titled, was on the whole remarkable for its leniency, murder alone being treated as a capital offence. During 1683 the population of the colony was largely increased by a steady influx of immigrants from Germany, Holland, and Scandinavia, as well as the British Isles. Penn was fully occupied with the work of settling the newcomers on the land, surveying its extent and resources, and delimiting its frontier. A dispute with Lord Baltimore about the boundary on the Maryland side compelled him to return to England in 1684 to solicit its adjustment by the committee of trade and plantations. The decision of the committee was eventually in Penn's favour, but was not given until October 1685.
Penn hailed James II's accession to the throne with high hopes. James had been his father's friend, and in a certain sense his own guardian. He believed him to be sincerely averse to religious persecution, and dreamed that under his auspices a golden age of liberty and justice might be inaugurated. The king, from motives of policy, flattered his hopes. He resided first at Holland House, then at Windsor, was frequently closeted for hours with James, was denounced as a catholic or even a jesuit by some, and courted as a royal favourite by others. Though he characterised the proscription which followed the suppression of the western rebellion as a ‘run of barbarous cruelty,’ he continued to believe in James's clemency, throwing all the blame on Jeffreys and the priests. From this it is evident that, in denying to him ‘strong sense,’ Macaulay is strictly within the mark. He was, in fact, a sanguine optimist, destitute of the penetration into human nature and capacity for determining the limits of the ideal and the practicable which mark the statesman. On the other hand, Macaulay's statement that he accepted the odious office of extorting from the families of ‘the Taunton Maids’ the ransom assigned by the queen to her maids of honour rests on no better evidence than a letter from the Earl of Sunderland to a ‘Mr. Penne,’ who is almost certainly to be identified with one George Penne, a hanger-on at Whitehall, who is known to have been concerned in a similar transaction (cf. Paget's New Examen and Roberts's Life of Monmouth. The non-identity of ‘Mr. Penne’ with William Penn was elaborately argued by W. E. Forster in the Preface to his edition of Clarkson's Life of Penn. Macaulay, however, refused to alter his original statement for reasons given at length in a note to the sixth edition of his History. Forster's Preface was twice separately reprinted, 1849 and 1850, under the title William Penn and Thomas B. Macaulay).
In March 1685–6 the king, probably at Penn's instance, made proclamation of pardon to all who were in prison for conscience' sake, whereby some twelve hundred quakers regained their liberty. About the same time, under the title ‘A Persuasive to Moderation to Church Dissenters,’ 1686, 4to, Penn published an argument for the immediate repeal of the penal laws. During an evangelistic tour in Holland in the summer Penn had several conferences with the Prince of Orange at the Hague, and found him favourable to a policy of toleration. The repeal of the Test Act, however, William declined to discuss, and Penn himself acknowledged its impolicy in the absence of some equivalent guarantee for the maintenance of the protestant religion. On his return to England he spread far and wide among the quaker churches the glad tidings of the new policy. He concurred, however, with them in recognising the inadequacy of the declaration of indulgence, and in accepting it as a mere preliminary to repeal, which he sought to commend to the nation at large in his ‘Good Advice to the Church of England, Roman Catholick, and Protestant Dissenter,’ London, 1687, 4to (cf. his Works, ed. 1726, i. 130–1, ii. 749 et seq., and Mem. Hist. Soc. of Pennsylvania, vol. iii. pt. ii. pp. 215 et seq.)
Macaulay's statement that he was employed in the attempted ‘seduction’ of the baptist minister, William Kiffin [q. v.], is diametrically opposed to the account of the matter given by Kiffin himself, from which it appears that Penn was but one among other courtiers through whom Kiffin voluntarily communicated to the king his desire to be excused the office thrust upon him, and heard in reply of the king's good intentions towards him (Kiffin's Life, ed. Orme, 1823, p. 85).
Equally untrustworthy is Macaulay's account of Penn's action in the contest between the fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford, about the headship of the house. According to Macaulay, Penn was employed to terrify, caress, or bribe the fellows into compliance with the royal mandate for the election of Dr. Samuel Parker, bishop of Oxford. The simple facts are as follows: Penn, on one of his evangelistic tours, happened to fall in with James II at Chester on 27 Aug. 1687, and afterwards attended him to Oxford. There he heard the case of the Magdalen men from their own lips on 4–5 Sept., and in their interest wrote to the king, characterising his mandate as ‘a force on conscience,’ inasmuch as the fellows
