and should do nothing, but what he was willing to answer before God and his country.

The Lords were at a loss. They could not free a friend of James without approval from the Prince of Orange. They got over their difficulty by taking security in 60007. for Penn's appearance in the following term, to answer any charge which might be brought against him. With a threat of prosecution hanging above his head, he was permitted to remain at large. He went to Worminghurst, and watched the drama from his eyrie in the Sussex downs.

Penn was not long left in peace. Fresh causes of suspicion rose; spies and informers dogged his footsteps; he was said to be rich, and there were many about the court who wanted money. At the end of February the Lords in Council issued warrants for his arrest. But Penn was made aware of these new accusations, of the witnesses whose evidence was to be taken and he declined to surrender himself till Easter term. But not to sanction malicious reports by flight he wrote to Shrewsbury, to say that he was living at his country-house, attending to his private affairs and the concerns of his colony; that he did not feel justified in giving himself up an unbailable prisoner; that he was already bound over to appear on the first day of term; that he could affirm, without reserve or equivocation, his entire ignorance of any new plot or conspiracy against the government. William acceded to his request to be allowed to remain in the country till his day of trial. By Easter term (1689) men's minds were calmer; and when Penn appeared in court to defend himself. not one of his accusers dared to confront him. Not a whisper was uttered of his being a Jesuit. No man accused him of any wrong. The

magistrate declared that nothing had been proved against him. He was free.

Though free in person, he had reason to be anxious for his province. William had desired the crown in order to provide the means of waging war on France. His hope by day. his dream by night, was war; a coalition of the Protestant powers; a declaration against Louis; a victorious march on Paris. War with France, as Penn well knew, however glorious to the arms of William, might be ruin to his province. War in Flanders and Brabant meant fire and sword in Canada, Pennsylvania and New York. A march of English infantry towards the Sambre and the Meuse might bring a horde of savages to the Susquehannah and the Delaware. How could the colony of peace, the city of fraternal love, be saved? As yet, this war was in the future, and the wisest men were puzzled as to where it might begin. Some thought it would begin on English soil. King James was ready to return. A vast majority of his Scotch and Irish subjects would have hailed him with delight, and even in the English shires opinions were so nicely balanced that observers who had no desire to see him feared that he had only to appear in order to regain what he had lost.

Amidst these doubts, Penn found some comfort in the fact that William stood by the principles he had published at the Hague.

At the risk of giving ground of offence to the Church party, William pressed for an Act of Toleration for Dissenters, and even declared it necessary to afford protection to the Papists. Though his temper was not merciful, he was a politic prince. He knew what power the position he aimed to acquire, as protector-general of Protestants from the fiords of Norway to the Theiss,

would give him in the councils of Europe; and he naturally asked himself with what effect he could interfere in behalf of Finn and Magyar, if he gave the Catholic at home a just cause of complaint? Even before his election to the throne he had entered into treaties with the Emperor and the Pope.

Penn was gratified with the results, though they fell short of his desires. The new Act disarmed the petty tyrant. It opened the prison-doors to crowds of Quakers. He hoped it would gradually lead to a still more liberal and enlightened policy, as the dominant parties became aware how great an accession of strength it would bring to the nation. But he had little time to indulge in these reflections. He had little time to dream his dreams of a coming golden age. The King had hardly left for Ireland, where the war was burning fiercely, ere he found his name denounced in public and a proclamation issued for his arrest. This ban was issued on the twenty-fourth of June. Penn was lying on a sick-bed; ill of a surfeit and relapse; and six weeks passed before he could move a foot or even hold a pen. So soon as he could stir, he wrote a letter to Daniel Finch, Earl of Nottingham, in which he said, 'Since the government does not think fit to trust me, I shall trust it. . . . and therefore I humbly beg to know when and where I shall wait upon thee.' Nottingham, a very honest man, a friend of Toleration, was the King's Secretary of State. Fifteen days later Penn was brought before the Council and discharged; there being no evidence of any serious kind against him. Three weeks afterwards the King returned from Ireland to renew with higher zest the war with France.

When war was once begun, the King perceived

how much his power of making front against the French in Canada would be strengthened if the full control of all the Colonies from Charleston to Boston were vested in his crown. Vast deserts had been signed away; these deserts were becoming states; and William saw how much they might assist him in his wars. A little had been done already. When the charters were revised by James, some articles had been amended in a royal sense. The charter of New England had suffered much. A good excuse was offered in the state of public feeling in the Colonies for robbing them of rights they dearly prized. Not one of these Colonies had been warm in William's cause. In Maryland and in Virginia the people were either Catholics or Cavaliers. In Pennsylvania they were either Quakers loving peace, or Swedes or French who felt no passion for the strife. Lord Baltimore delayed his proclamation of the new reign, and there were serious thoughts of stripping him of his Colonial crown; but for the moment William held his hand, not liking to disturb existing order in the midst of actual war.

Penn was anxious to go out. He had been several times arrested; his life to say nothing of his freedom was no longer safe. No accusation was too monstrous not to find some people who, from either hatred or self-interest, were willing to give it credit. Affairs were going wrong in his province. New York, exposed to the French, was egging on the people of New England to attack New France. Meetings were being held to organise defence; the Colonists were calling on each other; here for money there for men. The Puritans of New England buckled to their sides the swords which their fathers had worn at Naseby and Marston Moor; and a warlike ardour which

was gladdening the stern and martial soul of William spread from Massachussetts to the Carolinas. The Quakers alone were calm. Amidst this martial preparation they declared they had no quarrel with the French, and would not fight. If French and Indians came against them, they would go out to meet them unarmed, and tell them so. What could William do? The Pennsylvanians would neither defend their own towns, nor pay a war-tax to the frontier governments of Albany and New York. Penn took a more practical view of the crisis. His colony contained others besides Quakers-Germans Dutchmen, Swedes, and English who would shoulder a musket and draw a sword in defence of their homes. These men had no thought of giving up their goods to the Canadians, their scalps to the Iroquois; and the pacific disposition of the Quaker majority only added zeal to the obtrusive energy of the young and unconvinced. A war party was gaining ground in the colony. Penn felt how necessary it was that he should be on the spot to appease these scruples, and to regulate this rising heat. England had no further need of him. His residence had cost him six thousand pounds-the greater part of which he had given away in charities, in jailors' fees, and in legal expenses attendant on the liberation of prisoners. Preparations for his departure were hastily made; a vessel was engaged to carry him across the Atlantic; the Secretary of State appointed a convoy to protect him on his outward voyage.

When he was ready to start, he was suddenly called to the death-bed of George Fox -whose decease took place on the 13th of January, 1691. Over his old friend's grave at Bunhill Fields, Penn delivered a long oration. Three weeks after this