ministration, but his personal dignity, on the issue of the contest. Could he yield to subjects whom he had menaced with raised voice and furious gestures? Yet could he venture to eject in one day a crowd of respectable clergymen from their homes, because they had discharged what the whole nation regarded as a sacred duty? Perhaps there might be an escape from this dilemma. Perhaps the college might still be terrified, caressed, or bribed into submission. Penn attempts to mediate The agency of Penn was employed. He had too much good feeling to approve of the violent and unjust proceedings of the government, and even ventured to express part of what he thought. James was, as usual, obstinate in the wrong. The courtly Quaker, therefore, did his best to seduce the college from the path of right. He first tried intimidation. Ruin, he said, impended over the society. The King was highly incensed. The case might be a hard one. Most people thought it so. But every child knew that His Majesty loved to have his own way and could not bear to be thwarted. Penn, therefore, exhorted the Fellows not to rely on the goodness of their cause, but to submit, or at least to temporise. [1] Such counsel
- ↑ See Penn's Letter to Bailey, one of the Fellows of the College, in the Impartial Relation printed at Oxford in 1688. It has lately been asserted that Penn most certainly did not write this letter. Now, the evidence which proves the letter to be his is irresistible. Bailey, to whom the letter was addressed, ascribed it to Penn, and sent an answer to Penn. In a very short time both the letter and the answer appeared in print. Many thousands of copies were circulated. Penn was pointed out to the whole world as the author of the letter; and it is not pretended that he met this public accusation with a public contradiction. Everybody therefore believed, and was perfectly warranted in believing, that he was the author. The letter was repeatedly quoted as his, during his own lifetime, not merely in fugitive pamphlets, such as the History of the Ecclesiastical Commission, published in 1711, but in grave and elaborate books which were meant to descend to posterity. Boyer, in his History of William the Third, printed immediately after that King's death, and reprinted in 1703, pronounced the letter to be Penn's, and added some severe reflections on the writer. Kennet, in the bulky History of England published in 1706, a history which had a huge sale and produced a great sensation, adopted the very words of Boyer. When these works appeared, Penn was not only alive, but in the full enjoyment of his faculties. He cannot have been ignorant of the charge brought against him by writers of so much note; and it was not his practice to hold his peace when unjust charges were brought against him even by obscure scribblers. In 1695, a pamphlet on the Exclusion Bill was falsely imputed to him in an anonymous libel. Contemptible as was the quarter from which the calumny proceeded, he hastened to vindicate himself. His denial, distinct, solemn, and indignant, speedily came forth in print. Is it possible to doubt that he would, if he could, have confounded Boyer and Kennet by a similar denial? He however silently suffered them to tell the whole world, during many years, that this letter was written by "William Penn the head of the Quakers, or, as some then thought, an ambitious, crafty Jesuit, who under a phanatical outside, promoted King James's designs." He died without attempting to clear himself. In the year of his death appeared Eachard's huge volume, containing the History of England from the Restoration to the Revolution, and Eachard, though often differing with Boyer and Kennet, agreed with them in unhesitatingly ascribing the letter to Penn.
Such is the evidence on one side. I am not aware that any evidence deserving a serious answer has been produced on the other. (1857.)
