Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/515

P E N N 493 Quakers in Cork, at which he assisted to expel a soldier who had disturbed the meeting. He was in consequence, with others present, sent to prison by the magistrates. From prison he wrote to Lord Orrery, the president of Minister, a letter, in which he first publicly makes a claim for perfect freedom of conscience. He was immediately released, and at once returned to his father in London, with the distinctive marks of Quakerism strong upon him the use of the "thee" and " thou," and the refusal to remove his hat. So staunch on the hat question was he that he could not accept even the compromise suggested by his father, viz., that he should uncover before the king, the duke of York, and himself. Penn now became a minister of the denomination, and at once entered upon controversy and authorship. His first book, Truth Exalted, in which he summons to trial princes, priests, and people, was "a short but sure testi mony against all those religions, faiths, and worships that have been formed and followed in the darkness of apo- stacy," and declared Quakerism to be " the alone good way of life and salvation." Its tone and language were violent and aggressive in the extreme. The same offensive per sonality is shown in The Guide Mistaken, a tract written in answer to John Clapham s Guide to the True Religion. It was at this time, too, that he appealed, not unsuccess fully, to Buckingham, who on Clarendon s fall was posing as the protector of the Dissenters, to use his efforts to procure parliamentary toleration. Penn s first public discussion was with Thomas Vincent, a London Presbyterian minister, who had reflected on the " damnable " doctrines of the Quakers. In this he appears to have acted as second to George Whitehead. 1 The dis cussion, which had turned chiefly upon the doctrine of the Trinity, ended uselessly, and Penn at once published The Sandy Foundation Shaken, a tract of ability sufficient to excite Pepys s astonishment, in which orthodox views on the Trinity, plenary satisfaction, imputed righteousness, and other doctrinal points were so offensively attacked that, at the instance of the bishop of London, Penn was placed in the Tower, where he remained for nearly nine months. The imputations upon his opinions and good citizenship, made as well by Dissenters as by the church, he repelled in Innocency ivith her Open Face, in which he asserts his full belief in the divinity of Christ, the atonement, and justification through faith, though insisting on the necessity of good works. It was now, too, that he published the most important of his books, No Cross, no Crown, which, besides the lessons of constancy and resignation indicated by the title, contained an able defence of the Quaker doc trines and practices, and a scathing attack on the evils of the age, especially the loose and unchristian lives of the clergy. While completely refusing to recant or to yield to the persuasions of Stillingfleet, who, it is stated on doubtful authority, was sent to argue with him, Penn addressed a letter to Arlington in July 16G9, in which, on grounds of religious freedom, he asked him to interfere. It is note worthy, as showing the views then predominant, that he was almost at once set at liberty. An informal reconciliation now took place with his father, who had been impeached through the jealousy of Rupert and Monk (in April 1668), and whose conduct in the operations of 1665 he had publicly vindicated; and Penn was again sent on family business to Ireland. There is good reason for thinking that the extent of the differences between him and his father have been much exaggerated. 2 While there he regularly attended Quaker meetings, and was active in intercession for imprisoned Friends. At the desire of his father, whose health was fast failing, Penn 1 Sewel s Hist, of Fri-ends, p. 172. 2 Granville s Memorials of Sir W. Penn, vol. ii. p. 571. returned to London in 1670, and was immediately involved in fresh trouble. Having found the usual place of meeting in Gracechurch Street closed by soldiers, Penn, as a protest, preached to the people in the open street. With William Mead he was at once arrested and indicted at the Old Bailey on 1st September for preaching to an unlawful, seditious, and riotous assembly, which had met together with force and arms. The Conventicle Act not touch ing their case, the trial which followed, and which may be read at length in Penn s People s Ancient and Just Liberties Asserted, was a notable one in the history of trial by jury. The prisoners and the jury were alike brow beaten and threatened by the bench, and particularly by the recorder. With extreme courage and skill Penn ex posed the illegality of the prosecution, while the jury, for the first time, asserted the right of juries to decide in opposition to the ruling of the court. They brought in a verdict declaring Penn and Mead " guilty of speaking in Gracechurch Street," but refused to add "to an unlawful assembly " ; then, as the pressure upon them increased, and as they were sent back time after time without food, light, fire, or tobacco, they first acquitted Mead, while returning their original verdict upon Penn, and then, when that verdict was not admitted, returned their final answer " not guilty" for both. The court fined the jurymen 40 marks each for their contumacy, and, in default of payment, imprisoned them, whereupon they vindicated and estab lished for ever the right they had claimed in an action before the Court of Common Pleas, when all twelve judges unanimously declared their imprisonment illegal. Penn himself had been fined for not removing his hat in court, had been imprisoned on his refusal to pay, and had earnestly requested his family not to pay for him. The fine, however, was settled anonymously, and he was released in time to be present at his father s death on 16th September 1670, at the early age of forty-nine. Penn now found himself in possession of a fortune of 1500 a year, and a claim on the crown for 15,000, lent to Charles II. by his father. The admiral appears, from a later statement of Penn, to have asked the king and James to become his son s protectors, and James accepted and acted up to the engagement in a special manner. Upon his release Penn at once plunged into controversy, challenging a Baptist minister named Ives, at High Wycombe, to a public dispute and, according to the Quaker account, easily defeating him. No account is forthcoming from the other side. Hearing at Oxford that students who attended Friends meetings were rigorously used, he wrote a vehement and abusive remonstrance to the vice-chancellor in defence of religious freedom. This found still more remarkable expression in the Seasonable Caveat against Popery (January 1671), in which, while refuting the arguments of Roman Catholics, he urges, far in advance of his age and of all other sects, entire and unlimited toleration of faith and worship, not, be it observed, on the grounds of expediency or of Scripture, but upon the distinctively Quaker doctrine of the " inward light." . In the beginning of 1671 Penn was again arrested for preaching in Wheeler Street meeting-house by Sir J. Robinson, the lieutenant of the Tower, formerly lord mayor, and known as a brutal and bigoted churchman. Legal proof being wanting of any breach of the Conventicle Act, and the Oxford or Five Mile Act also proving inap plicable, Robinson, who had some special cause of enmity against Penn, urged upon him the oath of allegiance. This, of course, the Quaker would not take, and consequently was imprisoned for six months. A saying is recorded of Penn on this occasion worthy of remembrance. Robinson had ordered a corporal and some soldiers to take him to prison. "No, no," said Penn, "send thy lacquey. I know the way