died Feb. 6, 1685. James II., who succeeded, had been the pupil in naval affairs of Penn's father, and was his own intimate friend. Penn took lodgings at Kensington to be near the court, upon which he constantly attended, and where he had such influence that his house was thronged by hundreds of suitors asking his intercession in their behalf. His intimacy with the king led to foolish suspicions that he was secretly a Jesuit, and in April, 1685, he published a pamphlet entitled "Fiction Found Out," to rebut the charge. In 1686, partly through his influence, a proclamation was issued by the king and council for the release of those imprisoned on account of religion, and upward of 1,200 Quakers were set free. This was followed in April, 1687, by a proclamation declaring liberty of conscience to all, and removing all tests and penalties. Penn meanwhile made a tour on the continent, during which by order of the king he had a conference with William, prince of Orange, whom he endeavored to convert to his views of universal toleration. Soon after the revolution of 1688 Penn was called before the council to answer to a charge of treason; but no evidence appearing against him, he was discharged. Subsequently, a letter from the exiled James requesting him to come to France having been intercepted, he was again brought before the council in presence of King William; but after a long examination, in which he declared his friendship for James though he did not approve his policy, and said he could not prevent him from writing to him, he was discharged. A third time, in 1690, he was arrested on a charge of conspiracy, tried by the court of king's bench, and acquitted. In 1691 the charge was renewed by an informer named Fuller, whom the house of commons afterward branded as a cheat, a rogue, and a false accuser; and Penn concealed himself to avoid arrest. Meantime Pennsylvania had been greatly disturbed by civil and religious quarrels, and in October, 1692, the king and queen deprived Penn of his authority as governor, and directed Gov. Fletcher of New York to assume the administration of Pennsylvania. Powerful friends, among them Locke, Tillotson, and the duke of Buckingham, now interceded in Penn's behalf with the king; and he had a hearing before the council on the charges against him, and was honorably acquitted in November, 1693. In February, 1694, his wife died, and he bore testimony to her virtuous life and Christian death in "An Account of the Blessed End of my dear wife Gulielma Maria Penn." Within two years he married Hannah Callowhill, a Quaker lady. His government was restored to him in August, 1694; and in September, 1699, he sailed on a second visit to America, accompanied by his wife and daughter. He found the colony prosperous, and was warmly received. He immediately gave his earnest attention to various reforms, and especially to the amelioration of the condition of the Indians and negroes. Tidings from England that a measure was pending before the house of lords for bringing all the proprietary governments under the crown, led him to return to England in 1701. One of his last official acts was to make Philadelphia a city by a charter signed Oct. 25, 1701. Soon after his arrival in England the project of bringing the proprietary governments under the crown was dropped. For several years after this he was involved in great trouble by the affairs of Pennsylvania, where his son, whom he had sent there as his representative, had disgraced him by vicious and riotous conduct; while his trusted agent in London, a Quaker named Ford, left to his executors false claims against Penn to a very large amount. To avoid extortion Penn suffered himself to be committed to the Fleet prison in 1708, where he remained a long time, till his friends compounded with his creditors. In 1712 he had made arrangements for the transfer to the crown of his rights as proprietor for £12,000, when he sustained repeated shocks of paralysis; and though he lived six years longer, he never regained his mental vigor, and for much of that period was deprived of memory and of the power of motion. He was interred in Jordan's burial ground, near the village of Chalfont St. Giles, in Buckinghamshire.—The reputation of William Penn in his own day did not escape suspicion and censure. The extraordinary mingling of Quaker simplicity and court influence which marked his life gave rise to many imputations, which, have been revived with much force and pertinacity by Macaulay in his "History of England." Admitting that Penn was without doubt a man of eminent virtues; that he had a strong sense of religious duty and a fervent desire to promote the happiness of mankind; that on one or two points of high importance he had notions more correct than were in his day common even among men of enlarged minds; and that he will always be mentioned with honor as the founder of a colony who did not in his dealings with a savage people abuse the strength derived from civilization, and as a lawgiver who, in an age of persecution, made religious liberty the corner stone of a polity, the English historian alleges that "his writings and his life furnish abundant proofs that he was not a man of strong sense. He had no skill in reading the characters of others. His confidence in persons less virtuous than himself led him into great errors and misfortunes. His enthusiasm for one great principle sometimes impelled him to violate other great principles which he ought to have held sacred. Nor was his integrity altogether proof against the tempations to which it was exposed in that splendid and polite, but deeply corrupted society with which he now mingled. . . . . Unhappily it cannot be concealed that he bore a chief part in some transactions condemned, not merely by the rigid code of the society to which he belonged, but
