Cheshire the King turned southward, and, en lui."- Bonrepaux to Seignelay, Sept. 12. 1687. The evidence of Gerard Croese is to the same effect. "Etiam Quakeri Pennum non amplius, ut ante, ita amabant ac magnifaciebant, quidam aversabantur ac fugiebant."-Historia Quakeriana, lib. ii. 1695. As to Penn's tour, Van Citters wrote on Oct. 1687, "Dat den bekenden Arch-Quaker Pen door het Laut op reyse was, om die van syne gesintheyt, en andere soo veel doenlyck, tot des Conings partie en Sinnelyckheyt te winnen." * Cartwright's Diary, Aug. 30. 1687; Clarkson's Life of William † London Gazette, Sept. 5. ; Sheridan MS.; Barillon, Sept. 1687. "Le Roi son maître," says Barillon, "a témoigné une grande satisfaction des mesures qu'il a prises, et a autorisé ce qu'il a fait en faveur des Catholiques. Il les établit dans les emplois et les charges, en sorte que l'autorité se trouvera bientôt entre leurs mains. Il reste encore beaucoup de choses à faire en ce pays là pour retirer les biens injustement ôtés aux Catholiques. Mais cela ne peut s'exécuter qu'avec le tems et dans l'assemblée d'un parlement en Irlande." The King at in the full belief that the Fellows of Magdalene College, however mutinous they might be, would not dare to disobey a command uttered by his own lips, directed his course towards Oxford. By the way he made some little excursions to places which peculiarly interested him, as a King, a brother, and a son. He visited the hospitable roof of Boscobel, and the remains of the oak so conspicuous in the history of his house. He rode over the field of Edgehill, where the Cavaliers first crossed swords with the soldiers of the Parliament. On the third of September he dined in great state at the palace of Woodstock, an ancient and renowned mansion, of which not a stone is now to be seen, but of which the site is still marked on the turf of Blenheim Park by two sycamores which grow near the stately bridge. In the evening he reached Oxford. He was received there with the wonted honours. The students in their academical garb were ranged to welcome him on the right hand and on the left, from the entrance of the city to the great gate of Christ Church. He lodged at the deanery, where, among other accommodations, he found a chapel fitted up for the celebration of the mass." On the day after his arrival, the Fellows of Magdalene College were ordered to attend Magdalene. him. When they appeared before him, he treated them with an insolence such as had never been shown to their predecessors by the Puritan visitors. "You have not dealt with me like gentlemen," he exclaimed. "You have been unmannerly as well as undutiful." They fell on their knees and tendered a petition. He would not look at it. “Is this your Church of England loyalty? I could not have believed that so many clergymen of the Church of England would have been concerned in such a He reprimands the Fellows of * * London Gazette of Sept. 5. and Sept. 8. 1687. business. Go home. Get you gone. I am King. I will be obeyed. Go to your chapel this instant; and admit the Bishop of Oxford. Let those who refuse look to it. They shall feel the whole weight of my hand. They shall know what it is to incur the displeasure of their Sovereign." The Fellows, still kneeling before him, again offered him their petition. He angrily flung it down. "Get you gone, I tell you. I will receive nothing from you till you have admitted the Bishop." They retired and instantly assembled in their chapel. The question was propounded whether they would comply with His Majesty's command. Smith was absent. Charnock alone answered in the affirmative. The other Fellows who were at the meeting declared that in all things lawful they were ready to obey the King, but that they would not violate their statutes and their oaths. The King, greatly incensed and mortified by his defeat, quitted Oxford and rejoined the Queen at Bath. His obstinacy and violence had brought him into an embarrassing position. He had trusted too much to the effect of his frowns and angry tones, and had rashly staked, not merely the credit of his administration, but his personal dignity, on the issue of the contest. Could he yield to subjects whom he had menaced with raised voice and furious gestures? Yet could he venture to eject in one day a crowd of respectable clergymen from their homes, because they had discharged what the whole nation regarded as a sacred duty? Perhaps there might be an escape from this dilemma. Perhaps the college might still be terrified, caressed, or bribed into submission. The agency of Penn was employed. He had too much good feeling to approve of the violent and unjust proceedings of the government, and even ventured to express part of what he thought. James was, as usual, obstinate in the wrong. The Penn attempts to mediate. courtly Quaker, therefore, did his best to seduce the college from the path of right. He first tried intimidation. Ruin, he said, impended over the society. The King was highly incensed. The case might be a hard one. Most people thought it so. But every child knew that His Majesty loved to have his own way and could not bear to be thwarted. Penn, therefore, exhorted the Fellows not to rely on the goodness of their cause, but to submit, or at least to temporise.* Such counsel came strangely from one *See Penn's Letter to Bailey, one of the Fellows of the College, in the Impartial Relation printed at Oxford in 1688. It has lately been asserted that Penn most certainly did not write this letter. Now, the evidence which proves the letter to be his is irresistible. Bailey, to whom the letter was addressed, ascribed it to Penn, and sent an answer to Penn. In a very short time both the letter and the answer appeared in print. Many thousands of copies were circulated. Penn was pointed out to the whole world as the author of the letter; and it is not pretended that he met this public accusation with a public contradiction. Everybody therefore believed, and was perfectly warranted in believing, that he was the author. The letter was repeatedly quoted as his, during his own lifetime, not merely in fugitive pamphlets, such as the History of the Ecclesiastical Commission, published in 1711, but in grave and elaborate books which were meant to descend to posterity. Boyer, in his History of William the Third, printed immediately after that King's death, and reprinted in 1703, pronounced the letter to be Penn's, and added some severe reflections on the writer. Kennet, in the bulky History of England published in 1706, a history which had a large sale and produced a great sensation, adopted the very words of Boyer. When these works appeared, Penn was not only alive, but in the full enjoyment of his faculties. He cannot have been ignorant of the charge brought against him by writers of so much note; and it was not his practice to hold his peace when unjust charges were brought against him even by obscure scribblers. In 1695, a pamphlet on the Exclusion Bill was falsely imputed to him in an anonymous libel. Contemptible as was the quarter from which the calumny proceeded, he hastened to vindicate himself. His denial, distinct, solemn, and indignant, speedily came forth in print. Is it possible to doubt that he would, if he could, have confounded Boyer and Kennet by a similar denial? He however silently suffered them to tell the whole nation, during many years, that this letter was written by 66 William Penn the head of the Quakers, or, as some then thought, an ambitious, crafty Jesuit, who under a phanatical outside, pro |