CHAPTER XVI.

THE QUAKER COMMONWEALTH.

WHEN William Penn sailed from Philadelphia to England, in the summer of 1684, it was in the hope of soon returning to take personal supervision of the affairs of his rapidly growing colony. But he soon discovered that England was full of troubles for him. The accession of James II. brought Penn into a prominence that had its unfortunate side.

Friendship

between Penn and

James II.

We have seen how it was the dying request of Admiral Penn that the Duke of York should have a care for the welfare of his son. The trust thus confided to James was amply redeemed. There can be little doubt that he was really fond of the young Quaker, and felt in his presence something of the fascination that the brilliant mind will often exert upon minds too narrow and dull to understand it. Moreover, in this case James's policy happened to coincide with his personal inclination. It would be impossible for any two sects within the limits of the Christian Church to differ more profoundly than the Roman Catholics and the Quakers. Yet circumstances were such in Penn's time that this radical hostility did not prevent the existence, for a moment, of something like a tacit alliance be

tween the two; and the same cruel king, who broke the legs and crushed the thumbs of his Scottish Presbyterian subjects with all the zest of an inquisitor, was glad to seize an occasion for setting free the Quakers who crowded the jails of England. This was because Quakers and Catholics differed so far, though in opposite directions, from the opinions generally held by the English people that they were alike condemned by everybody. Even the warmest advocates of toleration were wont to make an exception in the case of Catholics and Quakers, who for different reasons. were regarded as hardly within the pale of Christianity. Hence Quakers and Catholics had, for the moment, an interest in common, as opposed to the intermediate Christian sects, and hence, both as duke and afterward as king, the Catholic James found it worth his while to befriend the chief of the Quakers. It was a singular alliance, that between the man for whom such words as pity and clemency were meaningless terms, and the man whose faith in the ethical teachings of Jesus was so genuine that he was eager to see them embodied in civil legislation and made the cornerstone of a new Christian state. It is strange to think of the champion of truthfulness. and toleration as a Jacobite, leagued in political bonds of sympathy with a family whose very name has come to be almost a synonym for bigotry and falsehood. It is this singular alliance Macaulay's

which once kindled the wrath of the hasty charges. prejudiced and impetuous Macaulay, and led him to bring some foul charges against Penn's integrity.

The Maids

Of Macaulay's charges, the only one that needs mention is that which relates to the of Taunton. affair of the Maids of Taunton. When the handsome Duke of Monmouth was making his silly attempt to dethrone James II., and on a bright June day of the year 1685 rode into Taunton with much bustle and parade, he was met in the market-place by a procession of school-girls, from ten or twelve to sixteen years, all in their prettiest summer gowns. They gave him a royal standard richly embroidered, and the good schoolmistress gave him a Bible, and all felt, no doubt, that they had done what was right. A few weeks later, when Monmouth had begged for life in vain, and the ghastly skulls of his adherents were bleaching over many a city gate, and the execrable Jeffreys was holding his Bloody Assizes, some of the queen's maids of honour asked the king for permission to threaten these poor children, of whose frolic they had heard, in order to extort blackmail from their parents. James granted the infamous permission. The story of the consequent distress and misery at Taunton almost makes one ashamed of belonging to the human race. One young girl was snatched from home and thrown into a dungeon, where she died of fever. Another

1 They were conclusively refuted by W. E. Forster, in his preface to a new edition of Clarkson's Life of Penn, London, 1850; and by Hepworth Dixon, in his Life of Penn, London, 1851; and others. After Macaulay had replied to his critics, the matter was again taken up and treated with consummate ability, by John Paget, in his New Examen, London, 1861. Mr. Paget's evidence and arguments are absolutely conclusive, and leave Macaulay in a very sorry plight.

mustered courage to go into court and declare her innocence of evil intent and beg the hyena Jeffreys for mercy. His only answer was to put on

one of his hideous frowns and shout, "Take her away, jailer!" She was led away shivering and sobbing, and died within a few hours, literally frightened to death. Out of such sufferings the queen's ladies tried to make £7000, but were obliged to desist long before their greed was satisfied.

Macaulay's

blunder.

Now, when Macaulay found that the name of the solicitor who represented the maids of honour in this devil's work was "Mr. Penne," it seemed to him to furnish welcome proof that anybody who stood high in favour with James II. must be more or less of a knave. So he seized the occasion for inculcating a moral lesson for the benefit of all admirers of the founder of Pennsylvania. "The maids of honour," says Macaulay, discreditable "requested William Penn to act for them, and Penn accepted the commission. Yet it should seem that a little of the pertinacious scrupulosity which he had often shown about taking off his hat would not have been altogether out of place on this occasion."1 Macaulay went on to speculate ingeniously as to the arguments by which Penn might have succeeded in silencing the voice of conscience. Many of us can still remember how Macaulay's readers, more than forty years ago, were astounded by this grave accusation. But when, after more careful inquiry, it turned out that the "Mr. Penne" in question was not the

1 Macaulay's History of England, cabinet edition, ii. 235.

great Quaker at all, but a certain George Penne, a notorious pettifogger and pardon-broker at the vile Stuart court, the historian's moral lesson lost much of its point, and one could not help feeling that once more in this dull world there had been some very vigorous barking up the wrong tree!

None of the charges brought against William Penn have been adequately supported; and so far was his character from deteriorating through his intimacy with James II., that at no time in his life 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. As for the king, Penn always maintained that, with all his faults, he was not so black as people painted him; and this we may readily admit. A man who had and retained such friends as Nicolls and Dongan could not have

Penn was not awake to James's treacherous qualities.

been entirely devoid of redeeming traits. But there was one side of James's character to which Penn was not sufficiently awake. Unlike other Stuarts in many respects, James was as false as any of the race, but his treacherousness was more or less concealed under an appearance of honest and awkward dul

ness.

One would not look for Machiavelism in such a dense atmosphere. Nevertheless, James was able to impress Penn with the belief that in extending royal favour to Quakers he had the interests of religious liberty at heart, and, so long as Penn was thus hoodwinked, his demeanour towards the king was liable to be such as to excite the suspicion of patriots, who realized how danger