could not comply with it without breach of their oaths. He then left the city; nor had he any further dealings with the fellows until the following month. In the meantime it had transpired that a quo warranto was to issue against the college; and Dr. Bailey, one of the fellows, had received an anonymous letter urging compliance with the mandate on the absurd ground that a decision on the quo warranto adverse to the crown was a moral impossibility. Bailey had jumped to the conclusion that Penn was the writer of the letter, and had written to him exposing the badness of its law, but at the same time craving his mediation with the king. Penn disavowed the authorship of the letter; nor is there any reason for doubting his word. He consented to receive a deputation from the college at his house at Windsor, and accordingly Dr. Hough and others waited on him there on 9 Oct. They laid before him a written statement of their case, which he undertook to read to the king. He made no proposal by way of accommodation, but told the fellows frankly that, ‘after so long a dispute,’ they could not expect to be restored to the king's favour without making some concessions; that the church of England was not entitled to exclusive possession of the universities; that he supposed ‘two or three colleges’ would ‘content the papists;’ and that in the event of the death of the bishop of Oxford, Dr. Hough might succeed to his see (Magdalen College and King James II, documents edited by Rev. J. R. Bloxam, D.D., Oxf. Hist. Soc. 1886). It is evident that throughout this affair Penn's sympathies were divided. From the church of England he was further removed than from the church of Rome. ‘I am a catholic,’ he wrote to Tillotson, ‘though not a Roman.’ ‘Our religions are like our hats,’ he said to James: ‘the only difference lies in the ornaments which have been added to thine.’ He knew that Lord Baltimore's catholic colony of Maryland had been founded and administered on the principle of complete toleration of religious differences, while on both sides of the Atlantic the quakers had suffered at the hands of puritans and churchmen alike. He was passionately desirous that the policy of religious equality should at length have a fair trial in England. At the same time, he saw that the case of the fellows was very hard; and he sought to break unpleasant news to them as gently as possible, and even to console Dr. Hough for the certain loss of the headship by an airy vision of lawn sleeves.
Besides interceding for the Magdalen fellows, Penn endeavoured to procure the release of the seven bishops (Mem. Hist. Soc. of Pennsylvania, vol. iii. pt. ii.). Nevertheless, on the Revolution he was summoned (10 Dec. 1688) before the council as an adherent of the fugitive king. He had the courage to avow that James ‘was always his friend and his father's friend, and that in gratitude he was the king's, and did ever as much as in him lay to influence him to his true interest.’ At the same time he protested that ‘he loved his country and the protestant religion above his life.’ He was then held to bail in 6,000l. (discharged at the close of Easter term following). The substance of a letter of ‘M. Pen,’ containing news favourable to the designs of the Jacobites, is appended to one of D'Avaux's despatches to Louis XIV (see Negotiations de M. le Comte d'Avaux en Irlande, 1689–90, pp. 188–419). The style, however, is such as, even when allowance is made for translation and condensation, renders it hard to believe that the original was written by Penn, or, indeed, by any Englishman. In any case, Macaulay's identification of ‘M. Pen’ with William Penn is precarious.
The interception of a letter from James II to Penn shortly before William III left for Ireland (June 1690) occasioned his citation before the privy council. He appealed to the king, urging the manifest injustice of imputing disloyalty to him merely because James had chosen to write to him, and protesting his entire innocence of treasonable practices. William, who knew him well, was satisfied, and would have discharged him, but the council held him to bail. Macaulay's imputation of ‘falsehood’ on this occasion is entirely arbitrary. In the panic which followed the battle of Beachy Head Penn's name was included in a proclamation issued on 17 July against supposed adherents of the king's enemies. He at once surrendered himself, and, no evidence appearing against him, was discharged by the court of king's bench on 28 Nov. He was charged by the impostor Fuller with complicity in Preston's plot, and deemed it most prudent to live in retirement until the storm blew over. He remained, however, in London, in constant communication with Lord Sidney and other friends at court, until through their influence he obtained, on 10 Nov. 1693, a formal assurance of the king's goodwill towards him. In view of this fact it is hard to attach any importance to the occurrence of his name in a list of advisers of an invasion of England drawn up at St. Germains in the following month (see Macpherson, Original Papers, i. 468, and
