regard, and conferred on him the honour of knighthood; this shows that he had won a reputation for loyalty, and that what he had done in Cromwell's time was fully forgiven. It also appears that he could now abuse the man to whom he owed so much.1 Charles entered London at the end of May, and crossed London Bridge in gorgeous procession, men wearing cloth of silver and velvet coats, buff and green, black and gold, white and crimson,—delighting the eyes of the shouting citizens. We cannot suppose that all this went on unnoticed by the boy who studied under a private tutor on Tower Hill.

He was now approaching the age of sixteen, and boys at that period were early sent to the University. Before this there had been talk about William's entering Oxford, and now it was determined that there he should be sent. Anthony Wood says, "He was entered a gentleman-commoner of Christ Church, and in the beginning of Michaelmas term (October) he was matriculated as a knight's son." Thus it comes out clearly that William was not sent to college until after the Restoration, and so the clouds and darkness in which some writers have enveloped this part of William Penn's history are dispersed, and the dreams of his being within the walls of Christ Church when Dr. Owen was Dean, flees away. It was not to

1 "1662, March 12.

"Sir W. Penn told me of a speech he had made to the Low States of Holland, telling them to their faces that he observed that he was not received with the respect and observance now, that he was when he came from the traitor and rebel Cromwell -by whom, I am sure, he hath got all he hath in the worldand they know it too."-Pepys Diary.

the University of the Commonwealth, but to the University of the Restoration, that the new knight sent his son; and what the University was under puritan rule has nothing to do with this gentlemancommoner's residence within sound of the chimes of big Tom. Still, of course, traditions would linger in the halls, cloisters, and gardens touching what had gone on there under Owen; but whatever tales might be trumped up discreditable to puritan régime, there is historical proof enough to show that the state of learning and the discipline of the colleges had been such that puritanism had no reason to be ashamed of it. Misrepresentations of that period are still abundant, and a good deal of our popular history respecting that era needs to be rewritten.

Immediately after the Restoration, clergymen dismissed by the Long Parliament began to recover their livings, and heads of colleges were enabled to recover their forfeited rights. Dr. Reynolds, who had been appointed in the spring to succeed Dr. Owen, was, before the autumn, followed by George Morley. In the place of Dr. Thomas Goodwin, the famous puritan president of Magdalen, appeared Dr. Oliver, who had been ejected under the Commonwealth. Like changes occurred throughout Oxford. All the heads of houses underwent a change; even where the same men as before were allowed to remain, they had to alter their ways; so that throughout the Midland home of learning things wore quite a different colour from what they had done a year earlier. Some of the former students remained: John Locke, the famous philosopher, and Robert South, the famous preacher, were both elected students of Christ

Church; Christopher Wren, the famous architect, a Wadham man, was at the Restoration Fellow of All Souls. But with no one of these three would Penn be likely to come in contact, as they were all his seniors. A whole tide of new D.D.'s, new B.D.'s, and new M.A.'s rushed in to fill up vacancies. Seventy Doctors of Divinity were created within twelve months, and if Dr. Owen had visited his old haunts he would hardly have known the place.

At that time it took two days to travel from London to Oxford, through Uxbridge, Beaconsfield, and High Wycomb, described then as "unwalled. boroughs." Travellers were frightened at reports of highwaymen; but if we are to believe what is said. by a French visitor in England, shortly after Penn took his journey to the University, safeguards were not neglected. We can imagine him slowly proceeding on his way.

"It is certain," we are told, "there are good regulations made in this country; and when any robbery is committed, the country presently takes the alarm, and pursues so hard that the highwaymen very seldom can make their escape." Every one does not report so favourably of English travelling then, as does this polite French physician.1

Before describing young William's course at Oxford, I must pause to give a short account, necessary for understanding a crisis which occurred in his religious thoughtfulness.

Some minds are so constituted that they shrink

1 Monsieur Samuel Sorbiere's "Voyage to England"; quoted in "Annals of Oxford" by Jeaffreson, vol. ii. p. 147.

with invincible dislike from all mystical forms of thought. They are averse to that for which others have a strong affinity. It is not necessary that a person should wholly approve a system in which there are elements calling forth his sympathy and admiration. In reviewing the history of religious opinion, surely we should endeavour to appreciate whatever may be true and good in forms of conviction and feeling which we are far from adopting entirely as our own. It is not requisite that people should be Roman Catholics in order to see what was beautiful in the character of Francis of Assisi; or Lutherans to see what was grand in the Saxon reformer; or Quakers to see what was profoundly spiritual in the founder of the Society.

с

CHAPTER II.

MYSTICISM AND THE EARLY friends.

WE

HAT we understand by mysticism is a habit of mind which leads men to take transcendental views of spiritual subjects, and, forsaking paths of mere practical understanding and logical reasoning, to plunge into depths of imaginative inquiry, or to soar into an atmosphere of spiritual rapture. In early ages of the Church these tendencies appear, and in the writings of many mediævalists it bursts forth in beautiful forms before the Reformation. John Tauler, of Strasburg, was a charming instance of this type of thought; so was the author of the "Theologia Germanica." They broke through the meshes of perverted logic, and opened wide doors which led. into open fields of truth.

Veins of like thought ran through the reflections of the Cambridge school of divines which rose towards its zenith just before Penn went to Oxford. But Saltmarsh, in his "Sparkles of Glory" already mentioned-explaining the title as intended to signify "some beams of the morning star, wherein are many discoveries as to truth and peace, to the establishment and pure enlargement of a Christian in spirit and truth" is a bolder example of English mysticism;