76

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

chap. stant access to the royal ear. This was the celebrated William"TossT - Penn. His father had held great naval commands, had been

William a Commissioner of the Admiralty, had sate in Parliament,

Penn. .

bad received the honour of knighthood, and had been encou-raged to expect a peerage. The son had been liberally edu-cated, and had been designed for the profession of arms, buthad, while still young, injured his prospects and disgustedhis friends by joining what was then generally considered as agang of crazy heretics. He had been sent sometimes to theTower, and sometimes to Newgate. He had been tried atthe Old Bailey for preaching in defiance of the law. After atime, however, he had been reconciled to his family, and hadsucceeded in obtaining such powerful protection that, whileall the gaols of England were filled with his brethren, he waspermitted, during many years, to profess his opinions withoutmolestation. Towards the close of the late reign he had ob-tained, in satisfaction of an old debt due to him from thocrown, the grant of an immense region in North America. Inthis tract, then peopled only by Indian hunters, he had in-vited his persecuted friends to settle. His colony was still inits infancy when James mounted the throne.

Between James and Penn there had long been a familiaracquaintance. The Quaker now became a courtier, andalmost a favourite. He was every day summoned from thegallery into the closet, and sometimes had long audienceswhile peers were kept waiting in the antechambers. It wasnoised abroad that he had more real power to help and hurtthan many nobles who filled high offices. He was soon sur-rounded by flatterers ami suppliants. His house at Ken-sington was sometimes thronged, at his hour of rising, by-more than two hundred suitors. He paid dear, however, forthis seeming prosperity. Even his own sect looked coldly onhim, and requited his services with obloquy. He was loudlyaccused of being a Papist, nay, a Jesuit. Some affirmed