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WILLIAM

From the Life of William Penn.

PENN AND

MACAULAY.

WITH A PORTRAIT OF PENN.

THE fierce assault of Macaulay, in his History of England, upon the character of William Penn, has given a new interest in the life of that eminent Friend. The charges made by Macaulay have been reviewed and replied to by Mr. Hepworth Dixon, the biographer of Penn, in a manner that has been generally pronounced to be successful. As these charges obtain fresh currency by the publication of the new volumes of Macaulay's work, it is but just that Mr. Dixon's reply should also be made familiar. We accordingly accompany our plate of Penn with Dixon's defense.

would himself exact the strongest facts and the severest logic from the man who should presume to dispute the laws of Kepler; and the fullest and most unquestionable evidence would be required in support of an assertion that Milton was a debauchee, or Buckingham a man of virtue.

"I will apply this canon to his own method. That I may not incur the charge of improperly assuming that Penn's reputation was thus historically fixed, I will cite Mr. Macaulay's own reading of the verdict which more than a century and a half has ratified. 'Rival nations,' he says, have agreed in canonizing him. England is proud of his name. A great commonwealth beyond the Atlantic regards him with a reverence similar to that which the Athenians felt for Theseus, and the Romans for Quirinus. The respecta

honors him as an apostle. By pious men of other persuasions he is generally regarded as a bright pattern of Christian virtue. Meanwhile admirers of a very different sort have sounded his praises. The French philosophers of the eighteenth century pardoned what they regarded as his superstitious fancies in consideration of his contempt for priests, and of his cosmopolitan benevolence, impartially extended to all races and all creeds. His name has thus become, throughout all civilized countries, a synonym for polity and philanthropy.'

"Mr. Macaulay has written several volumes of history and criticism. He must be aware that one of the fundamental laws of Critical Inquiry demands, that when a fact or a character has stood the tests of time, and in the progress of opin-ble Society of which he was a member ion has attained to something like a fixed position in the historical system, the evidence in support of any assault on it must be strong and free from taint in some fair proportion to the length of time and strength of opinion on which it rests. This rule is deeply based in human nature. The fixity of historical ideas is, in other words, the permanence of truth. Once a great historical verdict is passed, the noblest instincts of our being prompt us to guard it as something sacred-to be set aside only after scrupulous inquiry and conclusive evidence against its justice. The wise man will not rashly disturb the repose of ages. Our faith in history is akin to religion: it is a confidence in our power to separate good from evil-truth from falsehood-to preserve in their native purity the wisdom which serves to guide, and the memories which inspire the best actions of mankind. Mr. Macaulay will not deny the reasonableness of a rule growing out of such a feeling. He

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"This general verdict Mr. Macaulay challenges. He admits that his attempt requires some courage; I think the reader will agree with him, when the evidence is adduced on which his challenge is supported. This evidence consists of five assertions: I. That his connection with the court in 1684, while he lived at Kensington, caused his own sect to look coldly on him and even treat him with

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obloquy. II. That he 'extorted money' with war and destruction. This insanity from the girls of Taunton for the maids cost Monmouth his head, and won a gibof honor. III. That he allowed himself bet for hundreds of his followers. to be employed in the work of seducing Kiffin into a compliance with court designs. IV. That he endeavored to gain William's assent to the promulgated edict suspending the penal laws. V. That he 'did his best to seduce the Magdalen collegian from the path of right,' and was a broker in simony of a peculiarly discreditable kind.'

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"These allegations I shall examine in the order in which they occur.

"I. I quote Mr. Macaulay's own words. 'He was soon surrounded by flatterers and suppliants. His house at Kensington was sometimes thronged at his hour of rising by more than two hundred suitors. He paid dear, however, for this seeming prosperity. Even his own sect looked coldly on him and requited his services with obloquy.' His only authority for this statement is Gerard Croese, (Hist. Qua. lib. ii. 1695,) a Dutchman, who never was in England in his life, and whose work the Society of Friends has never recognized. Croese could have no trustworthy knowledge of the opinions of the Quakers, and no right to represent their opinions. The statement is not, however, merely unsupported; but it is positively contradicted by the Devonshire House Records. These prove that at this time Penn was in regular attendance at the monthly meetings, and was elected to the highest offices in the body.

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case of the maidens was not different to that of many others. They had taken with their parents' knowledge, a prominent part in the rebellion; and when the day of vengeance came, they stood before the law guilty of a crime for which the sentence was death. The idea of sending them to the scaffold for faults which were their parents' more than their own, was of course not thought of; but that the parents might not escape punishment, the power to pardon them was given by the King to the maids of honor-not likely, I must suppose, to be the most exacting of creditors-as a sort of fee or bounty. It is to be remembered the sale of pardons was in that age a regular profession; from the King- at least in Charles's time-to the link-boy or the porter at his gates, almost every man and woman connected with the court regularly sold his or her influence. The young girls about the queen, daughters be it remembered of the first families in the land, had no proper conception of the horrid wickedness of this brokerage; and they requested the Duke of Somerset to get the affair arranged for them on the best terms. Somerset wrote to Sir Francis Warre, the member for Bridgewater, asking him as a personal favor to see the parents, as being a neighbor and likely to be known to them, or to name some proper agent who might arrange the business. Warre had "II. That the reader may understand evidently no wish to be mixed up with an the Taunton affair, I must point out the affair of this kind; and he replied that it features, with more exactness than Mr. was already in proper hands, those of one Macaulay has done, which relate to his Bird, the town clerk. For some unknown charge against Penn. When Monmouth reason the maids of honor forbade this arrived at Taunton, he found that the agent to proceed in their behalf, and town had pledged itself to the rebellion, Warre was again applied to; but he reby the signal act of having had wrought fused to name a broker on the spot, excusat the public expense, a set of royal stand- ing himself on the pleas that the schoolards for him and his army, by the daugh- mistress was a woman of mean birth, ters of the principal families. The cere- and the young ladies were acting at the mony of presenting these standards was time under her orders. Weeks elapsed one of the most important acts of the re- and no settlement was made by the pabellion; at the head of her procession the rents; nor do we know-except by inferschoolmistress carried the emblems of ence-what was done in the matter at royal power-the Bible and the sword- court, until the following letter was writand the royal banner was presented to ten: the duke as to their sovereign. There"WHITEHALL, Feb. 13th, 1685-6. upon he assumed the name of King-set a price on his uncle's head-and pro-ing acquainted me that they designe to employ 'MR. PENNE-Her Majties Maids of Honor havclaimed the Parliament then sitting, a you and Mr. Walden in making a composition treasonable convention, to be pursued with the Relations of the Maids of Taunton for

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"To whom was this letter addressed? Sir James Macintosh, the first man who brought the letter to light-for Mr. Macaulay has not even the merit of originality in his errors-assumed that it was addressed to William Penn; and in this singular assumption he has been followed by his friend and admirer. But Macintosh went still further: he not only assumed, without warrant, that a letter addressed to a 'Mr. Penne' to engage him in a 'scandalous transaction' was addressed to the governor of Pennsylvania; but he also dared, in defiance of every rule of historical criticism, to assume that William Penn accepted the commission that was so offered. Mr. Macaulay, of course copied this gross mistake from Sir James, and gave it the additional currency of his own volumes. This point is particularly noticeable that Mr. Macaulay did not consult the original authorities, but satisfied himself with merely quoting from the Macintosh collection. Now this letter was certainly not addressed to William Penn. 1. In the first place, it does not bear his name: he never wrote his name 'Penne,' nor did others ever so write it. In the Pennsylvania correspondence, in the Minutes of the Privy Council, and in the letters of Van Citters, Locke, Lawton, Bailey, Creech, and Hunt, and in the correspondence of his private friends, I have seen it written hundreds of times, but never once, even by accident, with an e final. Least of all men could Sunder

land, his intimate acquaintance from boyhood, make such a mistake. 2. The letter is highly disrespectful, if supposed to be written to a man of his rank-a man who had refused a peerage, and who stood before the court, not only as a personal friend to the king, but as Lord Proprietor of the largest province in America; the more especially would this be the case when it is considered that the letter was written by the polite and diplomatic Earl of Sunderland. 3. The work to be done required a low, trafficking agent, who could go down to Taunton and stay there

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until the business was concluded: it is obvious that this could not be done by William Penn. 4. The letter is evidently a reply to an offer of service: the maids of honor designe to employ' Mr. Penne and Mr. Walden, because, as it seems to me, they had applied for the office. Malice itself would shrink from the assump tion that the governor of Pennsylvania would voluntarily solicit such an employment. 5. It is contrary to every thing else that is known of Penn that he would allow himself, on any pretense, to be drawn into such a business. 6. No mention of it occurs in any of his letters: I have read some hundreds of them, and although he was the most communicative of correspondents, not a trace of his action, or of his having been applied to in the affair, is to be found. Knowing his epistolary habit, this fact alone would have satisfied my own mind. 7. No mention has been made of his interference by any newswriter, pamphleteer, or historian-though had he been concerned, the host of ma ligners, who rose against him on the flight of James, could certainly not have failed to point their sarcasms with the scandalous transaction' and 'extortion of money.' 8. No tradition of his appearance on the scene is preserved in the neighborhood; when, had he really been the agent employed, it is impossible that so conspicuous a broker could have faded so soon from local recollection.

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of George Penne, gent. setting forth that his 'GEORGE PENNE-Upon reading the petition family having been great sufferers for their loyalty, He humbly begs that His Majesty would be graciously pleased to grant him a patent for the sole exercising the royal Oake lottery, and licensing all other games, in his Majesty's plantations in America, for twenty-one years. Majesty in Council is pleased to refer this matLords Commissioners of the Treasury, and upon what their lordships report of what is fit to be done therein for the petitioner, His Majesty will declare his further pleasure.'

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ter to the consideration of the Rt. Hon. the

This man, whose fitting reward, accord

ing to his own estimate of the value of his | the money. I know of no proof that the services, was the fief of a gaming-table, maids of honor got a shilling. was the Mr. Penne. His name is always spelt with the final e. In the first draft of the foregoing minute, the clerk had spelt the name George Penn, both in the margin and in the text, but has filled the final letter in afterwards, as if prophetically guarding against any confusion of this wretched fellow with the great governor of Pennsylvania. He was a low hanger-on about the back-doors of the court, ready for any dirty work. When pardons were to be bought and sold, he was a pardon-broker. He was actively engaged in the Taunton affair; and among other feats, as I am able to state on the authority of a family cash-book still preserved, he obtained £65 from Nathaniel Pinney as the ransom of his brother, Azariah Pinney, one of the transported rebels. Mr. Walden was apparently an agent of the same kind, and equally and deservedly obscure. For some reason, however, the designe to employ' these men miscarried, and the maids of honor found another agent in the person of Brent, the Popish lawyer, who was a regular pardon-broker, and was arrested on the flight of King James, as I find by the minutes of Privy Council. This fellow employed as great a rascal as himself, one Crane of Bridgewater, as his sub-agent, and between them they settled the business, as Oldmixon relates.

"Having cleared Penn from this foul and unfounded charge, let me say a word or two in behalf of the maids of honor. Mr. Macaulay says they were at last forced to be content with less than a third' of £7000. How much less? Is there any evidence that they received a single guinea? Dr. Toulmin collected his information from the families of the girls of Taunton, at a time when the children of the little rebels might have been still alive, and he says merely that some of the parents paid as much as fifty or a hundred pounds. Some of them? Oldmixon tells us that the number of the scholars was twenty. How many of twenty could be called some? Take it at ten; if pardons were purchased for ten, five at £50 and five at £100, this would but yield £750 altogether. Besides which Oldmixon, who had peculiar means of learning the real facts, says the agent and his subordinate paid themselves bountifully out of

"While on this digression, I may add a remark in behalf of another much-abused lady. The historian counts up with virtuous indignation the number of transported insurgents which the queen, Marie d'Este, selected for her private portion of the spoil, and talks of the thousand pounds' which she made by her 'unprincely greediness and her unwomanly cruelty.' Now we not only do not know how much, if any thing at all, the queen put into her pocket; but we do not know for certain that she received for herself a single transport. We have no good reason to believe that she ever dreamt of such a thing. The only ground for this gross charge against the honor of a woman and a foreigner, is a letter of Sunderland to Lord Jeffreys-which Mr. Macaulay, as usual, has copied from the 'Macintosh Collection'-in which that statesman, after after giving a list of grants of prisoners to various persons about the court, adds in a postscript- The queen has asked for a hundred more of the rebels who are to be transported; as soon as I know for whom, you shall hear from me again.' It is clear enough from Sunderland's words that she did not ask them for herself. is equally clear that Mr. Macaulay's estimate of the profits she cleared on the cargo, after making large allowance for those who died of hunger and fever during the passage,' is a mere invention. The misfortunes of this woman should have shielded her from injustice.

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"III. Towards the close of his reign, when the Churchmen openly repudiated their own doctrine of passive obedience, James became anxious to secure the adhesion of his Dissenting subjects; and among other leading men, he selected Penn's old opponent, William Kiffin, the Baptist, for a city magistracy. But two of Kiffin's grandsons had been taken and executed in the Western rebellion, and it was doubted whether the old man would comply with the wishes of the court. At this point Mr. Macaulay introduces Penn. The heartless and venal sycophants of Whitehall, judging by themselves, thought that the old man would be easily propitiated by an alderman's gown, and by some compensation in money, for the property which his grandsons had forfeited. Penn was employed in the work of seduc

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tion, but to no purpose.' Now, there is not the slightest foundation in history for this statement. Mr. Macaulay here asserts that Penn was 'employed' by the 'heartless and venal sycophants' of the court, to seduce Kiffin into an acceptance of the alderman's gown-and that he failed. The passage means this, or it means nothing. It will be allowed that on such a point Kiffin himself must be the best authority; in his autobiography, lately published from the original manuscript, he says In a little after, a great temptation attended me, which was a commission from the king, to be one of the aldermen of the city of London; which, as soon as I heard of it, I used all the diligence I could, to be excused, both by some lords near the king, and also by Sir Nicholas Butler and Mr. Penn. But it was all in vain. This is just the reverse of what Mr. Macaulay states. Penn did not go to Kiffin; Kiffin went to Penn. Instead of being employed in the work of seduction, he was engaged in the task of intercession. Mr. Macaulay makes Kiffin refuse the magistracy: Kiffin says he accepted it: The next court-day I came to the court, and took upon me the office of alder

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man.'

"IV. A little attention to dates will soon dispose of the fourth charge against Penn. Mr. Macaulay writes- All men were anxious to know what he (the Prince of Orange) thought of the Declaration of Indulgence Penn sent copious disquisitions to the Hague, and even went thither in the hope that his eloquence, of which he had a high opinion, would prove irresistible. Now, Penn returned from Germany in the autumn of 1686, and the Declaration was not issued until April 1687. After 1686, he never went to the Dutch capital. There is no evidence, even, that Penn sent over copious disquisitions; Burnet, Mr. Macaulay's authority, says not a word on such a subject. When Penn was at the Hague, in the summer of 1686, the subject that was under discussion related to the Tests, not the Indulgence. The Declaration was unthought of at that time; Burnet is very clear on this point. But there is other proof that Mr. Macaulay's guess-work is wrong. In November, 1686, five months before the Declaration was issued, Van Citters reported to his correspondent, the substance of the conversations between Penn and the Prince, as it was then known

in court circles in London; and in that report, no mention whatever is made of the Declaration.

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"V. In the ninth chapter of the preceding memoir, I have given the true history of Penn's connection with the affair of Magdalen College. In this place I shall content myself with a special refutation of Mr. Macaulay's errors; first quoting his material passages, and numbering them for separate remark. 1. 'Penn was at Chester, on a pastoral tour. His popularity and authority among his brethren had greatly declined; 2. since he had become a tool of the king and the Jesuits.' 3. Perhaps the College might still be terrified, caressed, or bribed into submission. The agency of Penn was employed.' 4. The courtly Quaker, therefore, did his best to seduce the College from the path of right.' 5. "To such a degree had his manners been corrupted by evil communications, and his understanding obscured by inordinate zeal for a single object, that he did not scruple to become a broker in simony of a peculiarly discreditable kind, and to use a bishopric as a bait to tempt a divine to perjury.' These assertions may be looked at one by one, as they stand here. 1. Had Penn become in 1687-the date of Mr. Macaulay's authority-unpopular and powerless with his brethren? There is fortunately, better evidence than that of an agent of Louis Quatorze: the evidence of the 'brethren' themselves. The Records at Devonshire House prove that his influence was high as ever in the society of Friends; he was elected to speak their sentiments; he served their most important offices; was in accord with Fox, Crisp, and the other leaders; and at the very moment when Mr. Macaulay introduces him with this disparaging comment, he was on a religious tour, one of the most popular and brilliant of his public ministry. To this may be added the testimony of Penn himself; in one of his letters he expressly says, that it is at the joint request of the Society of Friends, and of persons in authority, that he is engaged in the business of the nation. 2. Was he ever a tool of the king and of the Jesuits'? No man, I venture to believe, will entertain a doubt on this point, after reading the ninth chapter of these memoirs, and the authorities there cited. Family experiences had given him an early abhorence of the persecuting spirit of the Ro

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